Strange weather this morning, the kind of day when a single building will stand out sunlit on a gray street. Just as I came off the bridge to work, it began to pour from a clear sky and I drove through a white, glittering curtain of driving rain.

There was a ridiculous article in Image, “Warren Hinckle on R. Crumb,” actually an appreciation of Dori Seda which quoted Crumb a couple of times and included not one example of her work. It also made no mention of the car accident, or the delay in getting treatment.

The car accident worsened Seda’s lung problems and likely lead to her death. Because of the miserable state of medical care in the US back then, she did not seek out medical treatment because she was far from wealthy and feared incurring even more bills. Seda was not eligible for Medicaid. She died a casualty of Reaganomics.

As for the article not including her work, what I didn’t know was that Seda’s mother, who hated the sexuality of Seda’s work, was refusing to allow it to be published after her death. (Every artist’s nightmare.) Fortunately, Seda had left a will granting her partner, Don Donahue, full ownership of her work after she died, and in 1991 the will was successfully filed by Dori’s friends.