2000-11-06 - 16:59:45

Last week was kind of sad for a bunch of reasons. A big one was while I was looking around for info on an old professor of mine, I found out his wife died at the end of last summer, of breast cancer. Her name was Ann Mikolowski, & she was a major force in the Michigan art scene for decades. She & my professor, Ken Mikolowski, are so amazing & inspiring to me. They owned their own printing press, & were the Alternative Press, from 1969 I think, until maybe still now? An article I read said he was considering whether or not to continue without her.

I never met her, but it still hit me hard. I totally lost it at work, & cannot stop thinking about it. Ken meant a great deal to me in college, & he still does. I imagine she must've been pretty fantastic. While it's already unfathomably difficult to me to lose someone you've built your life with, I think that people are especially meaningful to one other if they've been through social struggles together. Losing someone you love who you share a history of political activism with has got to be one of the most terrible losses ever. I dread it. And Ken & Ann are people who, from my perspective, have 60s values & made it through the 80s & the 90s without doing ugly things for money. They take paths that aren't easy or comfortable, & they kick ass at keeping poetry & art functions happening, & encouraging young writers & artists. Ken brought people like his friends John Sinclair & Allen Ginsberg to class, to talk to the students. How fancy is that?

I really don't know anything about Ken & Ann. Maybe I shouldn't be writing their names, & I could have everything wrong. Maybe it's retarded to idealize people I don't know well. Maybe they HAVE been doing ugly things for money. Maybe Ken sells his students names to telemarketers for extry cash, & made a bunch of commercials during the SAG strike. Although, I'm pretty sure not.

During the Gulf war, I went to my tutorial with Ken & we were talking about how depressing it was, & I told him I thought we should shut the campus down immediately. He looked at me like, "Who're you tellin'?" Obviously I was all new to activism & thought I was so radical, & to him it was the most common sense thing. Yeah, people are dying, the campus as a whole should do the most drastic thing possible to make a statement against it. This is so radical?

I don't think I'm saying what I want to say about him/her/them. I'm going to move on. This weekend I rented "All About Eve" & "Nashville". Of course they were both fantastic. I told Andrew that I'm Bette Davis & he's Eve, & it's true. Always studying me, like I'm a book or a play! Determined to be a better Pam than I am myself. Well, I won't stand for it. Although I am looking forward to seeing him with long red hair.

I also watched "Sid and Nancy" on IFC. I want to adopt Nancy's voice as my own, it's so lovely. Poor Chloe Webb, where'd she go? The last I saw her was in "Practical Magic" (I was on an airplane, so knock it off).

And most of all this weekend, I touched Nick & Lloyd for hours on end, all over their most private Selves. They got all glossy & squirmy from being petted so much, & would then have to be spanked back to normal.

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