Where are your friends from freshperson year? To Josie Garza: a Most Stellar Dyke. I did love you, and I love you still.

Recently, I received news of the passing of a person that I knew from my freshman year at Hollins University, a woman of note (it seems strange to refer to ourselves as girls, though back then, I suppose we were), if only to me. First year at college was a bit strange for me, I don't know if I loved it or hated it: it was an eye-opener on American college culture, and on the variety and spirit of Americans. And because I find this obituary sadly lacking, I'm going to fumble one of my own...

Josie and I met during orientation, and spent the majority of our first semester doing... well, whatever it is people do during their first semester at college, I can't remember. Some drinking and dancing and talking about nothing, I think. I took two classes with her, and my strongest memories had to be of the "Female Cyborgs in Early Modern Literature" class during our second semester of first year.

Josie probably had no respect for the concept of 'off-topic' or 'on a tangent.' She was hardly the most conscientious student ever, none of us did all our readings, really, but she always added something amazing to our tiny seminar class, something wonderful and tenderly imaginative, like "Wouldn't it be great if... ?" or "Hey, what if...?" and since this was a class partly about sci-fi, you can imagine that what she said was always surprising, and sometimes laughable. It was the laughing that she incited, the genuine delight she found in sharing her non-serious, non-scholarly musings, that will always stay with me. She makes me remember the greatest thing about pure academia: that anything is possible in the mind. I don't think it mattered that we hardly ever talked about cyborgs in a scholarly way. I think it did matter that we laughed, and that Josie often had a hand in our laughing.

In my senior year, I wrote a thesis on the Image of the Female Cyborg in Film and Literature (are the caps a bit much? Yeah, they are a bit snobby aren't they, those big letters. I forgive myself. You don't need to. ) I miss that class, I miss that particular time, and I miss Josie making me laugh. I hope you're laughing now (you probably are, we look pretty ridiculous) , wherever you are, Josie Garza.