Madeleine L'Engle died. She and Susan Cooper were the most important authors of my childhood and the only ones I regularly reread still. Her vision of the world has also been what I aspire to, where magic, science, religion, and love all blend together and there are people who really are battling for the higher good (and her bad people were usually more misguided and stupid than evil).

I've been slowly collecting the complete L'Engle--I'm missing 1 Austins book, 1 Crosswicks book, and two of the weird Hebrew Bible stories ones (Joseph and Jonah, I think?). Her non-fiction is bizarre and unexpected--Walking on Water is the most unusual book about the creative process I've ever read, and I love it. I know that many folks don't get her books, and the religion stuff bothers a lot of people, but her voice was unique and I think helped some kids learn to be better people.

She used this quote from Robert Frost in The Arm of the Starfish and I think his words say what there is to say about her life and what her books tried to teach us:
But yield who will to their separation,
My object in living is to unite
My avocation and my vocation
As my two eyes make one in sight.
Only where love and need are one,
And the work is play for mortal stakes,
Is the deed ever really done
For Heaven and the future's sakes. _
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08:56:53 PM, Friday 7 September 2007

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I have lost my voice. It had never occurred to me just what an advantage this is in grad school. People leave me alone; my advisor expects only short answers to her questions; I don't have to answer the phone. I see very little incentive to get it back. _
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