Zenna Henderson

Shortly after Leon and I began dating in the early 1980s, we discovered that we both shared an interest in science fiction. Leon was much better read than me, and introduced me to a number of new authors. One was a woman named Zenna Henderson. I began reading a compilation of several novellas called Pilgrimage.

One story in particular, called Pottage, really spoke to me. Like the rest of her stories, it involves the People, an alien race who were dispersed across the American Southwest when their spacecraft crashed there. They had strange powers, they could levitate and fly, and were despised and persecuted by the local populace because they were different. Pottage concerns one isolated community of the People who survived by suppressing and denying their true identity and not using any of their special powers. How could a story like that not resonate with a gay man just out of the closet?

In the early 1990s, this newfangled thing called the Internet was just coming to prominence. I once did a search on her name (no, I didn't Google it. If Google even existed at that time, I wasn't aware of it. I used Yahoo). There wasn't much information. She had lived in Arizona and had been a teacher. No surprises there- both of those aspects of her stories were obviously written from the inside. She was Mormon for part of her life. This background undoubtedly also influenced here themes of alienation. She was also deceased, for about a decade. I believe that she died of cancer, and did so prematurely as she was only in her mid sixties. The minimal information that was available online about her caused me to view her life as rather mysterious.



Nearly three years ago, I began this blog. In my profile, I list Zenna Henderson's People stories as an entry in the Favorite Books section. About a year and a half ago, I received an unexpected email.

I am an occasional reader of Cobban's blog (Lopaka Lounge), and this evening I happened to click on your name after reading your most recent comment. I was so excited to see that you're a fan of Zenna Henderson's works. She will always be Mrs. Henderson to me, as she was my first grade teacher.

I was floored- someone who had actually met her. We have had a small amount of correspondence, and it has been interesting to hear of what she was actually like as a teacher. Last year, just before I went to Arizona, my friend contacted me and suggested that I might look for her grave in St. David's cemetery just outside of Benson.

It was not to happen last year. This year, however, I drove with Homer down to Bisbee to visit with Cobban and his partner Ray. On the way home, we drove right past St. David's Cemetery. As Homer is an archaeologist and avid genealogist, he was happy to stop off and help me find her headstone. I'm very pleased to have been able to pay my respects to someone whose work I admire very much. Thanks, P. for contacting me and sharing your connection with her.

Photo by Homer

Books that changed me

This is a cool meme that I got from Spo. Five books that had a profound effect on me. Not necessarily favorites, or great books. I was somehow different after I read each of these books than I had been before.

1. Beautiful Butterflies by J. Moucha (Author) and F. Prochazka (Illustrator). Amazingly, still available used from Amazon. It’s a coffee table book with stunning illustrations of amazing butterflies from around the world. I got it as an eighth birthday present from my great aunt shortly after it came out in 1965. The book contributed to my developing love of butterflies, but had two other profound effects on my life. The most spectacular species were all from far away places, and I immediately began a lifelong romance with travel. I dreamed of seeing several favorites someday, a dream that was recently realized for Morpho cypris in Costa Rica. The book also had numerous species with very strange names. Rather than an easily understood name like Cabbage White, these butterflies had two names, written in italcs in what appeared to be a foreign language. A person’s name appeared after them. This was my first exposure to the names of the some of the great lepidopterists from the age of exploration: Hübner, Bates, Staudinger. But it was more than that- these names had the ring of magic words to them. They haunted me. They were my first introduction to scientific nomenclature.

2. A Fairly Honourable Defeat by Iris Murdoch. I discovered Iris Murdoch’s writing at the recommendation of a friend while I was in graduate school. She remains a favorite author, and this is my favorite of her works. It was the first Murdoch novel that I read, and contained a very positive depiction of a gay couple, Simon and Axel. I read it when I was just coming out, and carried the images of a reasonably functional gay couple with me for a long time.

3. The End of Eternity by Isaac Asimov. This book was also a recommendation from a friend, this time while I was in college. Not the greatest science fiction novel that I have read by any stretch of the imagination, it was none the less a good read. I had tried and rejected science fiction previously, probably due to an unfortunate first pick (one of Heinlein’s more military works). I had come away from that experience with the impression that scifi stories were just macho paeans to militarism and weapons technology. This book had a real story to it, however, and got me started on a lifelong love of the genre.

4. The Chronicles of Narnia. My introduction to C.S. Lewis. When I was in high school, I went through a 5 year period as a born-again Christian, largely as a result of reading Lewis’ work and discussing it avidly with a group of students from a local theological seminary (Gordon-Conwell) at a nearby Christian coffeehouse. Althouigh I would later reject Biblical literalism (later still Christianity, and later even still theism), my time as a born-again Christian taught me many things, and provided a very safe haven for a deeply closeted and frightened young man.

5. The Borrowers by Mary Norton. I read this book when I was in the second grade. I resonated with the themes of trying to survive as a very small person in a world made for much larger folk and of being somehow different from others. More importantly than that, this was my first experience of a true love of fiction. It's now over 40 years since I read it, and I can still recall vividly the feeling of not wanting the book to end.

Theater Excursion

Between the statistics course last week, all of the butterfly eggs and hatching larvae in the lab at the moment and the general level of nuttiness around here right now, I’m tired of talking butterflies. What to do when you are feeling uninspired? Taking a tip from friends who blog, I’ll do a top ten list, completely unrelated to science and nature. Here are my top ten favorite plays ever (in no particular order):

1. The Glass Menagerie

I didn’t go to the movies, I went someplace much further. Unfortunately, bad productions abound. In capable hands, Tennessee Williams’ masterpiece can still reduce me to sniffles.

2. The Fifth of July

I’d want to be friends with almost anyone in Lanford Wilson’s cast of oddball characters. Warm and moving.

3. The Tempest

Why The Tempest out of all of Shakespeare’s comedies? I’ve always suspected that my love for this play is partly at an unconscious level- appropriate for a play where Jungian archetypes are encountered around every corner. It’s also the source of the plot line for a science fiction film called Forbidden Planet with more than a passing nod to Freud (monsters of the Id). It has entered my dreams on more than one occasion.

4. Yerma

How does one even begin to discuss Lorca? My Spanish is at a level where understanding the original language is a struggle, but it’s worthwhile. This is Lorca at his most lyrical. A Spanish peasant named Yerma struggles with being barren. The language of the play could only have been written by a poet of Lorca’s caliber. Best appreciated untranslated.

5. Othello

Is jealousy the perfect subject for a tragic play? Is Iago the best villain ever? Picking a favorite from Shakespeare is nearly impossible- I’ll go with Othello because of my strong affirmation to both of these questions.

6. Huis Clos

Once upon a time, I could read No Exit in Sartre’s original French. Those days are long gone, but the play remains an amazingly crafted existentialist exercise.

7. School for Scandal

The only play on my list that I have actually performed in. Mr. Crabtree, at your service. This was during my days in the gay alliance (AKA drama club) in college. A British comedy of manners from the late 18th century, the humor still hits home.

8. The Lady’s Not for Burning

Written in the 1940s, but set in the 15th century. Is Jenette Jourdemayne, the lady of the title, a witch? Accused of turning the town drunk into a dog, she seems wearily resigned to burning, in contrast to soldier Thomas Mendip who is just weary. Mendip is attempting suicide by trying to convince the town fathers that he has committed murder. The two lovers (of course they fall for each other) encounter a misdirection of concern by the town fathers eerily reminiscent of the Rovian White House.

9. Our Town

Yes, it’s sappily, sloppily sentimental. Yes there is a danger of going into insulin shock during the performance. I guess this one’s kind of a guilty pleasure for me. I don’t care- I like it.

10. Blithe Spirit

Delightfully silly in a way that only Coward can be. I’ve never been inclined towards drag at all, but were I ever to do it, I think I’d want to channel Madame Arcati.

Words from the Master

One of the difficulties about trying to write about butterflies is that one of the 20th century's literary stars was also a lepidopterist. In addition to writing such works as Lolita and Pale Fire, Vladmir Nabokov was a highly respected entomologist who has named several species of butterflies and, in turn, has had species named after him. An entire chapter of his autobiography is devoted to butterflies and collecting. The chapter ends with one of my favorite passages. It describes very closely the sensations that I was experiencing in the field yesterday, but with a clarity of prose that I can't even approach.

[T]he highest enjoyment of timelessness- in a landscape selected at random- is when I stand among rare butterflies and their food plants. This is ecstasy, and behind the ecstacy is something else, which is hard to explain. It is like a momentary vacuum into which rushes all that I love. A sense of oneness with sun and stone. A thrill of gratitude to whom it may concern- to the contrapuntal genius of human fate or to tender ghosts humoring a lucky mortal.