Threads of Memory, Struggle, and Resilience: A Journey Through Literature, Loss, and Activism

In City of Illusions, by Ursula K. LeGuin, the days for Falk seem all the same. The road ends at a ruin. Whatever the half-mile square level glass field he finds nearby was, it was a greater work than the Shing permitted men to make.

The north wind blows unbearably bitter, forcing Falk to pick his way south by west. Coming across what must be a tributary of the Inland River, he follows it west by south through the rolling land of woods. A wild hen he shoots cries in a piercing voice, “Take—life—take—life,” before he wrings its neck.

After Falk is captured by a wild herd society, his friend tells him they should be ready to run away if the chance comes up. Falk sits listening to the noises in the camp. Even though he is now a blind stranger, he is considered a Hunter. The tribe of wild herdsmen he finds himself among practices a monotheistic religion that involves mutilation, castration, and human sacrifice.

Estrel and Falk come a long way to see the city. Riding on toward the city, Falk feels his heart beat hard.

Donald Trump wants to withhold FEMA funds from California. Republican leadership believes he is only blustering. It is unrealistic to vote for someone believing that are only being bombastic and not going to at least try to implement potentially harmful policies. Trump has proven that he will try to do what he has promised, even if he has to bully others into doing so. The only thing that stopped his harmful policies in the past was organizations like the ACLU and a Supreme Court that saw the injustice in his policies. The makeup of the US Supreme Court has changed radically right, and the danger is even greater that they will not be a check on injustices created by the president. Over the last four years, Trump has learned how to consolidate power. Friends don’t let friends vote for bombastic bullies believing they are harmless. Damage can occur.

On the economic front, the economy had been recovering, prices somewhat stabilized, and wages higher than they once have been. We are on the front end of wave of using generative AI to simplify software development making more user-friendly agent interfaces. I have the honor of being selected by my company to help lead the effort. The prompts and agents have to be carefully crafted in a way to provide to assist a customer agent, providing accurate information without hallucination. It is fun to finally be studying the technology behind the deep learning of modern neural networks, and how to engineer dialogues. It’s a linguistic programmer’s dream.

We had a record turnouts at Queer Coffee, with fifteen people in attendance in January and twenty-eight people in February. The first step to building grassroots power is building community. One of the founder’s of Utah’s Gay and Lesbian Utah Democratic Caucus, the precursor to the Utah Stonewall Dems, has also started attending. We had people new to politics, a Utah house representative, and Chelsie Acosta, whose NEA seminar has gone viral to national media outlets. Chelsie shared how the ACLU was born ready to defend our rights, and that we need to support immigrant youth and children in the classroom regardless of their immigration status. I completely agree on both accounts. These are the kinds of fights the ACLU was made for.

In Remarkably Bright Creatures, by Shelby Van Pelt, another empty space is brought to the table of the Knit-Wits every few years. The yellow jeweled barrette at Mary Ann Minetti’s temple is matched by the crocheted yellow teapot cozy swaddling the teapot she is lowers to the table. Janice Kim’s round spectacles are fogged by a swirl of oolong steam.

Later on, Tova pokes her head through the door of Terry’s office to say hello. The same sort of white takeout carton that lured the octopus from his enclosure that night sits atop a pile of papers. Tova inclines her head to Terry as they exchange greetings.

At home, Tova notes that she must send Barbara a thank-you note for the potato casserole. Tova has the steaming dish halfway out of the oven, when something inside her pocket zaps her.

Life is finally going Cameron’s way. A girl like Avery has never caught his attention before and he’s about to come face-to-face with his father.

The memory of the afternoon three years ago when the Knit-Wits learned Mary Ann Minetti’s granddaughter had gotten pregnant slams into Tova’s memory as if it was yesterday. Eighteen-year-old Tatum’s particularly difficult choice had been debated by the group.

On the dock under the silver moon, the water sparkles back. Tova will not be moving to Charter Village. She tells herself and the moon that she will not be gone.

In More Stars than Grains of Sand, Al Forsyth considers whether we humans are exceptional in terms of genetic makeup, neural networks or our intelligence. Grape plants and water fleas have more genes that humans. An E. Coli bacterium has 4,149 genes; a fruit fly, 14,899; a chicken, 16,736; a grape plant, 30,434; and a Daphnea water flea barely visible to the naked eye, 31,000.

More chromosomes can be found in a species of butterfly than in a human. There are 46 chromosomes in each human cell, 6 in a Zika mosquito, 12 in a slime mold, 44 in a dolphin, 48 in a chimpanzee, 60 in a goat, 78 in a dog, 82 in a great white shark, 104 in a carp, and 268 in an Agrodaietus butterfly.

Humans have the most neurons pound for pound. Cats have 70 million neurons; octopi, 500 million; brown rats, 200 million, cockroaches, 1 million, ants, 250,000; jellyfish, 5,600; and sponges, none. Each human neuron measures between 0.005 to 0.1 mm wide and a fraction of an inch to several feet long.

Which animals will mostly adapt to whatever causes our demise? Rats would ideally be suited to replace us. Super-adapters include cockroaches, crows, snakes, and rats.

In The Nature of the Beast, by Louise Penny, Isabelle Lacoste asks Armand Gamache about his career prospects, and puts her apple cider on the table staring at him. He responds that he’s not going to answer her question.

Laurent’s parents are guided to Laurent’s body by the glint of the sun on the polished handlebars of his bicycle. The wail alerts other searchers from villages all over the Townships. Armand and Reine Marie stop urging the dog Henri deeper into the brambles and burrs.

The LePages’ truck was parked on the road by the Bistro. Gamache promises to tell them everything. Evie asks what Laurent’s stick was doing inside the cave.

Rosenblat tells those around him that some theories about Project Babylon are more outlandish than others. No one looks at Beauvoir, struggling to keep his mouth shut. Rosenblat mentions that Gerald Bull, who built the supergun, was the answer to a prayer, perhaps by the Israelis to fight Iraq.

Michael Rosenblatt looks up from his French toast. The French toast, sausages and maple syrup almost certainly made from the tree he can see out the window is a revelation. The gun he’d seen when he crawled on his hands and knees through a tiny hole was even more of a revelation.

Brian is at a loss of words when he tries to explain what he saw to Lacoste. After some silence, she asks him what he saw. He remembers thinking he was about to pass out, and is at a loss of words again. Then he stops and just stares out the window.

In Howl’s Moving Castle, by Diana Wynne Jones, Sophie’s stepmother notes that at the current rate of business they might have managed. The week before May Day, someone comes in asking for a hat with mushroom pleats. Sophie think she would find time to visit her sister Lettie.

Sophie wakes with sharp cracks from all over her body, and exclaims about taking revenge on the Witch of the Waste. Looking out the window, she catches a glimmer of the sea.

The next morning, Howl tells Calcifer that he had thought Sophie had destroyed him. Calcifer had never taken the castle that fast before. Howl picks up his guitar and opens the door with the knob green part down.

Later, on her way back to the moving castle in a royal coach ordered by the King, Sophie tells Princess Valeria that she won’t let the witch hurt her. When she arrives, Michael tells her that Howl is terribly upset.

A dog-man that comes to stay with them let’s Michael pat him and rub his ears. Michael mentions that he always wanted a dog. The dog doesn’t object when Howl fetches a hand out of his coverlet and also pats him.

Rolling waves bring monsters out of the water in pairs. Sophie asks what’s going on. Michael says that Howl and the Witch are using illusions to try to fool each other into chasing the wrong one.

In Castle in the Air, a stranger corrects Abdullah, and says he is selling him his carpet, not trading. Abdullah insists that “low and squalid establishment” might provide what the stranger seeks. The stranger insinuates to Abdullah if the smell of octopus cooked by his neighbor might be infused in Abdullah’s wares.

After the carpet transports Abdullah back from Princess Flower-in-the-Night, he carefully ties the carpet around the roof pole and goes out into the Bazaar. He instructs an artist to create drawings of every kind of man there is. The thought that the Flower-in-the-Night had never seen the everyday sight of the teeming, rushing crowds almost brings tears to his eyes.

When Hakim shows up, Abdullah shouts wearily at him, asking him what he wants. Hakim tells Abdullah he urgently needs to speak with him. In response, Abdullah invites him in.

After Abdullah is put in a deep and smelly dungeon, the only light coming through the tiny grating high in the ceiling probably emanated for a distant window in the floor above. Sure that golden light catching the wings circling a spire was the last beauty he would ever see, he stared backward as the soldiers had dragged him inside. When he notices how cramped he is in his chains, he shifts and clanks about on the cold floor.

Once escaping the dungeon and chasing after a soldier that he is sure is about to be robbed and feeling the blisters in his feet, Abdullah tries to limp faster. An irritable blue wisp coming out of the bottle bouncing at his waist complains about the bouncing. Abdulla tells the wisp that the man the wisp chose to help him needs his help instead.

When Abdullah asks the genie to protect the soldier and himself from people on horseback seeking them, he knows something strange has happened to him. He crawls around bluebell clumps, more troubled than ever after catching a fly with his tongue until he comes across another like himself.

Once restored to human, Abdullah is determined not to give the soldier an opening. The soldier invites Abdullah to see how charmingly Whippersnapper is playing with the buckles on his pack. Abdullah retorts that it charms him less than that the lump on the skyline may be Kingsbury.

In House of Many Ways, the bath and the taps are strange. Charmain wonders how she could squeeze a laundry bag dry after placing it in the bath. Under the window in the nearby bedroom two more sacks are stuffed full of laundry.

Peter asks Charmain how long she has been in her great-uncle’s house. Charmain feels like its been weeks. Peter tells her it looks as if she has been there that long.

The next morning Charmain carries her breakfast tray around the corner of the house to look for a garden table and bench she had seen out of the study window. She ponders telling here Great-Uncle William when he returns that the only thing missing from the perfect breakfast was a chocolate croissant. Charmain’s pleasure at stopping the kobold from chopping the hydrangea bushes down is destroyed when Peter sticks his head out the study window.

Twinkle tells Sophie she needs him. Sophie asks him if he has lisp, to which he lisp-replies, that yes, he does.

Back at Great-Uncle William’s house, it appears the breakfast spell only works properly in the morning. The trays only have rolls, honey, and orange juice on them. Peter asks if Waif will eat the lamb chop.

We are fighting many anti-trans bills at the Utah State Legislature. I was already following four harmful bills, when two more bills by the same representative got numbered and assigned to the House Rules Committee. The first bill I heard about seeks to create a Veteran Women’s Day, which on its surface is laudable. The bill sponsor went on to restrict it to “biological women,” which is incredibly devastating in its insincerity. As a transgender woman veteran who served honorably, I want to confront the sponsor and ask her, “What is the harm in honoring all veteran women?” I can’t help but feel this sponsor is just piling on the anti-trans bandwagon. However, in committee hearings, it is considered bad form to assume the intent of someone who has made a motion. We can only air our concerns and get her to reveal the reasoning behind her bias.

The second bill is even worse. In this bill by the same sponsor, all governmental entities would be prohibited from using public funds directly or indirectly to pay for gender confirming medical care. This would mean that organizations like Salt Lake County and Midvale City would no longer be able to provide comprehensive medical service insurance coverage to their transgender employees. This means that chronic depression and chronic anxiety in trans people would wind up going untreated unless they paid for it completely out of pocket, with no deductions applied to their insurance. The legislators complain about lack of local control, and then they turn around and deny it themselves. Smell the hypocrisy, anyone?

The civil rights movement at times like this feels like a rushing tide trying to sweep us away. In moments like this we need to look to the generations that have gone before us facing similar tides, and consider the metaphor of a boulder in a ravine. It’s as if a tremendous snow melt is racing down the stream, burying and attempting to hide everything in its path. By continuing to stand firm and speak to power, we are the boulder. Eventually, the tide will run out, and then turn, and we will still be there.

It’s incredibly important to people who are new to the movement to see us standing up to injustice, that we care, and that we fight for our rights and theirs. There will come a time when they are ready to join the fight, and so on for generation to generation. My father once told me, “Every generation has to fight for our rights.” We cannot afford to be silent. Silence is complicity, and through complicity fascism will when. It may be exhausting, but standing firm is our responsibility to those we love and to those who follow.

Mom had a stroke Thursday morning. It was only the evening before when she had called insisting on doing a video call. She was wearing a green top, and I was wearing a red one. She noted the colors of what we we were wearing. As I was waiting for people to show up for the game I was going to lead, she noted the soft fluorescent light, thinking it was a beautiful picture. I moved the camera around so she could see some of the cameras around the room. We chatted briefly, and then she said she she had to go. That may be the last conversation we ever had. Friday, she was in the ICU of the hospital, having come off the ventilator, but having trouble swallowing. She didn’t recognize her name when asked, and her whole left side was paralyzed, making it more difficult to walk. The doctors noticed there was no blood thinners in her blood stream. I think she misunderstood the doctors instructions, that we they told her she must take the blood thinners with the cancer medication, that she heard that she mustn’t take the blood thinners.

From her prior conversations, I know that Mom had pondered having a DNR, and that she had written DNR on the nursing chart. My sister and I would have no choice but to honor the DNR when it came to it. My mother was my best friend for much of my life, and it is so hard to see her go.

I booked a flight to go see her, and stay in her room for three nights. I understood that she would likely not remember me as she didn't even recall who she was, and that she may not able to speak. She was there from the beginning of my life, and I wanted to be there for her for this time in her life.

Sadly, she died around 3:30 in the morning Texas time. I woke to a message from my sister to call her back. I thought I had myself together, and then the grief would just hit me hard. For a good portion of my life as a only child, my mother was my best friend. We did everything together. I was always in the room with her. I never wanted to let her go, even though that is too much to ask. I contacted the airlines to have my flight changed for the weekend of the memorial, and am taking the next couple of days off from work, since I am emotionally shattered. Sometimes the only thing we can do is pick up the pieces of our life, honor and cherish our memories, and carry them into the future. My sister asked if I wanted a locket with my mother's ashes, and I said, of course. I also want a photo of her to hang on my wall. I also need to do the same for my beloved Danilynn who passed away two years ago, and if I can find a copy somewhere, my Dad, too.