Tibor Gergely, self portait, 1935

Tibor Gergely is best known in the US as the glorious illustrator of Scuffy The Tugboat and The Five Firemen, and 70+ other well loved childrens books, most published by Golden Books. If that were his only work, it would have been enough. But that is far from the whole story.

Tibor Gergely, Gossip, from tiborgergely.com part of a large series of drawings he made in the 1920's and 30's in and around the village of Kortvelyes, Hungary.

Gergely, an Austrian Jew, had a full, rich, life as an artist and intellectual in Budapest and Vienna before he emigrated to the US in 1939. You can find his story and more images at TiborGergely.com.

Tibor Gergely portrait of Paul Robeson, signed by Paul Robeson

While Gergely was in exile in Vienna in the 1920's he worked for the newspaper Der Tag. This portrait of Paul Robeson is one of many he made for the paper.

Tibor Gergely, charcoal sketch of woman in hat.

“It often happens that the essence of a whole lies concealed in some minor, insignificant detail. To find that detail and to express with it the whole - this is the joy of discovery, and the painterly gratification of the artist.”  Tibor Gergely

Fleeing the Nazi regime, Gergely and his wife, the painter Anna Lesznai, landed in New York City, and immediately fell in love with the hustle and bustle of Manhattan.

Tibor Gergely, The Battery, guache, painted from atop the Staten Island Ferry Terminal.

Shortly after he came to the US, Gergely met Georges Duplaix, who was head of production at Artists and Writers Guild and they collaborated on Topsy Turvy Circus. In 1942 Duplaix  became head of the Graphics Department at Simon and Shuster where he introduced Gergely to Lucille Ogle. They, along with Albert Leventhal, created Golden Books. Here Gergely found the home that would bring him millions of delighted readers. He created illustrations for over seventy Little Golden Books.

Tibor Gergely, A Year In The City, Simon & Shuster, 1948

Tibor Gergely,  the right half of an original illustration for "Five Little Firemen" 1942 

Tibor Gergely, The Taxi That Hurried

Tibor Gergely, Five Little Firemen

Tibor Gergely, Scuffy The Tugboat

Painting by Anna Lesznai found here

You might be interested in this book about Golden Books.

Golden Legacy, How Golden Books Won Children's Hearts, Changed Publishing Forever, And Became an American Icon Along The Way.

Interveiw with author Leonard S. Marcus HERE

And here is a wonderful little documentary about Gergely by his step great granddaughter, Sabrina Jaszi, including a telephone interview with her very knowlegable father, Peter Jaszi. 

YouTube video about Gergely

And it give me great pleasure to be able to make some Small Equals Keepsake Boxes with Gergely images. I only use pages from books - mostly Goldens - that are too beat up to salvage. I sometimes have them in stock, sometimes not, depending on what old books I can find. Look for them at my ONLINE STORE

Small Equals Keepsake Box with Tibor Gergely illustration on lid.

If you are interested in seeing more Gergely images I have a lot of them collected at Pinterest.

Mary Louise Spoor. From 1917 schoolroom poster

Two Mary Louise Spoor schoolroom posters are now available at my online store. One is a single sided triptych of Hickory Dickory Dock.

When I was designing posters for the Burlington Vermont No Lockheed Campaign, I realized I had a real taste for agit prop (see them HERE). So when Occupy came to town, I set my hand to designing a series of posters. You can see them on my Flickr sets HERE. 

This one is my favorite. It is available through Occuprint

 Occupy Vermont. ©Liza Cowan/CowanDesign

I know that local Occupy movements are important, but I decided to focus on an overarching theme: Occupy Patriarchy. The drawing is one I made in the early 1970's copying an image from a Greek Vase.

 Occupy Patriarchy poster by ©Liza Cowan/CowanDesign 2011

If you are interested in the ideas behind Occupy Patriarchy you can find a great resource HERE 

Below is one of my favorite Occupy Burlington posters, using what my regular readers know is a constant source of pleasure, vintage postcards. This one from 1906.

SEE SAW by OLLY MOSS. 

How could I not love this??

My mom and dad, Polly and Lou Cowan, died on November 18th. The year was 1976. They tend to float into my awareness during this holiday season, but it's been so long that I have to remember to remember. No wonder Thanksgiving is not my favorite holiday.

contact sheet, portrait of Polly Cowan by Mary Morris Steiner, 1958

And by strange coincidence - which I do not actualy believe in - the other day I received a packet of photos from the estate of Mary Morris Steiner Lawrence, who died in 2009. The package came on Monday the 21st, which means it could have been sent from San Francisco on the 18th. Close enough.

Mom raised me to believe in reincarnation and communicating with spirits. It was not something she spoke about with any but a few close friends, and with me. The story of her death is interesting, though, in this light. She called me about a week before she died. I was living about three hours away from Manhattan, in the Catskill Mountains of NY. She summoned me to the city to go with her to her bank so she could transfer my share of some heirloom jewelry to a safe deposit box we would open in my name. She had had her jewelry appraised and evenly divided amongst the four children. She didn't want us to have to pay inheritance tax on it when she died.

I thought she was being ridiculous. She was only 63, her health was perfect, she was fine. Great. But I went. I asked her why. She wasn't about to die. She said, "Oh, Liza, you and your sister think I'm going to live forever, but when my time comes, I will go."

We made the exchange. I spent the night. Meanwhile, for the past couple of weeks  I had been horribly - for me- depressed. I couldn't seem to shake off some kind of dread and sorrow that I didn't understand at all. It had been triggered by watching the TV movie Sybil about child abuse. But I hadn't been abused, of that I'm certain. On the contrary, my childhood had been filled with love, stability and good times. But that movie touched some nerve and I couldn't shake it. 

I talked about it with mom, told her about some other stuff that was going on in my life, stuff about friends, work, the usual. She told me that although she knew it was impossible, she wished we could live together again.

The next morning we spoke about reincarnation and communicating from beyond the grave. This was not an unusual topic for us, but in hindsight it was poignent. The very last paragraphs we spoke, as I waited to catch a cab to the train station, were about how she would try to communicate with me after she died.

I never saw her again. A few days later there was a fire in my parents apartment and they both died. 

And yes..she did communicate with me. I had lucid dreams for weeks afterwords in which we would chat. I would say, "mom, this isn't a dream, right?" and she'd say, "No, it's not a dream. I'm here." When those stopped, I would see her in the mirror, looking at me from what should have been my reflection. Or a photo of me would turn into a photo of her. Then it all stopped.

These days, she rarely communicates. When my daughter Willa was born, mom would visit us through the twinkly lights above the crib. I told this to my brother Geoff one day when he was visiting. He laughed. All the lights in the house flickered, sputtered, went out. Then came back on. 

Some days she leaves me a little token. Nothing, really. A pen found in the wrong place at the right time. Stuff like that. Or she directs a packet of photos to be send on the anniversary of her death.

Here's to all the ancestors we have lost. No matter when. 

Polly Cowan. Photo by Mary Morris Steiner. November 1958.

Today we occupied Burlington. Hope you can make it next time. Love, Us.

Early 20th Century postcard, City Hall Park, Burlington Vermont. Site of the Occupy Burlington actions and General Assemblies. Postcard from Cowan Ephemera Archive. Adaptation:CowanDesign.

This Op-ed was written by Marlene McCurtis & Cathee Weiss, producers of the Wednesdays In Mississippi Documentarty Film.

There been a lot of buzz recently about (the book and movie) The Help – Is it “true”?  Who is represented fairly?  What’s good and is not so good. Many question the actual merits of movie’s  “feel good” approach to race relations.  As filmmakers this controversy has confirmed our belief that we need more books, more films, and most importantly more talk about what really happened in Mississippi during this time of enormous change.

Set in the middle of the civil rights era in Mississippi, The Help depicts the relationship between two groups of women-- middle class white southern women and their black maids.  At the end of the day, it is a piece of fiction, one writer’s interpretation of the complexity of racial relationships in the south.  Yet, during this same time period there were real-life  black and white women in Mississippi quietly, and some times not so quietly,  working  hard to dismantle the dehumanizing Jim Crow system.  These women were obsessed, not about their toilets or polished silver, but rather about the abject terror incited by such racist stalwarts as the White Citizens Council and the Ku Klux Klan.  They were determined to do what they could to help create a more just society  for themselves and their children.   A few years ago we discovered a story about a few of these very real and committed Mississippi women. As documentary filmmakers, we felt compelled to add their story to our shared history.  It is the story of an amazing, yet little known organization called Wednesdays in Mississippi.

During the summer of 1964 under the banner of Wednesdays in Mississippi, over 400 women, both black and white met behind tightly drawn curtains to discuss how they could support the civil rights movement.  These were middle class women—white women who did have ‘help’, yet could clearly see the cruelty and the untenable nature of the segregated system.  They were also black women who were not maids, but who were business owners, schoolteachers, nurses and librarians.  They all were women with power and the will to invoke change. 

Dorothy Irene Height and Polly Cowan, co-founders of WIMS. From the WIMS website 

These revolutionary meetings were organized by Dorothy Height, the head of the National Council of Negro Women and her close friend and colleague, Jewish political activist, Polly Cowan.   Dorothy and Polly were northern, yet they knew women all over Mississippi were working to support civil rights. 

The summer of 1964 was Freedom Summer. Thousands of Northern college kids came into Mississippi to set up Freedom Schools and register people to vote.  That same summer Wednesdays in Mississippi brought black and white women from the north into Jackson to meet with their southern counterparts. Here’s how it worked: every week a team of women from a different northern city flew into Jackson. They came in undercover, as respectable ladies- wearing white gloves and  pearls.   They went into the heat and terror of Jackson, often against the wishes of their families, sometimes with great risk to their personal safety. Their goal was to listen to and support the women of Mississippi who sought peaceful and lasting change.

  Fannie Lou Hamer, Dorothy Height and Polly Cowan

While in Mississippi these northern women met with women like Elaine Crystal, a Jewish woman who decided, “to stop playing bridge and be a part of some thing that made a difference.”  Elaine helped form Mississippians For Public Education and fought to keep the public schools opened. And women like Jane Schutt, who was an active member of the integrated organization Church Women United and served as the chair of the Mississippi Advisory Committee to the US Commission on Civil Rights.  When in December of 1963, the Klan burned a cross on Jane’s yard, she decorated it with Christmas lights and kept right on working for racial equality. 

In the black community they found women like Clarie Collins Harvey.   A prominent businesswoman, Clarie had the economic freedom to boldly stand up to racist policies.  She  started WomenPower Unlimited, a grassroots organization  to support young civil rights workers in the state and to register black voters.   Clarie also developed the Chain of Friendship, an informal network of white women outside of Mississippi who supported the efforts of women fighting for integration inside the state.   Jessie Mosley was another mover and shaker in the black community. A professor’s wife, she started the first chapter of the National Council of Negro Women in Mississippi in the 1950s. While her husband’s courses at the Jackson State University “were often observed by members of the Klan or White Citizen’s Council”, this didn’t deter Jessie. She was a huge supporter of Wednesdays in Mississippi and worked  closely with Fannie Lou Hamer and other women activists to develop Head Start programs.

Throughout the 1960’s Dorothy Height and Polly Cowan continued to work through Wednesdays in Mississippi (which later became Workshops in Mississippi) to join black and white women together.  They spread throughout the state helping women work together to develop everything from home ownership projects for low-income families to community-based farm co-ops. 

In the end, it doesn’t seem fair to place the burden of truth on just one story, like The Help.  Wednesdays in Mississippi offers another perspective on this “truth”. As those who were involved in this project are now reaching their 70s, 80s, and 90s, it is crucial that their story like so many others from that time be documented before they’re gone. The truth will be found when the stories of those on the front line and in the living rooms, those who were the backbone of the movement are told.    Wednesdays in Mississippi is just one of those many stories.

To find about more about Wednesdays In Mississippi and other women in the movement, please check out the following links:

wimsfilmproject.com

http://www.history.uh.edu/cph/WIMS/

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Wednesdays-in-Mississippi-Film-Project/266953138296

http://jwa.org/teach/livingthelegacy

http://www.sites.si.edu/exhibitions/exhibits/freedoms_sisters/main.htm

http://www.nps.gov/mamc/index.htm

http://seesaw.typepad.com/blog/2010/04/wednesdays-in-mississippi.html

The Frozen Butcher at Essex Farmers Market. Photo Liza Cowan

The Frozen Butcher

photo Liza Cowan

Using contemporary technologies, this small, family-run, Vermont business brings their farm- raised, organic beef to local farmers markets. The refrigeration in their mobile shop, aka the truck, is powered by Solar Energy. Yes, the panels on the top of the truck are solar. So they can run all day and not burn any fuel. Cool, eh? And the meat is delicious too.

Snug Valley Farm

East Hardwick, VT

www.snugvalleyfarm.com

 
 
Silkscreen Mural by Iskra Collective. Maglianero Cafe, Burlington VT

Once in a while, I come across a place or an event that renews my faith in Burlington Vermont. Today, I ventured into Maglianero Cafe, which has been open for just six weeks, in one of my favorite culs-de-sac in Burlington's post industrial South End. 

Housed inside of the former Burlington Wholesale Grocery building, which fronts on Maple Street, the cafe is owned by the partners at JDK, one of Burlington's most prestigious PR firms. The building also is home to the Iskra Print Collective, who made the gorgeous screenprint murals inside the cafe.

Burlington Grocery Company, Maple Street, Burlington, VT.1933, photo by L.L. McAllister. 

My regular readers will know what a huge fan I am of Burlington's industrial architectural history. So you can imagine my delight in finding this old warehouse re-imagined as a cafe. The interior is large. Huge, even, with various spaces that flow into each other, yet can be separated for various large or small functions.

 The bar and a portion of Maglianero Cafe, Burlington Vermont. Photo Liza Cowan.

The iced coffee was delicious and refreshing, served with style and the only kind of warmth I wanted on such a hot day, by Maggie, the barrista.

Maggie at Maglianero Cafe, Burlington Vermont. Photo by Liza Cowan

The theme of the Malianero cafe is bicycles. They have bike parking and even have showers for cycling commuters - which invokes another old passion of mine, community bath houses. (Another time, dear reader, I might post an essay I did on Bath Houses and community bathing in early 20th Century New York City) 

Manager Jesse Bladyka, at Maglianero Cafe. Photo ©Liza Cowan

 

Silkscreen Mural (detail) by Iskra Print Collective, at Maglianero Cafe, Burlington VT. Photo Liza Cowan

Exterior of Maglianero Cafe, Burlington VT. You can still see the faded painted sign for Burlington Grocery Co. Photo ©Liza Cowan

Maglianero Cafe

47 Maple Street

Burlington VT 05401

802.861.3155

Trumpet Vine Flowers photo by Liza Cowan

photo by Liza Cowan

Farmers Markets, Burlington, VT. Community building, great food, great for the environment, supports local farmers,  AND retail theater at it's best.

 
Farmers Market, South Burlington Vermont photo Liza Cowan

screen capture from Healthy Living Website.

Screen capture: Healthy Living/South Burlington Facebook Page 

Burlington, Vermont. Farmer's Market, June 2011. Photo Liza Cowan

City Hall, Burlington Vermont. Saturday Farmer's Market. All through the summer.

Perfect Saturday morning event in Burlington Vermont. There are several excellent Farmers Markets around town, and in South Burlington and Shelburne. Each one has a micro regional flavor. But in all of them Vermont organic farmets display their produce and flowers, local small bakeries bring their breads, cookies, tarts. Organic beef, chicken, turkey, all raised practically right around the corner. Tibetan tea and momos, hand blended oils, maple syrup, wine. Home made root beer, candles. And a bit of craft, art and music in the mix. Good times.

 NO Lockheed, poster, What Will Lockheed Bring, by Liza Cowan, 2011

On May 12th The New York Times ran an article about Burlington Vermont activist group, No Lockheed, and the struggle to prevent a partnership between the city and the war profiteer arms dealer Lockheed Martin. 

I'm a part of the group and the story featured two of my 14 agit prop No Lockheed posters. 

STORY HERE

Here's my weblog premiere. A promo for the totally wonderful Art Is My Weapon scarf by the amazing TMNK, The Me Nobody Knows. The scarf will be at SmallEquals soon, and available at the smallequals online store.

Nobody was just featured in Vibe Magazine, so get your flair and remember you saw Nobody first at Pine Street Art Works for his solo show in September 2009.

From the vaults at the Liza Cowan Ephemera Collections (formerly known as Pine Street Ephemera Collections.) A coloring book from 1910. Enjoy.

Objects To Color, detail, girls face, cover.

Fire Engine

Fire Engine, detail

Ring-Round-A Rosy. 1910, Coloring Book

Ring Round A Rosy, girl, detail, 1910

Suzanne Snider, a writer and oral historian based in New York, is collecting an oral history of this movement. Recording narratives for Women in Print: Voices from the Radical Feminist Press (1960-1985), Snider traveled across the country, beginning with Oregon and California. The Bay Area, which was a center for the radical feminist press, was an obvious stop on the trip. “I could do a whole project here in Oakland,” she said on a recent visit, “but I want the oral history to cover the movement in Texas, New Mexico, Oregon,” and elsewhere.

Among the women Snider came to Oakland to interview was Elana Dykewomon. Dykewomon’s first book, Riverfinger Women, “blew my mind,” Snider remembers. “She was twenty-four years old when she wrote it. It was published by Daughter’s Inc,” a pioneering lesbian press. Despite its nearly forty-year vintage, “it’s one of the more contemporary novels I’ve read,” Snider said. In addition to Riverfinger Women, published in 1974, Dykewomon (who changed her surname from Nachman in 1976) has published six other books, including the Oakland-centered novel Risk (Bywater Books 2009). Dykewomon also brought the lesbian feminist journal Sinister Wisdom to Oakland (where it was based from 1987–2009), and recently retired from many years of teaching writing at San Francisco State University.

Once completed, the Women in Print project, featuring interviews with more than 40 women, will be archived in the Schlesinger Library at Harvard University's Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. (The first twenty interviews will be deposited this month.) In the next months, Snider will begin fundraising through Kickstarter in order to continue the project. More information on the project is online at womeninprint.wordpress.com.

Check out the article and  audio links HERE.

This video is from 1986, after DYKE A Quarterly had ceased publishing. But Alix...well, she's Alix. Being radical and funny at the same time. And the message is as true in 2011 as it was in 1986 as it was in 1976 and earlier. 

Enjoy.

Liza Cowan and Penny House, circa 1976. It was the last year we published the  magazine. Photo by Janet Meyers taken at Three Maple Farm, Preston Hollow, New York.

Good news on the archiving front. DYKE A Quarterly is now housed in two prestigeous institutions. Really...we couldn't ask for more.

An entire set of the magazines, including the poster, are now at The Museum Of Modern Art, in their Library. They are available to scholars and researchers and the general public by appointment. Here's the LINK to the library. 

An entire set of the magazines as well as all the collateral materials - that's the letters, layout boards, mock ups, fliers, and whatever fascinating bits of paper we saved over the years- is now housed at Radcliffe College at The Schlesinger Library. Here's a LINK.

Screen shot from Aunt Lute, A Multicultural Women's Press website.

Seems like maybe the time is right for writing our memoirs and gathering our archives. Aunt Lute, a multi- cultual women's Press, is hosting a memoir based interactive historical blog with famed author, theorist, poet Judy Grahan. This community based historical collection about the Lesbian Communities of The Bay Area in the sixties and seventies coincides with the publication of Grahnan's memoir, Riding The Dragon's Breath.

Visit their site for all the exciting information. This is a wonderful use of contemporary digital technologies, and I hope that it will get lots of great material and lots of great publicity. 

We are New Yorkers, so we will just cheer from the sidelines. 

A SIMPLE REVOLUTION -Community Dialog with Judy Grahan. Click HERE

International Women's Day, from The Body Politic, May 1979. Part of the CLGA exhibit.

This exhibit sounds great. If you are in or near Toronto, I hope you can go.

The Canadian Lesbian Gay Archive Celebrates

 the 100th Anniversary of International Women's Day

with a

Special  Exhibition 

34 Isabella  Street. Toronto, ON.

 March 3 - May 12, 2011.

Admission is free.    

In celebration of the 100th anniversary of International Women's  Day, the Canadian Lesbian and Gay Archives presents "International Women's Day: Toronto Women and  the Struggle for Equality," opening March 3rd at 7:30 PM. Curators Michelle Schwartz and Roberta  Wiseman have drawn from the CLGA's own collection of  posters, flyers, photographs, and ephemera to  create an exhibition of the history of International Women's Day in Toronto from the 1970s to the  present.

"...the exhibition has been designed  with the aesthetic and ambience of the early women's centres of the 1970s and 1980s, with bulletin  boards, banners, and slogan­ adorned walls. "  

 Leading off the International Women's Day celebrations in Toronto, the exhibition has been designed  with the aesthetic and ambience of the early women's centres of the 1970s and 1980s, with bulletin  boards, banners, and slogan­ adorned walls.

   "International Women's Day: Toronto Women and the Struggle for Equality" is the second in the CLGA's  inaugural series of juried exhibitions to be presented in the CLGA's new gallery space at 34 Isabella  Street. The exhibit opens on March 3 and runs until May 12, 2011. Admission is free.   

  Founded in 1973, the Canadian Lesbian and Gay Archives (CLGA) is a registered charity that collects and  preserves materials that chronicle LGBTQ history for future generations to study and enjoy. Housed  within the collection are thousands of documents, artifacts and photographs, as well as a world­ renowned international periodicals collection and an extensive refer ence library. The CLGA's collection is  now one of the largest of its kind in the world and is used by the educational, literary, media and legal  communities as they seek to understand, document, relay, film and protect the stories and rights of  LGBTQ people. Please visit us online at www.clga.ca.   

Alix Dobkin singing. With a nice assortment of pictures. Uploaded from youTube.

DYKE A Quarterly No. 3. p. 48. Reviews of Linda Shear and The Performance at Grace & Rubies CLICK TO ENLARGE

DYKE A Quarterly No. 3 p. 49. Review of Hysterical Hystoricals, Lesbian Connection, Dynamite Damsels CLICK TO ENLARGE

Hysterical Hystoricals: A Lesbian-Feminist Revue

 Written and produced by: IV Women Productions; Doreen DiBiagio, Chris Larkin, Robyn Lutsky, Joanne Schumann. Directed by Margueite McLaughlin. Music by Robyn Lutsky. Musical arrangements Kathi Sheer. Orchestration by Roberta Kosse. Musical direction by Robyn Lutsky and Kath Sheer. Lighting design by Shelly Blue, Dreen DiBiagio and Debbie Wieser. Set design by Doreen DiBiagio. Costumes by Louise Martinez. Choreography by Murphy Cross. Musicians: Mrj Conn, Robyn Lutsky, Natash Olate, Kathi Sheer, Alina Trobridge. Cast: Kathy Tedeschi, Marge Helenchild, Jan Goldman, JoAnn Starkey, Lillian Engelson, Doreen DiBiagia, Chris Larkin and Robyn Lutsky.

We were just talking about how nice it would be to see a Lesbian musical play when the fleer for Hysterical Hystoricals came in the mail. Of course we ordered tickets and went to see the play during Lesbian Pride Week in New York City.

How nice it was to go into the little theater with real theater seats and a real stage. It was exciting to sit and wait for it all to begin, watching the heater fill up with Dykes, all different types of Dykes, some scruffy movement Dykes, some not scruffy movement Dykes, and several women wearing bouffant hairdos and shell tops. I never see these kind of women at most Lesbian events, and it was a pleasure to see them at the theater.

We read the program and then the lights dimmed and the orchestra began the overture. It was great. We had been listening to Guys and Dolls and Oklahoma for months and it was a thrill to listen to the overture of a real Dyke musical. The play began. It was a series of short skits, commemorating the bicentennial, sort of, but mostly commemorating Dykes. Queen Isabella and Christina Columbus are having  lovers spat. Christina goes off to sail around the world with her all women crew. In a later skit, “Sappho’s Hideaway” Christina has discovered the New World in a women’s bar in Flatbush. The year is 1493. “I’m always late” says Christina “We had to start without you” they say. In another skit, Ms. Grossinger negotiates a deal to by Manhattan for Ms. Rockerfeller. In a ballroom scene all ten Dykes in the cast are wearing long ball gowns, singing and dancing with each other. The look terrific, hairy arpits, cowboy boots and all. They give an award to Zero, who does underground work with women. She always leaves the mark of Zero. She is a klutz.

In the old West, two cowbutches are planning a showdown gunfight to see who will wind the femme. The femme becomes disgusted, “You’re a mean and ornery critter, Calra mae” she said. “Neither of you can win me.” And she goes off with another femme.

The skits were all well done & very funny. Sometimes it was a little hard to hear the lyrics to the songs, but we were sitting right next to the drum. The music was well arranged, catchy, well played and hummable. The costumes were funny and funky. Everything was good. The show was entertaining and inspiring as well. It was truly a pleasure to spend an evening at Dyke Theater. By Liza Cowan

Liza Cowan, working on DYKE A Quarterly, January 1976. Preston Hollow New York. Photo by Alix Dobkin or Penny House. Photo of photo 2011, Liza Cowan. © 2011 DYKE A  Quarterly/Liza Cowan

I asked Elana Dykewomon if she would write a few words about DYKE A Quarterly, and a bit about her life today. Elana was an occaisional contributor to DYKE A Quarterly and a huge presence in the cultural landscape of 1970's Lesbian Feminism in the USA.

Elana's novel Riverfinger Woman was required reading as soon as it was published in 1974. At the time she was using her given name, Nachman, which she later updated to Dykewomon.

Elana writes:

December 29, 2010

Historically, it was only five minutes ago, but a lot has happened in those five minutes. So much of our energy did, in fact, change the world -- yet there's so much left to do. That's not news. Every generation of idealists needs to make peace with their youthful zeal and continuing impulse to hope, and posting the actual artifacts of the time helps.

I'm still... working. Though many things have slowed me, the worst was recovering from the infighting of the late 70s (a period I refer to as the "great dyke wars"). But I am long since recovered -- after all, I edited Sinister Wisdom for seven years, worked on senior/disability access for the SF Dyke March until last year, am on several boards, give writing workshops for lesbians locally and keep participating ("participating," I've decided, is the key to staying/feeling alive).

Dyke magazine was an important part of the dialogue of the 70s -- and looking at it again I remember how engaged we were with each other in print, how our publications were, in fact, "underground" -- invisible and incoherent outside of lesbian communities. We felt each other deeply and took our positions seriously. In the first issue of Sinister Wisdom for which I was editor, we published a poem of Adrienne Rich's that had words to the effect of: no matter how I disagreed with you, I always read you.

What I often observe in women writing about the 70s now is a casual dismissal of what we did (we were all stoned, white, middle class...too wrapped up in ourselves to have an impact). That this parrots the "above ground" portrayals of lesbian radicalisms and feminisms seems to go unnoticed. We were serious, we produced theory, action and culture that changed a lot of lives, that changed the perceptions of possibility for women. And we never took each other out in the woods and shot each other (which male radical movements often do...). Even when we had guns -- and some of us did (now most of us espouse a radical pacifism).

I have an essay about lesbian utopian visions in the current issue of Trivia online: http://www.triviavoices.net/current/dykewomon.php  ("Walking on the Moon").
And I have a website that gets updated a couple times a year: www.dykewomon.org

I have a lot of hope that lesbian life, energy, vision goes on -- it's for every generation to write their own chapter. And I'll keep reading...

Thanks!

Wishing you peace and inspiration,

Elana

 Some of Elana Dykewomon's books. Click smaller image to enlarge.

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