asta, California, author Sharon Mehdi met a beloved Karuk medicine man named Charlie Red Hawk Thom. Charlie said he was going to tell her something she must promise not ever to forget:

"Men have taken the world as far as they can. It's up to the women to take us the rest of the way."

In 2004, when the world was askew and getting askewer every day, Sharon wrote a little story about two grandmothers who stood in the park to save the world. It sold many thousands of copies and was translated into half a dozen languages. In the story, she quoted the words Charlie Thom had said to her two decades earlier.

Now, in 2018, the world is once again askew. More than ever we need the grandmothers, their daughters and their granddaughters. Charlie Thom died in 2013, but in this anniversary edition of The Great Silent Grandmother Gathering his words live on. We must not forget.