I was away from home for a week, having a very fine time attending the San Francisco Ring Cycle. On my return, I exited the restricted part of the airport and found my husband holding up a sign as if he was a limo driver seeking a passenger:
For nearly 35 years, I have been married to Mr. Romance, a man willing to drive 15 miles to the nearest store just to buy the board on which to write a romantic message. Lucky me.
This is what I posted in Bleeding Cool’s discussion of how few women are in the business (and minorities, and so on):
As someone who spent significant time attempting to create a stable of female and female-oriented comic book writers for the Internet graphic romance novellas of MyRomanceStory.com, let me say that 1) the perspective needed to write successful female-oriented stories is not readily come by from men, so please do not look to men currently writing comics or even women currently writing comics to fulfill that need on their own, especially in the current editorial climate; 2) the ability to write comics well is not readily come by from anyone, period; and 3) most female writers think comic books are for kids, so the good writers don’t apply. The boys club atmosphere of the comic book business also makes it an inimical place for female creativity outside the rigid lines of male interest. Counting colorists as part of the creative team is a joke; coloring has been a girl ghetto for forever.
Granted, with MyRomanceStory.com I was trying to create romance comics, not adventure comics, but that’s the perfect testing ground. Romance writers who would eagerly sell all rights or even pay production costs to dinky publishers just to call themselves published would not even submit story ideas, such was their contempt for the comics medium and their lack of familiarity with it.
But there is a new generation of comic book readers, female, that has grown up reading manga but has almost nowhere adult as comic readers to go. These women are a ready-made market for storylines that relate to adult American women, not childlike Japanese schoolgirls, because they already know and like comics. But is anyone writing comics for them? Not hardly. Are they writing comics? Where? Is anyone in the comic book establishment even talking about producing comics of interest to women? Not to my knowledge.
There are established female paranormal novelists who have had their stories turned into comics. That’s because they have the influence to make it happen, and they carry their novel audience to their comics. Where is the ripple effect? Is anyone trying to capitalize on these anomalies?
To strengthen female roles in comics we must strengthen female perspective in the comic book business. Adding more women creators could help, but bringing new flavors to comics is the key. Diversity really means not the narrow same-old same-old, whoever is doing the writing and the drawing.
My mother’s dressing table, a lovely piece of mahogany with very feminine crystal lamps, a glass top, and a large wall mirror, was always crowded with family artifacts. Not only were there the silver-backed brush, comb, and hand mirror that had been her mother’s, but there were a silver pin tray, various crystal jars with silver tops, and photos of family members. In the last year or two of her life, these included this studio shot of a handsome elderly couple. It hadn’t been up there all our lives, but Mom had rearranged photos as she pleased, and so here they were. We took them to be some relatives, possibly parents, of our grandfather, John A. Brown. This seemed likely because the man has a look of the Irish about him, and my grandfather, although born and raised in this country, was 100% of Irish blood.
On the back of the frame was the date “7-27-05,” and as you can see, the style of dress certainly indicates 1905. Imagine my surprise when I found another formal photo of this same elderly man, this sleek silver fox kind of guy, with a dolled-up little girl. And another of the little girl, with the same matronly woman. Okay, I thought, more relatives. Then I looked at the dedication on back of each of these professionally shot and mounted photos. It identified the little girl as a daughter of George M. Cohan, and the older people as Jeremiah J. Cohan and his wife, George M.’s parents, who had been in show business all their lives and put little George into the act as a young boy. From which he rose to great fame and worldly success on Broadway.
My grandfather came to know George M. Cohan in the course of doing some valuable legal work for him. Afterwards, they remained on friendly terms, friendly enough that George M. sent John A. Brown photos of his little girl and his parents in 1905. My grandfather knew many famous people, not that he bragged about it or dropped names. It’s a weird feeling when you realize that a relative had contact with important people, mingled with them, did business with them. I remember answering his office phone one summer during a visit when I was twelve, and taking a message from the Chicago district attorney. Boy, was I impressed. (I watched “Perry Mason” on TV, so I knew a DA was important.) My own life was in a quiet, safe social backwater. No one I ever met while growing up was famous or significant in history of any kind. Nobody I knew in my neighborhood growing up, nobody I met in elementary school or junior high or high school or even college has become famous, or contributed anything significant to any field of endeavor that I know of. Nobody. Not like George M. Cohan, the king of Broadway.
But who was George M. Cohan, you ask? And who were Jeremiah Cohan and his wife? And why does the inscription on the back of the little girl’s photo call her “Georgia” when Wikipedia calls her Georgette? Sic transit gloria mundi. History. They’re all ancient history. But not, as it turns out, blood relatives.
[This is a cross-posted response to an open letter to DC exec Diane Nelson remonstrating about the coming DC reboot, which appears to be eliminating many beloved female characters and storylines.]
The reboot reads like “New Coke” to me, the kind of classic error that is supposed to attract new fans but mostly alienates the current group. The PR names mostly male creators and male characters, which is a source of great frustration to those of us who love this medium but find it a parched desert when it comes to representing us or even attracting us.
Diane Nelson and her team probably believes that anybody already reading comics will continue to. They want to capture the huge potential audience of iPad users and moviegoers. However, that group, while more male than female, is far more balanced in gender than current comics readers. To attract them, more effort must be made to create gender parity in the comics presented. This has not happened yet. If the corporate bosses will be happy with a mere increase in subscribers or sales via electronic devices, then Nelson will have succeeded. If they are after the Big Score, then they must pull in the massive and completely untapped female audience. So far, this reboot very clearly is not attempting to grab female attention. It’s a shame. It’s the reason I don’t read comics anymore.
There is a whole generation of avid female manga readers who could and should be pulled into mainstream comics reading (why read about another culture when you can read about your own?). But American comics bosses and creators are so shortsighted/biased/dismissive they can’t even bother to figure out how to capture this big market.
(On a side note, yes, it is always best to proofread before sending, and yes, executives don’t read long missives. But that’s the problem in a nutshell, isn’t it? A non-reader is in charge of a reading business.)
My grandfather, John A. Brown, was a remarkable man. He spent his early years on the family farm in Tannersville, New York, then went to Chicago to study law. He supported himself through law school and his masters, an unusual degree in the 1890s, by working for newspapers as a linotyper. Thus began his lifelong association with the printed word, even before he became a practicing attorney.
For fun, he engaged in many healthy outdoor activities: hiking, camping, fishing, cycling, and more. He joined, founded, or co-founded several athletic clubs, including the Lincoln Cycling Club. My grandfather also celebrated and noted many occurrences in his life by writing poems. His style is the sentimental one popular in his day that most of us only know from Robert W. Service’s “The Shooting of Dan McGrew,” and “The Cremation of Sam McGee.”
Recently I read a couple of Grandaddy’s poems about the Lincoln Cycling Club. As with many pastimes, cycling evidently had its ups and downs in popularity. The first poem, subtitled A Retrospect, noted that automobiles had surpassed cycling as a mode of transit, but gave credit to the club for helping push the paving of rutted dirt roads. The second poem, dated May 1938, sadly notes the aging of the few remaining Lincoln Cycling Club members. Not only did my grandfather write these poems, but he also saw to it that they were professionally printed on handsome card stock, to become treasured souvenirs for his friends and relatives. His poems are a matter of pride in our family. Despite poetry’s various fashions, the honest feelings expressed in these two poems stand the test of time.
Herewith:
Lincoln Cycling Club
A Retrospect
Tonight around our banquet hail
The Lincoln Cross Bars gleam,
Tonight old memories recall
The cyclist’s passing dream,
Tonight in friendship’s earnest clasp
We greet old friends anew,
Tonight we drink a silent toast
To friends whose days were few.
Tonight we pass in storied mirth
The tales of days agone.
We live again the night before
Our famous Violet Run.
We hear again the bugle call
To mount its order peals
Again our Cross Bar banner bright
Leads on our spinning wheels.
Tonight we see the headlights flash,
Not those of wheels we knew,
Unlimited in power or dash
Not built for one or two,
But autos large and autos small
With engines staunch and strong,
Not those we furnished man power to
Now take the world along.
O let us not time’s passing days
Regret or want them back.
We brought a closer outdoor world,
We brought the concrete track,
Where stifling dust of rutty roads
Through wind and rain and sun
O’er countless ways our cross bars blazed
From dawn to set of sun.
Tonight another toast we’ll drink
Aye, fill your glass to how
The cyclist raised the world we think
From dust and mud and slough,
But as you smile, and drink the while
And toast the cyclist man,
Remember clear, our Cross Bars dear
At all times led the van.
—John A. Brown
This is the one that brought tears to my eyes:
Lincoln Cycling Club
Our cross bars faced the rising sun,
Reflecting back its rays,
When starting on the weekly run
In those old cycling days.
The muster at the bugle call,
The Captain’s stern command,
The roll call answered quick by all
Of that old cycling band.
To mount the bugles second peal,
A softer tone and sweet
Sent forward on those spinning wheels
Our comrades down the street.
Out on the country’s dusty roads
To paths so well we knew,
That led us down the valleys green
Where ferns and violets grew.
We learned to love the great outdoors
‘Mid spring and summer’s smile,
We drank the wine that nature poured
On every green-clad mile.
Each year we made these runs a part
Of many a bygone day,
With spring and summer in our hearts
Nor thought they’d pass away.
Our cross bars face the setting sun,
Reflecting back its rays,
Our span of time is nearly run,
Gone are our cycling days,
No more we hear the bugle call,
The Captain’s stern command,
They’re few to answer the roll call
Of our old Lincoln Band.
No more we send our spinning wheels,
Down street or country lane,
No more we seek the valleys sweet
Where flowers bloom again.
But yet we love the great outdoors
When spring and summer smile,
Aye, still we love the green-clad fields
A stretching mile on mile.
O Father Time, you set the years
And with them each man’s space
And be it long or be it short
Each mortal makes his race.
Gaze on the record down those years
Aye, note its entries bright,
Where Lincoln’s man power followed pace
Companions in your flight.
O Time, deal gently with us few
Who answer “here” tonight,
Survivors of that gallant crew
Whose cross bars faced the light.
Give to us ‘cross the Great Divide
A pathway straight and clear,
That with those comrades we may ride
As with them we rode here.
JOHN A. BROWN
May 23, ‘38
My grandfather died 29 years later, having outlived everyone from the old Lincoln Cycling Club band.
I got a shocking view into the head of a hoarder the other day. I took a box of powdered sugar dessert cookies, nearly finished, into the kitchen and emptied it into a plastic storage container, including as much of the loose sugar as I could without creating a mess. A few minutes later, I found my guest eating the remaining sugar from the bakery box THAT I HAD PUT IN THE GARBAGE.
I remonstrated, pointing to the storage container with the ample remains of the dessert and sugar. I also said I had a pound of confectioner’s sugar in my pantry if sugar was desired. Clearly, my guest had acted under the mistaken notion that I had wastefully thrown out the entire box of dessert remnants. Remnants, remember, not half a box of cookies.
My friend is not poor, not hungry, and not particularly hung up on desserts. Although this friend has talked about paying more attention to weight these days, trying to keep it from creeping up, overeating is not a serious issue for this person. Obviously my friend’s hoarding illness impelled this completely outre behavior. Maybe the trash-picking is a testimony to how at home my friend feels in my house, which I should take as a compliment. I don’t think so.
It was painful to see my friend stoop so low while in the throes of an irrational mental state. The desperation behind the action must be intense and overwhelming. We’re talking a few bits of flavored sugar, hardly something worth trash-picking over, but a person with a mental disease evidently does not see it that way.
It also was painful to realize that my friend views me as some kind of decluttering storm trooper who throws out valuable things indiscriminately just to be rid of them. Nobody wants to think that others view them as a bully. If the issue is bullies versus hoarders, though, I’m on the side of the bullies. I know people who are on that side who will toss food, for instance, because they do not eat leftovers. That bothers me, but they are being realistic about their eating habits. I have come to understand that it is better to throw something out than to throw it in. Throwing it in leads to overweight and to homes filled to the brim with stuff, stuff, and more stuff.
Why do I talk against hoarding over and over? Because multiple people in my life have this sickness. The rest of us also own too much stuff, and keep too much stuff, but most of us can get rid of it when necessary. Only the few attempt to wring the very last bit of value out of all the objects with which they come into contact, or hold onto them long past when they have any value. Ironically, many hoarders claim they are saving items in order to make them available to people who need them. In the case of this sugar, no one needed it.
In the grip of an addiction, each of us is capable of behavior that can (or should) cause deep shame, not to mention public embarrassment. The key to ending the addiction is to do something about it. Get help. I don’t want to be a bully, but equally, I don’t want you rooting through my garbage.
Edited to add: I was reminded that there’s a Seinfeld episode in which George eats a discarded, partially eaten eclair from the garbage.
Perhaps I have imputed hoarding impulses to what is much more common, the kind of childish greed that says, “Hey, that looks perfectly good. I’ll eat it.” Our mothers told us not to, but when they weren’t looking, we’ve probably all eaten food from garbage sources, our own or others’.
My mother, Margaret Vartanoff, was an Episcopalian convert. She always greeted us happily on Easter Sunday with “He is risen!” In the week prior to that joyous day, my mother walked the walk of Jesus through all the miseries of the crucifixion. By Saturday, when he was “dead,” she was emotionally exhausted. That was the day we always took our Easter baskets down to church for a special private blessing from Father Meisel. I don’t know why she wanted that for us, but we dutifully complied for many years.
Even prior to Palm Sunday, my mother took Lent very seriously. Each year she gave up something she really liked. And she didn’t talk about it or boast in any way. It was only after we kept trying to ply her with her favorite ice cream one year that she confessed she had given it up for Lent. Mom adored ice cream and even when she was long gone in dementia in her nineties, she would get up on her own, make her way to the kitchen, and get herself a Klondike bar. So giving up ice cream was big for her. But she did it as some kind of gift of faith, a faith that was always strong in her and was the moral center of her life.
Easter for me was always about dyeing the eggs, making up the basket, and showing up in church in a nice outfit. This was during my childhood, when I was willing to be bored stiff in church week after week. As an adolescent, I gave that up once I determined that God and I were not going to have a deep personal relationship. Hey, I tried. I even made my own altar in the woods one time, an idea that I must have gotten from some Sunday school publication. It didn’t work. God remained stubbornly far from me. I didn’t get God. Still don’t, but I’m okay with it.
As a parent, I tried to make Easter a fun day. I do love the idea of an Easter egg hunt, and I’ve done them inside if the weather’s been bad. At least one year, there was a plastic egg hidden in the dryer. In the era before plastic eggs, Mom always hid chocolate Easter eggs all over the house. In the silverware drawer. In the napkin drawer. On the dining room table. In the music cabinet. On the piano. And more. Part of the fun was that she hid three eggs in each spot, one for each child, and sometimes we did not all find the same caches. Days, weeks, or even months later we might find one, two, or three eggs in some obscure place Mom had chosen. Chocolate doesn’t go bad easily, so they were a surprise treat whenever we found them.
When I lived in Massachusetts, a wonderful state with far too much winter, I saw that someone had decorated a bare tree with plastic Easter eggs. This idea, which at first seemed tacky and probably still is tacky, appealed to me. There is little color outside in winter, and these vulgarly bright eggs hit the spot. Ever since, I have put the brightest plastic Easter eggs I can find on my front trees or bushes or wherever I can reach. I usually put them up in nasty weather and take them down in balmy temperatures.
And that’s the meaning of Easter to me. Oh, sure, sometimes there’s a lamb in the oven, or a rib roast, and company come to stay. But the passion of Christ has nothing to do with my enjoyment of a spring day that tends to be quiet because everybody mowed their lawns the day before. The fact that the society in which I live is based on Christianity relates to me on this occasion on a secular, not to say hedonistic or materialistic level. Those chocolate eggs. Those plastic eggs. The Easter basket decorating. The Easter hat.
Got to go dye some eggs now.
Every year at the beginning of the tax season, our AARP Tax Aide outposts in the public libraries are mobbed. These free tax preparation service sites are first come, first served, which enables us to do far more tax returns in a day than if we took appointments. That’s because there is no way of knowing in advance how complex a person’s tax situation may be. (Our favorite taxpayer claim is “This will be simple.” Right. If it’s so simple, why couldn’t you do it yourself? Aha! Because it’s not simple at all.)
I’ve done tax returns—accurately—in as little as five minutes. This week I did one that took two hours, and it wasn’t even that complicated, just a ton of information from multiple sources that had to be correctly identified and input so it would correlate. Two hours. The usual appointment time at sites that take appointments, such as the senior center, is half an hour or forty-five minutes. Not long enough for the really detailed returns, and far too long for the simple ones. So you see why first-come first served makes sense, although we are not happy to see a crowd of people staring at us, waiting, for hours at a time. They look bored, tense, and miserable. They seldom read anything even though they are at the public library. Their kids, whom they sometimes must bring with them, are usually ready to climb the walls.
Yesterday I was in the reverse position., waiting in an eye doctor’s office with thirty-five other people. I’ve never visited this retina practice when it wasn’t exactly this crowded. On previous visits, the office staff has claimed that one of the doctors was on vacation. Yesterday I didn’t even bother to ask, because obviously this practice is run on the scarcity paradigm we use when doing taxes.
But here’s the difference. These doctors know what we’re here for, so they know in advance how much time and how many resources we’re likely to take up. And still they have us waiting for two hours before getting to even the first bit of an eye exam. They chronically underestimate how much time it takes to do their jobs.
I hate that we have to make people wait for hours for get their taxes done, but that mostly happens in early February when people are eager, not to say desperate, to get their thousands of dollars in Earned Income Credit. They don’t have to do it then, and they can choose other volunteer tax prep sites that take appointments so they wouldn’t have to wait at all. People coming to see doctors don’t have those choices. Unless the office staff tells us in advance that we’ll have to wait a while to be “fit in” for a rush appointment, we walk in blind, never knowing if we’ll find a sea of people in the waiting room, or nobody. But the doctors have to know. The staff has to know. Why don’t they call and warn people that the doctors are running late? Why not offer a later appointment time? During the two hours I waited yesterday, I had time to write this and another blog post, too. And chat with total strangers. And take a nap. And be bored. What a waste of my valuable time! And all for the two to three minutes that the specialist actually devoted to me, and the five to ten minutes that a technician gave me for an eye test a few minutes before that. A doctor might not know if he’s running thirty minutes late, but he certainly knows when he’s running two hours late. I asked him about it, and he said they actually worked on Sunday, too. So he’s working very long hours, giving his expertise to many more patients than is sane. And meanwhile, we’re feeling abused in the waiting room. There’s a huge disconnect occurring.
I have to wonder if this situation is good for either side. Does a doctor overworking actually require the abuse of patients? Does the anger we patients feel harm the delivery of medical advice or treatment? At some point, the doctors have to catch up on their two hours wait time—or do they ever? And if not, why are they allowing their staff to make so many appointments? Do they have a god complex and feel they must do it all rather than refer people to other medical groups? From talking to the staff, I could tell that they get some pretty unhappy comments from patients, but they feel helpless to deal with it. The doctors call the shots, after all, not the office staff or the techs. After waiting for over two hours to see a doctor for three minutes, I feel rushed and angry, and reluctant to put myself through this kind of experience again. Even for the sake of my eyesight. Am I also reluctant to follow the doctor’s suggestions? Likely. Am I considering switching doctors? Possibly, although I believe this is a fine doctor who truly knows his stuff. He only needs a couple of minutes to examine my eyes and identify my issues. So why do I need to wait two hours for my audience with the Great One?
I’m sure that people waiting at the tax prep spots experience the same frustrations I am citing. But they can walk out at any time, come in during any hours we’re open, do their taxes themselves, utilize free online e-filing, and more. I can’t do my own eye exams, and that’s the crunch issue.
I have a confession to make. It’s harmless, so don’t get excited. I am one of those women who likes particular tissue box designs. We buy the patterns we like, and then we save the cardboard box when the tissues are gone. Then we restock the same box with new tissues from some boringly designed box. Why do we do this? Because paper companies keep retiring tissue box designs.
I thought I was the only person who saved tissue boxes whose designs I liked. I only was doing it with reach-in tissue boxes. Harmless, right? Then I visited a friend who was doing it with the pop-up kind. Setting aside how clever we are to be able to replicate a factory machine and lay in a batch of new tissues into a box by hand, this is weird.
Only, guess what? At another person’s house, I saw the same thing happening. This person even had purchased many decorative tissue boxes in pottery, plastic, metal, and so on. But she still refills cardboard tissue boxes whose designs she likes, effectively keeping them around for years and making them her de facto decorating choices. I suspect there are thousands or even millions of women (and some men) doing this same thing.
That being the case, I’d like to announce that I am still waiting for the Scott Paper Company to sell tissues in those plaid boxes they had about fifty-five years ago. I don’t know that they would meld with any decor I have in my home, but I would buy them anyway. As a child I liked them and I would love to see them again. Scott Paper, are you listening? This is a reason to recycle old designs. Seeing them will bring a rush of recognition, and we will buy our refill tissues from you, something we don’t necessarily do right now. In effect, some of us, perhaps many of us, are simply buying tissues as bulk. If you want brand loyalty, abandoning all past box designs is a mistake.
Of course I have not done a serious study of this phenomenon; this is mere anecdotal evidence. Still, during my long life as a Baby Boomer I have discovered that what I like, there’s a good chance many millions of people will like also. Bring on the genuine retro tissue box designs, please.
I have always been an extremely dutiful observer of the written social niceties. I write Christmas and holiday cards. I write bread-and-butter notes. I wrote my great-uncle in the nursing home, and my aunt in another nursing home, and my cousin in her retirement home, too. I keep in contact with various elderly people whom I know do not receive many letters or calls, and who often have few family members left, either.
Recently, some friends of mine suffered horrendous losses in their families. No way of putting it any more positively: these were unexpected and most miserably received deaths. In one case, I sent an immediate Facebook note, but the tragedy cut at me too deeply for me to want to say more. In another, I called and asked to send a card and was advised that the bereaved person couldn’t bear to receive them. This got me to thinking.
Then my own mother died, suddenly yet not unexpectedly, one day before her 96th birthday. The medical experts had not predicted a sudden end, only the beginning of the end. In other words, we had plenty of warning, and none. Many people sent condolences. Some sent e-mails, others sent Facebook notes, others sent greeting cards, still others wrote carefully composed notes. Then there were people who called, or who came to the funeral, or sent flowers or food, or who sang, or who stayed to clean up. (Did I miss anyone? If so, know your help was appreciated.) All of the outpourings of sympathy were welcome. All of them were appropriate. I want to thank all of these people, but I can’t bring myself to do it individually.
I’ve been thinking about why I have no urge whatsoever to write thank you notes to people who sent me condolences. I’ve decided that I am exhausted from the effort of holding myself together, as were my friends who suffered worse tragedies. This effort I must continue to maintain until my mother’s earthly affairs are completely settled. As her executrix (a word she loved), I am charged with the awful duty of going through her belongings, dealing with estate matters, arranging for the interment of her ashes in the family plot, and more. Over and over again, I have to make the calls and write the letters that tell the world she is dead, and her name must be taken off a mailing list she’s been on for seventy years—that of the Art Institute of Chicago, of which she was a life member, for instance. I am the one who has to contact her university alumni association, and various religious organizations, and charities, and so on. It’s an important role, and the final service I can render her other than to remember her. It’s also a task that pushes at my store of calm acceptance. I am not able to relax and comfort myself with the vision of my mother at peace in heaven, because daily I have to deal with the reality that she is not on earth anymore.
Does this sound too “poor little me”? Perhaps it is. This is how I am experiencing my grief, in little pecks and nips that sting, not in the open relief of tears and collapse. I have this job to do, you see, and I am grimly determined to do it promptly and carefully—and it sucks.
Although any and all of you who sent kind words may deserve or expect some acknowledgment of your efforts, I’m not sending thank you notes. If you are ever in the same position, I won’t expect them from you, either.
