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Comic Strip of the Day

CSotD: Woman, uninterrupted

Published: June 15, 2011 1 minute 4 comments

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Okay, Sarah Laing's Let Me Be Frank is now officially on the list of Comics I Have To Avoid Citing All The Time. (And you have to click on that link, because this is only the first of three panels.) 

I can't resist the way she combines simple art with a voice that I would call "passionate detachment." I think it's the way I'm supposed to feel about Ira Glass, but his purposefully atonal voice seems to me so calculatedly hip that I find it off-putting.

By contrast, Sarah Laing sounds like someone who has genuinely found, in her comics personna, a way to say what is on her mind without being interrupted. This is not a small thing, but goes back to our earlier discussion of male and female communications styles.

For many years, I was with a woman who, for four of those years, went to Smith College on a scholarship for non-traditional-aged students, in order to get her long-delayed degree.

If you've never been around Smithies, let me assure you that they are not shrinking violets nor in any way prone to hiding their light under a bushel.

But, even there, a seminar of all-women was different than a mixed-sex seminar. It's simply the style of men to stake out and defend a position, rather than to offer a theory and, while defending it, yet allow it to be shaped by others.  

Conversation among Smithies does not sound like it was lifted from Jane Austen, but the atmosphere there is different, and there are women who would sit and stew in silence while tables were being pounded but who will venture to jump into a discussion, even an intense discussion, in that setting.

This is not entirely a male/female thing. I've known plenty of women who can't wait until your lips stop moving so they can top your story. There is also a style more prevalent among women than among men of interrupting to finish your sentence, which can feel supportive if they are right most of the time but which is maddening when you have to keep saying, "no …" and starting over.

On the other hand, I have worked for both men and women, and I can tell you that a board meeting being run by a woman is different. While brooking no nonsense and tolerating no pointless discursions, a woman CEO does encourage more participation. You leave the room feeling that you've been heard, even when you don't get your way. It matters.

Now, I see nothing in the stories Sarah Laing tells that makes me feel she can't hold her own in conversation. Quite the opposite. The life she describes sounds full of friendship, laughter and camaraderie.

But there is, in her cartooning, a voice that is probably not heard often around those bistro tables or in those late night living room conversations. There is a quiet intimacy in her storytelling that is a privilege to be invited to hear.

(And in this case, it's particularly enlightening, given that I am of the generation who bought "Laurel's Kitchen" and foisted it upon our children, right down to the leather pancakes and the whole wheat bread with the mass of soggy dough in the middle. Reading this makes me feel like Ebenezer Scrooge being guided by the Ghost of Garbanzo Beans Past.)

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Comments 4

  1. Great blog entry today. Loved how it went from the comic to male/female communication and back again. And the last line, “Reading this makes me feel like Ebenezer Scrooge being guided by the Ghost of Garbanzo Beans Past.” is priceless. Thanks.

  2. The folks who wrote “Laurel’s Kitchen” are part of the Blue Mountain Center for Meditation, the practices of which have helped me immensely. The _nutritional_ precepts of “Laurel’s Kitchen have been helpful, but I certainly am thankful for the intervening 40 years of incorporating other food cultures, and spices and seasonings, so that vegetarian cuisine has become _much_ more tasty and satisfying! Later editions of “LK” reflect this!

  3. Bill, I think it’s important to note that people like Laurel and the Laurel who came before her, Alicia Bay Laurel, as well as Frances Moore Lappé, were part of a more holistic approach to life, of which diet was a part, but which was not defined by diet.
    It’s like something that Peter Yarrow of Peter, Paul and Mary remarked one time, that people thought demonstrations were the Movement, but they weren’t. Certain things fit in, and it’s hard to imagine being part of the larger group without at least acknowledging those pieces. Lappé, for instance, is not a vegetarian, but she makes a strong argument that raising meat is not efficient — which can mean that you shouldn’t eat meat at all, or it can mean that you should use meat in smaller portions, like in stir-fries. In either case, you acknowledge the reality at a level which is up to you to determine.
    Glad to hear the pancakes aren’t quite so pot-holder-like anymore, though!!!

  4. Oh, definitely, and I didn’t mean to not place LK in a larger sphere — that’s why I brought up the Blue Mt. Center. The founder’s writings and work is meant to transforms lives and ways of living (they definitely helped me transform mine), and LK worked to do that on how we view food: as a gift to those around you, as a way to do good, not harm.
    But I certainly am thankful for 40 years of learning how things are prepared from around the world, and better produce and more spices…

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