Quote

"Is this Earth?" he cried, for things had changed abruptly.

"Yes, this is Earth," said the one beside him, "nor are you out of it. In Zambia men are rolling down hills inside barrels as training for space flight. Israel and Egypt have defoliated each other's deserts. The Reader's Digest has bought a controlling interest in the United States of America/General Mills combine. The population of the Earth is increasing by 30 billion every Thursday. Mrs. Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis will marry Mao Tse-Tung on Saturday, in search of security; and Russia has contaminated Mars with bread mold."

"Why then," said he, "nothing has changed."

Excerpt from Ursula K. LeGuin's short story "A Trip to the Head" as reprinted in The Wind's Twelve Quarters, 1975.

She cracks me up.

ISFDB says this story was originally published in 1970, the year before I was born. So she also makes me feel quite, quite young.

**

Ms. LeGuin has a list of links to good background information on the so-called Oregon Standoff on her site. Go here and scroll to the section "New on the Website".

She also wrote a blog post in October with what is, I believe, the text of a speech she gave to celebrate the 15th Anniversary of the Steens Mountain Wilderness. In it she says, "It’s only too easy to antagonize 'the locals' by appearing to dismiss their hard-earned local knowledge or giving the impression that the aesthetic emotions or escapist yearnings of hikers, campers, birders, tourists are more valuable than the ranchers’ relationship to the land and the living they and their animals earn from it. Such antagonisms can be modified by patient listening on both sides, genuine conversation, working towards a mutual good. Sounds easy. It’s complicated."

**

I do love Ursula LeGuin. Even if she always puts her most misguided societies in volcano country.