Threads of Memory, Meaning, and Resistance: A Personal Reflection

In Blood of the Old Kings, by Sung-Il Kim, Arienne can’t risk lighting a fire. She is determined not to be the kind of person that would trade freedom for a bit of comfort. Eldred asks her what she plans to do now. Arienne replies that she will hide inside the chamber until the morning.

Cain finds himself surrounded by a sea of fire. He avoids the fire as best he can. Underneath the Senate, there are apparently 327 Power generators linked together to form a circuit.

I met with the President of the WSLC of Utah over dinner. She presented me with a beautiful potted Peace Lily to commemorate my mother and remember the peaceful moments I had with her. The Peace Lily now lives near the Christmas cactus that I moved to the perennial Christmas Village in the middle of my living room. For whatever reason, the cactus appears to be happy, spreading and blooming. It could be related to the arctic cold front that descended upon Utah this last week.

Steven J. Ross, Charles R. Gallagher, Bradley W. Hart, and Nancy Beck Young were not only friends to Rachel Maddow's book Prequel, by Rachel Maddow, but were friends to the podcast that got Maddow going on the topic of the rise of fascism (and the fight against it) in pre-World War II America. Spare and sometimes harder to to find were the academic sources and biographies, but Maddow found some great ones that were indispensable to work with.

In the book, George Deatherage exclaims to a small, rabid audience of Americans that the swastika “brought Germany out of the depths of despair,” and that it would do the same for the United States. In the late 1930s simmering feelings about the Nazis then in charge of the German Embassy were still only at a low boil in the U.S. In November 1938 teenager Herschel Grynszpan, despondent over the treatment of Czechoslovakian Jews, walked into the German Embassy in Paris, and shot and killed the third secretary.

While I don’t condone violence, statistically the more people art hurt and have their livelihood taken, the more likely more of them will be the type of people who respond to those kinds of situations by resorting to violence. Undoubtedly, as a result of the actions by the U.S. President and legislative bodies, we are going to see more violence. This is not something I want to see, but it maybe inevitable if we continue along the current course. It would nothing short of a miracle if we don't see and increase in violence.

Public uprisings are almost always met by authoritarians with the use of state violence, and in fact they count on violence among protestors to leverage their police powers. For the U.S. President, that means deploying military into our towns and cities. He fired the Joint Chiefs of Staff and installed his own cronies, because he doesn’t want the military to refuse his orders based on conscientious objection. Our only hope is that they do refuse to enforce unconscionable laws, and not simply be the puppets of a mad dictator. At some point, someone has to stand up for democracy and madness before blood is spilled and the death toll rises in this country.

At church Sunday, the topic was on absurdism and the meaning of life. Readings were from The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and Man’s Search for Meaning. I have read both of those books and they are timeless in their lessons. In Hitchhiker’s Guide, the meaning of life has an answer, but no question. In reality the only moment we are certain about is the here and now.

In Search for Meaning, Viktor Frankl’s notes on finding transcendental meaning are tested in the Nazi concentration camps, where he was a prisoner. Meaning is distinct and individual for each person. It is what we live for and what keeps us alive. Our purpose today may not be the same as the purpose of yesterday, and may change tomorrow.

Our purpose can be as simple as simply surviving to be reunited with one’s family, or to see justice restored. Our purpose can be as simple as a guide to working toward our own values while we are still here. Frankl in essence turns Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs on its heed. The need for self-esteem can quite often supersede the need for survival.

In Prequel, Rachel Maddow describes how John F. Cassidy received the full glow of the spotlight the day after his arrest on the second Saturday of 1940. He told journalists that it was a lot of nonsense when the FBI used a motorcade to bring him and his fellow defendants to court under armed guard. The brief bios the lawmen passed out to the media of the alleged criminals included a chauffer, a tailor, a postal telegraph clerk, two Brooklyn Edison clerks (including Cassidy), a telephone lineman, a dogsbody for a local local department store, a dogsbody for a local hotel, a baker, a high school honor student, an elevator mechanic, and a washing machine salesman.

In Orbital, by Samantha Harvey, Roman wakes early to look out the lab window to watch Central and East Africa to become suddenly bright and hot. The moon is seen several times a day by the crew and in strange distortion. He reminds himself every morning from the satellite that it is the morning of a new day.

My sister gave me a beautiful heart-shaped pendant containing my mother's ashes. I wear it just below the multi-beaded choker necklace my mother gave me. When I took the pendant to Jared's to have in engraved with my mother's initials, they politely declined, stating that the engraving machine sometimes destroys the jewelry, and they preferred not to risk the loss of the ashes.

Instead, I am having them engrave a companion piece to be added to the same chain using jump hoops. The piece is a couple's heart that will have the birthstones of my mother and me, and our first names engraved side-by-side. When the locket is passed down, it will also pass down my mother's name with my love for Mom.