posthumous Le Guin

Ursula K. Le Guin's Book of Cats (Library of America, 2025)

The Word for World: The Maps of Ursula K. Le Guin, edited by So Mayer and Sarah Shin (Silver Press and AA Publications, 2025)

Le Guin, cats, and maps - three of my favorite things. How could I resist? I ordered both of these (the second is from the UK, and is in connection with an exhibition) in advance, not knowing what I was going to get.

The Book of Cats is not a regular Library of America publication - it's short (about 100 pages) and on thicker, lightly tinted paper. It's not a complete collection of her writings on cats - no Catwings, no essays on the life of Pard. But it does have a lot of cat poems, only some of which have been previously published, and a couple of author-drawn picture stories, one on the art of cat arranging (or how to lounge in a typical feline fashion), which has only been seen before as a rare pamphlet, and a cat-and-mouse superhero comic, and some other illustrations, and a delightful series of letters among cats about proper behaviors, like Head Scratching:

When the Female Human is facing the wrong way in bed she needs to be rearranged, so I come and scratch the top of her head until she turns over and faces the correct direction so that I can lie down beside her pillow with my butt in her face and go to sleep.

Lastly, an annotated and dated list of all 20 cats which had custody of UKL in her lifetime (plus a photo of her at age 3 petting the first in the set), from which I figured that the one I met on my one visit to her house was Lorenzo aka Bonzo, whom she introduced to me as an "elderly gentleman" as he lay cradled in her arms.

The Word for World intersperses maps, mostly hand-drawn by UKL herself, with essays by various hands. Some of the maps are previously published, some are not. The unpublished ones include maps of Earthsea with tiny differences from the published ones, further talismanic maps of the Valley of the Na, diagrams of seasons on Werel (the one from Planet of Exile - keep up, now), and most interesting, a map of the provinces, principal cities, and major rivers of Orsinia, which does look a lot more like Hungary than it does like Czechoslovakia - I always thought it would.

I've never found critical writings on Le Guin to be as interesting as those on some of my other favorite writers, and that's true here too. The only essay I got much out of was the one by her son Theo, which talked about influences - the vital role of the ranch Kishamish in her life, a map of St Helena she found in France which may have affected her style, a comparison of her aesthetics with those of Tolkien. I really appreciated that.

Eichler

Today the first rains of the season arrived. It poured heavily and wetly for about four hours, which is longer than the heavy downpours usually last around here. Nevertheless I ventured out into it, and I was far from the only one, to the local history museum for an evening talk about Eichlers.

No veteran residents in Silicon Valley need to be told what that means. An Eichler is a home built by the developer Joseph Eichler, who in the 1950s-70s was one of the many builders busy turning the local orchards into tract housing developments. Eichlers came in various models, but they all had a strong family resemblance, and until the imitations ("Like-lers") came along, looked like nothing else for sale in the middle-class housing market.

For one thing, they were built in post-and-beam construction, with no load-bearing walls. That meant those walls could be light or intermittent or even made of glass. The resultant opening up to the outside (many Eichlers came with courtyards or atria) and the Prairie School-like expansiveness of the beam-driven construction is what made Eichlers feel like "Frank Lloyd Wright for the masses," more effectively than Wright's own Usonian houses.

Eichlers are easily recognizable from the outside by their beam ends, grooved wood on the facades, and low-slung roof rises. To this day there are whole blocks in this area with nothing but Eichlers.

The speaker was a real estate agent who specializes in Eichlers. He talked a lot about maintaining sale value and on remodeling to update Eichlers (original construction was a bit shoddy) while keeping the mid-20C spirit of the original. Most of the audience were Eichler owners concerned about whether their neighbors were going to build second stories. I grew up in an Eichler but haven't lived in one for many years; I may have been the only person there whose primary interest was in architecture as an art form. Nevertheless when I asked a question along those lines, the speaker proved to be well-informed.

I learned something of the history of Eichlers, both the firm and the style of houses; and where exactly they are. I learned that the realtor keeps maps of Eichler developments, such as this one of my town; my family's Eichler was in Fairbrae Addition, the big red blotch in the middle of the map. Here, this is a typical Eichler.

three concerts

1. The concert I went to up in the hills was a wind octet concert I was reviewing for the Daily Journal.

With a remote winery setting and with a fancy hot hors d'oeuvres and wine buffet out on the balcony beforehand (the grilled salmon skewers were delicious), this was a concert designed for the well-off to enjoy themselves. The general location, in the thoroughly Well-offville part of the area, and the extremely steep admission price, also contributed to the effect. I wouldn't have gone if I hadn't been comped as a reviewer.

However, I'm glad I did go, because the music was excellent, and so were the acoustics of the tiny hall. Two each of oboe, clarinet, bassoon, and horn played one of Mozart's serenades for that combo. (No flutes? Some claim Mozart didn't like the instrument. Others claim that that's false.) Then a piece by Ruth Gipps, who is one of those mid-20C women composers like Florence Price who is slowly bubbling up from obscurity. And a modern arrangement of excerpts from Smetana's 19C opera The Bartered Bride, complete with a narration amusingly emphasizing how confusing the plot is.

2. Up in the City, the Attacca Quartet took a brisk and compact Haydn quartet (Op. 50/5) and a brisk and compact Bartok quartet (no. 4) and played them to be even more brisk and compact. Also a piece by David Lang (daisy) in his characteristic style of repeating fragments until they add up to something; and a collection of miscellaneous pieces that weren't listed in the program and which I didn't catch what the first violinist said about them.

On my way to this concert, timing was such that I was able to stop off at a farewell party for a household of three that I know who are moving to Ireland this week (one of them being able to claim citizenship there by virtue of ancestry), not the only people I know leaving the US for good. Fortunately the dire implications of this did not dominate the conversations, and everyone was in a rather cheery mood. Many people there whom I knew in the 1970s and '80s but haven't seen much since. We're all a lot older.

3. Harmonia California, a little nonprofessional string orchestra, did a gratifyingly good job on some Mozart (including the delightful but little-known K. 136 Divertimento) and Bach (the Double Violin Concerto), and then ventured into two obscurer pieces from the turn of the 20C, both excellent works it was a pleasure to hear: Anton Arensky's Variations on a Theme of Tchaikovsky and Samuel Coleridge-Taylor's Four Noveletten. Gratifyingly well worth going to.

the accursed scholarly paper

Well, maybe not that accursed. This is the fourth time I've given this paper - it was premiered less than 15 months ago - and only the second time something went wrong.

The first time was the other time. I was ill and isolating at the conference and couldn't read the paper. So the papers coordinator did it for me.

This time was for a regular meeting of a Zoom group online. In the middle of reading it from the Word copy on my screen, my computer froze. I had to apologize and take a break. In the end, I had to hard-reboot the computer (i.e. press the power button) and it took almost 20 minutes to get everything up and running again, counting all the kerfluffle I'd spent trying to avoid having to do that. How embarrassing.

The other two times went very well indeed. So yes, maybe not that accursed.

figuring out Taylor Swift again

Some time ago I wrote of my delighted discovery of Taylor Swift's Tiny Desk Concert, in which she played her songs in simple arrangements I found agreeable, unlike the overproductions of the Eras Tour which was Not For Me.

A few commenters gave suggestions of other TAS numbers I might find agreeable, but they didn't mention what turned out to be the gold mine. Quite recently, DGK sent me links to a couple videos extracted from a documentary film called folklore: the long pond studio sessions, which is on Disney+. The songs are a bit much of a sameness for me to want to listen to all at once, especially with the documentary natter in between, and the songs are more immediately impressive than they are lovable, though the ones I heard first are growing on me rapidly - but only in these versions; I listened to other performances and, nah. Any one or two of them - not just those two - are in this version very much the kind of popular music I want to hear.

Apart from the addition of a guest vocalist on one song, it's just her and two guys, variously on piano and acoustic guitar, occasionally a little light percussion or a soft electric guitar which only once threatens to get even slightly loud. Very soft and gentle and intimate, and quite sophisticated and complex songwriting.

Here's the two songs DGK sent me. The rest can also be found on YouTube with a "long pond studio sessions" search.

Terry Garey

Gone now. She'd been ill for a long time, but for a long time before that she had been an ornament of Twin Cities, and before that Bay Area, fandom. Quiet, often motionless, but managing never to be inconspicuous, she was easy to talk with - and it was with, not to, because without ever being loud or pushy she was always responsive and involved in conversation. She was one of the people who gave the circles she belonged to their special flavor.

I am one of many,
many,
many,
many people who knew and loved Terry and felt a special connection to her.

I would see her around at Little Men's, around the Portable Bookstore, in The Other Change of Hobbit after that opened - she clerked there for a while, and I got to walk in one day and wish her happy Boxing Day, back when few people in this country knew what that was - the Magic Cellar, parties and meals and conventions. After she moved to Mpls, I was changing planes there once and contacted her beforehand, so she came down to the airport (this was before 9/11) and we had lunch.

I think the most special thing she did for me was to convince me to join Spinoff, which was one of the apas founded to continue the mixed-sex conversations of the original AWA after the men were asked to leave. Spinoff had a loose and random/goofy air to it, Firesign Theater and FKB, and I found it best to write for it late at night, when my mind was disconnected and could free associate. There was a bit of that to Terry too, but she was never undirected and always knew where she was going.

not going anywhere today

Most of my recent adventures would have been inconvenient to describe, but I can tell you about this one.

I set off this morning to drive to the City for the Tachyon Books party. But I didn't get there. A few miles up the freeway, one of my tires shredded itself. I pulled over with caution and some difficulty and called AAA, figuring the guy could put on my temporary tire from the trunk - I wasn't going to try that myself, still less with a freeway immediately at my back - and I could limp to a tire store.

But when he arrived, he reported I had no temp. What? I did the last time I had to do this. But that was probably not this car. The man told me that temps are not standard equipment on Hyundais, and I didn't even get this one new, but surplus from a rental company.

So I had to wait again for a tow truck, first having a difficult colloquy with the first guy over where he was going to request the tow truck to take me. I hadn't had much need for a tire store lately, but I'd been pleased with the place I'd taken B's car a couple years ago when it needed a thorn removed from its paw. Guy didn't want to take me there. My free towing limit distance was 5 miles, and this was 9 miles; I'd have to pay $15/mile. I said I knew that. He went away to call it in and then came back and said he'd found a place closer than 5 miles. It was called Super Cheap Tires. I said I wasn't going to a place with a name like that; it sounded like a ripoff joint. He argued further but I insisted and repeated I was ready to pay.

When the tow truck driver arrived I told him also that I was ready to pay, but instead he pulled out his device and calculated a shorter route along local streets. It was 5.6 miles, he said, which made me wonder what route could possibly have been 9 miles. Furthermore, he said, he wouldn't charge me for the .6 mile.

I wonder if there's some reason other than desire to save the customer money to avoid tows that charge by the mile. Maybe there's paperwork they hate to fill out. Anyway, he took me there by an intelligent route. (I know this area; I've lived here since 1959.) He knew where the store was; he'd towed cars there plenty of times.

The store guys did their expected good and not-too-expensive job (see? Super Cheap, phooey) and I was on my way. But by now I wanted lunch more than to drive an hour to the City, and was pretty tired after all this, so I just went home.

one has music, the other doesn't

I've been to two stage productions in the last two days.

The musical one was South Bay Musical Theatre's production of The Sound of Music. Advertising for this heavily emphasized how the stage show is not sappy like the movie. And it was a good show, consistently interesting all the way through, fine singing, acting enough to give the impression those were the characters, not people playing them. Maria (Lauren D'Ambrosio) looked rather maternal, a bit disconcerting at the beginning, highly appropriate by the end; the Captain (Brad Satterwhite) kept from melting his emotions just long enough; Mother Abbess (Kama Belloni) thrilled everyone by belting out the end of "Climb Ev'ry Mountain"; the children (all but Liesl were double-cast) were amazingly good, in movement as well as voice; the Nazis were effectively sinister. The favorite songs - the title song, "My Favorite Things," "Do-Re-Mi" - were delivered with fresh energy, renewing appreciation of what remarkably good songs they are. A real winner.

The non-musical one was Theatre Works delivering their section of the rolling world premiere of Lauren Gunderson's new adaptation of Little Women. This did not work: it was too stagy, and the cast could be seen working their butts off rather than embodying the characters. Much of this was due to Gunderson's inept framing: the story is framed as Alcott writing it, and even within the frame half the dialogue is delivered in the third person, the actors describing what their characters are thinking or doing. This distanced the characters from the audience, destroying any illusion that the actors were the characters. The zippy condensation, in which events vanish in a flash, didn't help either. A real snore.

in the hills

I went to a concert last night. I'll tell about the music when my review is published in the Daily Journal, but the venue turned out to be problematic. It was in a small hall perched on the balcony of a winery at the top of the mountains that overlook our urban area. The view out over the valleys and the bay was spectacular, at least before the sun went down. But getting up there in the first place, and even more getting back afterwards, was another story.

To get up to the top of the mountains anywhere in the middle of their run, you have a choice of three or four extremely twisty and winding roads climbing up the slopes. I chose Page Mill Road, which is the closest to the winery. I got off the freeway at Moody Road, which for much of its length goes winding but not twistily up a creek canyon and then attaches to Page Mill, which powers its way straight up the slope. I've known this area since I used to bicycle around in it at the age of 8, but I don't go up there often, and the sudden and extreme hairpin turns on Page Mill still have the power to surprise; only afterwards do I say, "Oh yeah, I remember that one."

Coming back at night was even hairier. The road running along the summit of the mountains, Skyline Boulevard, is winding but not twisty, and can be dangerous because cars tend to speed along it faster than it can handle. And in the dark and the fog I missed the crossing of Page Mill, where there is apparently no sign other than the tiny street signs. After a while I realized this, and figured I might as well continue another winding ten miles or so to the next access, Congress Springs Road, which is a state highway, so there ought to be a visible sign at the crossing.

There was a sign, but to my surprise nothing designating it as a highway. Just a directional sign pointing off to Big Basin. If Big Basin is to the right, then this is where I want to go left. This road has fewer surprise hairpins than Page Mill, but it's every bit as twisty, and it goes on just as long. In the dark and the fog I often couldn't tell which way the road was going to turn next, and I missed noting any of the landmarks I know along that road which would tell me how far I'd gotten. Eventually, after much exhaustion, I knew I'd reached the end when suddenly dumped out onto the main street of the quaint downtown of Saratoga. Turn left at the other end of town and it's literally a straight shot home. So I got here, but I will certainly pause before considering doing this at night again.

phone behavior

Yeah, I've seen the videos in which young people are presented with a dial telephone and try to figure out how it works. I haven't forgotten the time I saw a phone book from the 1910s with detailed instructions on how to dial a phone, that being quite a new technology then.

But I've just had a personal encounter with unfamiliarity with other aspects of old-fashioned phone behavior.

It was a call to establish a medical appointment. The young-sounding woman on the line said she'd tried to call before, but had gotten a beeping sound. That's called a busy signal. I don't have voice mail on this phone.

Then she said, if you need to call back to change the appointment, use the number displaying on your phone. My phone does not display numbers. She had to read it to me.

Of course, none of this would be true if the call had been on my cell phone, but I don't like using the cell phone when I'm at home. (Partly because reception is bad here. We're one mile from Apple world headquarters, but that doesn't mean we have a good cell signal.) I use the good old-fashioned landline.