Tag: Locus

February 24th, 2024

The racket of our neighbors moving in continued late into the night. Two husky women about our age, artists. Downstairs, alongside their front door, their street-side wall is a working garage door. Every few minutes, someone would drive up with stuff to unload and it would open. We could hear it grinding up slowly and majestically like a drawbridge.

This morning I somehow set the time ahead. Tim and I started off for work at 7:30, took a look at the clock on the Chronicle Building, and drove back home. We left again at 8:30. I managed to spill moussaka all over the car.

Charlie was gone when I got to work. When Shelly returned from the airport she told me he had said I could either work on the Dbase or type Fritz’s manuscript. Naturally I chose the manuscript.

While I was typing I listened to the news on the radio. First, they announced troops were being sent to the Honduras – then they said they weren’t. Then they said they were. Then, tonight, there was a press conference, and it was official. Such bullshit! A last ditch effort to either start a war or get more funding for the contras.

They’re still getting used to the apartment downstairs. At one point this evening the lights flickered, there was a bright flash and a heavy thud from downstairs. I started to hurry down, but heard one of them laugh and say, “Oh my God! Can you believe it? I don’t believe it!” From this I gathered that neither of them were lying unconscious and electrocuted, so I went back upstairs. The lights are still on.

I got a cancellation notice for my insurance today. Have to call my insurance agent tomorrow to ask him if I’ll have to reapply.

I didn’t. It was fine.

This was back in the day when you could have a face-to-face relationship with your health insurance agent. Mine was an amiable, gray haired man with a moustache whose office was on Shattuck in Berkeley. I liked him, but in the United States, especially back then, every conversation with a health insurance agent was slightly fraught and could include biting one’s tongue. I remember him explaining that the catastrophic health insurance plan I was on had to be discontinuted (and shifted to a much more expensive premium) because of the AIDS epidemic. “A client caught it, and by the time he died, we’d had to pay for EVERYTHING!” he said, his voice hushed with shock.

Which I had assumed was what health insurance was for, but I sure as hell wasn’t going to say so.

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February 19th, 2024

We finished the issue today. The last days are in some ways the worst. There are always a thousand piddling things wrong that have to be fixed. I correct and run out one page and it comes back smeared with red and I have to do it again. Everyone was on edge. Faren silent, Trevin snappish, Shelly exasperated because Charlie was giving contradictory orders. But, we got it out. Tomorrow, Charlie can leave for wherever he is going a comparatively happy man.

New neighbors have moved in downstairs. Earlier this evening there was a lot of scraping and bumping, loud music, and voices echoing up the stairwell. The phone downstairs is hooked up now (I bumped into the phone man yesterday coming out of our apartment) and they’ve gotten about three calls so far.

At one point this evening one of them, the blonde one with glasses, rang the doorbell and asked me to move the car so they could get the furniture in. Across the street were at least two pick-up trucks loaded with furniture, and three men talking to each other in Spanish. Lucius was upset. He kept crowding by the door at the foot of the stairs, meowing and hurrying up to me as if he expected me to do something about it.

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February 10th, 2024

Went to the Waldenbooks on Geary.

At Powell Street there were two evangelists, the usual black man in the white suit, red feathered hat, and AIDS pasteboard, and an old white guy with a megaphone, which I thought was kind of unfair. On the corner of Powell and Geary was yet another evangelist, waving a black, floppy-covered bible, pacing and declaiming alongside a meek little old lady who was wordlessly passing out tracts.

Then I passed a demonstrator, apparently against the Iran Iraq war. A lady on the street behind me crowed, “I’ve never seen a real, live demonstration before!” She was plainly from out of town.

In front of Neiman Marcus I walked past a group of people demonstrating against the wearing of furs.

This is a very opinionated city.

At Waldenbooks I bought a new diary (this one is about finished) and a paperback true-crime anthology.

The black evangelist with the red feathered hat and pasteboard was for years a fixture at the Powell Street Cable Car turnaround, where he could moodily grumble into his microphone at a captive audience of tourists queuing for a ride. I remember him as very dapper, with sunglasses and a well-trimmed beard in addition to his hat and three-piece suit. He would bring a small carpet to mark out his territory, and a chair where he sat next to his sign, along with a posted warning that he would charge a fee to anyone who photographed him — thus following the venerable San Francisco tradition of making a spectacle of oneself, then objecting because people notice. (The Castro did the same thing for years, its residents costuming wildly on Halloween Night, then complaining afterwards in letters to the Chronicle because “outsiders” were taking pictures.)

I was a regular in the area, so the black evangelist’s occasional growls were frequently aimed at me. Whenever I walked by, he’d raise his microphone to his lips and mutter into it something about women who weren’t virgins being unworthy of marriage. Obviously, that ship had sailed and there was nothing I could do about it, so I never bothered to respond.

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February 5th, 2024

Thursday, March 10

At work today Charlie took a few pictures of Trevin, Shelly and me. I had dressed up in a mini-skirt and black sweater, though I didn’t have much makeup on. If the photos are black and white it shouldn’t make much difference.

I took the cat carrier back this morning. As I went in, the blonde lady breathed the word “safe,” with relief. I hope the fact that the carrier’s been chewed on one side doesn’t get her into trouble.

Friday, March 11

This morning on my way to work, I heard that Ronn Owens would be interviewing Gerald Straub, the man who used to work for Pat Robertson. Because I didn’t want to miss it, I bought a cheap transistor radio at the Montclair Pharmacy and listened to the interview with the earplugs while I worked.

Straub is a voice in the wilderness. He wants to talk about the Robertson political agenda and everyone else wants to talk about money and sex scandals in TV evangelism.

We finished the first section today. Tomorrow, Charles and Shelly will take it in. We developed the pictures Charlie took yesterday and decided on one where I am being squashed between Shelly and Trevin. If none of those had turned out, we would have used a Christmas shot in which I’m sort of leering into the camera looking like one of the children from Village of the Damned.

Ronn Owens was San Francico’s morning talk show DJ, in the prime spot of 9:00 am. He prided himself on being the “reasonable” alternative to Rush Limbaugh. For me, Owens is best summed up by his response one morning to the single black caller who phoned in to answer Owens’ question to his viewers, “Are you better off now than you were before Reagan was president?”

“No,” the caller had said. “I’m WORSE off. And so is every other black person I know.”

“Oh come now,” Owens had responded, in his friendly, “reasonable” tones, “I’m better off. Everyone else so far who’s called says they’re better off. Don’t you think you’re being just a LITTLE myopic?”“

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February 1st, 2024

This morning after an abortive attempt at filling out the Taxpax form ( I really do have what amounts to a phobia about filling out such forms.) I discovered a premium notice from State Farm — $375 – due February 28. All of the forebodings and terrors I had felt staring at the TP form crashed in on me, and for a few minutes I just paced around the living room, flapping the premium notice and wailing inside.

At 8:30 I drove down to the Cat Clinic to pick up the cats. There was some trouble running out my bill on the computer. The vet complained to me that the program was lousy and kept screwing up billing and inventories. She assured me Capone (the bobcat hybrid) had been good. This surprised me. His last vet gave him an F in deportment on his card. He and Lucius (the Abyssinian) had refused breakfast that morning. Then she went back to get him.

There were a few thumps and the faint – almost just the impression – of a surprised voice attempting to soothe. When she emerged from the back, she was carrying the carrier in one hand (with Capone in it) and Lucius in the other. Capone refused to allow Lucius in the carrier with him, and my attempts at conciliation just got a few more growls. She leant me a cardboard carrier for Lucius, explaining that she wasn’t supposed to do this, and would I please return it tomorrow morning.

In the car, with Capone in the carrier in the back, and Lucius in the cardboard carrier up front, Lucius went berserk, screaming for help, moaning, and tearing at the inside of the box. I got so frazzled I turned the wrong way down Polk Street and had to do a U-turn to get out. Lucius managed to get his paw out of one of the holes and snag me viciously in the arm. I hope the woman at the vets doesn’t get into trouble when I return the carrier. He chewed it up pretty badly.

Once home, I called the insurance office and the male secretary who answered assured me that if I got the check to the office that day, it would probably be all right. I rushed over to Berkeley and wasted about fifteen minutes looking for the office on Shattuck. When I found it my insurance agent let me in. Like the other man he was – mostly – reassuring, and I left after writing him a check and giving him my day number. I got to work at 10:15. Charlie made no comment, except to give me a bangle watch that had come in the mail as a sample.

The 20^th anniversary issue is going to contain pictures of the staff. Charlie may have a picture taken of the new set-up. If I’m in it, I hope I can get my glasses off and my lipstick on before he snaps the shutter.

And now to take another shot at filling out the Taxpax form.

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January 13th, 2024

This afternoon while I was working, I heard Charlie talking to someone, another male who wasn’t Trevin. I turned to look and saw Charlie showing someone the mystery books he kept at the end of the hall. The man’s face was turned away, but I could see he was tall and gangly and wore wire-rimmed glasses.

I went back to work, wondering if the man were a visiting author or a prospective employee. Charlie brought him in to see the back office, showed him, rather proudly, the Pagemaker set up, and I got a better look at the vistor’s long, angular face and brown hair. He looked kind of like Orville Redenbacher’s grandson. After they left the room I quietly asked Faren who he was, and she said he was Kim Stanley Robinson.

Charlie interviewed him in the living room. Occasionally I came in, bringing a new page for Charlie to examine. Robinson left at about 4:30 after signing some books for Shelly and posing for some pictures.

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December 13th, 2023

Egad. Only about $275 in the checking account. At least we know the rent check went through.

Charlie’s plum tree is beginning to bloom. Last year he had a party to celebrate it but I’m not sure he will this year. Since they built the house next door and spoiled his view, bitterness has filled his soul. He keeps the drapes on that side of his house closed, and last week I saw him leaning on the rail of his porch and staring gloomily down at the construction. It’s a big, handsome house, painted gray with white trim, and it’s pretty seen through the branches of the plum tree.

Still, it’s a pity. When I was still doing paste-up, I used to watch for deer, which would walk into the empty lot where the house is now standing and look for windfall plums. I will miss them.

When I began at Locus in 1986, we were still using old-fashioned paste-up, and I worked mainly at a table in the living room, against the broad picture windows looking out onto the deck and the plum tree and the woodsy East Bay Hills. Charlie would sit at his desk against the same window on the other side of the room, usually on the phone. There was a tone he used when he said people’s first name to notify anyone listening he was speaking to someone important. “Bob!” said in a certain way was not any old “Bob” but Robert Silverberg.

“Poul!” (Anderson) “Greg!” (Benford), “Pat!” (Murphy) , ” Chip!” (Delaney), and I could swear, on one amazing occasion, “Stephen!”

My own table typically had a paste-up board, a hot roller and wax, carefully cropped word-processed paragraphs I’d typed up and run out in the back office, red tape for where photos went, and an open magazine (usually VOGUE) to use as a base when waxing the little paragraphs before affixing them to the board. I enjoyed my job. If Charlie wasn’t conversing with someone interesting on the phone — or better yet, in person — he played good music on his stereo, and the view from the window into the plum tree was relaxing. I remember watching several deer, three does and two fawns, browsing below in the shade, nuzzling the grass for fallen fruit. If you walked out onto the deck they would not run away, but look up with interest and move forward hopefully, in case you dropped something edible.

By this entry, we had abandoned paste-up for Aldus Pagemaker, I was permanently at the computer in the back office, and Shelly was at my old desk by the window.

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December 10th, 2023

Charlie wants us to get the issue out, the first part that is, by Friday, which means I’ll probably be putting in some late hours this week. He has “promoted” me from Editorial Assistant to Production Assistant, mainly so he can list Shelly as Editorial Assistant on the colophon. Trevin is now “librarian.” He was listed as Editorial Trainee for months and he’s leaving in a few weeks to go back to school.

Today, Tim went through all the papers piled on the coffee table and “organized” then into various places in the apartment. I would never have had the courage. There are articles of correspondence, like IRS forms, that I can’t handle without building up to a heart-pounding anxiety attack. There are others, (like the letter from our last landlord about the cleaning bill) that I don’t even read. I just note there is writing on the paper, have Tim relay to me whether we need to send money or not. I’ve tried reasoning out these nervous seizures of mine and what it comes down to is that I am afraid of being yelled at by my father, an IRS agent, my tax filer, my landlord, Tim and/or my bank. (I’m not afraid of Charlie yelling at me. That’s what he does.) I don’t envision poverty, prison, or public disgrace — just the horrible prospect of having to explain myself. Maybe it has something to do with all those years in Catholic schools.

“Charlie” was Charlie Brown, editor of Locus Magazine, the science fiction trade magazine where I was working at the time. He was a round, bearded, wall-eyed professional fan, a bully to his small, mostly female staff, but a good friend to writers he respected. The magazine, which is still around, and started as a single page promotional flyer in 1968, was published back then out of his house up in the Montclair Hills. Charlie grossly underpaid us, but we had free access to all the Stouffer’s frozen dinners in his freezer for lunch, and working at Locus could mean meeting in person science fiction luminaries like Robert Silverberg, Fritz Leiber, Lucius Shepard, Lisa Goldstein, and Marion Zimmer Bradley. Brushes with greatness over the phone included Arthur C. Clarke , Robert Heinlein and Ursula Le Guin. Harlan Ellison hung up on me at least once.

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Pam Troy

A Writer’s Website

Tag: Locus