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We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable. So did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings. Resistance and change often begin in art, and very often in our art, the art of words. — Ursula K. Le Guin

I hate writing two obituary blogs back to back, and some people might think that I’m shorting some of the other people who’ve  died today – a couple of musicians, and a writer of  horror novels – but Ursula LeGuin was important to me.

She wrote The Dispossessed, which is a rare thing among  science fiction novels.  It  was a political science fiction novel.  Not the only one ever, I suppose.  It’s in  the  same category as 1984 and Brave New World, and pretty much nothing else.  Heinlein’s libertarian leanings were clear in his work, but he was still just writing science fiction.  Asimov stayed as far away from politics as he could.  Sure, there were good guys and bad  guys, but the emphasis was on the science and there wasn’t a great deal  of nuance.

LeGuin took the twin planets of Urras and Annares, and used them to compare our own society with an anarchist utopia.  But, she was  honest  about it and the anarchist utopia had  some  problems, too.  A lot of thought went  into the writing, you  could tell, and a lot of  thoughts  came out  of  it.  It sure made me think, and I’m sure millions of other readers, too.

Then, there was The Lathe of Heaven, which was a great study in alternative universes.  Wish for a  world in  which there’s no racism, and you  get a world in which there are no races, and no rock and roll.

She was an extremely prolific writer, and I’ve just scratched the surface.  I think I’m going to have to read a couple more of her books, now that she’s gone.  I owe her that much.

Two people passed away today.  No connection between them, really, except there was, or I wouldn’t be writing about  them collectively.  The connection  is not in what they did, or in what they were known for, but precisely in how completely unknown they were.

One was the actor who played Tinky-Winky on the Teletubbies.  He was only in  his 50s.  That bothers me, when people die who are younger than me, I think “That’s way too young.”
The other was a woman in her 90s, just a couple years  shy of the century mark.  She was the model for Rosie the Riveter, the popular poster girl of the 1940s, working in a factory, supporting the war effort.  Up until the 1960s, nobody even knew there was one specific model.

Both of them affected many people’s lives.  Both of them were almost totally anonymous.  Teletubbies was still on TV, and still popular, when my kids were little.  I never thought for a second about the actors inside the costumes, and really didn’t see any  significant personality differences between Tinky-Winky, Dipsy, La-La, and Po, also known as the purple one, the green one, the yellow one, and the red one.  So, the guy who just died was not exactly Boris Karloff, even though he may have had a few more lines of dialogue.

Rosie the Riveter not only fulfilled her WWII function and helped defeat Hitler, she also became a symbol for women in the workplace.  The struggle is ongoing, of course, but I think a lot of women between then and now, who’ve done jobs which were previously thought of  as men-only, felt grateful to Rosie.

Just two average people, with a very tenuous link to  fame, but they were positive forces in our lives, and their passing deserves to be noted.

RIP Naomi Parker Fraley, 1921-2018

RIP Simon  Shelton, 1966-2018

I’m cheating and writing last night’s blog this morning, which means I’ll have to write another tonight to keep even, but that shouldn’t be too much of a problem.  There’s a lot of time between the morning and the  evening and if the news cycle doesn’t provide any  inspiration, something  else will.
It was just tiredness, I got home late from a poetry reading – well, late by an old man’s standards, and late because it  was after a day of teaching and not getting home in between, but it wasn’t truly late.  The reading went O.K., it was at a new place, which was not bad.  Kind of an off the beaten track neighborhood, but near the yellow line which is good for me, comfortable enough, but it had what I consider the fatal  flaw for a poetry reading, i.e. it was not a space designated for such activities.  When you have people  in the same space who  are  there for drinks, or for dinner, and didn’t specifically  show up for  the poetry reading, they’re going  to  keep on talking because why shouldn’t they?
Anyway, my  three short, silly  poems were fairly  well  received, they seemed to raise a few chuckles, a few smiles, which weren’t completely forced, but my longer piece, a brilliant work of genius on the nature of time, did not elicit the awe and profuse praise I thought it should, but that’s always the way when I write something long that I think is a masterpiece.

Then I came home to find the Democrats had completely caved in and ended the government shutdown with absolutely nothing to show for it because they are a bunch of suckbutt losers, but that seems to be the consensus opinion.  Maybe I’ll blog on it tonight, maybe not.

O.K., the women marched yesterday, several million of them, apparently, and in many different cities.  Signs were carried, I’m sure speeches were made, and women felt very validated to be with so many other women who all approved of women being women.  I’m sure there were some men there, too, because a lot of men approve of women, and giving more rights and powers to women, and then of course there are some guys who will say absolutely anything to get laid, but I’m not sure that old tactic is working for anybody  in this case.  I don’t know.  Out f the millions of people involved, it probably worked for somebody.

What now?  Were any causes advanced?  Did they decide on a slate of candidates?  I doubt it.  I’m sure there were a lot of Hillary loyalists there, and some Tulsi supporters, and all of them claiming to be part of the same resistance, which isn’t really possible.
I suppose a lot of friendships were formed, and phone numbers exchanged, and those are  good things which can help people to organize down the line.  I don’t want to be too critical because I’m sure it was very important to everybody who was there, but I don’t know that it accomplished much.  I  don’t know  if street protests ever accomplish much.
We need to get some progressive candidates elected this year, but I’m still not sure we agree on who those candidates should be.  So, we’ve still got a long way to go, and we haven’t even started, really.

Like many people my age, I read a lot of Buckminster Fuller when I was young, and was seriously impressed by him.  I’m not sure any kids today still read him.  That’s partly because most kids today read nothing at all, and partly because he’s not current.  They still read Tolkien, and they still read Dahl, and maybe a couple other writers from that era, but Fuller is not that entertaining.

I revisited him a couple of years ago, and realized part of the reason.  He’s not really a great writer.

Yes, he had one brilliant, amazing idea, which I believe is absolutely true and the world would be an infinitely better place if more people accepted that idea.  (the  idea is that the world could be an absolute paradise, if we so chose.  We have the technology to make it so), but that doesn’t mean that people were riveted to the page, that his words resonated in their memories.  The idea resonated with a few people, but the exact words, not so much.
One of his flaws as a writer was his love of big words and long sentences.  He was a very smart man, who obviously wanted other people to know how smart he was.  Also, he pretty much never quoted anybody else, or cited other people’s  ideas.

I wonder if the world wouldn’t be a very different place if Fuller had been a better writer.  Or, if it would make any difference at all.  Maybe just not enough people are good readers.