 Welcome to shrink wrap. I'm Ken Burtness and I'm guest hosting for Steve Katz who's away on vacation and having a great time And we're gonna have a great time too today I've got a very dear friend who's a former resident of Hawaii and now lives in Minnesota So she's come a long long way to be on shrink wrap with me. So I'm happy to introduce Debbie Jones Debbie Welcome and thanks for coming all this way, and I know you just didn't do it for shrink wrap But we'll talk about that later Debbie and I are going to do some time traveling today and Debbie's going to take us back 42 years to when we were both Fanatics for science fiction and fantasy and Debbie founded this book club, which is still going after 42 years Tell us a little bit about that Debbie Well, thank you Ken. It's a delight to be here and Thinking back to all that time ago in the mid 70s it was a very different world and It wasn't nearly as easy to find people who were interested in the things that I was interested in I was Really a crazy Lord of the Rings fan at the time and it was still a little new but We didn't have Facebook and we didn't have the internet and and so you had to kind of find people by accident And I was hoping to find people that were interested in starting a book discussion group That would meet on a regular basis and it took a little while. I think I finally Shanghai'd a bunch of friends that we knew through the University of Minnesota into meeting at our Place to talk about the Lord of the Rings. I probably promised them cookies cookies and the group We kept going. We met about once a month. We actually moved Over to I think it's the YMCA across the street from campus One of our very early members Steve was running a Weekly I think it was weekly coffee house where people played guitars and saying and that would allow him to kind of Do both so it was just convenient and so we met there and at various people's apartments and outside and We would discuss a different fantasy book occasionally science fiction every month I'm sorry to say there were not as many of them in those days as there are now and some of them were a little hard to find But we talked about The Lord of the Rings and the c.s. Lewis books that The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe and his space trilogy Also, Charles Williams too Charles Williams, I always hope to include for some reason Charles Williams was never quite as as popular a choice as as others Ursula K. Le Guin's Earthsea trilogy of course was that was then a trilogy came out then The the very earliest dragon writers of pern books were coming out at the time We also made an attempt to find some of the classics of fantasy that were had been out of print some of them for a long time and we would Take turns with the one library copy at either at the University of Hawaii at Manoa or at the public library um and For instance the Lord Denzeney King of Elfland's daughter does that ring of bell? Absolutely. Yes, and I was there for that. Yes. Yes uh, it was a small group of mostly students friends of of ours and people who just kind of Either heard about us and came and sat in and joined the group or um It was very much word of mouth This is a good spot to bring terry in because my understanding is That a lot of the members at the first and I joined the second year So I was not there for the first year But as I remember most of the people at the beginning were from the Institute of Astronomy at UH Which terry was a graduate student. Yes My husband terry In fact the reason that we came here was because he was starting a phd program in astronomy at the institute Which was then only like five years old. It was a new Institute now celebrating its 50th anniversary, which is why we're here now, but there was a very wonderful group of Faculty and graduate students at the time very energetic and engaged and A lot of fun was had by the group of people that were here at the time um, they're all Dedicated and enthusiastic about about science and many of them were also readers and They were interested and so people Did participate from that group of graduate students? This would have been about between 1974 to 1978-79 when a lot of that group dispersed and of course Yes We left in 1978 um And by that time you were a regular and several of the other a number of the other folks That you knew that had joined us because you spread the word among your friends um Some of them are still Still with the group and I think that is just one of the most Joyful things that's happened in my life is that this little group of student graduate students in that little apartment in makiki Still meets Regularly after all this time 42 years 42 years. Yes. We had a reunion By the way, you can see in the backdrop the Institute of Astronomy That debbie was talking about where uh, she and terry will be for the rest of the week Celebrating 50 years at the Institute of Astronomy and that's a feat in itself. We celebrated 42 We celebrated our 40th two years ago on kawai And we do it about every 10 years our 30th was on Maui on Maui and our 20th was on the big island and so And we get debbie and terry to come out for those two and that's always a wonderful thing and it's great to have an Excuse to come back. We I'm still homesick for this place in january I remember the midwest Yes, well You know, you can find little pieces of the islands almost anywhere over there and and we have but it's always a pleasure to come back and This time is particularly wonderful because for the first time In many years a lot of us from that era will be gathered together and it You know, I I don't go to the professional astronomy Meetings where my husband is likely to run into this one or that one but This time I was able to come and I'll have a chance to see a lot of people that were certainly great friends back in the day and That's and I'm also very proud of them. They have done some amazing science and wonderful sciences come out of the institute here and University of Hawaii and the observing that goes on here, you know, people come from all over the world to Observe here. That's a great program and I was always fascinated with astronomy because I was always fascinated with science fiction so astronomy was a natural and The thing I liked about the people from the institute of astronomy that I met in your book club Was the fact that they were not just scientists. There were some astronomers who were pretty hardcore scientists But there were also dreamers and those are the people who generally came to those meetings and I think that's a great combination to have a scientific background But also be able to dream and imagine possibilities and that's what we're going to talk about today A lot because I want to not only look back at the book club and the institute of astronomy But I also want to look forward into What's coming up? and You know the possibilities and the dreams that we have and I know Debbie has done a lot of things in her life been done a Explored a lot of different avenues and she's still Looking ahead and that's what I'm very interested in and seeing seeing where you're going to go and where your dreams are now and And I like to talk about that. Okay Oh, would you like me to work my way forward or? I think we got a few minutes to sort of get into it and I use mentioned Ursula the Gwyn Uh, and you and you mentioned to me before about McMasters. Who was a very big influence on you Uh, but you'll I always get a mixed up bourge old. Yeah, uh lowest McMaster bourge old Who is my current favorite author? uh, I've cycled through many of course starting with jr or total keen um and uh Including going back to dr. Seuss. It's amazing how How lasting an influence dr. Seuss has had on me because that was fantasy You know, if you think back to the 500 hats of our salami heavens, and I uh, what I saw on mulberry mulberry And on beyond zebra and all of those things what they did was they in a playful way Took you outside of the ordinary and the I guess the hard edges of reality and reality seemed a lot more hard edged when I was a kid then It either it is now or I I guess there's a lot more acceptance of fantasy, but dr. Seuss is kind of sneaky and playful about allowing children to To be imaginative and of course there were the fairy tales and everything that we all read but um Did you read dr. Seuss to your kids? Oh, yes favorite You know, I think that uh They preferred the ones that were more recent than the ones we just mentioned I'm trying to think of some of the names. There was one that We read to my daughter that and I'm I'm not remembering it now, but uh There was a certain page that had a very dark image that She was so distressed by because it was very terrifying to her And something was going in happening in her imagination with that page that Was fascinating we've talked about it since and she said yes, it was it was really scary to me And it was just a page in a dr. Seuss book. So, you know, there's They they connect with kids imaginations and uh, I was always interested in the kinds of things that Pulled me out those special doors those doors of imagination into things that were not Of the ordinary world Uh Those special doors are what I really want to talk about we're coming up on a break pretty soon But uh those special doors This is where we sort of interface with psychology Which is my other of course The interest because I'm always looking to open doors for my clients to open doors to possibilities of new ways Of non-scary ways Of ways to cope with the fearful things that we have in life And fantasy did that for us when we were young fantasy did and uh, And it would even then though it was really not a very acceptable kind of literature It wasn't even considered literature. We we were used to the fact that people write academic papers on these things now That was not done in the sixties, you know, they were maybe lewis carol Maybe if it had been around long enough, but tolkien. No and leguin and even ray bradbury. They're they're They're classics now. They're studied. They're accepted, but at the time they were a little Underground exactly a little bit exactly We're gonna we're gonna come up on a break. So save that thought. Okay. All right. So yeah, we're gonna break and you're gonna Have a commercial for about two minutes And then we'll be back to talk about those open doors and those things to make life a little bit More fun and interesting for us. Thank you. All right. Welcome back to shrink wrap We're talking with debbie jones and we're just about to open some doors some fantastic doors Some doors that will show us the future Maybe of science maybe of astronomy, but also those the future of the inner mind The fantasies that we create ourselves And debbie was talking just before the break about the fact that we've come a long way We have you know when I look at a whole bunch of things, you know are We've made some many progress in gender issues and racial issues and we have you know Fantasy and science fiction is much more acceptable, but it's still I mean you take a look at the movies today Science fiction and fantasy movies are sort of put off the side They're not considered real serious stuff just like animation is still not considered more serious stuff And actually the fantasies are one of the most serious things we have because in the fantasies There's hope for us And so many people today's especially that I see as clients They've lost that hope they're sort of mired in this stressful present-day environment and Yeah, it's different in the ways that our parents our environment when we were growing up, but it's still An environment that's looking at the practical. How can I make more money? How can I extend this? How can I buy a bigger house? And in the end that's not really satisfying when you get to the end The work I've done with elderly clients They don't regret They don't wish they had a bigger house. They tend to wish they had Explored more and been with people more and that type of thing and this is where books and fantasies can help us so I wanted to sort of go back to that and and sort of talk about what What dreams that you had that were most helpful to you on your You know on your sort of journey as we've been on the journey for quite a while Yes I think one of the most exciting things about this kind of literature to me then and still is The ability the idea that you can create a different world your own world a new world You can draw maps of it. You can imagine the culture that lives there. You can create characters that Do that that have a story a narrative that Is not yours, but it is yours because you make it It doesn't have to be you right here this person, you know, but you can actually be other people through your own creations Whether you and for some people this means well, I can imagine that i'm Frodo Well, maybe you could yes, and that's why those books are are fun, but you can also invent your own world and Of course a lot of people then piggyback that on with a fanfic You've you've heard of that fanfiction where people write their own versions of their their own characters Or you can create your own complete world and that that was a very exciting idea to me I think personally for me it was uh as much about What they wore and what how they decorated their houses and what the landscape looked like I was I was the art director I wasn't necessarily the script writer. So Uh that side of it, but you did write a novel. I did write a novel. Yeah, I did and that was about a dream, right? It was based on a dream that I had uh when um, we were here students graduate students here in the 1970s and It uh, it was a good very long book and I recognized Very late and it took me many years to write. I belonged to a writer group in The twin cities and we would meet once a month and Each one of us would read aloud Piece of whatever we were working on so when I look back at it now I realized that the rhythm of the sizes of the chapters and the way things happen is very much governed by the amount of time that I would have to read aloud to this group monthly so it it's Kind of built in the structure to the structure of the novel That's just That and that kept me going. I would have to have something prepared for the group So I would do these pieces and sometimes I would have to go back and revise, but I did finish that. Yeah, it's Never been published. It was it seemed when I got to the end that finishing it and revising it was Enough Tell us about the dream that that inspired it Well in the dream I dreamed that uh The character and it wasn't even really me in the dream um was It had a graduate student and somewhat frustrated career-wise and made it sort of accidentally made a discovery that One of the reasons that she wasn't successful was that everyone else Knew that there were these secret societies that you had to be recruited into one in order to Get a thesis topic and whatever and so this character Stumbles on this sort of unknown underground secret world that Has been one of the rules is that you have to find out about it for yourself. You can't nobody can tell you nobody can tell you you have to discover yourself and She also has there's an antagonist who's made it her business to make sure that All the efforts to discover have been stymied and that this character has been steered down the wrong road, which is that she's crazy I'm just imagining it Just imagine that phrase has A double-edged meaning and that was what kind of what this book goes goes to is like well It's just imagination or on the other hand just Now as a psychologist, I'd look at that and say well, this is your way of working through You know the pros and cons this is Your way of working through those frustrations and looking at both sides and sort of looking for where to go Where's the door to this? Well, it was it was a wonderful metaphor And I don't really believe that it was a metaphor for anything that I was necessarily going through at the time in any obvious way but it was the whole idea that that Society was kind of underpinned by this secret culture that You could go through your life and not know about and then stumble on and then stumble deeper and stumble deeper and and that it might be Menacing and it might be dangerous And yet you would you could gather allies And that's what happens in the book is that the character gradually gathers this very odd group of misfits to go on this journey with her and I left it kind of as a cliffhanger at the end. I always intended to To go back and write but at the time I was kind of finished with it And I felt it was a complete story, but there's another story to be told about these characters and perhaps now That I'm looking forward to a time when I hope to have more time to write I will tell that story. I will find out what it is because I don't really know What's the exciting thing about writing is you don't know You know you start writing and you think you know, but it takes a life of its own the characters take on a life of its own What do you do and and you just follow along you do and sometimes you get very angry This this this is not what I plan for you Why are you doing this but but they lead you in interesting places They lead you to interesting places and sometimes the people that they encounter are not who they seem to be when they first And sometimes they're a lot more interesting than you realize until you've written out a bit more and It's not a a straight road. There's a lot of detours and You know going back and we hit over like life. Yeah Yeah, so That particular seed that dream It's not as important to me now and whatever it meant Is kind of lost in the history of what I I did with it taking to write that But the next thing is the dreams continue and that you have Different dreams in different decades or different years and the dreams change And your path changes and the way you look at the world changes Uh, that's really true. I thought that I would be a writer and I took Majority tours from that and Usually doing other kinds of creative work as I As you know, I've done a lot of visual art As opposed to writing, but these things go in cycles and uh dreams have always been an important resource for me And I get the feeling you're ready for a new cycle. I think so. Yes And what about that new cycle might it look like? I think uh, it looks like I would really like to cycle Back more to the writing and the narrative Then I then I have been doing for the last 35 40 years I've done a lot of visual art in that time and uh a little off beat. I I've made costumes as you know Costume con you went to a number of Most people probably don't know anything about it. I know about uh, you know comic book Yeah, it's this predated Cosplay by many decades and grew out of science fiction conventions back in the late fifties But there are people who liked dressing up and it was a sort of a place where you could go and you know Be a wizard or a gypsy or whatever and beautiful art was made by the people who were into that and I got to the point though where it was physically a little more challenging than I was really Enjoying anymore. So I turned more to electronic and digital media Did you wear the costumes yourself? Oh, yes. I made them just for myself We we had competitions that we we were in and sometimes solitary alone I I did a lot of collaborative work. I love collaborative art With ellen or ferrell who was as close to being the other founder of the the salmuth now our group as as could be We did a lot of projects together And now when you put those costumes on, you know, I work with this in psychology a lot Trying to get a person to try on a new persona and one of the things that helps us have them change the way they dress That's very true. So what was it like? How did you feel different in different costumes? I it was again, it was like opening one of those doors into an alternate reality uh The trap that I fell into was Getting so involved with the actual creating and the making that Wearing it was kind of almost an after You didn't take time to enjoy your own creation I didn't take enough time to enjoy them But I still have most of them and of course a lot of it's preserved on videotape or nobody uses videotape anymore Now they don't it's preserved digitally. I was I won A bunch of awards including at the world science fiction convention a couple of times I saw pictures of those and these were fabulous fabulous costumes Uh, we're sort of running out of time, but I like the like where we're going as far as the alternate Stuff, I mean so many people today are so unhappy and dissatisfied and to be able to look at an alternate situation an alternate life an alternate being Is oftentimes just really incredibly therapeutic It certainly can be if it's done in a healthy way It's always been a I hesitate to use the word escape For me, but it's also, you know Doors can lead into a small room. They can also lead out into a grand ballroom a or a wonderful landscape Yes, absolutely a wonderful landscape that's open and free and they can be very freeing in fact um Tolkien himself wrote a very famous essay called on fairy stories where he he talked about people dismissing This kind of literature as escapism and fairy tales escapism escapism and he said Well talk think about How what escape is like if you're a prisoner? Yeah Incredibly freeing. Yes Opening up to everything there's running out on your responsibilities that kind of escapism And there is freeing yourself from the prison of Whatever is holding you in and holding you back. That's terrific. We've sort of run out of time so I wish we could go on for a long time because It is just so nice being with you debbie jones and uh And it's just great seeing you again and it's great going back and going forward to possibilities that Well, not only the literature can give us but also the writing and any other thing that we do to Sort of move out and sort of expand our universe And thank you all for joining us at shrink wrap. I'm ken berness sitting again in for steven kats And it's been a pleasure as always and I hope to see you again sometime in the future