More Home Improvements

Stuff I bought and hung up in my Burbank condo:

I bought a Moroccan mirror. My plan was to go to Mexico and buy a Mexican mirror, because it seems more appropriate for SoCal, but the Moroccan store is right by the North Hollywood metro. So Moroccan it is. 

A coat rack? Well, sort of. An everything rack by the front door. I have been looking for an interesting coat rack since I moved in. I finally gave up and got a cheap one. 

Fun with Photoshop

I had to cough up a photo of myself for a panel I'm on at work. All the other women on the panel had dazzling professional headshots with perfect skin and make-up, and blurred backgrounds.

I do not have one of those.

I guess I should get one, maybe. I'm not sure I will. That is so not my thing.

Meanwhile, I had to give them something. I dug into my snapshots and faked it.

Can you spot the differences?

One in Every Port

I got a new toy! 

Because I don't have enough to do...

In Memoriam

So this happened.

photo provided by Scott Edelman

I did not plan to speak at the memorial celebration of the life of Fabulous Flo. But among all the stories told from the podium, none of them mentioned Flo being a pioneer for women. Which she was, along with presumably dozens of other women behind-the-scenes as well as the women in the spotlight, such as Marie Severin and Ramona Fradon.

Every generation seems to neglect its own history, and the praise for each next wave seems cursed with a lack of respect for those who came before. And so I felt it necessary to point out that Flo was a woman in comics long before we were holding panels congratulating ourselves for the invention of something that has been around for decades.

We fetishize certain jobs, pretending only they matter. The mainstream equivalent is society ignoring traditionally female jobs—nurses, teachers, caregivers, secretaries—and talking about how women were not in the workforce before they became middle management, heads of corporations, coders, and executives. Of course they were in the workforce. We just discounted their efforts and neglected their contribution.

Women have always been in comics. Just take a look past your value system. Writers and artists matter, but they are nothing without the people who presented their visions to the world. 

Big City of Dreams

Looks like a fun place.