 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. Hello, everybody. I'm here with Barbara Kahn, director, playwright, actor of Great Renown. We are here to talk about her work and her life a little bit. So welcome, Barbara. Thank you. Thank you for having me here, for interviewing me. Well, it's our pleasure. I'd like to start by reading a little of your own statement about your biography and who you are, if I may. I have written more than 25 historical plays with the goal of holding a mirror to the present. My plays have been presented in the United States and Europe. I write about the history of prejudice in the United States and abroad about racism, anti-Semitism, misogyny, homophobia, and anti-immigration sentiment. Putting a personal face to injustice has a power that reading history books cannot duplicate. I agree with that wholeheartedly. As a reviewer wrote, Barbara Kahn is something rare in theater and historian and playwright. Aiming for our heads and our hearts, she tweaks our intellect and kindles our emotions. Acting is my first love. I wrote roles for myself, including two one-character plays that I perform whenever the opportunity occurs. Seema's story and co-op. Let's pause now and let me ask you to talk a little bit about those plays. Seema's story and co-op. Seema's story is actually a one-character version of four full-length plays that had the same main character at different times of her life. I adapted it into a one-person play that I've performed. Or it begins the character's life in 1913, Russia, as a teenager. The first play tells of what happens to her there that forces her to leave. She leaves on her own in 1913 and comes to America. The second play is about her life in New York in the 1920s. One of the reasons I wanted to write this story is about the fact that most of popular culture about immigration shows families coming here, particularly Jewish families that came at the turn of the last century. But there were quite a few women who came by themselves. We don't really get to see their stories but there were many of them. Seema represents one of them although she's fictional. Then of course there's a scandal in New York which is based on her sexual identity and that forces her to leave and she ends up in Wyoming. Why did she end up in Wyoming? Because a friend of mine saw an exhibit at the Smithsonian about Jews in Wyoming, the history of Jews in Wyoming. I said, well that's different than working in the garment district. So that was the third play. The fourth play takes place in Berlin in 1946 called the Tempest Toss. Now she's middle-aged and she returns after the war to see what happened. If she can find out what happened to her sister who she left behind and has not heard from in 12 years. So I combined, you know, I took that character and I turned her into a one-woman play that takes place on the eve of World War II when she hears she's in Wyoming working as a photographer, very successful with her partner. And when she hears that war has broken out in Europe and she does not know if her family is still alive or not, it triggers all of the memories that she's kind of put behind her about her life over there and what compelled her to leave. And that's the one-woman play where she and in the play it's I call them a one-woman play, not a one-woman show because it's a play. It's not and then I did this and then I wrote that and then I moved here. It's really what I call not not relating but recreating these events as one person. So that's that's Seema's story. Co-op was inspired by the gentrification that's going on in New York City as well as in most major cities here and in Europe as well. And there was an elderly African-American woman who would throw a blanket on the sidewalk outside the theater where I work with her belongings. She was homeless trying to sell her whatever she could to get by. And a policeman came one day, young man, and told her you're not allowed to sell here and kicked her belongings into the street. And everybody came out of the shops and everything to retrieve her stuff. And she kept saying, but I'm moving. I'll move. And I was so horrified. I didn't witness this. I heard about it. And I was so horrified that I started I took a walk around the Lower East Side. And this time I looked for homeless people who were selling stuff on the street. And I was shocked at how many elderly women there were. And I would stop and I would buy something for a quarter. If I tried to give more it was an insult, whatever. And I would talk to them a little bit and try to remember enough of what they said so I could get out of their sight and write it down because I wanted them to have their dignity and not feel exploited. And from that I created co-op, which is the fictionalized version of this woman who's been evicted from her home of many years. And every day it's turned co-op the building. And every day she comes back to in front of this building that was her home for 12 years and she tries to sell a few things on the sidewalk just enough to get by for the day. And that's co-op. It's very timely. Unfortunately, yeah. Yeah. Let's go back to the bio. According along with stage work I have appeared in several films. My life in the theater has been governed by a passion for justice and for quality. In the 19th century, George Sand wrote, all I want is for people to question the accepted lies and call out for the forgotten truths. Another saying for our time. Continue, portraying the truth gives me fulfillment as an actor. Directing with integrity and insight is what I offer other actors. Preserving the truth is why I write plays. Very eloquent. Thank you. Let's talk about Bertolt Brecht and Mother Courage in your favorite play. Would you mind telling us why? Sure. Tell us a little about Brecht and the play, if you would. Well, there's some plays or types of genre plays that I really, really love that I'm not able to write because of my own mindset, but I love and Brecht is one of them. Mother Courage is my favorite play because it's about a mother who is caught with her daughter in the midst of a war. And the whole purpose of her play is to protect this daughter from the competing armies. If I remember correctly, she's not on one side or the other. And the reason it's my favorite play is my grandmother was my own mother, Courage. She was left stranded in Eastern Europe after her husband, my grandfather, came to this country and then war broke out. And he came with his older daughter and left behind my grandmother for younger children. And he was going to send for them, get established here in action in Philadelphia and send for them. And war broke out. And then the Russian Civil War, the revolution, the Civil War, nothing got through, no money. They couldn't get out. And there was fighting going on in both sides. If they encountered Jews, well, hell, why not? The Jews were targets of almost all sides. And my grandmother, through her own ingenuity, her own care for her children, managed to get all four of them safely out of that country, across Europe, you know, to safety. And I'm just recently learning a lot of the details because my father, who was one of the younger children, rarely spoke about his experiences. He was four years old when his father left. He didn't see him for 11 years, took my grandmother 11 years. And so I'm actually writing my first book ever about my grandmother and this escape. And I'll be working, it's going to be a graphic novel. I'm working with an illustrator who I admire tremendously. And right now it's being edited. And then I'll send it to the illustrator and we'll see what we come up with with that. And then try to get it published some way or self publish it. But my grandmother was amazing. And unfortunately, I didn't get to know her until after she died. She was in this country for 40 years and her English at least to me was, you know, she didn't speak English. You know, we would visit once a week and you know, she would send us into the other room. But before that, we would come in and she would kiss each one of us and say, how is school? But if we answered, she didn't care about the answer. So we knew eventually not the answer. And we would be sent into the other room while the adults gathered and spoke in Yiddish usually, which I didn't understand. And we would wait long enough, the kids until my siblings and I until we thought it was okay to go back in their room and say, can we go home now? And that was my experience with my grandmother. I generally knew the outlines of her story, but not anywhere near the details. And I don't know if it's the age that my father was that he experienced this kind of trauma of being in a war or, you know, so that he didn't want to revisit it himself, or he was trying to protect us children from knowing some of those horrors or it might be a combination of both. But my siblings are social workers. And we've talked about this since our parents passed that, you know, my father probably suffered from a form of PTSD his whole life. Yeah. When my older sister, I'm a middle sister, younger and older sister, my brother's the youngest. Oh, when my older sister was going to study in Madrid, when she finished college, my father freaked. And we, of course, not knowing his complete history, we made fun of him about it. You know, they're not waiting 40 years for your daughter to come back and shoot at her. Oh, they probably have toilet paper now and things like that. And it was only after she came back safely that it was okay for the rest of us to go abroad, you know, for whatever reason. But my father arrived here at the age of 14 in 1924. So, you know, there were some family left behind who were evacuated during World War Two to the Asian part of the Soviet Union. And we actually, my cousins in Philadelphia drove up and we met with them. They actually ended up in Brooklyn maybe eight or 10 years ago. And it was not particularly pleasant. But, you know, they were totally disinterested in learning anything about any of us or even about my father, you know, if he was even alive or not. But they wanted money to take to their sister who was left behind who was still in Kiev. So anyway. Let's jump forward. Sure. Your involvement with the theater for the new city that was founded in 1970. I learned how long involved with it. My first play was produced there in 1994. And I've been doing a play every year since then. A friend and mentor of mine who died just two years ago, Robert Dada, who was a legendary director in New York City, off off Broadway at the Cafe Chino, which was actually the starting place for gay theater. Oh, really? Yeah. It was the only, it was the place that, you know, that gay authors primarily male, but some female could get their work produced. And he was one. And I did not know him then. But later on when I got to know him, excuse me, one day he said, come with me to a meeting at theater for the new city. There's a committee to organize for a benefit. And I want you to be on the committee. So I, before I left my apartment, I thought, wait a minute, I'm going to take one of my plays with me. And I put it in my bag. And he introduced me to Crystal Field, who is the founder and artistic director still at theater for the new city. And he introduced me as excellent playwright or something like that. And I sat at that through this meeting. And then at the end of the meeting, she said, well, you're a playwright. Why don't you give me a play? And I reached in my bag and she was kind of stunned. And I said, here. And actually that was 1992. And it took me two years for her to produce that play. I volunteered there, you know, when I could. And I earned my way in. And since then she's been just a major support. And she's basically responsible for the body of work that I have. Because I can write knowing the work was going to be produced. It took three years before I used up what was in the drawer. And then I had to start writing if I wanted to keep that slot every year. And I learned to write faster and hopefully not lose quality. That's my question. Do you have a writing process? I do. And it's, I'm actually just beginning a playwriting workshop that I'll be facilitating there. My process is probably unique, or maybe not unique, I don't know. But it comes from my acting background. And that I, even with historical plays, when they're real life characters, I may know the end. But I know the characters, I know the setting. I know the situation. And I do it like an improv in my head. They talk to each other. And then I just write it down. It's like automatic writing. And after I get a number of scenes, I take a look at them and I see which ones will fit into a concept of the play, an arc or whatever. And I see, well, maybe this one doesn't work or this one should go before the other one. And I need a transition season scene there. And that's how I complete the play. There's a community of playwrights and actors that you are part of, I imagine, the theater from the, from the new city and, and other people or your writing influences past and present. Well, well, as a lesbian playwright, there were very few lesbian playwrights I could look to who were produced. There was Jane Chambers, who was the one everybody went to, who, you know, I performed one of her plays once. But there wasn't anybody else to look at. But then with Theater for the New City, which has been, you know, it's not primarily an LGBT theater, but it's accessible to play, well, playwrights. And there was Maria Irene Fornes, did her work there, you know, who was a big influence. And I'm trying to think who else. Harvey Fierstein did his first play there. Charles Bush, who's been on Broadway, but who still comes back there and does a production every year. And, you know, it's been, it's been really an honor for me to be part of that family, that's for sure. Sam Shepard won the Pulitzer Prize for the play that, that was commissioned by Theater for the New City, although that's rarely noted in his bios or, or, you know, but it's true. The same with Harvey Fierstein. They commissioned his first play that he then turned into this trilogy, torch song trilogy that was done elsewhere, I believe, at La Mama. But it began at Theater for the New City, the first play. It describes itself as a cultural center, Theater for the New City. Yeah. Well, there are four performing spaces there. And they do a lot of, what they, what they describe it as bringing theater, bringing the community to the theater and bringing theater to the community. And right now in the summer, they're in the middle of their Summer Street Theater, which is an original musical that tours free to parks and outdoor locations in all five boroughs. And last year, of course, it was virtual. And, but it brings theater to people, particularly to children, and although it's not specifically children's theater, who maybe never got a chance to see live theater. They have an afterschool program for kids that trains them in all the skills, the theater skills, whether it's puppet, puppet making or costume or directing or whatever. And I think there've been studies that show the children that do that, their grades start improving, even if it's in math or something that they think is not related to theater. It's teaching them how to use their cognitive skills that maybe have been ignored by teachers who, who separate art from education. So they do that, they have the free Lower East Side Festival, the arts every year. And I think this year was the 26th year. And every year I write a short play for that, because it's over 100 performances of all kinds, music, theater, dance. It's over three days, it's free to the public. So I write a very short play, usually satire, something that's happening in the world. So yeah, they're a gift to the city, they really are. And Crystal is the driving force, Crystal Field. The time has elapsed very quickly. Are there any last words you want to share with the audience, Barbara? Well, I'm, I'm really pleased with, with how so much theater has been shifted or transitioned because of the pandemic, that I hope we don't lose some of that, that gives us access to audiences we would not have in live theater, audiences from around the world. But I also know that it's not a substitute for real theater, for live theater. So I really would encourage people to please go back to, to, to the theater, you know, we need you. With live theater, the audience is a character. It's collaborative. And I, I miss that tremendously. I look forward to it. And I look forward to audiences returning and enjoying live theater that, that they can't possibly enjoy in the same way on film or on zoom. Barbara Kahn, thank you for joining us. Thank you very much. It's been a pleasure. Hi. Welcome to all things LBGTQ. I'd like to involve in, in, I'd like everybody to meet Lindsay Merbaugh, Merbaugh, who is here to tell us about her exciting first novel. She has, welcome. Thank you so much for having me. It's so great to be here. And this is her first novel, but she does have other publications. And let me just tell the audience a little bit about who you are. Lindsay Merbaugh is a queer feminist author and high priestess of home mixology, serving as an editor of book reviews at Necessary Fiction. Her award nominated work has appeared in Pank, Electric Literature, The Calacists, Harper, Pallet, The Rumpus, and Bitch Media, among others. So welcome. Thank you. So when is your book coming out? It is called The Gold Persimmon. Yes. It's coming out. The Gold Persimmon officially comes out October 5th. Okay. It's around Halloween, which is perfect. Was that timing or was that just the way it happened? My publishers wanted to move quickly and said, if we do, we can do an October release, which I really thought Halloween. And they said, well, we can push it if you need to. And I said, no, let's do it. I want a Halloween book. So why did you decide to write a horror? That's a wonderful question. I actually did not realize I was writing horror until other people told me that's what it was. Sometimes when you're in your own world crafting a story that, as in this case, takes many years to put together, you don't necessarily have the perspective of totally understanding how other people might interpret it. You may not be thinking in great detail about what exactly, what is the genre of this? You're just writing the story that you want to tell. You're writing the story that you want to see in the world. And one thing that really made me realize what this book was categorically was when I found my publisher. I was at AWP last year before everything shut down. My best friend was with me and she said, there's this publisher here called Creature Publishing and you've got to check them out. They're publishing feminist horror and it really sounds like it's right up your alley. And I was like, oh, am I writing horror? Is that a fit? What is feminist horror? And so I went to check them out. I saw what books they had coming out. I saw they had a book coming out about a girl becoming possessed by a goddess. And I was like, wow, this sounds really cool and exactly the kind of stuff I would read. And the press defines feminist horror. And I would agree with this definition as well as basically writing that explores feminism and feminist ideas through the tropes of horror. And that can look like all different types of books. It doesn't necessarily contain supernatural elements. There isn't necessarily violence. But we're employing those tools in order to talk about the horror of the female body experience, the horror of gender, the horror of a society full of hierarchy and discrimination and what that means for those of us living in that. And that is exactly what my book is doing. This book is very much about the body. It's very much about gender and grief and also sexuality. And so all those things turned out to fit beautifully with what the press was aiming to do. And so I realized, okay, yeah, I'm a feminist horror writer. I'm writing experimental literary feminist horror, which leads to lots of questions about, well, how scary is it? Well, how sexy is it? And to that I always say, I think the most terrifying thing in the novel is the gendered violence that it discusses. Aside from any other sort of ghosts or any kind of inexplicable phenomenon, I think the scariest thing is the stuff that resonates with our shared reality, in my opinion. And I know you touched on a lot of issues in here, like children's relationship with their mother and other issues that I think our readers would be really, really interested in. So when you published short pieces that were published in other places, were they hard to or were they different? That's a really good question. I would say that a lot of my short fiction has run the gamut a little bit. I published a lot of magical realism, which might contain some horror elements. I've published some very linear realist stories. You know, like many writers, I spent years writing short pieces and publishing them as a means of trying to build myself as a writer and figure out through writing stories how I would actually attack a novel because it's a very different undertaking. And I didn't really start out writing things that were surrealist or magical realist. It kind of developed over time. And then those elements started coming out more when I started writing longer work. At this point, I actually don't write short stories really. I do write essays, but my fiction is primarily focused on novels. And I feel like that is where I'm really starting to hit my stride because there's a certain economy required with short stories that novels let you explore more. There's certain structural things you can get away with in novels that are harder to accomplish in short stories. But the whole time that I was writing and publishing stories, my goal was always to publish a book. And this book is my first published novel, but it's not the first book I've written. It's actually the third book that I've written. I had a novel that I wrote some years ago that I did shop around a little bit and then ultimately decided this isn't really the book that I want to be my first book. This story isn't quite working for me, and I want to take what I've learned from it and apply it to future projects. And then this book, I had the idea for it about 10 years ago. Didn't start writing it right away, and then it took, I'm not even sure, five years, seven years, something like that to puzzle it out. And along the way, I did continue writing short fiction. But now my love, my focus really is novels. It's where I flourish now. So how did this come to you? Were you walking in a hotel? Yeah, I love hotels. First of all, hotels are fascinating spaces to me. They're kind of this weird in between space of existence, where it's a very public location with lots of different people coming through. And at the same time, hotels are really devoted to privacy. You know, you have your own room, housekeeping comes and goes, but you're not supposed to really see them. You know, everyone has their own key. They're strangers all next to each other, but they may not ever meet or interact. So as sort of liminal spaces, I find hotels really fascinating from the really, you know, sketchy ones, and to all the way to the opulent ones. But when I got the idea for this book, it started with just one seemingly simple thing, which was a hotel to cry in. I had just moved to San Francisco after living in Ecuador for four years. I'd already written a couple books that I wasn't pursuing. And I don't know where it came from. Maybe it came from the loneliness I was experiencing at that time, or the bad breakup I'd just been through, or the difficulty of transitioning to New City, or maybe it was all those things. But I just thought, what if there were a hotel for you to cry in? And that was the nugget that I had. And that was all I had for a long time because I created a hotel, The Gold Persimmon, where people are in complete solitude. They go there to grieve their own suffering in whatever way they choose without anyone knowing what they're doing or checking in on them without seeing other guests. But how do you create a story out of people in solitude not interacting? Stories are typically from characters interacting. So I had to figure out who's in the hotel and what's going to happen to them. And how do I bring all of this together? And the vehicle for that really became Clytemastra, who works at the hotel. And so you see that world through her eyes. And then the story shifted and took on a more experimental route because I started thinking about whose hotel is this and who is really behind the story. So I'm talking about The Gold Persimmon, but there are two hotels within this novel. There's the Red Orchid, and there's The Gold Persimmon. And in some ways they are one in the same, but you have to, I want to say too much and give too many spoilers, but you have to look at that to see what that means. All right. And what is your writing schedule? Do you get up the same time every morning or are you kind of like, oh, I just feel like writing now kind of person or? That's a great question. I currently don't have a writing schedule. I am so busy with doing things for book promotion that I'm not doing a whole lot of writing right now. I've mostly been writing essays, but typically my writing schedule is every day I write in some way. I'm fortunate enough that I'm currently trying to write full time and my partner and I are making that work. Before that, when I had a regular nine to five job, I would write at work. I would write at my desk when I had downtime. And I required myself to put in a certain number of hours of writing per week. So by the end of the week, I had to complete say four or six hours of writing. And I just stuck to that for a long time. For years, every Friday night, I would go home. And while my partner was out with friends, I would be on my laptop writing. So that was how I managed to work it in. Now I'm blessed to have a bit more freedom, but I have another book that I'm editing and working on. And then I have a third book that I started writing that I want to give more time to, but have had a little trouble just because there's so much else going on and gearing up for the goal for Simon to come out. So I have a lot of irons in the fire, you could say. Well, you're lucky to have the time to be able to really work on it. So that's really great. So would you like to give our audience a taste of this book and read something for us that we can take with us and Absolutely, absolutely. I'll read a few pages from the beginning from part one where we where we actually are arriving at the goal for Simon hotel. The lobby is cool and quiet as a tomb. The only sound the soft verbal of the fountain behind the desk, a hunk of stone with a ripple of shimmer coursing through it, like a silver strand of hair, a spring pouring forth from the head, washing over the persimmon tree carved into the rock face. Green moss and tiny white flowers hide in the crevices. The orchids shiver. Five stands behind the desk with her hands on the porous granite caressing stone. The world outside is one of car horns, garbage, cell phone chatter, the obscenity of worrying trucks, the boom and clank of construction. Inside this is her world. When guests arrive one at a time, she studies their faces as they cross the threshold. Some of them tremble. Other smile of obvious relief float up to the check-in desk. Welcome, Kly says and means it. A sleek black theme tag is pinned to her cream blouse just above her breast. Her long black hair, wavy, almost curly, is pulled back in a gold clip. She wears simple gold earrings and a matching pendant in the shape of a persimmon tree. On her desk, there's a glass bowl of persimmons. She offers one to each guest. The fruit will never go out of season. It's grown especially for the hotel in a greenhouse somewhere. There are people who come here so their former selves can die, so they can transform into something else. Sometimes when guests return to the lobby to check out after their stay, Kly does not recognize them. Their faces are the same, yet not. Once in a while someone's hair goes white. Kly doesn't know what exactly happens in those rooms because it is not her business to know. Even the guests themselves probably couldn't explain it. But she does know something about solitude, about a quiet that can be deafening. She is the priestess offering safe passage. When Edith arrives, Kly notes her jaunty little walk for stylish leather jacket. She smirks and simpers. The first to survey the lobby was such obvious self-satisfaction, savoring the sight of each object. The orchids, the plush couches no one ever sits on. The fountain, even Kly herself, and finding a secret pleasure in it all. When Edith reaches the desk, hands stuffed in her pockets, she looks Kly right in the eye and smiles. She says, hi, slowly, with great purpose, the word accompanied by that smirk, teeth gleaming. Her voice is too loud, Kly winces. Welcome, she says, but this time she does not mean it, not exactly. What she means to say is, are you sure this is where you're supposed to be? Edith looks around again. She has no luggage, just a backpack slung over one shoulder. She tosses her head and her short, fine hair falls into her eyes, then she brushes it away. It's light brown, almost blonde, with strands of silver. Her eyes, blue-gray, are framed by tentative quotation marks. Kly thinks she looks younger than she is. There are at least 10 years between them. As Kly brings up a reservation on the computer, Edith plucks a persimmon from the bowl and casually rolls it around in her hands. Finally, it's time for the presentation of the key. She offers Edith a shining black card of her cupped palms, the way she's been taught to do, the way she's always done it. Edith arches an eyebrow. Really? Kly nods. Okay then. She takes the key, allows her finger to graze Kly's palm. It's full of electricity. Zip. You want to be down here for a while? Kly pulls at her shirt, composing herself. Yes, ma'am, until one o'clock. Edith smirks at her again for saying ma'am. Then she glances at her name tag. Well, if you want some company, you were to find me, Kly Tamestra. She pronounces her full name like an inside joke. With that, she saunters off to a gilded elevator where an attendant awaits to shuttle her to her room. She hums to herself as she goes, tosses the persimmon in the air. She catches it, throws it again, a prince with a golden bobble. The next day, Kly finds on her desk a small piece of heavy, creamy stationery folded in half. She knows who's left it, though she plays koi with herself and pretends she doesn't. Her hands tremble as she unfolds the paper to sneak a peek. Bravo, Lindsay. Thank you. Is there anything you would like to leave our audience with? I really appreciate your reading and the interview. And would you like to say some last words? I know we'll all be looking forward to getting the book. Thank you so much. I just want to say that the book is officially coming out October 5th, but you can pre-order it now through creaturehorror.com, my publisher's website. And if you do pre-order the book, you get a custom compendium of cocktail and mocktail recipes that I designed to complete a book. If you check me out online at Pick Your Potions, you'll see that I make quite an interesting array of fun cocktails, many of them inspired by books. So that's a fun giveaway if anyone would like to pre-order the book, which of course is very helpful for small presses and peer writers like myself because pre-orders count towards the first week of sales and help a book succeed. Well, we'll certainly get the word out. Thank you again. On a recent interview with Becca Ballant, she made reference to having attended a conference and being in a workshop and walking away from the workshop thinking whatever train that person who was presenting is on, I want a ticket. And today's guest is that presenter. Please welcome to all things LGBTQ recently retired major Ingrid Jonas. Welcome Ingrid. Thank you for having me. It's nice to be here. I have been waiting a long time to get you on our show to talk about your story in particular and then some of the work you've been doing. So let's start with, so how do you happen to be here in Vermont? And what made you choose law enforcement as a career? Well, we moved here when I was age nine and my brother was 14 months younger than I am. We came from Boston with our mom who was getting a divorce and kind of re-establishing herself or redefining herself. And so I went to elementary school in Memorial County and then high school in Burlington. And after college, I moved back to Vermont and in college, I sort of found my passion around working to advocate for victims of domestic and sexual violence. So that was really just through a course on women's studies that I was working in a shelter and realized, wow, there's this thing where people are unsafe in their homes and I want to do something about that. And that work, I was able to continue doing that work among many other people who were fighting hard for rights of particularly women in their homes in the late 80s, early 90s. And then I had worked with a number of great police officers and part of my job was to read police affidavits of probable cause around sexual and domestic violence as I was advocating for victims and also working with those who had caused harm or those who had offended and committed crimes. And I felt like the affidavits were missing in sort of those areas of nuance or like sort of the pattern of continued control and the things that were perhaps not even illegal, but were happening and helping hold all of this abuse in place and making it harder for survivors to get out and get away from that. So I was drawn to policing to try and make a difference in that area, just doing more comprehensive work around violence in the home. And so I applied, I actually didn't at the time realize that in order to do investigations you have to be a cop if you're doing that type of investigation. So I applied, you know how you are when you're, I was in my, probably my late 20s and started sort of doing these informational interviews with law enforcement and I applied in my, I think I was probably 30, 31 when I first applied to Mont State Police. I applied to other departments, but VSP was who hired me and I went through the academy and when I was in the academy it was a very different environment. I actually met you I think for the first time because you taught in the police academy and I'll never forget that. I felt like there were, you know, just, there weren't that many people that I experienced as kind and compassionate in that environment of being a recruit. There was just a lot of yelling and push-ups in that type of environment. And so I just remember listening to you and feeling like, oh, this is someone to whom I can relate and who cares about us and who cares about what he's teaching us. And so I just very much appreciated that. And so I never forgot you and I think we stayed in touch over the years and I felt like you brought a lot to our recruit class and just really got us thinking. So I feel like with regard to my career, I spent 23 years in the State Police and it was driven by wanting to help break down barriers and provide access to safety for people in Vermont. And I feel like if that focus was able to enable me to get to do a lot of great things in State Police from, you know, over a decade in investigations to doing internal investigations around allegations of misconduct within our own department to getting to do fair and impartial policing and a lot of other really exciting things. Okay. You touched on a whole number of things that I'd like to spend a little time pursuing. You have described walking into a police culture that on its surface might have been somewhat resistant, but you were able to achieve a rank that no other woman had achieved prior to your career. What was it that either you challenged and helped to change or what was changing in police culture that allowed you to become a major? Yeah. And I thought about that question. You know, I don't know if I have the final answer. There were certainly many, many women who came before me in State Police who did incredible work and who I feel like really didn't get recognized for the work that they did. And so it's a little bit of a feeling of, I don't know if it's survivor guilt or like a sort of sense of guilt where it's like, well, the timing worked for me, but it wasn't so much about me. I think that there were plenty of women and men who were helping to mentor and try to make sure that everybody was included. I think that being able to spend a lot of time doing complex casework is very helpful because you're so focused on the mission of, you know, why you're, you were drawn to the, why I was drawn to the work to begin with. So I think doing good casework is, was part of it and being part of good cases. I think that's a really important, I mean, that's why most people are drawn to policing. And then there were opportunities because there have been so few women in leadership roles in the Vermont State Police. I think it, there was, there was room for that and the agency was ready, but I do feel like it's more about, you know, we're talking about, you know, I was promoted in 2017 to the rank of major. That's, you know, it's kind of sad when you think about how long it takes. So I don't know that it's so much about a compliment about a person as it is more about like, what's wrong with your agency that it takes so long for women to ascend. And I think that most people would agree with that. You know, the colonel, the command staff would agree like, wow, what is taking us so long. So there's really no clear answer. I think it was timing. I think that a lot of women worked really hard and were probably enormously frustrated by the time they retired because they weren't recognized for the good work that they, that they brought. So what I'm hearing from you is that there were women before you on whose shoulders you stand who did work that allowed, which challenged and allowed, you know, the Vermont State Police to grow. And then as the opportunity arose, they saw you and said, okay, now is the time, it's past time. Let's see what we can do. One of the things that you have been intimately involved in is the Farron and partial policing project. And out of that is also the traffic stop survey, which has given us a real reflection on how we might be responding or not responding to race based issues here in Vermont. Can you talk a little bit about there and impartial policing, how it came into being and your hopes for how it might move forward? Absolutely. Yeah. So in 2015, Colonel Birmingham, who's still the director of State Police to this day had envisioned a command level position that would be dedicated to ensuring fair and impartial policing, which is essentially ensuring ethical policing practices in the department where equal access is ensured and where barriers that exist because we knew they existed were broken down or there was focus placed specifically and intentionally on breaking down barriers to access to safety services. So in 2015, we created this captain level position and in the rank structure, that's a higher ranking position in the department. So you have influence over super over lieutenants and their ex level efforts. So it was an important move to make it was actually really the first we weren't aware of any other departments, police departments around the state or even the country that we're doing that type of taking those types of steps where you're really dedicating and saying, we realize that this is an area where we have to work harder. So I was lucky enough to get selected for that for that role and was really excited, also very challenged by it. And I was at a place in my career where I wanted to do that kind of work. So it's it's not actually solving criminal cases so much as helping break down barriers, helping ensure that people are heard and working particularly in communities of color or working with the LGBTQ community to hear the things that we as police were missing around why people don't feel safe or don't feel like they have equal access and are actually afraid of police for valid reasons. So obviously you can imagine that it's hard work to just sort of stay in the room and listen to all of the concerns and all of the fears that we as police officers have brought to people. That was super hard for me to think of to be thought of as like, you know, somebody who has quite a bit of trauma to people. So that that sucked actually at times. And I, you know, spoken with Gary, you know, then Captain Gary Scott and now Captain Julie Scrivener, perhaps we so different members of us have been in this role and we've expanded the role as well. But it is challenging work, certainly. It's not your typical role for a police officer. So it's incredibly important work. I mean, that sounds as though, in a way, completes a circle because that's going back to what you were citing as being the reason to step into law enforcement is the nuance that was missing in the recording from law enforcement. What is what is the true impact on the victim's survivor for what has happened? And it sounds like with fair and impartial policing, you're trying to help the rest of the Vermont State Police appreciate not only the impact of the crime, but the impact of how they investigate. Absolutely. Absolutely. Just, you know, there's a lot of nuance that can get lost, even just, you know, a lot of this is about just deepening and understanding about each other. And I think that that gets lost in all of our work. So I think it was trying to get us to slow down and take a look at, you know, as informed by data, you mentioned the data studies around traffic stops. Just slowing down, understand other perspectives and experiences that real people in Vermont were living with as impacted by police. All right. So looking at fair and impartial policing moving forward, you had testified in support of the ban on the use of a trans or gay panic defense saying that the passage of the bill would make it easier for law enforcement to do their job. In our last remaining minutes, could you share a little bit about how that would help? Yeah, I think, you know, and I testified briefly in that, in that in the Senate Judiciary and it was really, to me, it was straightforward. My testimony was pretty brief because in my, from my perspective, it seems like it again helps break down barriers, right? Like if I think it's a little bit sad that we would even need to consider banning the use of a, you know, gay or trans panic defense to my mind, that seems like it should, I don't know how that would pass the straight face test, so to speak. However, I think it's also important to speak up as law enforcement and show support for something like this because it helps people understand I'm safe to go to law enforcement and talk about my experience. I'm not going to be further abused or viewed in a negative light or not worthy of equal access to the law and safety. So anything that law enforcement can do to help with that and to be at the table when talking about these important issues, I think is critically important not to be silent about it. So with that, I need to say thank you for spending this time with us. Thank you for the work that you have done and I hope you enjoy your retirement. So wonderful to see you. Thanks for having me. Thank you for joining us. We'll see you in two weeks, but in the meantime, resist.