Back from Wisconsin

[pegkerr]

Got up waaay too early for a Saturday morning, met with Lyda and Shari Mann (who I've not before) and Shari's husband Steve, and we drove in Shari and Steve's van to Amery. Very pleasant drive, with a stop at Coffee Caribou for caffeine. Our conversation, there and back, rambled over a wide range of topics: Catholic schools, our college majors, how Stillwater, Minnesota has changed (Shari's a former Stillwater resident); the Lord of the Rings movie, Carolyn Gilman's book Halfway Human, and indefinite pronouns. Lyda mentioned using "per" to mean either his or her; it's derived from the word "person." Good idea. I can't remember where she said she picked it up, but thought it might have been Ursula LeGuin. Pamela Dean uses zie and zer. Wish we had a better designated option in English for an indefinite pronoun for a human being. "It" just doesn't work--except as in Halfway Human where the inanimate-object denotation was part of the political subtext Carolyn was playing with when she used that pronoun for her main character--blands (neuters) are not accepted as fully human in that society. Lyda's partner Shawn is pregnant, and I talked a bit about how pregnancy was such a revelation for me in thinking about gender. I hadn't realized, until I was pregnant myself, how strange it was to have the most intimate possible relationship with another person without knowing that person's gender. Gender is so often the first thing we use to build our conception of another person, and so it was interesting, when I was pregnant, to think about my child, and about being a parent, without knowing that crucial bit of information about that tiny person inside me who was kicking me in the ribs.

I must take a look at the James Tiptree, Jr. Award short list this year.

The presentation was modestly attended, about fifteen people or so in the audience, with a nice range of questions, the sort you get at a standard "How do you get to be a writer" type panel that I've been on many times at science fiction conventions. I've never been served rhubarb bars at a science fiction convention, however. Sold about five or six books.

Came back this afternoon, crashed for a two hour nap, and then went to my nephew's high school graduation party. David's quite a bit taller than I am, but every so often when I look at him, I flash back to holding him as a baby, when he was baptized. Appalling.

They grow so damn fast. Fiona's halfway to college age now. Oy.

Cheers,
Peg

Comments

Indefinite pronouns

[aurantifolia.livejournal.com]

I first ran across "per" as the indefinite possessive in Bernadette Lynn Bosky's short story "None of the Above." I always wondered where it came from. Thanks for mentioning the derivation!

[holyoutlaw.livejournal.com]

Well, I'm kind of a curmudgeon on the indefinite pronoun issue. I'm all in favor of 'em, but don't like the artificial ones like per and zie. Blech. I just use "they" as often as possible, even for singular indefinite pronouns. At least it's a real world, and no more grammatically infelicitous than an ugly neologism. Hah!

Guess I better just grump away here...

Uhm, ahem... I did like this entry. And had never thought about fetal gender, intimacy, and all that the way you put it. Very powerful.

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

"Fiona's halfway to college age now." The other
half is much longer.

B

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

I think it was Dan Goodman who wrote in his Minneapa zine, -"There's no need to invent an indefinite pronoun because one already exists."-

K. [which is clever, but doesn't address some uses]