pantoum's Diaryland Diary

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LIVING LA VIDA LEATHER

270.

I love you. I love you but I am turning to my verses and my heart is closing like a fist.

That is a fragment of a Frank O�Hara poem and also what I long to say to the world today.

I left the Adobe Creative Suite training on Wednesday and subsequent feminist publishing symposium on Thursday with a mashup of ideas percolating inside and want to be in a studio creating right now, and not at work.

Had a long conversation with Ellie Smeal, former director of NOW, founding director of Feminist Majority, and current publisher of Ms. magazine. She said Feminist Majority did not want to take over publishing the mag and knew it was a bad business decision, but the previous publisher raped the magazine and very nearly put it under (by basically acquiring it so it could use the lists to market Working Mother and another magazines to Ms.�s audience while failing to market Ms.). In the end, she just wasn�t willing for the nation�s premier feminist magazine fold.

We somehow moved to the topic of inclusive language and I told her about editing inclusive lectionaries, responsorial psalms, and the Inclusive New Testament�an immense project I undertook as a grad student and one of which I am very proud.

We also talked about how to create an epublishing business model (good question).

I told her I�ve always thought of my publishing jobs as a means of gaining access to expensive publishing equipment that allows me to make the books and chorus materials and cultural thingies that I want to make. And THIS conversation morphed into a conversation about how blogs have replaced zines as the feminist community-making tool of choice.

She encouraged me to start a feminist press (which would be cool once I finish my novel) and told me that I need to be writing for Ms..

�

I haven�t devoted energy to journalism for some time, but used to enjoy writing columns for our local independent rag.

Midway through the symposium and some digging, I realized that there are several books just begging to be written from donor material at the Sallie Bingham Center for Women and Culture at Duke. (Loved that Sallie was at the conference too. She looks just like a slightly older Lucinda Williams and you better believe I shook the hand of a woman who donated enough money to allow the university to create a collection of feminist materials).

So. Yeah. My life is pulling me in some new directions, seems like, some of which may have germinated from my need to start this blog. My soul started insisting on a place for me to create, to cogitate, to be the core me and not just the person who is trying desperately to stay on top of my work demands and house repairs and other peripheral shit�and, ever since, it seems as if my need to create has been jumping up and down and demanding that I pay some fucking attention to it already.

Meanwhile, I�d like to point out that The Gay and Lesbian Review�s summer sex issue includes the article �Strap-On Party for the People.� Yeah baby!

Okay, I gotta get some postcards formatted and printed for my pals with the new gallery, so I better go for now.

Ciao.

LISTENING TO: Lou Reed/John Cale�s �Songs for Drella� (�I Believe� is currently playing. It�s about Valerie Solanas shooting Andy Warhol: Valerie Solanis [sic] took the elevator, got off at the 4th floor. She pointed the gun at Andy saying you cannot control me anymore...Valerie Solanis [sic] took thee steps pointing at the floor from inside her idiot madness spoke and bang Andy fell onto the floor...)