NAKEDJEN

Tag: Utah

  • Utah Is on Fire and the Fireworks Are in Aisle Nine

    Utah Is on Fire and the Fireworks Are in Aisle Nine

    I have just come home to Salt Lake City and Utah is on fire, and I do not mean this poetically, although honestly, Utah does enjoy making everything biblical and dramatic and vaguely Old Testament in July, so here we are, once again, surrounded by dry grass, hot wind, evacuation alerts, smoke maps, firefighters working themselves into ash-covered saints, dogs hiding under beds, veterans and refugees and babies and every person with a nervous system bracing for the nightly neighbourhood reenactment of “freedom,” while fireworks are stacked for sale in the aisles of the grocery store as if this is perfectly normal, as if this is not the sort of cognitive dissonance that should make all of us stop next to the ice machine and the rotisserie chickens and the family-size tortilla chips and say, wait, hold on, are we really doing this right now?

    Before anyone starts clutching their sparklers and typing with their thumbs full of liberty, I know what month it is, I know where I live, I know Utah in July is not so much a month as a prolonged ignition ceremony with snack breaks, I know we begin with the 4th of July and then we just keep right on going until the 24th when the pioneers allegedly rolled into this valley, wiped the dust out of their eyes, looked around at all this dry, flammable majesty and said, “This is the place,” which apparently, generations later, has come to mean this is the place where we spend most of July scaring the bejezzus out of every dog, every sweet person with PTSD, every baby trying to sleep, every elder trying to remember what quiet feels like, and every canyon full of sweetgrass waiting for one yahoo with a lighter and a pocketful of constitutional fireworks to become the plot twist nobody needed.

    I am not anti-fire.

    Please.

    Let us not be ridiculous.

    I am a Burner, for fuck’s sake, a woman who has spent a good portion of her adult life hauling water and snacks and weird forms of devotion across a dry lake bed where people build impossible things out of dust and scaffolding and crazy grit and love, then set them on fire under the supervision of people who understand wind, perimeter, safety, ritual, consequence, and the very important difference between sacred flame and Chad from down the street launching aerials into a neighborhood full of juniper while declaring himself a patriot.

    I love fire.

    I love the bloom of fireworks in a night sky when they are handled by professionals who know what they are doing and have permits and water trucks and actual plans that do not begin with “hold my beer” and end with the county sheriff asking everyone to evacuate.

    I love spectacle.

    I love celebration.

    I love light.

    I love the crack and shimmer and gasp of it, the moment when a whole crowd looks up together and forgets for three seconds how divided and tired and mean we have all become.

    What I do not love is carelessness dressed up as tradition.

    What I do not love is selling explosives in grocery store aisles while Utah is literally burning in every direction, while we are watching acres disappear, while animals are running, while people are packing medication and photographs and dog food into cars just in case, while firefighters are out there trying to convince the flames not to become weather, while smoke sits in the valley like an unwanted relative who refuses to leave and makes everyone’s lungs feel personally insulted.

    I do not love the part where we ask for help with one hand and sell the problem with the other.

    FEMA has authorized federal funds to help fight the Iron Fire, which is a sentence I find almost darkly comic in this particular American moment, since depending on which political carnival ride you happen to be strapped into, FEMA is either a vital public agency or a government bogeyman hiding under the bed with your tax dollars, but apparently when the hills are on fire we all remember very quickly that mutual aid is not communism, it is what keeps the flames from eating the next ridge.

    And still, here we are, Utah, with the fires burning and the air turning into a throat lozenge from hell, selling fireworks next to the groceries, smiling brightly through the smoke, acting as if we can call something a national emergency and then we spin around and hand out spark boxes with patriotic branding and a coupon for more for the arrival of all those pioneers.

    I do not think we get to have it both ways.

    I really don’t.

    I do not think we get to say we love this place, we love these mountains, we love these canyons, we love this big dry weird holy bowl of a valley, we love our families, we love our neighbors, we love our firefighters, we love our dogs, we love our veterans, we love our freedom, we love our pioneers, we love our heritage, we love our God, we love our country, and then spend the hottest, driest, most flammable weeks of the year treating the entire state as if it is a disposable party favour wrapped in red, white, and boom.

    I know fireworks are legal.

    So are many dumb things.

    Legal is not the same as wise.

    Legal is not the same as kind.

    Legal is not the same as neighbourly.

    Legal is not the same as, perhaps we should not tempt the desert into becoming a funeral pyre just so Kyle can light the “Mega Patriot Screaming Eagle Thunder Dragon 5000” in the cul-de-sac while everyone’s Labrador trembles behind the washing machine.

    This is the part where someone will tell me I am trying to ruin everyone’s fun, which is hilarious, truly, since I am a woman who believes very deeply in fun, possibly too deeply, a woman who has built entire temporary civilizations around coffee, glitter, grilled cheese, electrolytes, radical hospitality, art, dust, nakedness, body joy, and the spiritual necessity of occasionally doing something weird under the stars, but I also believe fun has to survive contact with the actual world, and the actual world right now is hot and dry and on fire and full of living creatures who did not volunteer to become collateral damage in Utah’s annual month-long pyrotechnic identity crisis.

    I am asking for restraint.

    Not forever.

    Not joylessness.

    Not a statewide ban on wonder.

    Just the tiniest little teaspoon of common sense stirred into the Pioneer Day punch bowl.

    Maybe this year, while the fire crews are out there doing the kind of work most of us cannot even imagine, while families are refreshing containment maps, while the air smells wrong, while the mountains stand there looking dry and tired and entirely too ready to go up if we breathe on them funny, maybe we could decide that freedom also includes the freedom not to light shit on fire.

    Maybe we could decide that being a good neighbour matters more than making the sky explode from your driveway.

    Maybe we could decide that dogs and babies and veterans and refugees and exhausted people and traumatized people and firefighters and wildlife and lungs and canyons and whole communities deserve one July where we do not confuse noise with patriotism and sparks with devotion.

    Maybe we could put the fireworks back on the shelf and go eat pie.

    Maybe we could stand outside and look at the mountains, while we still have mountains to look at, and remember that they are already dramatic enough.

    Maybe we could wave a flag without setting the hillside on fire.

    Maybe we could let July be July without turning every night into a tiny war.

    Maybe we could be brave enough, just this once, to celebrate by not making anything worse.

    I know.

    Radical.

    Possibly un-Utahn.

    Someone alert the Governor.

    But here I am, home again, looking at fireworks for sale in the grocery store while the state burns around us, and all I can think is that irony has finally put on boots, walked into the aisle, picked up a box of TNT Pop-Its, and asked all of us whether we have completely lost the plot.

    And honestly?

    I think the answer might be yes.

    But we could still choose differently.

    We could still choose the mountains.

    We could still choose the dogs.

    We could still choose the firefighters.

    We could still choose the air.

    We could still choose not to be the spark.

    Wouldn’t that be something?

  • A Warehouse Is For Freight, Not Families

    Yesterday I stood on the far west side of Salt Lake City, staring at a gigantic empty warehouse the Department of Homeland Security bought for $145 million, with plans to turn it into an ICE detention center. A warehouse. Near our airport. In our city. As though human beings are inventory. As though the right word is “facility” and not what it really is: a place built to disappear people behind walls and fluorescent lights.

    Let’s start there. Warehouses are for packages. Not for people.

    Salt Lake City’s mayor has already said what should be obvious to anyone with a pulse: mass detention inside a warehouse is inhumane, outside the city’s zoning allowances, and contrary to the values of Salt Lakers. She is right. Full stop.

    And the obscenity of the timing should make every Utahn furious. Homeland Security has somehow found $145 million to buy an empty building for detention expansion while the department’s own budget fight has left TSA officers working without pay. Tens of thousands of airport security officers have been showing up unpaid, absences have surged, and some airports have faced serious disruptions. So let me get this straight: there is money for cages, money for contracts, money for detention infrastructure, but not enough political courage to pay the people keeping airports running? That is not governance. That is moral failure with a spreadsheet.

    Utah should know better.

    This is a state with a living memory of Topaz, where Japanese Americans were incarcerated behind barbed wire in one of the worst civil-rights violations in this country’s history. They were never charged. Never convicted. Just removed, confined, and treated as a problem to be managed. If you think history repeats itself with the exact same haircut, you have not been paying attention. History comes back wearing a lanyard, holding a procurement document, calling the camp a warehouse conversion.

    And this land was not ours to begin with. The Salt Lake Valley has long been a gathering place for Indigenous peoples. This is the traditional and ancestral homeland of the Shoshone, Paiute, Goshute, and Ute Tribes. We are on borrowed land, whether or not that phrase makes people squirm in their expensive boots. The least we can do is refuse to add one more chapter of sanctioned cruelty to soil that has already held too much.

    Standing there yesterday, I realized something uncomfortable: outrage alone is no longer enough. We know how to chant. We know how to hold signs. We know how to post the photo and go home. But the image that stayed with me was not the rally as it was. It was what it could have been: a living human chain around that building. Bodies linked arm in arm. A fence made of conscience. A line that said, in the oldest language there is, No. Not here. Not in our name.

    I have done this before in other fights. I have put my body where my values were. I have stood in the road for old-growth forests. I have blocked entrances where animals were being tortured in the name of research. I have been arrested for refusing to move while weapons were being built. None of that came from some romance about confrontation. It came from understanding that sometimes the body is the last honest instrument left. Sometimes you do not merely raise your voice. Sometimes you physically interrupt the machinery.

    That does not mean performative menace. It does not mean trying to out-tough the state by dressing like a junior militia and smashing windows. A very small group at the protest seemed to think covered faces, body armor, graffiti, and property damage were the message. They were wrong. Utah will not be moved by cosplay intimidation. Broken glass does not build a broader coalition. It hands the story to the people who would much rather talk about vandalism than detention. I understand the rage. I do. But if your politics make you look like a mirror image of the force you claim to oppose, then you have already wandered off the path.

    What wins here is not theater. It is moral clarity.

    What wins here is grandmothers, veterans, students, clergy, tribal voices, teachers, artists, airport workers, neighbors, and yes, the loudmouth dog mamas too, showing up again and again with enough discipline to make the truth impossible to ignore. What wins here is refusing the lie that this is normal, or necessary, or inevitable. What wins here is making Utah look directly at what is being built and asking: Is this who we are now?

    I do not believe it is.

    I believe Utah can still choose decency over fear. I believe Salt Lake City can reject the idea that people should be warehoused three miles from an airport like delayed freight. I believe we can remember Topaz not as a museum field trip, but as a warning. I believe we can honor this land by refusing to make it host one more machine for disappearing human beings.

    Enough is enough.

    You can build a warehouse. You can hire guards. You can print forms and call it policy. But you cannot make a cage moral by giving it a budget line and a neutral-sounding name.

    Utah has seen this kind of shame before. We do not need a sequel.

  • 💜 Purple Alert: Why I Still Search for August

    💜 Purple Alert: Why I Still Search for August

    People keep asking me why I’m still searching for August.

    Here’s the truest answer I have:
    Because I can. And because I hope you would, too.

    Because if your heart beat just a little louder —
    if you heard a tremor in the universe,
    a missing pulse,
    a soft human who hasn’t come home —
    I like to believe you’d go looking.

    Even if you didn’t know him.
    Even if he was 29, grown, and complicated.
    Even if the world insists adulthood equals safety.
    (Trust me, it doesn’t.)

    Sometimes a brain goes haywire.
    Sometimes it lights itself on fire.
    Sometimes a person walks away naked into the snow
    and doesn’t even know they’re gone.

    I know this because once — I was the one who wandered.

    New Year’s Eve, 2008

    (which was technically still 2007 because time is a suggestion)

    I had just moved to Salt Lake City.
    A blizzard.
    No friends yet.
    Just two black labradors — Buddha and Stella —
    who carried my heart on eight paws like it was their holy job.

    I don’t remember the seizures.
    I only remember becoming conscious in the snow.
    Naked. Disoriented. Freezing. Alone.

    Not metaphorically.
    Actually and literally wandering the city,
    no memory of how I got there,
    no idea where “home” even was.

    I saw the glow of a Smith’s supermarket.
    Closed. Empty.
    But a payphone in the vestibule leaked just enough light
    to feel like a lifeline.

    I remembered one number.
    Collect.
    My mother.

    “Mom… I’m naked and cold and I don’t know where I am.”
    “Jennifer, you’re in Utah.”
    “Why would I do THAT?”

    She called emergency services from Maryland.
    She told them where to find her daughter
    wandering state-newborn and soaked in snow.
    They found me.
    They wrapped me in blankets.
    They got me home.

    And when we arrived?
    Every single light in my house was on.
    Front door wide open.
    Two dogs sitting guard — waiting.
    Holding vigil over whatever was left of me.

    If I hadn’t found that payphone,
    if I hadn’t seen those lights,
    if Buddha and Stella hadn’t anchored me to this world,
    if — if — if —

    I could have disappeared.
    Forever.
    Just like that.

    No alert. No network.
    No hey Utah, one of us is missing — go look.

    That is my WHY.

    That is why I search for August.
    Because someone should.
    Because his mother deserves not to wonder.
    Because he deserves to be alive and found if he wants to be.

    Because there is a world where that night was me
    and nobody knew to sound an alarm.

    Utah doesn’t have a PURPLE ALERT.

    But it should.
    Every state should.
    A Purple Alert for adults who wander,
    who are neurodivergent or vulnerable or lost in the fog of a burning brain.
    Not a punishment.
    Not a trap.
    Not a “gotcha.”

    Just a net.
    A community rally.
    A lifeline in the snow.

    It is not a miracle.
    But it could save one life.
    And that is enough.

    I have systems now.
    Layers.
    If I go missing again — alarms will go off.
    Texts will fly.
    People will look.

    Not everyone has that.

    August doesn’t have that.

    He is missing.
    Still.
    And I’m not ready to stop searching.

    If you’re reading this, you don’t have to know August to care.
    You just have to remember something simple:

    There was a night I could have been the one you were searching for.

    And every mother deserves to sleep knowing
    that if her child wanders naked into the snow —
    a city will rise like hands to catch them.

    💜 Utah deserves a PURPLE ALERT.
    💜 August deserves to be found.
    💜 And any one of us could be next.

    If this moved you — share it.
    Talk about Purple Alerts.
    Help me make noise.

    We’re still looking for August.
    Let’s not stop.