Searching For- Mensia Francis In-all Categories... May 2026

And yet, isn’t this the deepest kind of searching? Not for a file, but for a someone . All Categories—news, images, books, maps, videos, people—are just metaphors for the ways we try to hold each other against oblivion. Mensia Francis may have no digital ghost. But she exists in the syntax of my question. The question itself is a form of remembrance.

I try again. This time I put the name in quotes: “Mensia Francis.” Perhaps she wrote a letter to the editor in a small-town newspaper that hasn’t been digitized. Perhaps she was a nurse in the 1940s whose personnel file is in a cardboard box in a Missouri basement. Perhaps she is a character from a self-published novel whose single printed copy sits in a thrift store. Perhaps she is still alive, deliberately offline, tending a garden where the Wi-Fi cannot reach. Searching for- Mensia Francis in-All Categories...

The cursor blinks on an empty search bar. Above it, the words “All Categories” promise totality—news, images, books, maps, videos, people. I type the name: Mensia Francis . No autofill suggestions. No “Did you mean…?” Just the cold neutrality of a database waiting to be queried. And yet, isn’t this the deepest kind of searching

I press Enter.