Cartoonist Lynda Barry’s work was featured in the Summer 2008 issue of Tricycle (see “Monkey Business.”) We got word from our friend Frank Olinsky (designer of the original Tricycle logo as well as the MTV logo) that she was featured in the New York Times:

In a drab fourth-floor classroom at Miami Dade, the two women, each in her late 40s, joined the 33 other students assembled — mostly women, mostly middle-aged and mostly creatively frustrated. At the front of the class, Barry wore an Emily Dickinson T-shirt, a red bandanna knotted atop her head. She was preparing to sing. “Singin’ ’s the scariest thing you can do in front of people,” she told her new students. “I figure I’m already nervous” — indeed, her deep voice shook a bit — “so what the hell.”

“I hope you’re nervous, too,” she added. When someone nodded, Barry broke into a grin. “Good!” she exclaimed. “I want you to be terrified.”

She closed her eyes and sang to the tune of “Coal Miner’s Daughter”: “I was born a meat cutter’s daughter/My mom was from the Philippines; she was a janitor/I ate TV dinners at night/I grew up by the TV light/While Dad drank vodka in the basement and Mom hollered.”

Barry opened her eyes and smiled. “I’m gonna work you like mules on the Erie Canal,” she said.

Read the whole piece here.

Thank you for subscribing to Tricycle! As a nonprofit, to keep Buddhist teachings and practices widely available.

This article is only for Subscribers!

Subscribe now to read this article and get immediate access to everything else.

Subscribe Now

Already a subscriber? .