 Morning and welcome to Moments with Melinda. My guest today is Bill Schubart. Hi Bill. How are you? How are you? I'm good. No complaints. It's a bit like maybe May or June out here. Yeah, but wait till Friday. I think we're going to get some ice and snow and subzero weather. So like I think it was Mark Twain who said, if you don't like the weather in Vermont, just wait a second. Well, Bill, you and I go back way, way, way back many, many decades, but let me tell my viewers a little bit about you for anyone who might not know who you are. Bill Schubart has lived in Vermont with his family since 1947. He is an entrepreneur, community leader, novelist, commentary writer, storyteller, collaborator, public speaker, and the go-to guy in Vermont if you want to get the best advice on just about anything. Do you say that's about right about you, Bill? Oh heavens, yes. Well it is. I mean you are a person who people go to when they need to talk about issues and things that are going on in the state that they want some perspective on. You are that person, and so you cannot run away from that, my friend. Now let's start with your childhood. You grew up in Morrisville, Vermont. Now how did your parents get to Vermont? Well, my father died in the war before I was born, about four months before I was born. He died in late golf in the Philippines, and my mother was pregnant with me and was put in the Plaza Hotel, which was a residential hotel at the time by my biological father's family, and was told to stay there for a year until I was born. And frankly she went stir-crazy and she escaped one night with me as a newborn, got on the Montreal out, got off at random in Waterbury, took the Couture Jitney to Morrisville, ran into Second Floor apartment, and moved in with me as a newborn, well almost a year and a half year old, and two years later married a handsome French-Canadian ski instructor named Emil Rene Petruer, who I, as the only person I ever knew, was my father. A wonderful, wonderful man. And your father did die before you were born and he died in the Second World War. You were raised by a single mom for those few years until she remarried, and your mother and Mr. Couture had two more children, which is your brother Michael and your sister, right? So tell us a little bit about your father's Mr. Schubert's mother, who lived in Manhattan and your relationship with her and how she, because you lived in rural Morrisville, Vermont, so you had this rural life that you loved running through the rivers and the woods, having this sort of backwoods life, beautiful life with your mother and her new love. My paternal grandmother lived in an 18-room duplex on 71st and Park Avenue with three balconies overlooking Park Avenue, full maids quarters. I had my own bedroom, even though I lived in Vermont, and she was very concerned when my mother took off to Vermont that her only male or only grandchild would be raised by a bunch of country robes. So she actually threatened a suit, a custody suit, which of course we were going nowhere. And dad, my stepfather, was a consummate diplomat and a truly wonderful man, and he stepped in and he said, look, let's work this out. We'll set it up so Billy comes to New York once or twice a year and stays with you, and that settled it. So once or twice a year, dad would drive me down to Waterbury and put me on the Washingtonian southbound, and troops would send a domestic to Grand Central Station to meet me and bring me up, and we'd have lunch at the Russian Tea Room and go to the old Metropolitan Opera, and I'd lie in bed crying because I wanted to come home and play with my friends in their haylofts. Oh, sweetheart. Well, I think it was unfortunate that your grandmother tried to take you away from your mother. That must have been horrifying for your mom, but at the end of the day, thank heavens that your stepfather, who was really your father, Mr. Couture, had the wisdom and the diplomacy to work it out. And I think you being raised in New York probably had a lot to do with who you are today and the cultured man that you are. So, Bill, who would you say had the greatest impact on the way that you see the world? Wow. Our house was always filled with really interesting people, and that was partially my mother's influence and my stepfather, Emil Couture. We had very, very close friends across the political spectrum. We had Father Jim Dodge, who had been a trappist monk at Gethsemane, and went to become the spiritual advisor to the Trapp family until he got in a screaming match with the Baroness, and he moved into our cellar supposedly just for a few weeks, but lived with us for four years, living in our basement. So, we had a Catholic priest who was a fascinating guy, and then he brought someone over from Germany, who also ended up living in my bedroom. I had to move in with my brother, who was with us for a couple of weeks, named Herr Dr. Dr. Hermann Steinbach. He was an inventor, absolutely loony, but very interesting, and Ron Terrell, who owned the local gas station in Moisville, but was a collector of pre-revolutionary Russian artifacts and new Russian history, which I loved, and then there was Fred Westfall, who was the legendary ultra-right wing legislator from Elmore, who was frankly far right of Genghis Khan, and he was a good friend and way out on the spectrum. So, you had lots of influencers in your life growing up. Was there one person in your life who had the greatest influence on you? I don't think so. I think it was a panoply of people. It's a whole group of fabulous people. Yeah, I had a cousin in New York who was a black sheep in the family and New York, a photographer, a world-class photographer. She did mythogram dance company. She went to travel all through the South during the civil rights era, put her life at risk, and she was a huge influence on my life and was not really accepted by the family because she was so far out there, but she sort of inherited the Alfred Stiglitz gene in the family, a passion for how photography could change society. Fascinating. So, Bill, you started two companies in your life, and one of them is Filo Records and the other was Resolution. Can you tell us a little bit about that period in your life? Sure. I mean, my brother, Mike, I call him my brother, but as you know, he's kind of my husband. He is your brother. He is my brother. He was a musician at UVM, and when I was an Exeter, I fell in love with the whole science of recording and had the great good luck to participate in a recording of Mozart's Requiem with Nadia Boulanger, who was a student of Debussy and legendary in classical music, and I just fell in love with recording. So, I bought a pig bun one night after having too much to drink from Terence Tiny and East Charlotte and borrowed the money and woke up the next morning owning Saul Douglas's Pig Bun, and a friend of mine, who was a wonderful architect, agreed to do all the work for nothing and we converted the bun into a recording studio, and I did a lot of the initial engineering and the setup, but the real creative force in Fido Records and what was Earth Audio, the bun, was Mike. He produced some of the most wonderful, we produced about 140 albums altogether and the ones that just, and they're all available, and everything we did is still in the market. Mike was really the creative force. Michael Kutcher. Yeah, and then when we saw that technology was democratizing, that the, all the money we'd spent on all this reporting technology, you've seen the same thing in film, was coming down to be affordable to the average person. So, the distinguishing factor was creativity, not technology, that the main barrier to entry was cost of technology. We realized that there wasn't going to be a future for a four hire recording studio, so we looked for a film company merged with Blue Jay Films, Jimmy Taylor and Brian Doubleday and Barbara Potter, and started a company called Resolution, which grew up to 225 employees. It was massive. You did all the videos for 60 minutes and you were nationally and internationally known. It was a huge success, Bill. It really was. It really was. Well, congratulations on both those incredible companies. Now, you have served on many, many, many boards throughout Vermont, and you've chaired many of them, and a couple of them you've actually pulled me onto, and I thank you for that. What do you believe has been your greatest contribution to the state of Vermont, or contributions? We can be plural. I don't know. It's hard. I mean, my, the one tool that I have is writing. So, whether I'm writing a novel about Vermonters, like Lila and Farron, or, you know, Panhead, or LaMoyle stories, the ability to take the oral tradition and put it in writing is something I feel very strongly about. But then also I write opinion pieces for Vermont Digger, and my goal there is to take really complex issues like health care, public education, criminal justice, the penal system, and, and make it comprehensible and not polarize the discussion, not blame people. So much opinion writing as well. These people are doing this, and these people, but to take all that out and just say, look, here's what's actually happening. And here's some pathways out of this. So, again, my tool is writing. I'm, I'm a student of governance. I worry about the nonprofit sector in Vermont, the hospitals, all these wonderful people doing all this work who don't understand governance. They don't understand the role of a board of trustees. And I've offered, you know, at no charge to work with any nonprofit organization that's struggling with governance issues. Yes, you have. And for my viewers, I'm speaking with Bill Schubert, and his website is www.schubertscubart.com. I suggest you visit his website. It's a beautiful website, Bill. Let's, let's talk a little bit about some of your written books. You've written Spirit Traffic, The Correctional Facility, The Priest. No, I just have to correct you. I didn't write Spirit Traffic. That's the one book I published. It was not by me. That you did not write. Well, I mean, thank you for clarifying that. But you did write The Correctional Facility, The Priest, Lila and Theron, which is one of my personal favorites. I weep through that story of their long life, and it was, and you actually knew them. The lamoille stories, one and two, photographic memory, I am baby, panhead, and fat people. Tell us a little bit about how you chose the subjects that you have woven into your books, some nonfiction and others fictional. Well, as a child growing up in a French community and family, you heard stories. If we went to Grammy coutures for Sunday dinner after mass, you know, somebody was always telling a story. If we went to Uncle Mando Couture's house, for whatever, you know, there was always somebody up there telling a wonderful story. And those stories really stuck with me as a kid. And I wanted to write them. So I did. I just that was my my first book was just writing down stories. And I wrote one about Morrisville and I submitted it to Vermont Life. And Tom Slaton was wonderful. So Bill, one of the first things you do as an author is to look at our publication guide, and you'll notice that we don't do fiction. But I love the story. So why don't you enter it in this contest? And I added it in the the short story contest that Green Mountain Power was funding. And it won. That was so encouraging that I wrote more stories and then published for the moral stories, which is still my best selling book. Fat People is a book I had to write. I have weighed at my peak four hundred and sixty five pounds. I've lost a couple hundred pounds several times twice in my life. And now we're about two hundred and seventy five, which feels fairly comfortable oddly enough. But I needed to write. I needed to write about that experience. So Fat People is a book that I wrote. It's a collection of short stories. It's not designed to teach you how to lose weight. It's it's not a how to guide. It's a collection of pure short stories that if anything I would want would elicit empathy for people struggling with eating disorders, whether it's bulimia anorexia or overeating, whatever, because it is an addiction and I was fully addicted. The book I'd want to be remembered for is I Am Baby. The Reverend Baby Hoover was a blind street singer in New York City who sang for ten years out of the awning at Blooming Dales on Lexington and 59th. And I got to know her and I was so blown away by this woman that I brought her up to Vermont. We produced an album of her and her partner, Virginia Brown, singing on the street. And it won an award. Didn't sell any copies, obviously, but I never forgot that woman. And I look at the photograph of her every day. And she taught me about gratitude. So a woman who had nothing to be grateful for. Nothing. Everything was taken away from her. She was raped when she was 14. She had a kid, her baby was taken away. And she was a reverend, an exhorter into the New York system. And I went out to her church one day and she only had six parishioners all blind. And she delivered a sermon on gratitude. And wow, that stayed with me all my life. And then I ended up a few years ago writing her life story. Well, perhaps she would be the person who had the greatest influence on you, Bill Shubart. Well, that's, there's a lot of truth to that. Perhaps. Perhaps. A lot of truth. So, Bill, thank you for that overview. By the way, I believe, I believe that people can go to your books on your website at Shubart.com. And they can read your books online or order them. They can order them, but I encourage people to go to local bookstores. I mean, the Vermont bookstores have been really wonderful. They stock my books. And my books are all available in print, audio, and ebook. Perfect. So for my viewers, go to www.shubart.com and review Bill's extraordinary books. Two of your more passionate subjects that certainly you and I have talked about have been Vermont's healthcare system and our current prison system. Can you talk a little bit about both of them with our viewers, Bill? Yeah, it's interesting the timing of this, because I was at a statewide meeting two days ago where a lot of us who are working on healthcare reform in the state came together. And a really interesting inflection point. We are all in a 100% agreement and all together there's over 100 of us. And the legislature, just Brian Chinna's H-156 expresses this, is a consensus that the infrastructure for the delivery of affordable accessible healthcare in Vermont is primary care. Hospitals are secondary. We are treating hospitals primary. You know, consuming more and more money, they're getting bigger and bigger and bigger. The executive compensation, I won't go into, but it's scary. And it's the first time in all the years since I was chair of Fletcher Allen after Bill Betcher was taken away, the president to go to jail. The Ed Kalavi came to me and said, Bill, I want you to be on the board of Fletcher Allen healthcare. And I said, Ed, with all due respect, I don't know anything about healthcare. And he said it's not about healthcare, it's about governance. Anyway, that got me started. And that's where you're the go-to guy in Vermont, if you want to get the best advice on just about anything. You and Ed Kalavi, no, really, truly. So this is an issue. You've written a lot of commentary and you have a vision for how to fix Vermont's healthcare system. As do many others. Which is cool. Are you making headway? Yes, definitely. All right. So let's talk then a minute about the prison system. And I know that you wrote a white paper, which I quote from time to time. And I think a vision of yours, which is of mine, is to close down the woman's prison and for nonviolent offenders, get these women out of the prison system who, by the way, many of them are there because of the men that they were with or the people they associated with. Or technical violations. Or technical violations, exactly. But get them out of the prison system and put them in one of the vacant campuses in Vermont. The vision is, Bill, and I think you're with me on this, put them in the dorms, allow them to have their children, set up a daycare center, allow them to start a cafe, to start making cloth products, to have a gift shop. And to then all of us, we go down and we donate our time to educate them on things like financial management or starting a business or whatever. And that's a vision that I've had ever since you published that white paper. I just have glammed onto that, Bill. And I'm, and I share it with everyone. So talk a little bit about that vision. Well, I just, I mean, it's interesting growing up as raised as a Catholic, the whole concept of punishment and atonement, you know, it's very haunting when you're raised a Catholic, but I've really come to understand that punishment doesn't make anybody better. And, you know, the very idea that we're considering building $160 million prison, what would $160 million do to, you know, move that investment upstream to supporting families, you know, helping women who have had adverse childhood experiences with trauma, form counseling, get them into, you know, get them into a social situation where they're not, they're not just feeling punished as bad people. Humiliated. Humiliated. Humiliated. Humiliated. They're seeing the light. And just adding to the trauma that they're experiencing. And, you know, I'm on the Williston's sort of justice center and the work that they're doing is phenomenal. How do we move that needle, Mr. Schubart? I see it moving a little bit. I mean, there have been some really, really encouraging there are many less women in prison than there were two years ago. That's a good sign. The smart justice work, the ACLU of which you're a part is, you know, is really making headway. I've worked with a number of people, psychologists, as I'm sure you have, and sort of general agreement that there's 12 to 14 violent women in Vermont who probably need, you know, to be kept away from, that's going to, that's always going to be there. We're always going to have to protect the public from dangerous violent, you know, borderline folks. But everyone else, there has to be a redemptive path. So it has to be, how do I regain my family, my loved ones, my community, the economy, a place to live? What is the way back? And that, of course, is the whole point of restorative justice. So, Bill, let's, let's, let's do this. I mean, this is something you wrote five, six, seven years ago. There are empty campuses on Vermont, in Vermont. And at the end of the day, when women go to prison for non-violent offenses, their family abandons them in a lot of cases. When men go to prison, their wives will stick by them, their girlfriends will stick by them. With women, it's very different. They end up being alone and they lose their children. And that destroys the family and their lives will never be restored. So, Bill, let's, let's make it, let's make a pact that we really get down on this and make this happen now. I'm totally with it. Yeah. Thank you for that. And all your work on this. So, Bill, what is your vision for the future of our planet? And what do you believe that humanity needs to do to reverse it? We are seeing as the road toward our species extinction, as I look outside with no more snow on my meadow and 50 degree weather. What is, what is your vision for the future of our planet and our species? Well, the dark side of my vision is the Gaia concept, which is that we're just in, you know, in a multi-million year history, we're just one species and we're killing ourselves. And the best thing that Gaia can do, Gaia being the Earth, can do is to let us kill ourselves and then see if there's a more benevolent species, you know, that assumes hegemony. One of the things that appalls me is the fact that we are unwilling to regulate the pharmaceutical industry that we're, you know, we're poisoning ourselves. We're unwilling to regulate the chemical industry that's poisoning our air, water, soils. You know, in Europe, the most toxic stuff has all been made illegal. You can't put round up on fields in Europe. Or in Canada. But you can in Vermont. Oh, it's in our, it's in our, all of our hardware stores. It's stacked up at the ceiling. Round up. What it all boils down to, Melinda, simply is, do we put profit ahead of well-being? And the answer is, in most cases, yes. We do it in healthcare. We do it in the environment. We do it in private education, you know. For human comfort. I mean, people's comfort, their comfort level. Yeah. So I appreciate that. I sort of have a very similar view of that as you do, but it's horrifying when I think about the world that my grandchildren will be living in in the next 50 years. And we're, we wonder why young people in the world are suicidal. Why are emergency rooms in Burlington on any given day? They have 20 to 35 young people sleeping on gurneys in paper clothing so they won't hurt themselves with no place to help them. And, you know, that's that issue. But given what we're handing them, you know, given what we're doing to their environment, their economy, their communities, why wouldn't you be depressed? Why wouldn't you be angry? We need to do better. And we're the generation who started Earth Day and fought for the planet. And we've failed miserably. And I'm says, I apologize every time I do a lecture. I always apologize to the young people and ask for their forgiveness of my generation that did not do enough. Yeah. Let's move into the words of wisdom because we're talking about the youth. What words of wisdom would you like to share with our youth on how they navigate the enormous challenges facing them today? Try and look at what is good in your life. Study, understand, and practice gratitude, no matter how small, you know, what you're, you have going for you. Focus on that. And one of the best ways to preserve mental health is to give, not take. You know, we have, we have a taking economy. You know, our businesses are focused on profit, not all of them, but many of them. We're focused on how many things do I own, you know, how many this, how many that. And let that go for a bit. You know, focus on how can I give back? What can I give somebody? Because you know what? You feel infinitely better when you give something to someone than when you take something from someone. Absolutely. But our kids today are looking at a world that they may not be able to survive in. And so for them to navigate that is a true challenge. Now, another issue that I know you and I both share deeply in our hearts is the issue of our democracy. And as you know, it is and has been under attack. So how do we as citizens ensure the future of our freedoms and our liberties here in the broad? I mean, I think we talk about it, we write about it, we sing about it, we organize about it. We proselytize in every way we can. When a young person says to me, when I say, did you vote? They say, oh, what's the point? Why bother? I say, oh, thank you very much because you're part of the problem. You know, and they say, well, my vote's not going to make any difference. And the answer is the vote of all of the people you represent is going to make a difference. Vote. Give blood. Give, you know, donate. If you make, you know, $500 a week working in a restaurant or $300 a week working in a restaurant, give some small amount. Give $3. Whatever. Well, it's very different than our generation too, because we, 17 percent of our generation was, you know, challenging our norms. And it's tough for kids today who are dealing with their student loans and their climate change. And $1.75 trillion in U.S. student debt. Which should be forgiven. I'm sorry, but I know it's probably an emphasis on my viewers. But at any rate, so our democracy, I think we're probably, I'm feeling a little bit more positive about that today than I was, you know, a couple of years ago. Be careful. I'm trying to find the positive. Every stone, I'm looking for the positive. And thank you for writing about it, Bill, because you do that so beautifully. Can you name, for me and my viewers, the three most important sectors of Vermont's economy that need major overhauling? Definitely, agriculture and food systems. The amount of money that we are spending, you know, to support a dying dairy industry, which monocrops, you can't grow corn without, you know, chemicals, that needs to be redesigned. And we are redesigning it. I mean, you know, Ellen Kaler and the food to, you know, amazing work being done there, the center in hard work, you know, the whole movement of, for, for the generation of agriculture, that's one area. I think another area is public education. I'm haunted by this idea that we are supposed to spend $179 to $279 million to create a a child care system when we're going around to small communities and closing our schools. We need to redefine public education as starting after a six month bonding family leave that our schools open when a child is six months old. And, you know, there are early educators who understand the balance of play and learning, you know, and, and at the other end too, lifelong learning. I mean, you know, you want to learn, you decide you want to learn Greek and Latin, you can go to your local public school, even though you're 64 years old. I mean, that's one system I want redesigned. I mean, obviously the whole social, I mean, the criminal justice system, which we talked about. Yes, we did. And the health care system. So why have you never journeyed into politics, Bill? Boy, I'm always embarrassed when people ask me that question. I don't want to embarrass you, but I just know before it, it's fair. I have been asked if I would run for political office. And I've thought about it and I've said no for two reasons. One is you put your entire life and your entire family into the public view. And like anybody, I've done stuff that was a mistake that I'm ashamed of, you know, that I don't particularly want, you know, all over the place, but nothing horrible or anything. But do I want to expose myself and my family to all of that? What do they call it? Opposition research is the term. And the other thing is, after working as hard as I have building businesses, I don't want to work that hard. I want time to write, to be outdoors, to be in the woods, to swim. You know, at 77, the quality of my life is really important. And I used to joke with my good friend, Will Patton, why don't we both run for governor? We could split the job and each work just 30 hours a week. I think you should choose a female partner to run with you. But I totally hear you on all that. And thank you for that honesty. Could you tell my viewers a little bit about what you're working on now, what your next project is? I don't have any specific next project. I do feel, as I said, we're at a cost in health care. So I'm spending a lot of time writing about that, meeting with people, talking with a wide variety of people about how do we get this to happen in the next couple of years, not in the next 10 or 20 years. I'm writing my 10th book, which is a hard one, but I'm at that wonderful place where I've written enough now, so the characters take over. What is your book? What is the book you're working on? I don't know. I mean, it takes place when I and a woman my age rent a camp on Willa Bay, and then it just moves from there. And I know roughly what it's going to be about. It's going to be partially mysterious. But again, I never know when I start writing a book where it's going to take me. Well, for all of my viewers, please visit Bill Shubart's website at Shubart.com, S-C-H-U-B-A-R-T dot com. All of your books are there. Your commentaries are there. They're phenomenal. Also, you have your weekly commentary for Vermont Digger that you do, and you're a Renaissance man, and you've made a huge difference to the state of Vermont. And aren't we lucky to live here, Bill? We are lucky to live here. I mean, we really are. I worry sometimes that we're a little too self-referential. We're better than any other state. We've done this first, that first, so on and so forth. Then I pick up The Guardian, which is England's major paper, which I read every day, because they report on America almost more thoroughly than the New York Times. And the second headline is Vermont has the second highest per capita homelessness population in the United States. And I say, you know, as good as we are, as lucky as we are to live here, we've got work to do. We do have work to do. But in Vermont, we can call up our governor. Yeah, that's true. Anyone can go down to the local store, the little rudry store in Huntington, and see Tom Stevens and talk to him. In Vermont, we have the capacity to run for government and be elected. And the changes that we're making in this state are phenomenal. And we are, and I think the efforts to deal with the homelessness and the addiction issue and the poverty in the state, I mean, there was a point when 26% of Vermont's children were going to bed hungry. And we have the largest nonprofit sector of any state in the, I think, in the union with all these issues. So I hear you on all this. And I am, you know, Bill, I think in some ways you are the conscience of Vermont. And well, look, you just, well, whatever, it's my show. I can say whatever I want about my viewers. And you, but you are, and when we meet up at that Heinsberg Cafe, and you and I spend a couple hours talking about things, you get a lot of this. And so to my viewers, I want to thank you for joining me and Bill Schubart today for our moment to talk about Vermont and in our world. And to Bill Schubart, I want to thank you for being the Renaissance man that you are and for all that you've done for Vermont. And thanks for being on my show, man. We've been friends for a long time. Thanks for inviting me. And I admire you so much. Well, I, the feeling is mutual. You are, you are a windstorm. Well, to my viewers, thank you for being with me. And I will see you shortly for another moment with Melinda. Goodbye.