Wikipedia Trail: From Ursula K. Le Guin to Ghost Towns

One post from the Twitter feed that grabbed my attention this week was a quote from fantasy writer Ursula K. Le Guin: "The story is not in the plot but in the telling." Because the quote resonated so much with me, and because I'd heard of Le Guin many times but didn't actually know much about her, I decided to begin with her for this Wikipedia Trails project.

Ursula K. Le Guin

An active author since the early 1960s, Le Guin has become one of the most awarded, influential writers in the fields of fantasy and science fiction. Though I'd heard about her Earthsea from many different sources, that was about the extent of my knowledge about her, so I was surprised to learn what a long career she's had and how many people her work has shaped. By now, she's influenced four generations of readers and other writers, including Neil Gaiman and Salman Rushdie. Though her list of awards and accomplishments is definitely nothing to overlook, it's that legacy—the footprint she's left in the field of storytelling—that impressed me the most. Part of what inspired Le Guin to explore the complexities of culture in her work was the fact that her anthropologist father and his circle of friends studied the Native American man Ishi, who was known as "the last wild Indian," as he navigated modern life. I decided to learn more about him.

Ishi

After surviving disease, bounty attacks, and the Three Knolls Massacre of 1865, Ishi was eventually left as the last living member of the Yahi people of California. Once he lost the few remaining members of his people, he lived alone in the wilderness for four years before heading to a town in California in an attempt to find food. Word spread about him quickly, and when the University of California found out about him, they brought him on as a research assistant at the university, where he also lived and was studied. In the five years between his arrival at the school and his death by tuberculosis, he helped anthropologists understand and record information about the Yahi culture.

California Gold Rush

The California Gold Rush made life much more difficult for Ishi and his family, but it led me to the third stop on my Wikipedia trail. This era of quick growth and sweeping migration has always caught my imagination, but I was interested to learn that many of those who rushed in to pan for gold actually came from different countries and continents. Searching for gold also became a family affair for some: the women brought in steady incomes, which gave their husbands the chance to try to find gold.

Ghost Towns

After the gold fever passed and opportunities dried up, some of the boomtowns became ghost towns instead. Although ghost towns themselves don't represent anything new to most people, I was intrigued to learn about a handful of former ghost towns that have actually been resettled—either as tourist towns due to interest generated by their status as ghost towns, or simply due to availability and proximity to more in-demand locations. One of these revived ghost towns is Walhalla in Victoria, Australia, pictured above.



Image Credits:

Ursula K. Le Guin giving a reading at Danville, California, in 2008. Source: Wikimedia Commons.
Photograph of Ishi. Source: Wikimedia Commons.
San Francisco in 1851, during the Gold Rush. Source: Wikimedia Commons.
A revived ghost town of Walhalla, Victoria, Australia, including original and newly reconstructed buildings. Source: Wikimedia Commons.


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Growth Mindset: Reaction

Listen to other people gripe often enough, and you'll pick up on a couple of points pretty quickly: it was always better back in the day, and every system is broken.

Not to say that either one of those complaints is necessarily invalid, just a bit overworked. That said, after hearing enough about how unprepared my generation is for the real world of jobs, Dweck's growth mindset findings make perfect sense.

In some ways, I tend to come up against a fixed-mindset wall myself. Not in the sense that I quit trying to improve once I've achieved a certain level of success—I push myself a little too hard for that—but in that I'm much more likely to drop something if I'm not achieving enough success. It's not exactly flattering, but I'm not a good loser, so I either get frustrated and quit, or decide my time is better spent elsewhere and move on to some new task or project.

That's one reason I'm glad to have had Dweck's findings pointed out to me, because it's a good time in my life for it. It's my last year of school, so I'm doing a lot of thinking as I get ready to take that final bow—thinking about what I've achieved here, what I want to achieve in the future, what kind of job and life I want to set out to make happen.

A lot of the time, at this point in life, it's more encouraged to think smart instead of think big, to be grounded by steady, realistic goals. And as much as I think that's important to keep in mind, I think it's more important not to be held back by that, not to get wrapped up in and strangled by your safety net. At the end of the day, that's the main thing I want to avoid—and by keeping all of this and Dweck's growth-mindset proof in mind, that's what I plan to do.



Image Credit: Growth Mindset Meme Cat by Laura Gibbs. Source: Growth Mindset Memes.

Starting the Semester

For me, in a lot of ways, organization is a trap.

It's brightly colored Post-It notes and tab dividers in snazzy patterns and the shiniest aisle at Target—but it's also a one-way ticket to procrastinating on the stuff I actually need to get done. Slippery slope and all that.

Then again, though, there are still a few tips I try to stick with to make life easier on myself:

1. I plot out readings, assignment deadlines, and test dates for all my classes on one calendar. Sometimes the whole "out of sight, out of mind" thing tends to rear its head at me, but this way, I can avoid all that and know that no deadlines are going to sneak up on me. That said, one giant mass of due dates isn't always the clearest way to view my schedule, which leads to the next point.

2. At the beginning of each week, I look at the compiled calendar and break it down into an informal to-do list of things I need to get done each day. For one thing, let's be real—checking a task off a list can be weirdly satisfying, a tiny slice of therapeutic goodness. But this is also handy because it breaks the months and weeks into manageable chunks, and lets me see how I need to prioritize errands and assignments. Sometimes the things that feel really urgent can actually wait a day or two—and other times, by plotting out the to-do list, I realize I can be much more efficient by combining two tasks I might not otherwise have thought to tackle back-to-back.

3. Granted, this last one is probably pretty obvious, but I use a different folder for each class/project. There's basically no start-up effort required, but it pays off for the rest of the semester: scrambling to pack my bag for the right classes in the morning takes no time at all, and it's also easier to bring other-day assignments along to work on between classes.



Image Credit: To-Do List. Source: Pexels.

Reading Options

For week 2, I've chosen the Ovid I unit. I've always found stories about physical transformation interesting, plus I like that they can work on multiple levels, be used to convey just as much about the inside of a character as the outside. I clicked with the stories of this unit because of the humanity in the characters, and because I think a lot of them would work translate well to flexible reinterpretations and modern updates.

As for future units I'm interested in, here's a rundown of several that caught my eye.


KING ARTHUR

While I've always been a fan of Arthurian legend, one thing that appeals to me about this unit is the fact that it includes the time when Arthur was young and hadn't yet established himself as the king of legend. I like the idea of stripping this larger-than-life character down into a young guy just now getting his start, and I think that might be fun to potentially play around with in the future. Besides that, I'm always a fan of complicated sibling dynamics, and I think experimenting with a version of Arthur and Morgan might be a lot of fun.

RUSSIAN FOLKTALES

Witches and warlocks are always entertaining, but one of the main reasons I've chosen the Russian folktales is the array of supernatural creatures it offers. Partially because so many of my favorite books and television shows include twists on the supernatural, it's become one of the genres I love the most, and I think this unit has a lot of potential for inspiration and creative freedom.


WELSH FAIRY TALES (EMERSON)

One of the things I find most interesting about stories of fairies is all of the duality found in the different takes on them. My favorite interpretations involve the cold but cunning, almost trickster-like versions of fairies, unpredictably capricious in their dealings with humans. Also, the idea of fairies as exorcists is something I've never encountered until now, and I think it a lot of things could be done with it.


WELSH FAIRY TALES (THOMAS)

Though I've already selected the Emerson Welsh fairy tales, I was drawn to the Thomas version for different reasons. It includes a lot of the elements I mentioned earlier that I was interested in, and would be a good chance to combine some of them in different ways. The haunted lakes and different spells, though, are what ultimately convinced me I wanted to look deeper into this unit in the future. I think this unit has the makings for a very interesting story atmosphere, which is something I want to get better at crafting in my own writing.



Image Credit: "How Arthur Drew the Sword." 1902 illustration by H.J. Ford. Source: Project Gutenberg.

Storybook Favorites

Though there were loads of interesting stories to choose from, I've selected the three below because each one of them is representative of elements I liked when wandering through all the storybooks.

LOST IN THE WOODS

The aspect that initially drew me to this storybook ultimately ended up being my favorite thing about it: I appreciate that, instead of a simple, bare-bones frame story or one that feels too gimmicky, the frame is a complete story instead of simply a narrative convention, with a separate plot that’s interesting in itself. The mystery element not only kept me reading, but intrigued and actively involved in trying to figure out the story. Though there were a lot of characters, they were all developed enough to be distinct from each other—and the titles of each section were great, hooking me from the beginning. I also liked that instead of telling me the situation, the introduction showed it to me instead. The layout with tabs at the top, left to right, seemed to flow better in that it mimicked the turning of pages.


THE TALES OF THE SEVEN PILGRIMS
I loved how this story takes two very familiar, somewhat tired concepts, and they instantly feel fresh because of how striking their combination is. Also, I thought it was a smart move for the writer to use the Canterbury Tales characters’ stories as background information and to inform the characters themselves, but not try to shoehorn their tales into the main narrative. It’s more interesting having the additional information available as a footnote instead of crammed awkwardly into the story. The introduction as a case file before the interviews works well; because of the way the stories are set up as files in the case, the up-down navigation (which I usually wasn’t as much of a fan of in other storybooks) feels like a natural fit.


LSD IN A YELLOW SUBMARINE

Though this one was shorter and could have done a bit more to incorporate the myths, I chose it because I like the storytelling decisions it represented—a looser approach to interpreting and incorporating the mythology and folklore, instead of being a slave to fitting it into the frame story weakening that story as a result. Beyond that, it was also one of the more unique takes I saw, and I thought it was refreshing to find a modern story with fairytale elements thrown in, instead of the other way around.

Image Credit: Vasilissa by Ivan Bilibin, 1899. Source: Wikipedia.

Introduction to a Story Addict

So. The name’s Jenna.

I write young adult speculative fiction, obsess over all things superhero (the X-Men will always be the best, even if they wound up with the cinematic short stick), and lament the deaths of my favorite characters. My entire material bucket list consists of a 1967 Chevy Impala, and if a word exists, there’s a 97% chance I’ve mispronounced it at least twice.

I’m a Professional Writing major and a Film & Media Studies minor—which is fitting, I guess, since for as long as I can remember, stories have been the fiery star my life revolves around.

My favorite television show—and the best story I’ve ever found, period; the story arc for seasons one through five is genuinely a thing of glory—is Supernatural. The story of two codependent brothers travelling around the continental United States “hunting things, saving people,” it’s grown from a tiny, low-budget show that almost got cancelled several times, into the longest-running science fiction TV series in the U.S. (Season 12 starts airing later this fall.) In case it isn’t obvious, I could discuss Supernatural until pretty much the end of time. Since life is a tragedy and I don’t have access to a T.A.R.D.I.S., though, I’ll move on to add that some of my other favorite shows include Veronica Mars, Doctor Who, Sherlock, The X-Files, Twin Peaks, and the DCAU.

As far as books go, Maggie Stiefvater’s Raven Cycle will pretty much always own my soul; it mixes Welsh mythology with the most compelling character work I’ve ever been lucky enough to come across, and is one of those series that gets better each time you read it. Holly Black’s Curse Workers trilogy is my other all-time favorite—it’s the noir-influenced story of Cassel Sharpe, a teenage conman who’s just trying to defy his own nature and go straight, but who keeps getting dragged back into the life by his mob-connected family. Pretty great stuff.

Image Credit: Chevrolet Impala. Web source: Wikimedia Commons.

Story: Blood Pact

Not to overgeneralize or anything, but as a rule, a knock on the door in the middle of the night can’t mean anything good.

Especially on this night.

I swung upright and hunched on the edge of my borrowed bed for a minute, then pulled on the worn cowboy boots I’d kicked off a few hours earlier. When the floorboards outside the guest room creaked, I waited a few seconds, then followed. At the other end of the hall, the old man wielded a shotgun and a flashlight, but it was still hard to make out much else in the darkness.

“Sam?” I asked quietly.

He stiffened, turned creakily around to face me. The flashlight found my face like a searchlight; I flinched despite myself.

Maybe I shouldn’t have used his name. Maybe I should’ve stuck with sir—but now didn’t seem like a good time to remind him that we’d only known each other for several hours.

That he didn’t really know me at all.

“Problem, boy?” he said gruffly, turning back down the corridor and starting again. I glanced back at the tiny guest room he’d let me use—this place was more hermit cabin than vacation home, though the two were probably synonymous to the old man—then sighed and trailed after him.

“I thought I heard something.”

“Probably nothing,” he said. The shotgun in his hand begged to differ, but I didn’t. I hesitated at the top of the stairs, watching him pick his way to the front door at the bottom of them. “You go on back to bed. I’ll take you into town in the morning, see if we can get your truck looked at.”

“Thanks,” I said. But I hovered there at the landing, watching as he zipped his ancient canvas jacket over his plaid pajamas.

There was another knock at the door, sharper this time.

I left before the old man could open the door. No point sticking around to see who it was when I probably already knew.

There had only been ten of us in the transport truck, after all.

***

It had been almost eight last night when I’d finally left the soggy marshland outside and approached Sam’s cabin. When I’d been the one knocking at his door.

I hadn’t gotten the shotgun treatment, but that was probably because it’d still been light out. Just enough for him to glance out the window by the door and look at me. I was sixteen and looked younger—a thin face and round eyes will do that for you.

The old man had paused, and I’d stood there on the tiny stoop of his cabin, chilly in my leaking boots. Or the transport truck driver’s boots, anyway. They were a couple sizes too big, and between that and the oversized sweats I’d found in driver’s overnight bag, I looked ridiculous.

But at this point, I figured anything was better than escaped juvenile delinquent.

***

The old man had said he had this, and I tended to believe in guys like that—grizzled and rough, mean when they had to be. I tended to believe in shotguns, too.

Still, I hated leaving him alone. He clearly liked being alone—there was a reason a person retired to an isolated cabin, without even a TV or telephone. And that had seemed like a godsend when I’d realized he hadn’t heard about the transport truck crashing, the escaped teenagers.

But now it just made Sam seem vulnerable. I hated to think of one of the other guys jumping him.

Especially Fisher.

As much as I liked to pretend otherwise, Fisher would do whatever he felt like.

My big brother had been born with a whole lot of impulse where his heart should’ve been.

***

I paced around the guest room, wondering if I should just split. Ease open the window and climb to the ground below, disappear now instead of later. I’d always planned to leave before Sam woke in the morning—before he tried to take me out to find a broken-down truck that wasn’t there.

Not a broken-down pickup truck, anyways.

That sold me. I cast one last glance back and headed down, almost falling when I heard someone hiss my name in the darkness.

“Greyson!”

My stomach dropped.

Fisher. Crouched several yards away, hiding.

“There you are,” he said, voice hushed, grin glinting white in the moonlight. His blond curls looked downright angelic, which was painfully ironic. “I looked everywhere for you.”

And the thing was, I believed him. He was wild and reckless and sometimes I doubted he even had a soul, but he was loyal. We were blood.

I tried to ignore the fact that I’d been trying to leave him behind.

“Who’s around front?” I whispered, coming to join him.

“Philip. He's got an axe.”

I jolted up at the name, already heading towards the door. He called after me—when I didn’t stop, he hurried to catch up. “What the—”

“He’ll kill the old man.”

“So? That’s between them.”

“Fisher,” I snapped. “We can’t let him, okay? The old man was good to me. He was going to help me out of here.”

He hesitated. “I looked everywhere for you, and you were going to leave me?”

The thing about having a mostly heartless brother is, it’s pretty hard to insult him. “Yeah.”

He studied me, face expressionless in the darkness. Then he grinned again and shrugged, slung an arm around my shoulders. “Fine. We’ll save your geezer, then leave. But we stick together this time. Deal?”

I stared at him. It felt a lot like agreeing to get dragged into his crap for the rest of my life, which had landed me in juvie with him in the first place. Like making a deal with the devil.

But I guessed that fit. Rumor had it the devil had looked pretty angelic himself, once upon a time.

I clasped my hand over the back of his, still around my shoulder. “Deal.”

Author's Note: I loved Tom Gauld's "Map of the Area Surrounding Our Holiday Home," so I gave the holiday home to an old man and decided to write about it. From the key, I incorporated an escaped convict, a bog, and a (loosely interpreted) axeman.

Bibliography. "Map of the Area Surrounding Our Holiday Home," a cartoon by Tom Gauld from his book ROBOTS, MONSTERS Etc. Web source.

Image Credit: "House in the Woods at Night" by Ryan Thomas. Source: Flickr.

Favorite Place: Moonlight Drive

The world at night is made of dark corners.

It’s even more noticeable—more striking, more true—on the road at night, when your headlights carve a tunnel through the darkness and there’s no real way of knowing what’s waiting on the other side of it.

I guess that’s why a vehicle at night is my favorite place in the world to be. Not the driver’s seat—being that aware of the destination takes some of the mystery out of the whole thing—but the window seat. Any window seat. Any vehicle. Any place. A family road trip to visit my grandpa in Houston, a late train from Wales to England, just a quick dash from my house to the convenience store and back again—it doesn’t much matter where points A and B are when the distance between them feels like magic.

In the end, I think that’s why I like these nocturnal trips so much. It’s best out in the middle of nowhere, where there aren’t many streetlights and the darkness around you looks like it could belong to anywhere in this world and nowhere in this world all at once. Riding around, gazing out my window, it’s like the night is made of potential: a new, mysterious place where anything could happen. Even every song on the radio feels new, each one a slightly changed, slightly charged version of the same tune I’ve known for years. Riding around, gazing out my window, it’s like my imagination is the one choosing where I’ll end up, and I’m just along for the ride.

It’s the one time in life I don’t worry about where I’m going.

I can pull my knees up into the seat, watch the headlights make shy guesses about the world around me, and wait to find out.

Image Credit: "Night Driving" by Joe Goldberg. Source: Flickr.