Cori Connors: January 2026

They're all gone now, that generation above me. My mother and all her siblings are Heaven-bound. I remain exposed like the fresh turned soil after spud harvest. We are the top layer now.

I loved my elders. My aunts and uncles on my mother's side had a major role in shaping who I am. All of them now reside in my memory. Photographs with black and white filagree borders romanticize the past. My muscle memory revives them when I look in the mirror, when I cook, when old songs bubble up in my head or a curse word slips through my lips. When the wind whispers through the willows on the fishing stream I hear their voices. I strike a match each night in my bathroom, one second after I switch off the light, and seek the vision of my mother at the campfire as the flame jumps to life and the scent of woodsmoke hits my suburban nostrils.

I wonder what my elders would think of the current state of affairs. They all lived through the trauma of a world war, a great depression, and another world war, one after the other. They learned things without studying them. Life infused knowledge into them. I hunger for their wisdom. What would you do about this mess we're in, Mom? What did you do?

It's mid-January now. The season for ice cutting. The grandfather I never knew owned the old Parrish Ice House in Blackfoot, Idaho. George Parrish and his kids, my uncles and some of their seven sisters, bundled in their woolen layers and made their way up the canyon to the frozen Snake River. With massive drills and saws they worked up the sweat of honest labor, removing one layer at a time as they cut and lifted heavy blocks of frozen river onto logs. The blocks of ice rolled onto wagons, and later flatbed trucks. Loaded up with the maximum amount their horses or horsepower could handle, they made their way down the canyon, rolling the ice blocks into the old wooden barn filled with sawdust. In those days, before houses had electricity, people kept their food fresh in ice boxes, later replaced by refrigerators. By the time I was old enough to understand, the ice house had become the stopping spot only for campers that still used ice boxes or people who needed a block of ice for their Coleman coolers. Some of my earliest memories of summer visits in Idaho are of napping in the cool sawdust of the ice house and chipping off bitesize pieces of refreshing ice with a wooden handled ice pick. We Parrish folk are ice people.

I suspect my elders are looking down from their Heaven perch and shaking their heads at the bad rap ice is getting these days. We currently have two major events taking place on US soil. One is a massive winter storm covering half of our nation, laying sheets of ice on roads that don't know how to deal with it, and feet of snow in places that do. Schools are closed. Police encourage people to stay home and hunker down.
The other is another ICE storm, one that has nothing to do with the weather, though the location in Minnesota involves salt-of-the-earth people who know how to deal with the ice God made. Authorities are encouraging hearty midwesterners to stay home and hunker down, as if ice could frighten a Minnesotan! Schools are closed. The stone cold issues they are dealing with are man-made, outsourced from what appears to be an insatiable team of power mongers housed in our nations capitol. ICE in its most coldhearted sense, is the acronym for Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Since President Trump took office a year ago, the number of ICE agents has jumped from 10,000 to 22,000, thanks largely to Department of Homeland Security's recruitment drive to sign up what they call "qualified patriotic Americans" from across the country. In their enthusiasm to clear what they call the swamp of immigrants in America, they have taken to killing American citizens, separating children from their parents, detaining people without due process guaranteed by the US constitution. It feels like WWII being revisited. Without getting into the polarized debate of whether or not protesters deserve to be killed, I want to make it clear to my grandchildren and anyone within hearing distance that I am not ok with this. This is not OK!

While I probably have some pretty hard headed vociferous right winged ancestors whose opinion might not align with mine, I think they might agree that our beloved ice has lost the respect it deserves. And they would know the way the blood feels when it boils under the heat of injustice. The fathers of my grandfathers were driven from their homes once upon a time, forced to find refuge in the valley of the Great Salt Lake. The grandfathers of my grandfathers took up arms against British forces in the American Revolution's quest for freedom from tyranny. They would not be ok with this.

What to do? I cannot take up arms. But I can lift my voice, and I can lift my pen. And so can you. Silence speaks louder than words when there is danger at hand. Today my kids and grandkids marched in the streets of SLC with thousands of protesters. It's something. We have to do something. My tender hearted Annie lifted her heart shaped sign with quivering lips. She has never liked confrontation. She is peace personified. But doing nothing... saying nothing hurt worse than stillness. So like Joshua who had to get his feet wet before the waters of the Jordan river would part, she stepped out. She represents all my kids. Sometimes the only way out is through.

Want to speak up? If you live in Utah, here's where you can send your voice. Maybe if enough of us step out, the ice will melt and the waters will part. But if not, I can keep my conscience clear because I refused to do nothing.

https://www.house.gov/representa.../find-your-representative

UTAH SENATORS:

Senator John Curtis

Contact Form: https://www.curtis.senate.gov/share-your-opinion/

502 Hart Senate Office Building

Washington DC 20510

(202) 224-5251

Salt Lake City, UT

125 S. State Street

Suite 8402

Salt Lake City, Utah 84138

801-524-4380