Ursula K. Le Guin Tag

New revelations coming out of the January 6 Congressional committee hearings this past week raised the hair straight up off my head in ways even I had not anticipated.

Ready for another go at language? I'll resist the temptation to rave at length about how Trumpisms have leached into the speech of even serious people, polluting journalists and constitutional lawyers who now find themselves dropping "This I can tell you,” “When you look at . . . ,” and way too many gushes of incredibles and biggests and mosts for comfort.

On January 22, the world lost a great writer. That word, ”great,” is tossed around like cheap confetti, but in this case it's the unadorned truth. This country, too, lost one of its sharpest consciences, a citizen who ceaselessly reminded us that freedom was everyone’s birthright and fighting to keep it was our job, yours and mine. This writer was political in the deepest sense—not through jargon but through her own esthetic genius and the sweat of her craft. Ursula Kroeber Le Guin was born in 1929 in Berkeley, California. She died at age 88 in Portland, Oregon, where she had lived for many decades. She’s survived by her husband of 63 years, historian, writer, and superb gardener, Charles; and their three grown children, two daughters and a son. She's also survived by 23 novels, 12 collections of her more than 100 short stories, five books of essays, 13 books...