“In a Valley town everybody had two houses: the house you lived in, your dwelling-place, in the Left Arm of the double-spiral-shaped town; and in the right Arm, our House, the heyimas. ... The heyimas was a center of worship, instruction, training, and study, a meetinghouse, a political forum, a workshop, a library, archive, and museum, a clearinghouse, an orphanage, hotel, hospice, refuge, resource center, and the principal center of economic control and management for the community ... In the smaller towns the heyimas was a large, five-sided, underground chamber, subdivided with partitions, with a low, four-sided, pyramidical roof showing aboveground.”
-- from Always Coming Home, by Ursula K. Le Guin.
Editor’s Note: Le Guin’s novel about the Kesh people, besides telling a fascinating story, offers many insights into the meaning of community and its physical form.





