From Dusty Gulch Part One of the Honklanistan Series 
By Roderick (Whiskers) McNibble

Dusty Gulch has always prided itself on being hard to surprise.

It has survived droughts, dubious leadership initiatives, interpretive art installations, and at least three “temporary” committees that never went away. Yet even by local standards, the recent arrival of Honklans from the desert realm of Hoklanistan has been… noticeable.

The Honklans first appeared following the invitation of Prentis Penjani, who described the initial Pigoose hybrid as “a cultural ambassador with excellent posture.” At the time, few suspected that one bird would soon become many.

When the bonds that hold us together are tested, the cost is often borne in the very divisions we seek to overcome.

I recently watched a film called United, based on the true and tragic story of the Manchester United team lost in the Munich air disaster of 1958. It is a story many people think they know - young men, enormous promise, sudden catastrophe -  but what struck me was not the crash itself. It was what followed.

In the aftermath of tragedy, Manchester United rebuilt not through optimism, but through unity of purpose. Today, in a world where everything has become political and division is quietly encouraged, that lesson feels more confronting than ever. This New Year, the question is not whether we agree -  but whether we are still willing to stand together.

Those who survived did not rebuild because they were cheerful, or optimistic, or untouched by grief. They rebuilt because they understood something that seems almost foreign to us now: that when loss comes -  and it always does - the only way forward is together.

That is what makes the film so confronting today.

Because we are not united.

Leonard Cohen once said, “I’ve seen the future, brother: it is murder.”

For a long time, we treated that as poetry. Or atmosphere. Or a warning meant for some other century.

But Cohen was never vague about the future. He didn’t predict gadgets or machines. He predicted the erosion of the soul. He was writing about what happens when efficiency outruns wisdom, when intimacy is replaced by management, when systems become more important than people.

What we are building now would not have surprised him. AI.

Artificial intelligence did not arrive as a conqueror. It arrived as a helper. It learned our language, anticipated our needs, smoothed friction, saved time. It offered answers before we had finished asking the question.

That is how power has always entered the room.

When I was a young girl, I wanted to be beautiful.
Clever. Successful. Happy.

As the years slip by like whispers in the wind, I find myself reflecting on the dreams that shaped my youth -  and on the stark contrast between that world and the one we inhabit today.

In an age dominated by illusion and manufactured identity, it feels worth pausing to remember what it once meant to aspire to genuine beauty, strength, and authenticity -  before the line between real and fake blurred beyond recognition.

I wanted to be pretty. As wonderful as my mother. To marry a man as great as my father. To meet a boy as strong as my older brothers.

And I can’t help wondering what children are encouraged to aspire to now, in an age of confusion, gender politics, and exaggerated, artificial bodies -  where self-worth is measured in filters and slogans rather than substance.