garlic, activism, interview with a bat
November 24th, 2008 | Uncategorized
Here’s an instructional video In Which Holly Demonstrates How To Plant Garlic And I Ramble On About The Buddha And A Freaky Dream I Had.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qp4mq3RU3_8[/youtube]
D’you all know about JoinTheImpact? This big spontaneous internet-based activist phenomenon that’s been going on since Prop 8 passed? Click here for a list of groovy subversive activities we should be participating in during the upcoming weeks. I kinda like the one about donating LGBT food to antigay churches. Once my ex and I did that by accident! We were looking for some church that served free dinners to people on Thanksgiving, and made a bunch of food for them. When we got there the straightlaced people all looked at us like we were aliens. They took the food, though.
And here’s a podcast of an interview I did last week with the illustrious Bat Segundo. Go listen to just the first minute or so–his introduction is really hilarious.
47 Responses to “garlic, activism, interview with a bat”
What a sweet slice of life this video is with you, Holly, your cat and the garlic bulbs. And so sensory — the cool, rich earth, the shot of the gun, the sharp smell of garlic. Miracles indeed.
I’m sure your furry friend appreciates the kitty comfort station you constructed for her…even if it is garlic flavored.
mmmm…. home grown Garlic…..when i lived in SE Australia we planted Garlic on the winter solstice to harvest on the summer solstice…. always a lovely piece of the celebration of short days to longer, and long to shorter….
My girlfriend planted Garlic that same weekend! I can now add this to my “all lesbians do X” list.
“All lesbians move in on the second date”
“All lesbians eat falafel”
“All lesbians plant garlic in November”
What a nice video – and so much wind that day! We had that wind in Quebec too. Whooooosh.
Dr. W. is a real hoot – a real garden manager. I love it when cats get right in the center of activities and show off a bit (as long as it’s safe, of course).
Our next door neighbor’s cat, a big sweet Maine Coon, loves us and our dog and kitty and he also loves to boss me around when I do yard and garden stuff-a little plaintive voice that goes on and on and on and… : )
Here’s Noam on Democracy Now from a speech he gave last week in Cambridge talking about the Obama election. I think it’s about a half hour long, but worth it, i think. No mention of prop 8, tho.
http://play.rbn.com/?url=demnow/demnow/demand/2008/nov/video/dnB20081124a.rm&proto=rtsp&start=29:16
ps – nice garlics
The cat’s not riding around in your garlic patch on a vacuum cleaner, is she?
Holly sounds like such a bright, young agronomist! Out here at Moo U, we have a lot of them, so I know the type. 🙂 And, speaking of bright, young women, did you know that the current edition of Newsweek has a story about Rachel Maddow? She says that “anyone who is 35 grew up without heroes”. Such a shame. But perhaps people like Holly, Rachel and A.B. will prove to be role models for the next generation.
LINK: http://www.newsweek.com/id/170385
My Cat looks just like that!
I hope one day my kitty might hang out with me like that. She’s still completely freaked out by everything and hides under the sofa most of the time. It’s a gently gently process that was really making progress until 4 weeks ago she mysteriously cut her back leg and ruptured her achilles tendon (ouch!) and since then it’s been a saga of vets and confinement to cat prison in the lounge. She’s just been allowed out so we’re back to the softly softly.
But I do love my little limping cat. 🙂
Should you be wearing brighter colors when outside during deer hunting season? You know how we fans worry.
I’m impressed that dr. w is not “helping” more aggressively, like by chasing the garlic or digging in the dirt. That’s what my cats would have been doing-they like to be involved.
I work at the Art Institute of Chicago – I recognize that bowl! I missed your reading at Women & Children First because it was Free Night at the museum…oh well. Happy Thanksgiving!
I thought that too, LM! Although normally when a cat gets right up in my face like that it usually means “feed/stroke/cuddle me, preferably somewhere warm and cosy. My cat had the power to send me to sleep – whenever he curled up on my lap I’d suddenly feel this wave of sleepiness wash over me and my eyes would close …
Anyway – I planted garlick a couple of weeks ago along with special overwintering shallots and red onions. That anything you can eat grows over the winter is a miracle to me. I was amazed to find you can grow all sorts of alliums, cabbages, salad leaves and fava beans over the winter in Britain, although maybe not in snowy Vermont! The cold makes the garlick sweeter apparently and the smell when you dig it up is so mouth-wateringly yummy.
I enjoy the fact that, by the end of the video, Holly has the camera and you’re planting garlic. Priceless.
Hi Alison: Is DTWOF retired…or just on hiatus? New York Magazine (Dec. 1, 2008 issue)has an article with some vague quotes from you basically saying you have retired the strip…is this true?
Mame —
Alison initially put the strip on hiatus while she writes and draws her second graphic novel. She is still working on that book, so the strip is certainly out of production for the next several months at least.
I can’t speak for Alison of course, but in her recent talks and interviews, she has said she’s seriously considering letting the strip go and moving on to other creative spheres. She indicates she’s enjoying the freedom from monthly deadlines and structured production. Yet, I don’t get the sense that she’s made an irrevocable decision one way or the other.
I figure we all will know more after the second book is released.
One problem with the strip is that it now earns very little outside book form (and not much from that either). This has occurred because so many queer newspapers that used to run it no longer exist. Hence very little income and the need to go to other projects –like the Entertainment Weekly drawings and the piece for State by State –that actually pay something. (I assume.)
I hope that fills in some gaps for you.
@Andrew, yes, they should, and they should have a little orange vest for the kitty.
yes. I knew the strip was on indefinite hiatus but I was hoping we might see the characters from time to time, at some point in the future. I certainly love Alison’s non-DTWOF work though and I look forward to all her projects.
The leaves are off the trees, the skies are grey, it’s Vermont…but where’s the two foot of snow on the ground? Have I got the wrong idea about your climate, or is this year unseasonably warm?
What’s going into those other (spoke-like, radial?) raised beds behind you?
Yes we’ve all been digesting this news. If you go back one thread, Alison posted a video of her recent appearance in SF. At the beginning she talks about why she may not continue the strip (which Ellen O. recapitulated above).
Meanwhile, we can all hypothesize if Stuart and Sparrow would bring JR to WDC for the inauguration (probably not, bc of scarce fossil fuels), if Clarice’s depression is lifting, and if Ginger & Samia got a subprime mortgage….
Have a good TDay, y’all – Nat’l Day of Mourning – Give Thanks Day – day off, etc. Time to plant garlic. Who knew? (yes, I know that many of you knew! ; )
@Andrew again: To avoid mishaps, they should each wear one of these shirts outside, and maybe the kitty could fit one of the dog shirts.
http://www.cafepress.com/NotADeer
You’re all so thoughtful. Here, we put on our outfits.
Hi, Alison. This is somewhat irrelevant to your post, but I’ve just purchased and read the Korean translation of Fun Home. The translator did a fair job, I guess, but one thing I noticed is that you seem to be speaking in honorific Korean to your father in the graphic novel. The Korean language is hiearchial, similar to Vous and Tu distinction in French but wider in terms of use. A younger person generally speaks in honorific to the elder.(And your mother speaks honorific to your father as well, although I don’t know whether if she’s younger than he is.) Most children do not, however, usually use honorific language to their own parents, unless the parent-children relationship is somewhat rigid and stern. I have yet to read the original English version of your book, but I was wondering if you really were trying to portray your relationship with your father in that kind of formal, stiff way.
The Japanese language has a similar system of lingual hiearchy, and I’ll be checking on that when the Japanese translation comes out.
Yun Jin Joo! Nothing is irrelevant to my posts here! Thank you so much for sharing this information about the Korean translation. I didn’t know that about the honorific form of address, nor do I know what the translator intended.Or what the Japanese translator will do. My relationship with my father was formal and stiff in some ways, but it was also casual and familiar. Being translated is such a strange experience.
“All translation is to some extent misrepresentation.” I read that yesterday in an article about translating Freud.
Happy Thanksgiving to all!
Anyone eating anything interesting? We’re attempting to make Peking Duck!
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Anyone got a good recipe for sweet potato pie? An American pal told me they were making it for Thanksgiving and it sounds even nicer than pumpkin pie.
This is my first blog entry ever! I don’t know how to act, nor what to say or do! This communicating on-line with no visual cues of gesticulating hands or expressive eyes…Is there body language on the web? Hummm.
What better time to enter the fray, what with all this talk of Buddha, Freud and garlic. Yum.
Traduttore, traditore – translator, traitor.
Japanese! Ooh! When where how much shuppansha wa dochira (which publisher)?
Happy Thanksgiving. Up at 0430 to make cranberry sauce and get the stuffing ingredients ready. (It was peeling and seeding and dicing and parboiling the butternut squash that took the most time, thanks for asking.)
@Ian: Sounds like a MAOIST ORANGE CAKE natural. But when I went there to look, no one has posted since…May!
**oh my**
Ian, I usually try the Food Network site for recipes. You’ll probably find quite a few sweet potato pies to choose from in their database. I got a recipe there for chocolate pecan pie. I made it last night and haven’t tasted it yet, but it looked and smelled fantastic when I took it out of the oven. Can’t wait to eat some later while watching the Texas-Texas A&M football game.
Happy Thanksgiving to all!
Ian, one of the characters in my Great American Lesbian Novel has the perfect sweet potato pie recipe (the one I use), and it’s online at More From Ginny Bates: Feeding Appetites and More Recipes. After going to the link, open the post all the way by clicking on “Read More”, then search for “Allie’s Nana’s Sweet Potato Pie.”
In the American South, it’s as common as pumpkin pie. I prefer it, actually.
Thanks for the recipes folks! I’m looking forward to trying them out – found a couple of good ones on Food Network and Allie Nana’s looks v tasty Maggie.
Hope y’all had a Happy Thanksgiving! At least this year there’s something worth giving thanks for, politically anyway!
Huh?
I planted my garlic last month. I’ve never heard of the leaving the tip exposed bit. But I’m in the PNW, not NE. I mulch with leaves after plopping them in 3 inches. I’d be curious to know if Holly has more luck with the exposure method. Great to hear her say, “bigger cloves, yield bigger heads!” 🙂 yeah, gardening!
Hi All,
You can use canned sweet potatoes or 2 c. cooked mashed sweet potatoes (baking will make them the sweetest) in place of pumpkin in any recipe. Works just fine, though you may want to cut the sweetener a bit, as sweet potatoes are naturally sweeter than pumpkin.
Alison, please don’t discontinue the strip entirely! Please please please… Even if you only do one strip every 4-6 months, that would be so welcome. Or just occasional random strips. Anything!
J.
Clippings service: A respectful and approbative review of STATE BY STATE leads this week’s “Books” section of THE SPECTATOR. Philip Hensher is, as always, wittily perceptive – “David Rakoff makes [Salt Lake City] sound just like Pyongyang with better supermarkets and stranger underwear”. No mention, however, of AB’s work.
have you chicks buried a whole lot of vampires in your backyard? Those garlic garden mounds look weirdly human shaped …
bh, those are my dead Mormons. Alison took care of ’em for me.
sobriquet67: Planting with the tips just showing is something that was told to me, so we’ll see how it goes. But the garlic bed will definitely get a blanket of leaf mulch. And hey, we’ve just made plans to expand the garden!
Yun Jin Joo’s talk of translations reminds me of one of my favorite episodes from Doonesbury. Someone was talking about how, after Mao’s stroke, Honey was the only person who could understand his speech. As such, she was the one who ordered the Cultural Revolution. “Well,” she admitted, “I think that’s what he said.”
The garlic video is reminicent of the Fun Home scene in which Alison and her father are planting bulbs and her father instructs alison to plant the bulb “pointy side up”. If I’m remembering right, alison then says that she hates flowers.
Coming in late from the peanut gallery, I’m hoping if AB gets time in the future, maybe she could do a yearly dtwof calendar. 12 episodes per year instead of 20-mumble.
Just sayin’
BTW – this isn’t showing up in my rss feed lately on LJ. Hm.
You say you feel you’ve made DTWOF obsolete, because the movement has had so much success–but as an avid, heterosexual reader of your work (though I have to say, Toni might be able to convert me), I promise you your work will absolutely never be obsolete! The memoir form is something you do so beautifully, and it’s exactly the right art form for middle age, but I hope that one day you feel inspired to start another strip that allows you the freedom to comment on ongoing politics and social issues. We really can’t face the future without you…
You have the best videos, Alison, loved the owl too, though hope it went somewhere else to eat. I too thought garlic, unlike irises, should be buried deeper.
To Holly (sorry, I couldn’t find the URL for her blog to post there):
Great to read that you all will be expanding your garden plot! Thanks for your feedback. Maybe the garlic tip exposure method is good for hardnecks…? We’ve just planted softnecks. Who knows! 🙂 Either way, best of luck! Happy restful winter,
sobriquet67