 Welcome to our interview show in which we interview LGBTQ guests who are important contributors to our community. We want to acknowledge that all things LGBTQ is produced at Orca Media in Montpelier, Vermont, which is unceded Indigenous land. Enjoy the show. I'm here with Esther Newton, lesbian pioneer. Welcome, Esther. It's great to talk with you. I've been following your work for many years. Let's start with a little bio if we may. Delivered in second person, if you don't mind. Throughout your career, you were a pioneer questioning and challenging status quo assumptions on gender, sexuality, and anthropological methods. By trade, you were an anthropologist before your retirement. At a time when anthropology was limited to studying faraway cultures, your foundational book Mother Camp was a bold and intimate study of the underground world of 1960s Midwest drag scene, bars in particular. There's a story about that, too, involving the academic repercussions of your groundbreaking publication. Let's continue with the bio. Despite your groundbreaking work, you struggled to gain acceptance in an academic world that sidelined women and shunned homosexuals. With dogged persistence and the growing voice of the feminist and LGBTQ movements, you would go on to write important works, such as Margaret Mead made me gay, essays that are on my bookshelf in the other room, Cherry Grove, Fire Island, 60 Years in America's First Gay and Lesbian Town. This happens to correspond with the New York Historical Society exhibit that's playing in New York until October 11th called Safe Haven, Gay Life in the 1950s. You didn't contribute directly to the exhibit, but you did groundbreaking work about it, and I'm sure they have used a lot of your information. Yeah, they told me that. Yeah. So my best informant's dress, that is a book, an essay, My Best Informant's Dress, The Erotic Equation in Field Work. And that was a foundational essay of queer anthropology. So if you wouldn't mind, let's pause for a minute, and I will ask you what queer anthropology is. Well, really Mother Camp, my book about drag queens, that's really the foundation that wasn't called queer anthropology then. No. You know, it was the found, in fact, the group, the member group of the American Anthropological Association at the time I wrote that was called, what was it called, study, something for the study of homosexuality, like they were all pretending they weren't really gay, you know, they were just in the sun. So it's evolved over the years. Then in the, in the 70s, it became sold of the Society for Lesbian and Gay Anthropology. So it became open to both people, whatever their orientation, if they were working on gay and lesbian people, or the gay and lesbian people who maybe weren't even working on, you know, they're working on, you know, something else entirely. And then eventually it became, I guess, this century, maybe even, I forget the year, it became the ACWA, the Association of Queer Anthropologists. So there's been, there's been an evolution of that along with how our communities have evolved. So Mother Camp was really opened up the idea that you could, you as an anthropologist, could study gay and lesbian people. So, and, but not only that, so there was that, but not only that, in my analysis of drag and the meaning of drag, and what it meant to performers and what it meant to audiences provided an aha moment to Judith Butler. Aha, another influential thinker. And she, she wrote about that in Gender Trouble, that she had this aha moment while reading this passage in Mother Camp. So about how gender is performed. So her whole idea of performativity was sparked by that. So really that book was the foundation, certainly one of the most important foundations of queer anthropology. And, you know, sociologists too, I mean, those fields are, yes, there are historical differences, but it's, there's lots of crossover too. So, but the, my best informants dress came along much later, much later. It was an essay. I mean, I can talk more about it if you want, but so I think that's what I think some young queer people have gotten, people who identify as queer have gotten a lot out of that essay. My best informant stress. Was that collected in queer cultures at anthology? It's been collected. You know, it turned out to be, I don't know, my most importantness. I mean, you know, how do you measure something's importance, but it turned out to be the most influential essay, I guess you'd say, that it's been translated into Portuguese, it's been, it's being translated into Spanish. The younger anthropologists seem to really love that, queer anthropologists really love that essay. But it's funny because it's the only, it's one of the only essays I ever wrote that was specifically aimed at professional anthropologists. Well, but I have to say something as a literary lesbian scholar of literature. The mythic managed lesbian of 1984 certainly influenced my career deeply. And that was certainly widely influential as well. Maybe not, maybe not so much in anthropology, but in the rest of the academy as well. That's a good point. No, not so much in anthropology, but that, no, that's been very influential as well. And I'm, you know, I have to give myself some props. Absolutely. Absolutely. I'll give them to you too. Thanks. Speaking of foundational work at the end of this short bio that I got from the film page, which we will talk about later. You wrote in 2018, you published in 2018, My Butch Career, which laid the foundation for a new generation of queer scholars and activists. That's a great memoir. I loved it. I loved your frankness. And it's very intellectual and smart, but it's not jargony. Right. You know, that some academics have struggled with in the past. I, it might play through a lot of jargon. I'm sure you have to. So let's, if we may, let's pause and talk about the writing of the memoir. Okay. How long did it take? 22 years from start to finish. I was going to ask you if you started it after you retired. But no, no, no, I was still working full time when I started it. In 1996, I was honored with the Kessler lecture, which is given by clags. And of which I was also a founder. And really, I was an organization. Yeah. So so I was given the Kessler lecture. And I decided I would do instead of doing something, I knew it would be a very varied audience, people from all different academic fields and all ages and stuff like that. And I decided I would do, I had just learned not that long before how to do PowerPoint. And I would, I had, I converted my lectures to PowerPoint. So I decided I would do a PowerPoint lecture that was autobiographical. And it was like this huge success. I mean, the place was packed. People standing ovation, you know, like it was, people loved it. And people said to me, oh, and there was me, I had music on the track too. And people said to me, you have to write a memoir. And so that that was the germ of that idea. I started working on it after that presentation in 1996. So but, you know, the first, I didn't retire from full-time teaching until 2006, 10 years later. So, you know, I only could work really in the summer on it until then. And then after that, I got the job at the University of Michigan. And I was only teaching half time. So then I had much more time to work on it. Did you have a fixed schedule? Do you mean an internal one, like a writer I would get up at nine and start working? Or do you mean it had to finish by a certain date? No, not a deadline writing schedule, although it might have dovetailed with a deadline, I don't know. Not really. I had to work around the time that I had. And I remember when I was still working full-time, I would sometimes come home at night and work, you know, after teaching all day and work on it. So I kind of had to fit it around that. I remember teaching as being incredibly time consuming. Oh, it's exhausting. You're not grading. You're constantly preoccupied by it. Right. Did it take off after you retired fully? Or was it pretty much finished by then? Oh, I went through a lot of different iterations and publishers. Well, I went through, it wasn't published by the original house that signed it. And it just had a torturous trail, really. I don't know if you want to get into the weeds with that, but I actually hadn't planned to retire. And then six years ago, I got very sick and a big asthma attack. And so I actually never, I retired then, basically. And so then I had, I did have more time to really make a final push on it. Yeah. Yeah, I retired and has been totally liberating in terms of how I spend my time. I love teaching, too, and scholarship, too, but retirement is grand, I find. Well, it has its pluses. What I don't like is the health issues. Oh, yeah. And also, you know, I, I, I got a lot. I love teaching and I got a lot from my students and and colleagues at times. And, you know, honestly, once I have finished the memoir, which was at the end of 2017, I guess, and I was retired then fully. And if Gene hadn't come along with the film, I'm not exactly sure. I mean, it's not like there's any shortage of things to do. There's always things that you're supposed to do, bill paying or whatever. But in terms of excitement and learning something new and and, you know, meeting new people and really, Gene couldn't have come along at a better time with the film because that's been really fun. Let's talk about the film. The tone of this film, this is also from the website, is light and fluid, guided by your love for a sport, competitive dog agility. That and, you know, when I saw the clip, my favorite part was with the dogs. Really? That pairs your aging butch body with your beloved dog teammate on an obstacle course that is constantly challenging. Oops, sorry. Well, challenging to end changing. Agility, persistence and passionate inquiry have driven your survival as a butch woman, octogenarian athlete, an iconoclastic scholar in a world full of obstacles. Is that a fair description of the film? I guess that's pretty fair. Yeah. Is it or are you finished filming? Actually, she's coming out sometime in August to do like one more. It's like anthropology or probably like any thesis that you get to a certain point and it's like almost finished and then you realize, I didn't ask about this. I forgot about that. You know, still have to read someone's, you know, and so she found some gaps that she's wanted to fill. So that'll be the end, the end of the filming. And it's in post-production now, they call it, where, you know, with the chyrons and the score and, you know, putting it together, editing still some post, you know, there's already a rough cut of the whole thing but she's still making some changes. It looks great. You know, the clip is available on Vimeo and I saw it on Facebook. I don't know where else it can be seen but whenever it comes out we're going to show it on the show and ask you and maybe Gene with you to do a joint interview. That would be wonderful. I love doing stuff with Gene. How did it come up? How did you happen to decide to do it? How did the idea originate? Well, as I said, Gene and I had shared a girlfriend, not at the same time, and so we knew each other. And oddly enough, or not so oddly because there's lots and lots of lesbian networks, my partner Holly had also had a shared lover with Gene. So we knew her and I trusted her. She was very active in the AIDS work of different kinds and so when she asked me to do it, I mean, I can't remember exactly when she asked me if I had already been sick. I think so maybe because there are scenes in the film of me with the, you know, the oxygen and all that stuff. And so she said I want, well, so she said I want to make I want to make a documentary about agility. That's how she started about lesbians and agility. And Holly and I both said that's not going to work because yes, there are lesbians who do agility, but they don't know each other necessarily. You're not going to find enough people. It's not, you know, that's not going to work. And gradually, gradually she switched over to it being about my life and career. She probably thought I think not going to be around that much longer, you know. It's my interviewer now. Yeah. I've recently had a gray illness and all these people out of nowhere have gotten in touch with me. I think because they thought, oh well, she'll be gone soon. I better make it. I'm actually writing an essay about that that's nearly finished about about the experience of making the movie. I'm looking for a place to publish any ideas. Yeah. Well, so it was sort of the lesbian network that launched the project. Would you say the girls network as we used to call it? Yeah, but hopefully some young people will like it. Oh, I certainly hope it seems to have wide appeal. I hope so. Tell me about your relationship with dogs. It's been long standing. Your mother was a dog breeder dog breeder. Yes. Yes. And when I was eight years old, nine years old, I put my first two obedience training titles on the dogs that we had then, dog that we had then. And I saw a dog show brat, basically. I grew up and then I went through a rebellion. It was like, ah, those people, you know, they're all so boring. All I talk about is dogs. But I never turned off dogs. I was love dogs. Have you always had a dog personally or pretty much? Yeah, I mean, in college only one year. And I went to boarding school. I didn't have a dog that year. But I've had dogs continuously since I was 26 or seven. But then, but it was just pets, strictly my pet. And then for reasons that are probably too complicated to get into, when I was about 40, I decided I needed to obedience train the dog I was getting. And so gradually, gradually, it's amazing how these things you're exposed to as a young person and with your parents, how they stick with you and they come around and cycle around. And so from that point on, when I was about my mid 40s, when I started to get into obedience again, and then serious competitive obedience, and then about 22, 23 years ago, agility came along. And it was like, Oh my God, this is so fantastic. I love it. What is it? I wanted to ask you when you mentioned it before, it's a special dog training course or what is agility? Agility is based on steeplechase in horses. Oh, so there's a course of obstacles that the dog has to negotiate. It's tunnels, it's what are called weave poles, where they go in and out like this. A frame, dog wall, all these lots of jumps, and they're numbered. And you have to direct the dog through those obstacles in the exact sequence that it's been laid out. And then the dog that wins, or the team that wins is the team that what we call runs clean, doesn't knock a bar, doesn't take a wrong course, you know, does the whole course flawlessly. Well, sometimes things get a little ugly, but still takes every obstacle the way they're supposed to be taken and has the fastest time. And is this a relatively recent program or is this a agility culture kind of thing? It was invented in England in the maybe late 80s. I'm not exactly sure about that. There's an entry that seems pretty accurate on Wikipedia. And then it came over here and now it's international. It's and televised quite a bit. It's very exciting and demanding. You have to run around the course with the dog, right? Yeah, they don't read numbers. You gotta, they're not reading the numbers, they're responding to your commands. So is that strenuous? It is. In fact, just recently, you know, there weren't any trials during the pandemic. And so just started trialing again. I was really out of shape. And I ran the course and I was so winded at the end, they had to bring in a wheelchair and wheel me out. Maybe take it more gradually. Maybe, because I also gave myself a stress fracture. Well, I have a friend who's in her middle 70s who just started it with her dog. And I told her about you that you were doing it. It was encouraging. Oh, yeah. There's lots of people in their 70s, not so many in their 80s, which is where I'm at now. And actually, it's interesting that you, very interesting to me that you said you love that part, because at a certain point, Jean was complaining to me that, oh, I don't know what to cut, you know, and it's too long. And I said, well, Jean cut out the agility stuff, you know, and just, and she said, no, I mean, no, absolutely not. If I did that, it would just be like every other day lesbian, trans, whatever tribute film. She may be right. And I think she might be right. Well, the time has flown by. We have about two minutes left. Is there any last thing you want to say? Not really. It's really been fun. It has been fun. And we hope you'll come again. It was great. Oh, I hope to come again. Absolutely. The film comes out. Whenever the film comes out, we'll promote it right away and have you and Jean back maybe. So thank you again, Esther. I'd like to introduce everybody at the LGBTQ family to Cliff Burnett Bennett. I'm sorry, Cliff Bennett. And he's here with a very interesting project. But let's talk first a little bit, Cliff, about you. I see you're from Ohio, and I gather it's a small town in Ohio. So how did you venture and how did you get to Vermont from Ohio? Oh, Linda, it's been quite a journey. And I'll try to share just a couple of highlights. I grew up in a small town of Clyde near Cedar Point and Lake Erie. And I was able to pay for my college education by working at the Whirlpool Company, making washing machines during summer. I wanted to be a United Methodist minister. And so after college, I was able to work as a director of Christian education at a 1100 member United Methodist Church in Akron, Ohio, and started seminary training at Ashland Theological Seminary, which was usually a three year that turned into five years or more. During that time, I left the cornfields of Ohio to go to Jerusalem to study historical geography. And all the credits I got from the academics there came back to Ashland, and I didn't have to pay any additional money for them. So as a 26 year old, I took off for the other side of the world. And I left the cornfields of Ohio to find myself in the middle of a cosmopolitan, multicultural, ethnic, very diversified religions there, etc. And I was able to walk the land as a part of my historical geography and archaeology classes. And I fell in love with it. And I've been back several times since. And being from a small town, and my father was the head of the police auxiliary, the captain of the police auxiliary, for town. So I had to be very careful, even though I was probably a pretty up straight guy about what I did and how I did it. So when I was in Jerusalem, I found myself experimenting with my ideas of what it might be like to be with another man, and found out that that was the real me, and then had to deal with those struggles as I continued to mature in my ages. And so in Ohio, I did marry, and I was a minister at the time. But I realized that I was not being true to myself. And eventually had had a divorce, well, I left the ministry, the pulpit first, and then a year or so later I had had a divorce. And I had a very traumatic experience that I was caught in a trap at a rest area near Mansfield, Ohio. By the police? Pardon? By the police? Oh, by law enforcement. There were the different law agencies involved. There was a rest area there. And there were a couple of undercover officers out in the back pretending like they were having sex. And I attempted to join them and they flashed their badges. So I spent my first night in jail that I had ever spent and had never expected to. And my name came out on the front page of the Mansfield newspaper the next day. So I was definitely outed publicly. And so yeah, I did a number of different jobs, had an art gallery to custom picture framing. But as a result, I ended up leaving Ohio and coming east. And when I arrived at upstate New York that summer of 93, I was in a 1976 Plymouth Duster and had three pennies left in the ashtray and started over. Oh, yes. And then you crossed over to Vermont. I crossed over to New Hampshire first and then Vermont. And I've been in Vermont for 13 years now. And I don't want to leave it. And you know, what a horrible experience. What year was that when the police were? That was like 1986. Jesus. And they came in the paper. Right. And it was called it was legally called impetuning a police officer. And I found out around the year 2000 that that law had been taken off the books, because it had been judged not viable kind of thing. But I continued to live with that mark on my record, but but moving past it. Yeah. But we're glad you're in Vermont. And I'm so glad that I'm here. And I originally arrived in Burlington in 2008 as a casual employee of the post office and enjoyed the Burlington area. But when I discovered the Mad River Valley here, and my partner and I at that time purchased three point acres of land and built a net zero house. I am in Vermont, not heaven with my gardens. The landscaping that's happening with the wildflowers and clover, no grass. That's a good idea. I have a friend who does like all sort of like succulents and, you know, so that's no grass and no having to water anything really or all that. So that's good. So tell me, I know you're starting a project out your way in Mad River. And, and so, unfortunately, this won't come on before the event. But could you tell us like what you're doing and what you plan to do with your idea in the future? Yes. As I'm advocating for Palestinian human rights, that's also intersecting with gay rights, with Black Lives Matters, with Indigenous rights, all those kind of things. So I'm one of those personalities that can usually keep most of those balls up in the air and, and moving around. So Sunday morning, there is a great parade, local parade happening in the village of Warren. And it's going to start with the boom of a cannon at 10 o'clock in the morning. And Warren has this really neat acceptance of people and invited anybody to come and participate in the parade that would like to. And here in the Mad River Valley, I'm a part, I like to attend the Mad River Valley anti-racism meetings that we have once a month, where we're working on who we are, our, our own attitudes. And where we have, like I, I realize even deeper now, how much racism I have, even though through the years I continue to take off more layers. So we just, that group just meant last Sunday evening. And I said, how about if we get some anti-racism people to have a unit in the parade? And so the response was, well, we're from, from most of the people, we're really enjoying that, that inward journey and not wanting to do a whole lot publicly. So if you want to do something, Cliff, go ahead. So with their permission, I've been contacting folks in the gay community, Black Lives Matter people, the Muslim community, and other agencies, Vermont Veterans for Peace, et cetera, so that we can have a unit in the parade. And that's Susan Klein, who is a parade marshal, has already given permission for that to happen. And so I'm going to go tomorrow morning, not knowing how many people are going to show up because it's an open invitation, but it'll be a fun time. And it's a wonderful time for us to be public. And sometimes some of our national and state elected people show up. And so it's a wonderful opportunity for us to, who especially in the gay community, can be present. Because we know that there's some people that would rather not have us being, speaking our truths, sharing our lives. And I don't deal with that stuff anymore. I'm out and proud and sort of rattled some of my gay friends, especially in the Christian community, and especially the very conservative, Asbury College, now Asbury University in Wilmore, Kentucky, where I graduated from because they still do not recognize the gays on the campus. And just this last year dismissed a couple of faculty members because they were friendly with the gays in the area. Yeah, there's a lot. Although the Methodists have now, haven't they at least, well, did they have a break off where some Methodists accepted LGBTQ people and another portion didn't? Like, did that happen in the Methodist Church? That has been in the process of happening since I left the ministry back in 1984. Okay, so that's always been on the forefront. And I appreciate those people that I know that continue. I basically have washed my hands of that. The news that has just recently been released is that the Methodist Church in Britain has divided itself. Yeah. Okay, they're still under the Methodist umbrella. But in their negotiations through the decades, they have come to the place that a congregation can, in my words, be open and affirming. And those who are not welcoming the gays can do their thing also. So that's happening in Britain. And there will be the international meetings where the United States folks will hopefully excuse my French, shit or get off the pot. But I'm not holding my breath anymore. To me, it's nice to see getting back to the event. It's really nice to see that a lot of small towns and medium sized towns around Vermont are doing their own gay pride marches and doing different activities and organizing around those activities. Because we really like to let people know that more things happen around the state than just in Burlington. And I think it's really important for people who live in these areas to be able to connect with people in smaller towns, in smaller areas. And so I think what you're doing is really important in that regard also. People can make connections. They might feel less lonely if they know there's groups or activities in their areas. So that's good. I'm glad to hear it. So do you plan on doing more of these in the future? Have people been uniting around this? How do you feel about it? The exciting thing, Linda, is that it's not getting reported through the major or through our Vermont major news services, but affirming the LGBTQ plus community continues to grow. So the congregational churches, both in Warren and Waitsfield, are open and affirming as I get out and about. Vermont has its mountains and that has its valleys. And each one has a sort of its own culture. I'm discovering that the LGBTQ plus people are being more and more welcomed and embraced and affirmed in being a part of the community. Just recently, I heard that up in Blueberry Lake, a person who was visiting the lake on a warm day noticed that the population of the lake that she saw was basically equal between whites and people of color. So that goes against some of the messages that we hear from other folks in the state of Vermont here. So there is this more welcoming kind of environment. Here at our Harwood Union High School, which has a number of towns here in the valley, there is a gay support group at the high school. And they get together and meet on a regular basis. So it is building those safety nets. And yes, I do want to do more of this. Waterbury is having there not the Fourth of July parade next Saturday on the 10th. And I'm going to see how well things go tomorrow. And because what I've been working on is me working on it with other supporters like you just in the last week. I don't know if you've noticed, but when there is a concern about human rights, et cetera, we are finding that Vermonters are coming out from their valleys, from their homes, from their jobs to participate in events. So I hope to be able to do a Waterbury event. And I've started having some dialogues with other folks here in the Mad River Valley to see if we might be able to do some kind of Pride, June month of Pride event here in the Mad River Valley. So that's going to take a little longer to put together. Yeah, so that will be a whole lot more structured. But let's let it happen. And I'm all in favor of community actions that don't involve corporations and lots of money from people who either give to both sides and participate or unless it's local businesses who really do support local activities or actions. So I'm always happy to see small groups of people organizing in small communities and making things happen. So I applaud your effort. Is there anything you'd like to tell us before we leave? And I just want to say one thing is like, if you have pictures from the event, if you would send it to me, I'd be glad to post them after on one of the shows and talk a little bit about it more. So is there anything you would like to leave the audience with? Linda, I would be glad to have have that conversation and share things. You just reminded me that the local public TV station is going to be broadcasting the parade live. And so I will communicate with you how to then that video, that presentation will be available in the files for the public to be able to access. So I'll get you that information so that you can publish it also. That would be wonderful. And good luck and have a wonderful parade. It's too bad the weather is so bad, but you know, bring your umbrella folks and head on out. So thank you. And we'll talk to you soon. Thank you, girl. Thank you, Linda. Bye-bye. As all things LGBTQ has been doing more and more interviews, we have found that there's a lot of organizing that's going on around Vermont that we just may not know of. And Rutland is indeed one of those communities where there is a great deal of organizing occurring and outreach to the community. And joining me today are two of those rabble rousers from Rutland. Tanya and Jacob only Tanya may have a slightly different appearance today. And there is Anita cocktail. So with that Anita, I understand that there was a lot of organizing that happened around Merchants Hall, which is performance space in Rutland. And your persona of Anita may have come out of that organizing. Could you tell me a little bit about that? Hi. Yeah, most of Anita came to be at Merchants Hall. She basically started doing little shows for fundraising at Wilson Castle in Proctor. But then we wanted to continue that when the castle closed for the winter. So I got ahold of my good friend Jacob, who is the owner of Merchants Hall and asked him if he was interested in doing monthly shows or anything to try it out. And he jumped right on the bandwagon and said, absolutely, let's give it a go. And 18 successful months later, until a pandemic hit, it just kept getting bigger and bigger from there. And we can't wait to get back in there. So Jacob, what made you think as a performance space that Merchants Hall in Rutland would support a drag show? You know, the main thing that we've learned at Merchants Hall since we opened in 2010, honestly, is that the most success seems to come from the most unconventional happenings. We've tried a number of things that felt rather obvious on the surface to me over the years, that we had very little attendance. And when Tanya said that she wanted to try drag shows, my first thought sort of from a business perspective was, okay, let's see how many people are interested in something like this. And I've quickly taught myself to sort of shed that away and to just try, to just try a new adventure. Rutland is one of the few cities in our state, but we're a very, very, very small community. So it's always a test. And that test never proves itself until something repeats itself. So it became very obvious within the first few months of the drag show, just more tickets sold, more tickets sold, more tickets sold. And I said here again, this could be some quick email to brush aside and say, no, it's too risky. There's not one already. So why should there be one? But Tanya has Anita has a huge amount of gusto. I mean that a huge amount of belief in bringing people together. And I just had to join the bandwagon and jump on for the ride. And I'm really, really fortunate that we have. And I'm impressed that your first response to Tanya's invitation and request was not, well, only if you teach me how to do my own makeup. It was. Now, Tanya, how many people are involved in the drag shows that you put on these days? We usually have about four to five that are regulars that we have there. At the beginning, we had some Rutland Queens, Amy Lee Celestial, Bethedon Clinique, Carmen Get It. And they kind of ventured and they still come and join us, but they ventured and are doing their own thing with a couple of new members of their drag family. And I've also gotten some other in my drag family now, such as Ryder Gently, a drag king from the Burlington area, Mikey Flex, another drag king from the Bennington area, Donna Ria, a fierce queen from right here in Brandon now, and Saseo T's, my newest drag daughter, aka Jacob. So we have them, but we also have at least one or two guest performers that we have coming from all over. We've had for less performers from up in Burlington way, such as Jinjo Lawley, who we love. Czechoslovakia has come down, Libby Lawless has come. I mean, just a number of people have come and joined us. And it's great because it brings other performers down that maybe people from our area in Rutland may not normally see. And so it gives them a chance to see somebody new. And it also, if we have somebody from that area coming down this way, a lot of times they'll bring a handful of friends with them. So then they can come down and see our space. And then in return, they invite us up and perform in their venues. So it's really nice, you know, we help each other out in the queer community like that place. And it's awesome to be able to work with so many different people and see so many different venues and perform together. As I understand it, you're one of the few lesbians who also performs as a drag queen. As a drag queen, yes. And that, well, also with that, when you first started, you, there was an interesting following that developed that coming to your drag shows became the girls night out. Yeah. Yeah, I'd say about 90% of our audience are straight women who just want to come and have a good time. They plan their months around, you know, when our drag show is, we have one couple of girls that come, they're good friends. And when we started, we had VIP tickets that you could buy to have a couch seat right up front, you know, to see all the little secrets that go on stage and stuff. And they'd get special, you know, snacks and things like that, get group pictures with all the performers. And they came to the first show and bought the first VIP tickets. And after that show ended that night, they came up and they said, can we buy out VIP for the rest of the year? And they've been to every single thing we've done, no matter where it is, they have come over to Cedar Meadows, the new venue that Jacob has built. And also they followed us to Burlington and walked pride with us and carried our banner for us. Anything we need, they're like, we're there. And we're so grateful of them. They're like our biggest supporters that we have. Okay. So Jacob, I didn't realize that Cedar Meadows was also one of your endeavors because I noticed the drag show is going to be back there on July 10th and also on August 14th. Correct. Absolutely. You know, Merchants Hall is a really small space, a very intimate space, at least compared to our traditional theater here in Rutland. The Paramount Theater is an 830-some odd seat proscenium theater. So when COVID protocol came into play, we are not a bar, we're not a restaurant. So our capacity rules with social distancing didn't allow us to host more than I think we went in together and mapped it out at one point and realized we could sell either 10 or 11 seats. And no, there's no way to make the ends meet. You know, just to turn on the stage lights and the full sound system alone, it all cost money. And we had to come up with some new idea. So that's where Cedar Meadow VT came from. The last season, we sort of watched a number of other venues around the state venture outdoors. And then we put all of our ideas into the same creative space here and in Castleton, Vermont in May, the Rutland Youth Theater organization opened with their production of Aladdin, the musical. And we did. We built a 36-foot wide large, with a catwalk outdoor stage. And just about a week and a half ago now, our first drag show of the season happened out here, which was overwhelming. For me, it was extremely overwhelming. It's still, you know, I'm sure most people feel odd gathering in groups. It's still a very new feeling, at least for myself. And with the restrictions adjusted, it was so fascinating to see that more than the norm came. I mean, it was a large amount of people getting back together and just letting their hair down and appearing to leave all of our troubles at home and celebrate drag outside in the heat. It was really fun. And people were ready just to have a good time. And you needed that long catwalk. So, Anita could strut. She knows how to strut. That I'm told. I'm still waiting to witness it for the first time. So, there is a Facebook page for both Merchant's Hall and Cedar Meadows that people can go on, find out what's going on when Merchant's Hall is going to reopen again. But as we conclude this, I understand that you put together as community outreach a prom for our youth. Could you tell me a little bit about that? Either one of you. That was all Anita. This was totally her, it was, it was totally her brain child. Huge success too. Yeah, we had an awesome time. I mean, we wanted to go through and have kids that didn't feel comfortable going to their own prom or weren't allowed to go to their own prom or nowhere for them to just go and be themselves to come and have a good time. So, we did it, you know, the Pride Month, we did it in June and we had a really good response. We had parents that were getting a hold of us saying, is there anything we can do to help? Can we chaperone? I'll make, you know, some cookies and bring over it. We'll bring punch, you know, whatever. And we had the Queens came, we gave them a show, you know, kid friendly, gave them a show and, you know, some of the kids came in and they were like hanging on their mother's skirts and they were really kind of nervous about going in. They're not sure what this is and stuff. And then watching them throughout the night, before the night was over, they're telling their mom, you can go now, I'm okay. And they're over dancing and talking with this new group of friends they had. They were taking pictures, they, it was amazing. It was so much fun. And I'm hoping we can do another one again soon because there's not enough out there for any of us really, but especially the younger crowd in the queer community. There's just, there's not any place for them to go or anything fun for them to do. And finally, places are starting to pick up on that and getting little groups together and things. And I'm hoping that maybe again at Merchant's Hall here soon we, when we get back up and open and stuff that there'll be continued interest in it and we can throw another successful one, it would be amazing. So what I am hearing from both of you is what you, what Merchant's Hall does and what it provides in Cedar Meadows now is you're truly creating a sense of community environment. And as we end for that, I need to say thank you for the work that you are doing. And I look forward to inviting you back when you've won the Drag Queen of the Year Award. Wouldn't that be something? All right. So thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you for joining us. We'll see you in two weeks, but in the meantime, resist.