7/29/2019 Thinking About Julia

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Copyright 2013 Carolyn Gage

Thinking About Julia

When I think of Julia Penelope, I think of lesbians, linguistics, and rocks. One

was her passion, one was her vocation, and one was her avocation. In my mind,the three have many things in common. Their commonness, for starts.

Lesbians, and words, and rocks. Prevalent, universal, not rare, ordinary, withoutrank or position, of familiar type. But to someone who has made a life study ofthem, lesbians, words and rocks are full of secrets, packed with history, andfreighted with potential.

Julia knew history. She knew the stories. She knew where lesbians came from,starting with herself. And she generously shared that history a history of sexualabuse, of being a kept butch and a stone butch, a history of patriarchal

attitudes. And she shared her emergence into a world of radical lesbian-feministvalues. She understood where words came from and how their uses evolved andwere evolving. She understood the significance of story to the lives of women,and how words could be manipulated to control that story. She understood thestructure and the politic of language unlearning the lies of the fatherstonguesas her book Speaking Freelyis so aptly subtitled.

And she studied and collected rocks. She loved to go rockhounding. Whereothers would see just an uninteresting pile of rocks, she would find her treasures.She knew the history of rocks: which ones had evolved their distinctcharacteristics under centuries of compression, which were the result of coolingmagma, which were aggregates of minerals bonded together over time. Sheknew which rocks were precious and semi-precious, which would be enhancedby polishing, and which were likely to prove geodes with secret, crystalline fairystructures hidden under their crude exteriors.

Lesbians, words, and rocks. She leaves a solid, living, individual legacy. Thankyou for your dedication and your integrity.