FINANCIAL LITERACY - PIGGY BANK TIME

I'm not a money expert or a financial advisor. The ideas I'm sharing are things I've learned and try to stick to. .

You never know when an emergency will hit. Or if there will be a big ticket item you need to buy. When my 12 year old dog needed emergency surgery earlier this year, I was glad I had saved enough cash to pay for it. .

If you give yourself a weekly cash allowance (see my previous post) you might find, if you spend carefully, that you have extra left over. Piggy bank time!

I save cash in addition to the 10% of my monthly income that I put into my money market savings account at my credit union. 

In addition to my emergency fund, I love my "fun bank." I only go to a movie, or to a restaurant, or order take-out, if there's enough in the fun bank to pay for it. If that's only once or twice a month, that's fine with me. I don't even buy coffee out anymore.

I don't know about you, but I love to watch my savings grow. As I age, the stakes are higher, and knowing I'm banking on my future is with its weight in gold. 

Follow along on instagram

FINANCIAL LITERACY - SPENDING CASH

 

I'm not a money expert or a financial advisor. The ideas I'm sharing are some things I've learned and try to stick to. .

CASH

I figured out my monthly fixed expenses and a general idea of monthly necessary variables (see my last posts on budgeting and keeping a spending journal.)

I also add my monthly contribution to my savings account - 10% for me - to my monthly spending sum.

Do allow for random extra  necessary variables like dentist appointments, kids birthday parties etc. AKA padding. And add that amount into your monthly expenses. Then subtract the total from the monthly net income.  

If you have debt...pay it down as regularly as possible. I'm not an expert on this, but you can find some good advice online, or ask a professional financial advisor about it. Whatever you decide, add this amount into your monthly expenses. 

Divide by four and that should give you a weekly cash budget. You should still have enough in your checking account for your monthly fixed bills AND some random necessary  variables. 

I use cash for almost everything. I take some with me in my wallet, and leave the rest in a safe place at home. If I have to use a credit card or a check, I remove that amount from my weekly cash allotment and put it in the piggy bank. .

My goal is to have some left at the end of the week to put into my cash reserve piggy bank. 

Remember to keep track of every penny spent. .

FINANCIAL LITERACY - SPENDING JOURNAL

I'm not a money expert, or a financial advisor. The ideas I'm sharing are just a synthesis of things I've learned and try to stick to. 

Keep a spending journal. In addition to figuring out your monthly "nut" (see my lat post) its important to know Where the rest of your money is going. You might be surprised to see how quickly the little things add up, and how often you pay for things things that you don't really need. .

I use an ordinary spiral, lined notebook. And a pencil. I write down each purchase, no matter how small. .

A daily $2.00 coffee x five times a week = $10. That's $40 a month on coffee. That's $520 a year!
Buy a thermos, make your coffee at home, and use the savings to pay down your debt. Or fix a window sill. Or put it in a savings account. Or your kid's college fund. .

I use cash for almost everything, so its extra important for me to write things down each day. I forget where the money goes otherwise, and you probably do too. .

The first few months of my spending journal I taped receipts onto the page. It's good to know how much you spent at the grocery store. Even better to pay attention to what you are buying and how much it costs. .

Did you really need to buy a hardcover edition of a new book? Or the latest edition of a glossy magazine? Or that new pair of shoes? Maybe you did. Maybe you didn't. But you will be aware of how much they add to your weekly expenses. With that knowledge you can begin to make better choices and build a sustainable budget. 

You can follow along on instagram.

FINANCIAL LITERACY - TOOLS FOR BUDGETING

 

I'm not a money expert, or a financial advisor. The ideas I'm sharing are just a synthesis of things I've learned and try to stick to. 

Budget is key. I don't use a lot of online apps, though they are available and some people love them. 

I use my credit union online banking service to keep track of my (non-cash) payments and my income. I pay all my regular monthly bills by direct pay. Before I did this, I'd always have a growing mountain of bills sitting on a side table, which I would avoid every day. The stress, plus the late fees, made my financial life a nightmare. Now I know they are paid on time, and I can track them easily.

To make my budget I started by making a list of every bill that comes in monthly or regularly. Insurance, taxes, utilities, cable and streaming services, garbage and snow removal, loans, etc. I added them up, decided which ones I could live without, and cancelled them. Add them up again and you have your monthly "nut." I subtracted the "nut" from my personal income. And voila, that's my spending money for the month. .

BUT--- there are other regular expenses : the variables. Groceries, gas, dentist, appointments, vet bills.
If there are kids living at home, the variables can become intense. Mine no longer live at home, so that helps. College fees, though! That's a subject in itself. 

You can follow along at Instagram

FINANCIAL LITERACY - SOME THINGS I'VE LEARNED

I'm doing a series on Financial Literacy, as far as I understand it, on Instagram. I'm not a financial expert, or advisor. These are just some ideas I've learned and try to stick to. I'll be posting them here, as well. 

These days I think about money and do my best to make careful choices. This was not always so. I used to be terrified of taking charge of my spending, and avoided thinking about, or being aware of, my own habits and my financial picture. One day, at age 66, I realized that if I did not figure it out ASAP, I might not have a chance of supporting myself as I age. This was sobering.
I spent a year keeping a daily expenses chart- it was very instructive. I read books, blogs and IG accounts about finance. These are a few goals and ideas I've learned, and that I live by now, after a lifetime of avoiding the topic like the plague.

Berkshire Conference On The History Of Women: Reclaiming The Future, by Liza Cowan, Windy City Times, 1990

I wrote the following article in 1990 about two trips I made to The Berkshire Conference on The History of Women, one in 1987 and one in 1990. In it I point out the differences I saw in the two conferences, and my different responses to them, in the pivotal time when Second Wave Feminism was waning and what we now loosely call Third Wave Feminism was on the rise. 

 

I offer it to you at this moment without annotation or commentary, except to add that after I wrote this article, I went to college and graduate school, and got a Masters Degree in Anthropology, focussing on 19th Century Medicine.  

 

 

Berkshire Conference on The History of Women. Liza Cowan 1990

 

Liza Cowan

Windy City Times

Thursday, June 28, 1990

 

Three years ago, in June of 1987, The Seventh Berkshire Conference on the History of Women helped save my life by giving me a collective historical past. This year’s Berks left me nervous that academic historians were going to revise my personal/political history beyond my recognition.

 Five months before the ’87 Berks, I had taken the drug Ecstasy and plunged into a state of constant terror. I had enjoyed the drug several times with no bad effects, but this time while I was tripping a cynical and uninformed friend told me that in five years everybody would be dead from AIDS. My mind, in its chemically altered and vulnerable state, believed her literally. My stomach went cold and knotty, darkness closed in on my internal visual field. I took myself home and tried every psychological trick I knew to change my subjective reality. I couldn’t. And as the days passed, it got worse.

 It wasn’t just my personal health that scared me. Sure, I was afraid of getting sick and dying. But the worst part for me was believing that there would be no people in the future. The memory of all our generations since the beginning of our species would disappear - forever.

 On a more personal note there would be no one to remember me, Liza. I had decided when I was 15 years old that I didn’t want to be famous, but I did want to be a legend, and I had structured my life’s work to that end. The word “legend” implies that there will be someone in the future to know about you. Legend implies future. I now believed there would be none. The future was blank. I was stuck in a terror-filled present. At the ’87 Berks, I found my path to healing through the past.

 I am not a historian; I have no academic training at all. The closest I ever came to doing history was when I presented a slide show, “What The Well Dressed Dyke Will Wear, 1900-1976” at the Lesbian History Exploration, a grass-roots lesbian history conference held in California in 1976. My sister, Holly Cowan Shulman, is a historian, and had been been invited to read a paper at the ’87 Berks on “The Image Of Women Presented Over The Voice Of America 1942-1945.” She asked me to go with her; she knows history, I know women

 I found tons of dykes at the Berks, some old friends, many women I didn’t know. I’d say there were several hundred visible/identified lesbians, many more woven throughout the conference. Every session featured at least one lesbian presentation. Joan Schwarz from The Lesbian Herstory Archives charmed us with her slide show on lesbians in Greenwich Village. Del Martin, Phyllis Lyons and Barbara Gittings presented an oral history of The Daughters of Bilitis. Two lesbians came from abroad to discuss “The Transition to Modern Lesbianism in Denmark and Holland.” Dykes packed the hall to hear about “Love and Friendship in the Lesbian Bar Communities in the 1950’s and ’60’s.” In a hot crowded room, we sweated through Tee Corrinne and Flavia Rando’s slide show on Lesbian Art from 1905-1930.” (Lesbians were not given the most luxurious or spacious accommodations.)

 Halfway through the conference, I remembered the summer when I was 10 years old and my mother and older brother took me to the Farmer’s Market in Los Angeles, a vast place with many varied food stalls. My mom gave me some money and set me off on my own to explore and have lunch. When we regrouped she asked me what I had eaten. “A hot dog,” I told her. She couldn’t believe it. With all the different and new foods available, I’d eaten a hot dog!? Why hadn’t I tried something I’d never had before, she asked, and marched me off to find new taste thrills.

 As much as I love lesbians (and hot dogs) I decided that since I already knew a lot about the lesbian subjects  that were being offered, I should take advantage of the opportunity to explore areas I knew little about.

 I learned from Sarah McMahon of Bodoin College about “The Indescribable Care Devolving Upon a Housewife: The Preparation and Consumption of Food on the Midwestern Frontier, 1800-1860. She compared recollections in women’s, mens and children’s journals from that time. Sally McMurry’s paper on “Women Cheesemakers in Oneida County, New York, 1830-1870” sent me back in time in my imagination to a rural area I had actually lived near. Lori Ann Keen taught me about “The Role of Afro-American Women as Innovators in the Fashion and Cosmetic Industries in the 1920’s,” and my all-time favorite, the one that moves me still, Marilyn Ferris Motz’s paper on “Lucy Keeler: Home and Garden as Metaphor.”

This was what I had wanted all my school years - to know about how women lived. I never cared about wars or presidents or any of that stuff of which man’s history was made. but it touched me profoundly that someone would write her PhD dissertation on the flower garden of a middle-aged spinster in the suburban Midwest at the turn of the century, that designing and maintaining a personal garden, feeding a pioneer family, or the life of a lesbian bar community was as worthy of analysis as, say, founding a railroad, or maintaining a career in Congress. Years before I heard this paper, I was impressed by Alice Walker’s essay, “In Search Of Our Mother’s Gardens” in which she wrote, “What did it mean for a black woman to be an artist in our grandmother’s day? It is a question with an answer cruel enough to stop the blood.”

The weekend’s revelations revelations suddenly made the past bloom for me. By hearing these papers I regained, as Anne Of Green Gables might say, Scope For The Imagination. In this blossoming the intimate garden of women’s lives, with its twisty paths and shaded groves of leafy rich details, my mind had a place to go to heal.

 Through the past, I eventually regained an image of time that included the future, an image that had disappeared during my five-month drug abyss. (The process of healing from Ecstasy Hell was more complex than I have gone into here. It took a year and a half to fully recover. Please, even if you’ve taken Ecstasy in the past and its been fine, don’t do it again If you've never done it don’t.) My life went on, but the Berks held a special place in my heart. Three years later, when it was held again, I was eager to go.

 Looking through the 1990 program I didn’t see very many of the intimate garden-type papers I’d enjoyed so much the last time, so I decided to concentrate on the lesbians, check out what was happening in the field of lesbian history.

 The conference was far too vast and complex for me to report on as a whole. Even keeping tabs on all the lesbian activities was too much. My experience was quite different this time, knowing I was there to write about the conference. I was far more attuned to the issues and controversies than I had been last time when I was there for my own amusement and healing.

 Lesbian accessibility and visibility are ongoing issues at the Berks. It took true dyke devotion for several hundred of us to hike over to the Lesbian Reception since at the last minute the venue was changed to a gym that was so far away from the main events that it was off the college map. A truly marginalizing experience.

 A Friday evening roundtable discussion “Documenting Third World Lesbian Communities” was bumped from its original location by the last minute scheduling of a talk by Kate Millet. Juanita Ramos and June Chen carried on, and both did excellent presentations, despite being put into a room with inadequate audio-visual equipment. It was a sleight that could not be overlooked. The Lesbian Caucus decided to go to the Sunday Berks business meeting, where it was decided that these issues would be put onto the agenda for the next Berks planning meeting.

 Most of the papers and presentations were given by academics. My overall impression was that the papers were much more abstract than last time, filled with the trendy jargon of deconstructionism. I wished they’d spoken English. I was both bored and annoyed by the rapid-fired droning reading styles of many of the presenters, and I found it very hard to take notes.

 None of the papers I heard thrilled me the way those few had at the last Berks. I enjoyed some. The paper on the “Radical Women of Heterodoxy” inspired me to consider doing biographical research. But when I look back at my experience of the Berks, I see that my focus is concentrated on two panels. I thought about them more than any others, both during the conference and afterward.

 On a hot, muggy Saturday afternoon I went to a panel discussion called, “Will The Real Lesbian Please Stand Up? Questions of theory and Method in Current Historical Research.” Becki Ross, dressed in a black leather jacket, miniskirt and bright red lipstick, read her paper on the “Social Organization of Lesbians in Toronto, 1976 - 1980.” She was talking about LOOT, a Toronto lesbian group. I was having a little trouble following the details because I was trying to remember if they were the Toronto lesbians I had had a big fight with in 1977. (I checked some correspondence when I got home and found out they were, which made it ironic that the more Becki went on about them, the more I identified with them.) She had done interviews with some of the women involved in the LOOT social space and her main point, I think, was that this lesbian community was repressive. They insisted on a conformity of thought and dress - the dress being drab flannel shirts and workboots, the thought being that women-only space was a radical act on its own. Sex work and gay male issues were not represented. As I listened, I began to feel uncomfortable. It had occurred to me that Becki had some agenda, some point of view that she was not expressing overtly, but that she was weaving into the paper. Something about how these lesbians were repressive. Was there a sexual theme to her analysis?

I was a lesbian-separatist activist in the ’70’s. I believed that women-only space was a radical idea. I still do. As I sat listening to Becki, I thought, “She doesn’t understand what we were doing. I don’t think she respects these women she’s talking about.” It was hard to remember that she wasn’t talking about me.

I think it’s too soon to analyze what happened 10 to 15 years ago and to declare it history. We don’t have enough distance on the time, enough perspective. Everything from 15 years ago appears weird. Look at the clothes, hairstyles, furniture. Now they just look stupid. Soon they will look interesting, and later they will be retro-stylish, like things from the 1950’s are now. Fifteen years later is the time to tell stories, ask questions, get oral histories, collect pictures, begin to put the pieces together. But it’s not time to analyze.

When Becki was finished, Julia Creet from the University of California-Santa Cruz read her comments on the papers. She mentioned “sex radicals” and (I wrote this down) “the sexual repression of lesbians in the 1970’s."  When it was time for questions I raised my hand. I said I felt like I’d been living on Mars instead of New York City, but I didn’t know what a “sex radical” was. I didn’t think that lesbians of the ’70’s were sexually repressive and, if we were, I’d like to know how. I was afraid that what they meant by repressive was someone who, like me, had an unfavorable analysis of sado-masochism.

I literally didn’t understand Julia’s answer. I don’t think she ever defined “sex radical” or said how the lesbians of the ’70’s were repressive. I didn’t want to turn it into a dialog so I shut up. But I was uncomfortable. Was “sex radical” about sado-masochism? Could it means something about butch-femme? Transsexuals? I strained my imagination to figure out what it could mean. How come I didn’t know the term, and why could they not explain it to me? If their analysis of of the lesbians of the ’70’s was formed by a “sex radical” perspective as I had a hunch it was, I wanted to know what “sex radical” meant. I never found out.

At another presentation, on another day, I was intrigued by the ideas of naming and self-concept. Lisa Duggan, in her paper on female cross-dressing and the “mannish lesbian” of the late 19th century, told the story of a famous murder case from the 1890’s, in which a young woman killed her lover rather than live without her. Almost as an aside, she spoke about women struggling to create themselves. She insisted that it’s too early to look for “lesbians” in the 1870’s or 1880’s. In this deconstructionist analysis even women who were sexually active with women, women involved in passionate friendships, even passing women, did not have an inner knowing of themselves as “a kind of person with subjectivity of self.” (I think she meant a sense of self as agent, perceiver, active player, rather than object.) A lesbian identity is created, she said. The “mannish woman” at the turn of the century pioneered lesbian subjectivity because her self-presentation took her outside of the female world.

I wonder if we are only lesbian if we have a word for it. Do women loving women in other cultures/times have “subjectivity?” And does that matter. What did they call themselves, and how did they conceive of their love for other women? What should we call women who loved women but didn’t call it anything? Should we give them a different name? Names? How do we discuss them with each other?

I will probably continue to call these women lesbians, but I enjoy thinking about the idea of self-description and and how it changes over time. I wonder how the concept we now call “lesbian” will evolve. I speculate that we are only beginning to be able to know how vast, how powerful, women-centered life can be.  And that’s truly Scope For The Imagination.

Husbands are deadlier than terrorists

 

If  The New York Times say so, it must be true.

 

 

 

The Future Is Female. Now in The Washington Post and i-D Magazine

The Future Is Female

I was quoted yesterday in The Washington Post, and they also ran three of my photos, all about the now-famous slogan, t-shirt and button, The Future Is Female. 

I liked that they reposted this quote, which I originally wrote for an interview with Charlotte Cush at i_D magazine in 1975.

The Washington Post article is HERE 

********************************************************************************************************************************************

And here is the article from i-D magazine. By Charlotte Gush. December 7, 2015.

 

In 1975, Liza Cowan photographed her girlfriend wearing a T-shirt that read ‘The Future Is Female’. Fast forward to 2015 and a replica bought by Annie Clark for girlfriend Cara Delevingne has caused an Instagram-based feminist fashion frenzy. i-D caught up with Liza to find out about the T-shirt’s lesbian separatist roots, her magazine DYKE and what ‘The Future is Female’ means to her. 

Alix Dobkin wearing original The Future Is Female Shirt form Laybris Books. Photo ©Liza Cowan 1975

In recent weeks, perhaps the very first truly Insta-famous feminist fashion item has emerged: a sweatshirt worn by Annie Clark, of St Vincent, and girlfriend Cara Delevingne that reads, 'The Future Is Female'. Far from being the latest catwalk creation, the design actually has its roots in the radical feminist movement of lesbian separatists in the 70s, having been created originally to raise funds for Labyris Books, the first women's bookshop in New York City, which opened in 1972.

In 1975, photographer Liza Cowan photographed her then-girlfriend Alix Dobkin wearing the slogan T-shirt, for an advert the magazine DYKE: A Quarterly, which she co-edited with Penny House. [note from Liza - this isn't actually true. I took the photo for my slideshow, What The Well Dressed Dyke Will Wear] Fast forward to 2015 and the lesbian feminist Instagram account @h_e_r_s_t_o_r_y posted Cowan's image, where it was seen by graphic designer Rachel Berks, who sells feminist products from her studio-store, Otherwild. With permission, Berks recreated the T-shirt and began selling it -- with 25% of profits going to women's health organisation Planned Parenthood -- in her online store and in the gift shop of a lesbian feminist haunted house called KillJoy's Kastle, where St Vincent singer Annie Clark bought two slogan sweatshirts for herself and girlfriend Cara Delevingne. Paparazzi shots of them wearing the designs spread across social media and a feminist fashion frenzy was set in motion.

i-D caught up with photographer, artist and feminist Liza Cowan to find out more about lesbian separatist feminism in the 1970s, her magazine DYKE: A Quarterly and what 'The Future is Female' means to her.

Alix Dobkin and Liza Cowan at Three Maple Farm, NY. Circa 1975

 How does it feel to see a radical statement created by your community of lesbian feminists in the 70s become famous on the internet in 2015?
If you had told me 40 years ago, when Alix Dobkin and I made this photo, that it would become a pop culture sensation of this magnitude, we would have said that the idea was impossible.

Are you concerned that the feminist message gets lost and people think it's just a cool image?
In some ways the message 'The Future Is Female' is, if not lost, then certainly understood differently than it was in the 70s. Feminism has changed, the world has changed. It is difficult for many younger women to imagine the power, the excitement and the urgent need for women to come together to change the world. This may change. I do like that people think it's a cool image. It IS a cool image.

What does 'The Future is Female' mean to you?
The beauty of the phrase is that there is no precise meaning. We are asked to absorb two powerful archetypes, and to imagine them in relationship to each other. It is a dynamic phrase, a lively phrase. In order to make sense of it, we have to engage with the words. The archetype of 'the future' asks questions about the nature of time: When does the future begin? Where is the future? How does it happen? As an archetype, 'female' covers broad territories. Flora or fauna. Virgin Mary or Kali. Medusa or Quan Yin. Astarte or Parvati. Bringer of peace, or destroyer of illusion. Nurturer or avenger. Mother, sister, daughter, aunt, grandmother. Nymph, maiden, crone.

'The Future is Female' reminds me that all life formed in a matrix. Matrix means womb, matrice, mother. Life springs from the female. Whether the future starts right this second, or in a million years, it emerges from the female body; not just the body of women, but of all female sentient beings, including the body of our home, Gaia.

I have also said that the slogan is a call to arms. While I think this is true, it is also true that it is an invocation. If we are to have a future, it must be female, because the rule of men -- patriarchy -- has just about devastated life on this beautiful little planet. The essence and the spirit of the future must be female. So the phrase becomes not just a slogan, but a spell. For the good of all.

 The image of Alix was part of a photography project about women. Tell us more?
From 1972 to 1978 I wrote a series of articles called What The Well Dressed Dyke Will Wear, starting in a small lesbian magazine I published called Cowrie Lesbian Feminist, which ran from 1973 to 1974. Later I published them in my bigger magazine, DYKE: A Quarterly of Lesbian Culture and Analysis, which I co-edited and co-published with Penny House.

Today, you can get a PhD in fashion theory. In those days, it was considered trivial. I knew it wasn't, and I knew and that clothing carried a social message. I wanted to decipher it. In the seven part series, I covered general observations, histories of lesbian clothing -- including ancient Amazons -- contemporary lesbian clothing designers, the politics of hair and the history and politics of footwear.

How did you discover feminism and when did you start to identify as a feminist?
I first heard about Women's Liberation in 1970, listening to Robin Morgan being interviewed on the New York City listener-sponsored radio station, WBAI. My life changed immediately. I joined a consciousness-raising group, and I never looked back.

After you became a feminist, you began to identify as a lesbian separatist -- what does that mean and why was it an important distinction?
I was not a lesbian when I became a feminist. I came out gradually over the next year or so. In the process of producing feminist radio shows at WBAI (the same station where I'd first heard Robin Morgan), I had the opportunity to interview many many accomplished and exciting women, including some lesbians. One morning I had a dream in which I revealed to myself that I deeply loved women, and I decided at that very moment to be a lesbian. Soon after that, I met Alix Dobkin, a recently divorced folksinger and mother of a nine month old daughter. We met when she came to the station to be a guest on my late-night feminist radio show, Electra Rewired. We became friends, and then fell in love.

Over the course of the next few years, we spent much of our free time reading and discussing lesbian books, periodicals and theory, with each other and with friends. The new ideas about lesbian separatism resonated for us, and we developed our own ideas, which I wrote about in DYKE, and Alix sang about. Our work took us to women's actions and communities in New York City and soon, all over the United States, where we enjoyed the opportunity to work out ideas with many brilliant lesbians.

Contrary to popular belief, lesbian separatism was never a prescriptive code for behaviour or relationships. It did not dictate who to be friends with, what 'family' should mean, or how to live your life. It was an analysis, a lens through which to observe the world. There was no centrally-distributed dogma. Lesbian Separatism, boiled down, was a way to figure out what it meant to be a woman, without having to bother with men telling you what you could not think or say.

It was a way to develop networks of women's businesses, publishers, bookstores, conferences, cafes, trade organisations, credit unions, music production, health care centres, media, schools, self-defence courses, cooperative farms, festivals, auto-repair shops, distribution networks. We did everything. Not everyone who participated was a lesbian, but most were. Women-only networks, spaces and actions are one of the cornerstones of creating community, and forging effective feminist activism. That's why it's such a difficult and contested thing to do these days.

Liza Cowan and Penny House at Three Maple Farm, 1975. Photo ©Alix Dobkin

Why did you create DYKE: A Quarterly, and what was the reaction to it?
DYKE: A Quarterly (DAQ) was my second feminist magazine, following a smaller predecessor, Cowrie Lesbian Feminist. Before that I'd been a radio producer. I like media, I like to write, I like to design; and we had wonderful resources of lesbian writers, artists and activists to draw on as contributors. Co-editor Penny House and I decided that publishing a lesbian feminist magazine would be our perfect contribution to the movement.

Some women loved it. Some hated it. Some loved how brave and honest we were. Some women were frightened by that. Some hated that we wrote about such 'frivolous' topics as clothing and fashion. Others found that enlightening. Some women loved that we tried our best to make it beautiful and substantial. Others were suspicious of us because it was beautiful and substantial. But we were always taken seriously.

All our articles were written by lesbians, (except one, by our woman dentist, about oral hygiene.) Our typesetters were lesbians, and the magazine was printed by a lesbian printshop. We sold only by subscription, or in women's bookstores. Sometimes we sold the magazine in person as we toured the country with Alix Dobkin. All our advertisers were lesbian feminists. We paid for everything we published. It was quite the cottage industry. Our biggest problem was funding. But that was par for the course in what was then known as 'alternative publishing'. We folded after four years and six issues.

In DAQ Issue 1, the introduction says that subscriptions will be returned to men, that you don't want male readers or straight women, just lesbians. Why did you want to be exclusive in that way?
The idea of women talking seriously to other women is often seen as a threat to the social order. We just wanted to talk amongst ourselves. Nobody else was interested, anyway.

Some people feel that lesbians have been ignored in the history of both the feminist movement and the gay rights movement. What's your take on that?
I agree, that absolutely happens, and I find it infuriating; but that doesn't mean that nothing has been written. It does depend on where you look. Lesbians have been writing both popular and scholarly works about lesbians for decades now, and there are some wonderful documentary films. Once you start searching, you will uncover a goldmine.

The DAQ archive is now held at The Museum Library at MOMA in New York. Do you think more needs to be done to preserve original feminist and lesbian cultural history?
Absolutely. I always encourage lesbians to donate their personal papers and their personal lesbian libraries to local or national women's or lesbian archives.

Flier for DAQ, Media issue. Photos ©Irene Young

The Future Is Female statement spread around the world after Annie Clark and Cara Delevingne were photographed wearing the Otherwild sweatshirts, and there is a big resurgence in celebrities endorsing feminism, like Beyoncé, who performed in front of a huge bank of lights that read 'FEMINIST' on her tour. What do you think of celebrity feminism?
I don't keep up much with celebrity feminism. I'm not a huge consumer of contemporary pop culture. I don't think it can be a bad thing for women celebrities to endorse feminism, and if it encourages other women, particularly young women, to feel good about being feminist, that's a good thing. For me, it depends a lot on the scope and content of their message. If there is no analysis or activism, feminism becomes a symbol with no substance. "The map is not the territory. The name of the thing is not the thing named." -- Alfred Korzybski, 1931. The word 'feminist" is not the same thing as feminist activism.

Although is it very popular to say you are a feminist now, some of the achievements of 70s feminists seem to be being undone. Has progress been made or are we slipping backwards?
I hope that we are reaching the end of an era of mean-spirited attacks, critiques and disavowal of 70s Lesbian activism, attacks which have been painful to witness, and are filled with lies, distortions and half-truths. I see a new generation of folks who have discovered us, and appreciate our work. The h_e_r_s_t_o_r_y Instagram account is one of many examples of this. I hear from more and more young people every day who are truly excited to know more about what we did, and are inspired to carry on the work.

Image from contact sheet, photoshoot for DYKE IS OUT flier 1974

What advice do you have for young feminist and lesbian activists today?
KNOW YOUR HERSTORY: Read, read, read. There is so much to read, so much scholarship, so many articles, so much literature. Get to know the radical roots of feminist theory. Read about 1st and 2nd wave feminists. Become familiar with the legions of amazing feminist and lesbian feminist women who came before you: activists, artists, scholars, scientists, trade-unionists, abolitionists, community leaders, organisers. Likewise, listen to women's music, watch feminist and lesbian films and documentaries. Explore lesbian theatre, and lesbian novels.

Form consciousness-raising groups with a few trusted women-friends. Consciousness-raising was the foundation of second wave feminism, and I can't stress enough what an important tool it is. Meet weekly, pick a topic for each week, and talk honestly and openly with one another. You'll be surprised what you discover. Things you thought were your private problems are not just common, but are the very structure of oppression. This is the technique by which we discover that "the personal is political". Not only will it expand your consciousness and political understanding, it will help you develop the small, trusted and intimate groups from which all kinds of networks and activism can spring.

lizacowan.com

Credits

Text Charlotte Gush
Photography Liza Cowan

When a blog becomes a book.

Technologies change. I like to think of this blog as an eternal resource, but that's probably foolish. While it seems that for now online sources have been able to store information while updating their capabilities, who knows what can happen to any given blog, or any types of technologies?  

Seesaw the blog becomes seesaw the book

 

 In a recent Facebook conversation on this topic, my friend Andrea Humphrey said this:

"On a class tour of the Schlesinger Library in the 90's, an archivist was showing us boxes of Dorothy West's letters and articles. I suggested that archivists would be relieved when all the archives come to them on space-saving floppies.  She said, 'quite the opposite. the technology required for humans to read hard copies will never change," but with the fast high tech innovation cycles and also the ways in which digital archives on discs disintegrate compared to on paper, they were dreading the enormous loss of important historical artifacts that can now occur before we even know whether they are important."

 

The technology required for humans to read hard copies will never change. 

 

I love that! And how nice it is to hold a book in your hands. The reading experience is so different. And how much easier for a brick and mortar archive to put an actual book on the shelf. So now the born-digital posts I've written are in a book. Just one copy, for now, for my own archive. In the future, we'll see. It will probably end up at The Schlesinger Library, too. 

 

Seesaw blog becomes seesaw book. Photo of Dr. Dorothy I Height, article about Wednesdays In Mississippi

 

If you blog, you might want to try this. I used a service called Into Real Pages.  Very easy to use. There are others. It was not inexpensive, but the result is priceless. 

 

SeeSaw Blog becomes SeeSaw book.

 

Poor Pitiful Pearl magnet

 

Poor Pitiful Pearl refrigerator magnet from Small Equals

My 2009 post about the doll Poor Pitiful Pearl has been one of the most popular of all my posts. This classic doll, designed in 1958 by author, illustrator William Steig, rests in the memory banks of so many people. I used to keep this Pearl in my gallery, Pine Street Art Works, and I can't tell you how many women of a certain age used to pick her up and tell me stories about their special Pearls. Kids loved her too. 

Now I've made a magnet of my Portrait Of Pearl. I think you might enjoy it. Available at my etsy shop or at smallequals.com

Victorian Trade Cards

Victorian Trade Card Girl with Dogs

 

Trade Cards =  Victorian lithographed deliciousness. You know I have huge collections of trade cards from the Burlington, VT company Wells Richardson, but I also have collected some others over the years. 

I've decided to make a few of them available at my Etsy shop. This one is a stock image, I've seen it used for other retailers. 

 

Detail, Victorian Trade Card. Girl and dogs.

 

Here's another beauty. The golden curled little girl talks to her canary. 

 

Victorian trade Card. Little girl and canary.

The images didn't have to have anything to do with the product. What was important was having appealing images, which people collected by the millions and put in their scrapbooks. 

 

Detail, Victorian Trade Card. Little girl with canary.

 

Hop on over to my ETSY SHOP!

 

 

Pinback buttons by Liza Cowan for Small Equals

Red Bird button. Small Equals. ©Liza Cowan

I have always believed that beautiful things need not be expensive. In fact, I prefer the things I make to be available for not that much money. Sure, sometimes I've put a large price tag on some of my work that is one-of-a-kind like the paintings in my FAKE!™ series. But for the most part, I prefer to make things affordable. 

My new buttons, a series of 12, is pretty cool. I like adornment, a lot, so these buttons are purely decorative. And, following my FAKE!™ aesthetic, some are made to fool the eye. They are not REALLY set into a silver bezel, they just look that way. 

Parrot button in silver bezel ,small equals, liza cowan design

 

The watches don't REALLY tell time. They just look like they do. 

Watch, Ritzi. ©LIza Cowan, small equals

 

I've also remade an old favorite of mine, one I published first in the mid 1980's. American Sign Language, "I love you." 

American Sign Language "I love you" ©Liza Cowan, Small Equals.

You can see the whole series in the sidebar ad right here on the blog. The link takes you to my online store  where you can buy retail OR wholesale. 

But if you prefer shopping at Etsy, I have a shop there, too.  I also sell vintage ephemera from my Etsy shop. 

 

Amazons, Allons-Y buttons

 

Amazons, Allons-Y

 

New from Small Equals, Amazons, Allons-Y button. Based on my series, now in wearable form. Very chic, so cool, must have. 

Available at Small Equals (that's me!)

 

 

Happy Thanksgiving 2015

 

Happy Thanksgiving.

DO YOU SEND BUSINESS EMAILS? USE MAD MIMI

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Do you send business email? So many people do. I have been using Mad Mimi for my emails since 2009. I loved them then, and now they are even better. It's ridiculously easy to create your custom emails, and they have the best customer support ever. And tracking, stats, and everything you could need to make gorgeous, effective, and easy emails. 

Take my advice, make friends with Mad Mimi. You won't be sorry. And please, if and when you do decide to give Mimi a spin, please link through the image above. That way I get a kickback through their affiliate program. And you know what? You can become an affiliate too. Just another great thing about Mimi.

Click here for  my latest newsletter.

 

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click the image to check out Mad Mimi. If you sign up this way, I will get the affiliate bonus. Once you have signed up, you can get an affiliate bonus for getting new customers too. AND you will be using the best, easiest, most beautiful, helpful email service in the universe. 

Otherwild, a shop in Los Angeles

Otherwild, a shop in Los Angeles

 

Regular readers of this blog will know of my interest in Retail Theater. 

Now from Design*Sponge (one of my favorite blogs) comes this story about the Los Angeles store, Otherwild, and its owner, Rachel Berks. Not only does this give us a glimpse of the process of owning and managing a small shop, a topic which resonates greatly for me, as a former shop owner and manager, but also the piece discusses Otherwild's best selling item, THE FUTURE IS FEMALE t-shirt.

 

 You may know by now that I had a part in the creation of this shirt, and the button. And you probably know how my brains are near bursting with the wild popularity of this shirt, 40 years after Alix Dobkin and I made the photo that it was based on.

 

The Future Is Female, the original shirt, worn by Alix Dobkin. Photo ©Liza Cowan 1975

 

 

The Future Is Female - the button

The Future Is Female

 

I made these buttons in 1974 for Labyris Books, the first feminist bookstore in NYC. Hard to believe I still have a bunch of them. They also came in other colors, but I don't have any.

Mint-condition vintage buttons now available in very limited quantity at my shop

Cowan home decor DIY tips in Nest issue of SevenDaysVermont

 The editor of Vermont's premiere weekly newspaper, SevenDaysVt, follows me on Pinterest, and decided that a feature about my DIY home tips would be of interest to the paper's readers. This is from their quarterly special insert on homes, Nest. 

Regular readers of this blog will find some of these images familiar. I've posted them here on the blog, as well as on Pinterest and Flickr.

Home Eclectic Home, Liza Cowan DIY home decor tips

Read the online version here.

 

 

Happy Birthday, Snoopy

1960's Russian/Soviet botanical matchbox labels

I must have ordered these 1960's Russian/Soviet botanical match box labels years ago and tucked them away in a little glassine envelope. Rummaging through my boxes of postcards yesterday, I came across them and popped them into the scanner. I can almost read some of the Cyrillic alphabet, but mostly if I am familiar with the word. And I do recognize many flowers, but I'm willing to bet I've made some mistakes in identifying these images.

Please let me know, and enjoy.

 

Aster. Russian/Soviet Matchbox label 1960. Liza Cowan Ephemera collections.

 

 

Russian/Soviet botanical match box label. Phlox. Liza Cowan Ephemera Collections.

 

 

Russian/Soviet match box label. Carnations. Liza Cowan Ephemera Collections

 

 

 

 

Russian/Soviet botanical match box label. Liza Cowan Ephemera Collections. Gladiola.

 

 

 

 

Russian/soviet botanical match box label. Tulip. Liza Cowan Ephemera Collections.

 

 

 

 

Russian/Soviet botanical match box label. Camomile, Liza Cowan Ephemera Collections.

On SeeSaw Facebook this week

SeeSaw is now on facebook, with links from our archives PLUS interesting things I've found around the web. Here's what's been on this week. 

SeeSaw on Facebook here

 

THE NEGRO MOTORIST GREEN-BOOK

Source: http://www.theroot.com/…/black_history_road_trip_negro_moto…

"In 1936 a Harlem postal worker and activist named Victor H. Green decided to develop a guide that would help African Americans travel throughout the country in a safe and comfortable manner. The Negro Motorist Green Book (also called The Negro Travelers' Green Book), often simply known as The Green Book, identified places that welcomed black people during an era when Jim Crow laws and de facto segregation made it difficult for them to travel domestically without fear of racial backlash.

The Green Book listed businesses and places of interest such as nightclubs, beauty salons, barbershops, gas stations and garages that catered to black road-trippers. For almost three decades, travelers could request (for just 10 cents' postage) and receive a guide from Green. Eventually the guide expanded to encompass information about Canada and Mexico."

 

Perfection Salad and Something From The Oven by Laura Shapiro

 

Perfection Salad, and Something From The Oven, two fascinating books by Laura Shapiro. I heard Laura speak at the University Of Vermont last Spring. I first read Perfection Salad when I was doing research on Jell-O. Turns out Laura is also obsessed with Jell-O images, so she is now the proud owner of a set of Jell-O placemats that I made. 

Here's an interesting early article about Perfection Salad. 
http://meaningness.com/perfection-salad

 

Mid Century Cooking from Mid-Century Menu

 

Here's a link to an interview with Ruth Clark who blogs at The Mid-Century Menu. Interview in CollectorsWeekly.com

 

More on Mid-Century Cooking. 
"Today, foodies typically look back on this era with an upturned nose, preferring to mock its foods rather than eat them. So when Ruth Clark took the obvious, and daring, step of actually making these retro recipes for her fascinating website The Mid-Century Menu, it’s not surprising she received a bit of hate mail. Clark typically cooks one vintage meal per week, which she documents through scans of the original recipe, photos of her re-creation, and detailed tasting notes (often featuring amusing photos of her husband, Tom, attempting his first few bites). Her blog is an everyday cook’s version of the Julie & Julia project, featuring the food that real people made in mid-century America.

 

"Clark recently gave us her experienced take on the marvels of mid-century eating, and the lessons contemporary cooks can learn from it."

 

SeeSaw has jumped onto the Facebook train.

Join SeeSaw on Facebook. HERE

I'll be posting new material and golden oldies from the SeeSaw vaults. But wait, I'll also be scouting the web for great things  about art, collecting, ephemera, exhibitions, and all kinds of related happenings that are not part of this blog. 

See you there, I hope. 

Digital collage, the "Maybe" series of time- traveling ladies.

I've been busy making digital collages, mostly using a combination of my own photographs and images from vintage Kodak ads, vintage sewing pattern packets, and old ads or images of 19th century ladies in swimming costumes and bicycles. Finding the images is just the first step. 

I separate the people from the background using Photoshop, which can be tedious, but once I have them done, I save them as PNG files and they are ready to go for the next collage. For the Greenhouse picture I  ran my original photo through the Waterlogue app on my iPhone. I do most of my actual design and composing using PicMonkey because it's much easier than Photoshop for this kind of work. For me, anyway. 

Some more examples. 

HOME: Making curtains the easy way

 I love curtains.  I'm lazy and frugal, and I don't have a sewing machine. And I like to change my curtains seasonally. I've never let any of these things stop me. 

In the winter, I like to feel cozy and warm. In the summer, I like my curtains to be light and breezy. 

Making curtains is easy, though, at least for me. My method: 

Find fabric you love. I shop around in local stores and online. There's always something gorgeous on sale. 

Measure the inside height of your window. My method takes twice the length of the window. Fabric usually should be wider than the window for gathering, or the same width for a tailored modern look. 

Place a tension rod inside the window frame.

Drape fabric over rod until the bottoms meet. 

Use two tiny binder clips or small safety pins at the very top sides, just under the rod. Sometimes you will find you need to use tiny safety pins along the side. 

That's it. And you haven't cut much fabric, so you can use it for other projects when you change your curtains. 

If you hate a ragged bottom edge (I don't) you can make a hem using liquid fabric. Super easy to do. 

I love to use clothing fabric for curtains. For summer, I'm using seersucker in my living room. 

 

I found this very cheerful plaid fabric for my daughter's room. It's from Waverly. Found on sale, of course. 

 You can do it, too! Now you know how. 

 

Home projects: wooden crate wall, and pink seersucker curtains.

The screened porch was a deal maker for me when I bought my house. At first, my plan was to build a half-wall around the room, but then I had the brainstorm of modular wall building with wooden boxes. The old owner had left a small cache in the barn, and I had my own collections, so I decided to stack them at one end, and to use some as a small "wall" on the outer deck. That's all I need. And in the Winter, they will go back to the barn because the porch fills with snow. 

My other grand idea was to put in white curtains for beauty, shade, and privacy. I had basic white curtains and tension rods on hand from an earlier project, so that was easy. A cheap and quick project, also removable for the winter months. 

Tin Marx dollhouse from my collections. 

Joanne's Fabrics had seersucker on sale at 50% yesterday so I scooped up 8 yards of pink and white stripe. I love using dressmaking fabric for curtains. My curtain making technique: cut the material to twice the height of the window. Drape over tension rod on inside of window frame. Secure at the top with binder clips or safety pin. If you want to get really fancy, you can hem them. I usually don't, but if I decide to, liquid seam glue works just fine. 

Lamp by Kileh Friedman,  Burlington, VT. Shade from The Lamp Shop, Burlington, VT.