Tell Me a Story

The Utah Democratic Party Central Committee had their quarterly meeting in Delta, Utah. I stayed home, reading The Truths We Hold, by Kamala Harris, for inspiration, and then attended the meeting remotely. I spent a couple of evenings calling delegates of the Salt Lake County Central Committee. I’m definitely finding support. One person I spoke with talked about the need to work with the caucuses when events came up, like Black History Month, and Hispanic Heritage Month.

I am a US Navy veteran and a principal software engineer with a Master's Degree in Computer Science and Engineering. I grew up as a middle-class air force dependent, struggling with a way to pay for college, ultimately paid for by the Hazelwood Act and the GI Bill.  I have been an engaged community activist ever since I moved to Utah fourteen years ago on the heels of the financial collapse of 2009. I am a parent of two children, a step-parent of four children, and a step grandmother to four grandkids. I am also a trans woman and a widow. My wife was a disabled truck driver, and I own a home in West Valley City. Recently, I’ve discovered I love kayaking.

I am the Vice Chair of the Utah Stonewall Dems, the Vice President of the ACLU of Utah, the Chair of the Transgender Inclusion Project, and a member of the National Association of Parliamentarians, as well as a house district chair. I was a national delegate to the Democratic National Convention of 2016, where I helped introduce planks to the platform with regards to healthcare and nondiscrimination. I have served as the President of SVUUS, the Chair of the Community Council of Midvale, and on the Executive Committee for the Women’s State Legislative Council. I have run for office at both the legislative and city levels, and consistently draw about 42% of the vote when running for city positions.

I believe everyone's voice needs to be heard, and that everyone should be able to see someone like them in successful leadership roles. The Second Vice Chair works with the issue and Identity caucuses, and chairs the Platform Committee. Both areas are vital to me—and interconnected. The caucuses bring the power to build community support and to be a voice to our elected leaders. Each caucus brings a vision of what we need for a more just society and a better world. When we craft the platform, it should always incorporate the vision of these caucuses in a way that helps identify who we are and what we truly represent.

I listened to Laverne Cox on the LPAC for Harris call encouraging each of us to make sure that five of our friends were registered to vote. She also called out the hateful term “gender ideology,” which is designed to promote the denial of gender affirming care for all people. It is a part of the dehumanization that endemic is to setting up an authoritarian regime. This goes against all our values that we hold dear, most essentially liberty.

During the board meeting of the Women’s State Legislative Council, a committee chair continued to question why the committee met without her, wanting to know who called it. Robert’s Rules of Order allows to members of a committee to call a meeting when the chair cannot or will not to address business, which was the case. Another member called for meetings to be held during a regular day and time, and when the president told her motion was out of order, she announced that she was quitting the organization and left the room. The other member followed briefly, most likely to console her.

During the membership meeting, Senator Heidi Balderee presented bills she was working on, including allowing active duty members to vest their 401k, requiring taxing entities to have a quorum in truth and taxation hearings, exempting high school seniors from income tax from entrepreneurial activities, a squatter’s bill protecting homeowners, and requiring radon transparency for home buyers. I suggested that she also include radon transparency for renters.

Representative Angela Romero, the House Minority Leader, stated that she is working on a bill to ban the use of polygraphs for sexual assault victims. They are not admissible in court and have been proven to be not accurate with trauma victims. In one case, a district attorney decided not to prosecute because the victim failed the polygraph. The person who assaulted her went on to harm four or five others. Banning the use of polygraphs also opens the door to more federal funding.

Representative Romero is also running a bill to extend the Murdered and Missing Indigenous Task Force by three years. What many people don’t realize is that the majority of the indigenous population lives in urban areas.

Representative Tim Jimenez spoke on a bill that he passed in the last session that would require teachers to have comprehensive training to be allowed to conceal carry on campus.

Senator Luz Escamilla shared that Utah is the fifth in the nation of childcare deserts. Some areas of the state only have a single provider. Women’s careers are impacted due the inability to afford daycare while they work. Because they can’t work a normal 9 to 5, they have to take nonprofessional and service jobs to bring in a necessary second income, causing them to fall behind in their chosen profession, with increasing income disparity as a result. Senator Escamilla spoke of a potential public/private partnership to use vacant government-owned buildings to help subsidize the costs of child care. We need comprehensive early childhood education, and to prioritize the investment in children from conception on. One of the roles of government should be to provide journey for the well-being of children and families.

In our monthly meeting for the Utah Stonewall Dems, we discussed scheduling events, including our holiday party, the Queer Coffees, and what day to host a Day of Action with Utah House of Representatives Candidate Rosalba Dominguez. We also talked about the various national organizing calls we attended, and the phone banking we are doing.

In music, harmony is a composition of distinct tones and melodies that come together to create something that is a unique blend that allows for the interweaving to produce a synergistic non-discordant effect. Applying it to society, it recognizes that we each have a story, and that we must listen to the other stories around us in order to weave our stories together in a way that is greater than the sum of our parts, and yet recognizes and uplifts one another. Harmony relies on celebrating uniqueness and diversity. That means each individual will be subtly changed in a way that values both their lived experiences and those around them.

The topic in church was also on stories, on the collective wisdom that we can tap into. Reading can be treated much like yoga. It’s a process of first preparing the body by stretching, relaxing as you move into a pose (or as near as you can get), breathing through the the stretch, doing a few cooldown stretches, and then a final relaxation. In a similar vein, reading for knowledge, wisdom or enjoyment requires that we find the right position and prepare our place, stretching our mind as we read, and then relax afterward with gratitude to the authors who have chosen to share their material. In this way, we can also honor ways in which we change and internalize our chosen material.

Medicine stories describe basic human activity, and how we understand ourselves. Stories are never neutral. Big stories in culture shape how we experience our life stories. Unitarian Universalism draws on indigenous Stories, Greek stories, and Christian Stories, just to name a few. Stories change based on the language with which we tell them.

We need to ask ourselves, "What stories are we sharing with each other?" Stories that we push away are some of the most valuable. Telling dangerous stories is pathway to liberation. Stories, like Pandora's box, can never really be put back in the jar once let out. Pestilence and disease in a story are only the beginning. In the best stories, hope still remains. What results from bringing together stories is an increasingly open mind and the potential for new stories.

The Greek story of Pandora brings hope. In indigenous tales, Coyote’s story brings laughter. In Proverbs, the feminine spirit Sophia brings Wisdom. When we bring these stories together, new ideas like joy, compassion, courage resilience, and grit spring from them. Hope is the story that remained in the bottom of the jar, and hope has remained there from the beginning.

In The Left Hand of Darkness, by Ursula K. Le Guin. Estraven is exiled by the king for treason. The order forbidding harboring, or providing support to Estraven is posted on several gates and road posts. Genly enters the king’s antechamber to speak with the king concerning the exile.

Labels as well as names are required to be registered in Orgoreyn. Yegey, whom Estraven is dependent on, and Obsle, whom Estraven had previously known as the head of the Orgota Naval Trading Mission, are two of the thirty-three who rule Orgoreyn. Obsle questions Estraven why he did what he did in Sassinoth.

Genly Ai notes that the people of Ehrenrang listened when he told them about himself and his culture, but none would bring themselves to ask enough general questions to form any adequate pictures of Terran or Ekumenical society. On the other hand, the people of Karhide flooded Genly with questions, including about the nature of the Ekumen. He gently answers their question, including the fact that as an economic entity it looks after interworld communication, balancing the trade of eighty-three worlds.

Estraven later has to rescue Genly, and fears that Genly’s mind has been changed, that he has been left imbecile or insane. When they wake up, they notice Genly watching them, who then weakly asks their name, as if Genly can't believe Estraven is there.

Once returning to civilization, and after sending a signal to the satellite orbiting the planet, Genly accepts with a quiet heart that he doesn’t know if the message was received and relayed, or if he had done right to send it. Considering the extraordinary and unfailing kindness of where he now is, he falls asleep, knowing that he had landed in the right country in the first place. The next morning on the road, he notices Estraven in the distance skiing with a flying gait toward him.

In The Truths We Hold, by Kamala Harris, the author shares family lore about how her mother worked right up to delivery in both her and her sister’s case. As a little girl, when Kamala ran for all she was worth, she felt that she could do anything. In the evenings, she would fall asleep to the music of Thelonius Monk, John Coltrane, or Miles Davis.

Kamala talks about an instance in which she needed to create a map for a hit-and-run case she tried in order to show the driver’s path. After trying some self-deprecating humor in front of the jury to acknowledge some gaffes she had made, Judge Horner took her aside and instructed her to never do that again, and to “figure it out.” Those words stuck with Kamala along with many other lessons she has learned along the way.

Kamala also writes about someone with whom she had spoken with years before becoming attorney general, and who joined her in that office. Venus turned out to be an incredible member of her team. They have continued speaking with one another long after their time in the attorney general’s office together.

In More Stars Than Grains of Sand, Al Forsyth notes that as human beings we have very little genetic variability. There hasn’t been enough time or people to provide a great source of variability. We each have within us about a hundred random genetic mutations that cannot be attributed to our parents. 

I tried tying my new kayak to my car, but discovered that the current brackets just won’t work. They were not as universal as promised and not really designed to work on horizontal racks, but I had tried anyway. So I took them off and ordered brackets that are designed to work with horizontal racks.

We got up to Little Dell Reservoir, having exchanged my hard-shell single kayak for my friend's inflatable. We got up there and then realized we were missing the pump for the inflatable. Instead of having one of the three of us sit it out while the others kayaked, we opted for a hike instead. We did have a bit of a challenge finding the way back, but after sufficient doubling back, we found switchbacks leading back to the car.

Stories are our roadmaps. Whether we create them or share them or both, they tie us together in a way that lead to more insight, more hope, and more resilience. At a certain stage, a child will often be hear to say, "Tell me a story." Let's keep them coming.