Picture my jaw dropping as I read through the Salon article about online journals. I am mentioned. This is astonishing enough, since I wasn't interviewed, but no, it's the way I'm mentioned that has me gaping indecorously. I am referred to as "young Lucy."
Yes. That's what I said, too.
I whiled away a pleasant, sunny Fourth of July afternoon with Ceej and David. We talked about science fiction and writing while strolling from cafe to bookstore to shop to cafe. To be a flaneur on University Avenue in Palo Alto is a delicious occupation, especially in the summer when the weather is fine. David and I cheerfully gossiped about our mutual friends in sf fandom, most of whom Ceej did not know. As usual, it was discovered to be a very small world indeed. He used to live around the corner from Robert Legault, who is a copy editor in New York and a friend of mine from the early 80's when he was writing for the Seattle Rocket and I was working with rock bands. I introduced Robert to my close friends Patrick and Teresa Nielsen Hayden after he moved back to New York, and they all three went on to interesting careers in sf publishing, especially for Tor. David asked if I also knew Robert's housemate, Scraps de Selby (formerly known as Tom Weber, once an angelic young man, all curly hair and rosy cheeks, now a formidably bald and pierced young New Yorker...with rosy cheeks). I had, quite well, from our days as Seattle fans. Ceej knew Scraps from the Well, actually, so she wasn't entirely left out of the gossip loop.
For entertainment, I attempted (somewhat ineffectually) to explain to them Ned Rorem's theory that all music is either French or German. French is style, worldliness, glib, visual, Catholic (that is, sensual), superficial in the best sense of the word. German is content, parochialism (which is not a bad word - Jane Austen was parochial), earnestness, aural, Protestant, and multilayered. I was much struck by this way of dividing up the world when I was 20, and have ever since thought of people as either French or German. It's useful if, like me, you never understand anyone who is not exactly like yourself. David surmised I would react to people based on how I classify them, but I find I am merely content to know where their passions lie. Ceej asked what she was. Easy. Ceej is German. David is German. I am French. Gabby is German. Nigel is French. Nancy is German. Kymm is French. Scott is quintessentially German. Gus is French but would like to be German. Having an excellent command of graphics doesn't automatically make anyone French, nor does being painfully earnest mean someone is German. This assessment of other diarists is itself French.
This evening I nursed a cold and watched the fireworks on tv while eating homemade potato salad. Iron Chef contained some amusing cultural strangeness. The theme was not so much a specific ingredient but the plates used to hold the food. They had 100 million yen (about a million dollars) worth of antique ceramics on display for the Iron Chef and the challenger to build a meal around. The strangeness was how they discussed the plates themselves. There was constant reference to how happy the plates seemed to be to have food on them after 350 years of being in museums, and how surprised the plates must be to be in a television studio, and so forth. The challenger was said to have whispered to his chosen plates asking them to gleam and make his food look good. It worked, as he won. I don't think I'd want to eat daikon radish jelly made with creme de cassis, though. It's my own cultural strangeness.
It's not nearly as strange as being called "young Lucy" in a widely read, influential magazine, though. My friends are never going to let me forget this.
