@frankboehmert@literatur.social I'm here but not often, I'm afraid. For creative mothering I've been on Instagram and for Le Guin on Bluesky. I'll try to remember to post here too.

In retrospect you probably shouldn't go up against writers in a contest of who can keep doing something longer while not making any money.

“I knew what Ged had to do. But I didn’t know where he was going to go and how he was going to do it.”

Le Guin on her writing method in A Wizard of Earthsea (she was a pantser, obviously). Plus a lovely short essay by John Plotz. Video by Arwen Curry.
https://lithub.com/watch-ursula-k-le-guin-on-creating-the-world-of-earthsea/

"I would have borne a child for them,...the authorities, the theorists, the fundamentalists; I would have borne a child for them, their child. But I would not have borne my own first child, or second child, or third child. My children."

Le Guin on abortion rights and reproductive justice.

https://lithub.com/watch-ursula-k-le-guin-on-her-illegal-abortion-in-1950/

Le Guin's "characters—and readers—find themselves forced to think again. When they do so, what had seemed a fundamental truth about their universe turns out to be anything but." Nice piece by John Plotz today in LitHub on Le Guin, capitalism, and reimagining our world.

https://lithub.com/dragons-are-people-too-ursula-le-guins-acts-of-recognition/

Self-promotion ahoy!
BILLSON FILM DATABASE
(kindle or paperback)

"A) this is brilliant B) it’s super pithy (like Halliwell but without the snobbery)"

"the best film guide ever"

"The wittiest & funniest film reviews I've ever read"

"tremendously informative and very, very funny"

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1546443118

NASA "Hidden Figure" and Black mathematician Evelyn Boyd Granville died in June at age 99. Space.com has this tribute to the remarkable life and career of Granville, who was the second Black woman in the U.S. to earn a Ph.D in mathematics and contributed significantly to early human spaceflight missions.

https://flip.it/bLswHv

#History #Science #BlackMastodon #InMemoriam

Months later, I'm still thinking about A. Fluffy Bunny, RN.

https://mastodon.social/@lesliewhat@wandering.shop/109733871714652859

Also from this great essay:

"Cats know exactly where they begin and end. When they walk slowly out the door that you are holding open for them, and pause, leaving their tail just an inch or two inside the door, they know it. They know you have to keep holding the door open. That is why their tail is there. It is a cat’s way of maintaining a relationship."

Humans don't always know, though--including maternal humans who share our bodies with others & older humans who share our bodies with time.

I'm in this!

Out There Screaming: An Anthology of New Black Horror

Out October 3, 2023
Pre-orders: https://lnk.to/OutThereScreaming

Intro. by Jordan Peele
Edited by Jordan Peele and John Joseph Adams

Contributions by N. K. Jemisin, Nalo Hopkinson, Tananarive Due, Rebecca Roanhorse, Nnedi Okorafor, Cadwell Turnbull and others

Jacket illustration: Don’t Make Friends, by Arnold J. Kemp © 2023
Jacket design: Janay Frazier

#horror #fiction #anthology #JordanPeele #OutThereScreaming #JohnJosephAdams

@lesliewhat Thank you!

But check out illuminating comments from Philip Deloria and from UC Berkeley prof Andrew Garrett, whose insightful book on Alfred Kroeber's legacy is coming out from #mitpress this fall.

Ben Naddaff-Hafrey interviewed me for this podcast on the life & afterlife of Indigenous California historian Ishi and the work of #ursulakleguin. I wouldn't overestimate Ishi's influence on Ursula's work. She knew of colonial genocide mainly through the lives of other survivors, some of whom she knew personally, all of whom were part of the same story. 1/

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-last-archive/id1506207997

It was fun watching the reactions of people walking through the gallery: who looked uncomfortable (young men, straight couples) and who enjoyed it (at least one young man who studied it with interest; two young women; a pair of middle-aged women who seemed highly amused).

Ferdi made other fabric "Horti-sculptures," including this one called "Vulva Pseudodomestica," and would probably be up there with Yayoi Kusama and Niki de Saint Phalle if she hadn't died at 41, in 1969.

I don't know why I didn't know before about Dutch artist and mother of two Ferdi Tajiri. I'm in love with her sculpture "Wombtomb" (1968) in the #rijksmuseum a fake-fur sarcophagus with a vulva-shaped opening on the lid. She apparently used it for performances and "happenings" as well as display (see photos).

"The only thing to spend our lives on is being alive."

#adriennemareebrown, Holland Festival, Amsterdam, June '23
#emergentstrategy

Le Guin, from "The Fisherwoman's Daughter." I don't agree that men are the only gatekeepers of motherhood, but I look forward to mothers rewriting the world.

The flowers in the second picture are what happens when someone in your family works in a flower stall. Happy Mother's Day!

@jacobheringman Thank you!!!

...with this unpublished poem from Le Guin's journal.