Laura Huxley, semi-remembered

You may have read that Laura Huxley, the widow of "Brave New World" author Aldous Huxley, died Thursday at age 96. I haven't met many people who get big-newspaper obits, but she was one.

Circa 1996, when I was scribbling for the Victor Valley Daily Press, Huxley visited a plot of dirt in Hesperia where an Iranian-born architect was experimenting with building earthen houses, a company, or compound, he called Cal-Earth. I was summoned to the place to meet the visiting celebrity.

Huxley would have been about 85 then, and it was a little astonishing that she had outlived her husband by more than three decades. She was trim, lively, curious, enthusiastic, mildly eccentric in her interests and a visionary spirit. She told me she and her husband had loved the desert, where he, or maybe they, had once tried to establish a Utopian community.

Other than that, the interview is kind of a blur. I can't blame LSD, as the Huxleys could, just the passage of time.

The details would be in the story, but the story, which I clipped, is in a box at home, stashed under about eight other boxes, all wedged in a corner behind two shelving units. After weighing the time and effort versus the payoff, I decided to let the box stay there.