 Welcome to Moments with Melinda, and my guest today is Diane Gair. How are you? I'm fine. I'm glad to be here. I am so glad to have you here. You and I go back many, many years, I think 30 or 40 years, we go back and we've sort of been aligning in each other's careers, and I have been dying to learn more about you and to share with my viewers your life story. So for my viewers, let me tell you a little bit about Diane Gair. She is an architect, an environmentally conscious designer, a teacher, an artist, and a writer. Anything you'd like to add to that illustrious list of accomplishments? I guess that will hold for now. Yes, and you are a visionary. I aspire to be a troublemaker, but I don't think people know that. Oh, I think they know. No, I do. I think people have, I think you have impacted people, and certainly in my work in sustainable redevelopment, you were always there, sort of the conscious in the back tapping me on the shoulder and saying, Melinda, have you thought about this? Have you thought about that? And you've always stretched me to think a lot deeper in the work that I was doing. And I think that's been one of your roles is that you are someone who does not hold back if you know that something could be done better to protect our planet. So I think I've always loved that about you. You are not a wilting flower. You are a explosive energy of what's right and good. And your trouble is good trouble, like John Lewis said. So let's start with you sharing with us a little bit about your life and your childhood and where you grew up and a little bit about that. Well, I guess I would start by saying I didn't grow up in the U.S. I grew up in Switzerland in French speaking part in Geneva and came to the U.S. at age 14 with American parents. So that gives me a little bit of an outsider viewpoint at some times. And I think that's added to my architecture that's added to my world view of how to solve problems. But it was a very urban but small place. So coming to Burlington sort of met a lot of those childhood pieces of having an urban context, but it was still small. And I don't know what all to say. Living at age 14, I went from being able to access the whole city on buses, on bikes, on walking. It was safe. And then I landed in sort of a suburban rural part of Pennsylvania where I rode the yellow school bus for the first time. So my world as a pre-teenager, teenager, went instead of expanding contracted. And I find that interesting and retrospect in terms of how that informed some of the ways I see and work. So you came from Switzerland where you were born and you lived at 14, you moved to the States and lived where in Pennsylvania? Well, it's not a famous part of my life. So I don't tend to talk about it. I'm from Pennsylvania. So that's why I'm here. Oh, right. So it was a mountain outside of Valley Forge. It was called Valley Forge Mountain. And it did form a couple of different things. But I think one of the... And when kids change schools and change cultures, all sorts of things happen. But the first two years that I was there, I pretty much isolated myself. And I think because of that, it informs my belief system in myself. I am very strong internally because I depended on myself for two years. And I know some people have different experiences out of that. But for me, it was very powerful. Well, you all are a deep thinker. And 14 is a difficult time to be thrown into a new... You're going through a lot of stuff anyway at 14. And so to be thrown into a new environment. So can you share a little bit about who had the most influence on your life and your career? Hmm. Hmm. Maybe a litany, a collection of friends and people. There's not one particular person that stands out. Although there was a course when I was in high school. I did end up in a Waldorf school that's sort of Rudolf Steiner philosophy. And there was a course called History Through Architecture. And in that course, we explored the meaning of space and sort of modulating there are three nested envelopes about space, personal space, community space and cosmic space. And that in particular, not only influenced my life personally and my work in the community, but also my belief system in terms of being part of the cosmos. So that's critical. And it was more a course following Rudolf Steiner than a person in particular. And then sort of unfolding at the same time, I had a couple siblings of friends who were studying architecture, one of whom was a woman who's now deceased. And so I knew right from the beginning that architecture was a possibility. As well as my father's an engineer, was an engineer, my brother was an engineer. So I ran in the family and where I didn't quite want to do what they were doing. I could go from engineering to architecture. And my father totally supported that from the get go. I said, teaching or architecture? And he said, go for it. I'll get you one tomorrow. So I would say my father was also a huge influence. As was my mother. I come from a long line of very educated women, both my grandmothers from both sides were educated. My paternal grandmother was in the extension service in Nebraska. And I was totally surprised when I went to visit with the archives several years ago that that was unusual. They were like, wait, we want her history, too. Because they said, no, extension service was always met. I'm going, what are you making? It's always been women to me. And my mother and my grandmother were also early in banking. So I'd have to say, you know, strengthen families in there as well as sort of friends along the way. So share with us a little bit about your journey from Pennsylvania. To to Burlington, to Vermont. So Pennsylvania was the high school for five years. And in 1971, my parents picked up and said, OK, that's it. We're going back out West because they'd started out West and landed in Colorado. I ended up not in architecture school, but a liberal arts school in California. Called Carlton University. And the way I like to say it is even Obama didn't like it there. Because he went to Carlton, maybe he graduated. I left. So I went to Carl, sorry. I went to Occidental College. And then I went to the University of Colorado. And then I spent a year in Germany and then I came back. So I went to five school, two schools twice, three schools total and graduated in four years. And then I went off and taught skiing, right? Isn't that what we did in the 70s? Yes, we did. I guess we did. Yeah, I was skiing. I was teaching skiing at Mad River. I guess we did. We did. And so so you now you you and your ex-husband was he was your business partner. You established your own practice called Artemis design. Artemis design or Artemis design. Tell us a little bit about your time in Colorado and the important work you did while you were there. OK, so to segue back just a little bit. So I end up in Colorado teaching skiing, three part time jobs. That's when I come home and I say this isn't sustainable. I need to do something else at six in the morning scraping sugar off of donut racks was not going to be my future. So I end up in architecture school. I meet Jeff in architecture school. We graduate and we decide. Well, I work for a couple other architects for a couple for a year and a half. And then we become part of the. It was a HUD renovation zone in Denver. And so we buy a building. We start to renovate it. There's a fire in it and there have been fires in several of my key iconic projects as it turns out. Jumping ahead old mill had a history of fire in it before that became my key project at UVM. So on Santa Fe Drive, Jeff and I opus Artemis designs and the fires the day that I quit my paying job. And the building burns down to the degree that then all the code violations kick in that we have to take care of. As opposed to just thinking we're doing a simple renovation, the whole thing has to be brought up to code. And I think you might know what some of that means. So so that's the beginning of Artemis designs. I basically named it after my own name. Artemis was the goddess of the hunt, the Greek goddess. And I become the one that's licensed. I'm sort of in charge of the office and Jeff and I work together and he does the renovations part more than I do. And it's sort of a split office. But after several years of that, the economy in Denver totally falls apart and it continues to fall apart for a total of eight to nine years. So at year five, I'm applying for jobs elsewhere and one of the places is UVM. And I keep track of the eight years because it wasn't like, oh, yeah, I could just go work for UVM for six months or a year and then go back. The economy continued to be non-existent. So I end up at UVM and it's it's a total love. I fall in love with Vermont. I fall in love with the work that I'm doing. I'm finally getting paid. I mean, all things are good, except I did leave a life behind in Colorado. And that was OK, too. Well, we're so glad that you came to Vermont. Well, Vermont ends up being and I came. The first visit was in November after Thanksgiving, frozen ground by the lake, dark. What year was that, Diane? What year was it? It was November 1988 or I moved in 1988. So maybe it was 87. I totally fell in love. I said, this is it. The smell of the earth in that frozen November night did it. And that's probably not what most people say. For the smell of the earth, I think that should be a book. And I know you've written a couple of books. We're going to talk about that. But I think you're next to be called the smell of the earth. Oh, cool, because I agree with you. There's there's something about the smell of the earth that it smells right. It's a great place to be. So talk to us a little bit about your work as an educator, because you were at Norwich University, the University of Vermont and the Yester Morrow Design, Build School in Waitsville. Talk a little bit about the work you did as an educator. So it evolves out of working for UVM for five years. And I think. Well, there was somebody teaching an architecture course within what was then still Votek, and they stopped doing that. And so I am asked to step in and fill in. And that meets a need in what I like to do and and expands from doing drawings to helping other people see the world and know that they can make a difference. So that's the engagement and teaching is is that. And what I found at UVM versus Norwich is that I could teach drawing and design skills to environmental students or natural resource students at UVM so that they had more tools where if I was at Norwich, they were already thinking that they were architects and and they didn't want to learn maybe about the environment. And what I've always been doing is meeting the environment, that place where we live with how we engage in it. And that's the architecture for me. So OK, go ahead and come together. Well, I also want to say that that you also had your students work on projects and actually design important parts of the city. Talk a little bit about that. So so the way to sort of help them manifest their voices was to take on various design projects. Barge canal for one, the waterfront for another, but it also involved projects in like Middlesex or St. Johnsbury. So having students engaged and at this point, then I'm also director of the Vermont Design Institute, which was a nonprofit that did this kind of work, nonprofit work of helping towns or nonprofits engage in design and planning around sustainable issues and giving them the resources that maybe their volunteer staff didn't have. One of the projects that I really like and we can always come back to to Wadesfield, but St. Johnsbury was a key early Vermont design project. And it was one preservation trust also still had runners, road runners. What are the when we used to have journeymen travel from town to town with the news, that kind of thing. Anyway, Steve Libby was was one of these folks for the preservation trust of Vermont. And together we created a team for for the St. Johnsbury Athenaeum and they were very worried because the courthouse was being reconstructed. And everyone was talking about the parking problem in the town. And the courthouse wanted to build a five story parking garage behind the town offices that would have dwarfed the Athenaeum. And so through a process of meetings with locals and pie socials started at that point. We engaged neighbors and folks who lived in St. Johnsbury and asked them about their parking habits, all of which ended up showing that there was a really easy non-built solution. So the state was happy with us, the Athenaeum was happy with us. The parking needs were solved and we didn't build anything. So no natural resources were used. What it really amounted to was re measuring all the parking meters so that people at the courthouse could park for six to eight hours and people at the post office would have 15 minutes and it was just a flip of all the hours on all the meters and then there was plenty of parking. So that and that was also in the time that the Rutland parking structure was controversial. So that to me, that was a win-win. We didn't have to spend five million dollars of concrete and we didn't ruin the Athenaeum. But that's how we go. That was like over 30 years ago. And you've been doing this work for so long. So now you so you just mentioned that you were the director of the Vermont Design Institute and I was going to that was going to be one of my questions, but you are committed to and have devoted your life's work to ensuring that architect chair creates a more sustainable future through community empowerment and integrative design approaches. Can you share with our viewers what that means and maybe bring in some of the projects where you've done that? Excuse me. So it ranges. It ranges from the Athenaeum project, which was a no build project. The the building that Jeff and I invested in, which was a HUD neighborhood target zone that had been redlined and no one could get loans for those buildings. And so it took, you know, physical engagement, direct involvement to make a change on those neighborhoods. And in that case, I wasn't only working on our own building, but I was part of a community coalition that helped neighbors gain a thousand dollars for a facade renovation. And with that facade renovation, the neighborhood streetscape would change and get bus stops, benches, street trees and new sidewalks. So that's sort of the very urban scale. And I think in between is the smaller projects that you know, an example would be participating and teaching with Yes, tomorrow, where there was a band of us that did hands on projects within civic realms. I went to Ball State with a team of folks, I think two years in a row. And we did a shelter along the river one year with the students and another part of that was for the high schools were building small houses for folks for like a habitat house, for example, and we were doing a carport. So that's the very direct hands on in the building, as opposed to sort of community engagement, which the Santa Fe project is. So I want to because we're getting so I have some I could talk to you for hours. And of course, this is a world that I'm just so in love with. Talk to me a little bit about about what you are working on now. And I want to move on to the Green Tara because you you stopped working at the nonprofit as a director in 2016. And so that's a while that's a while ago, six years ago. And I've been up to Green Tara. So who is Green Tara and share with us the community that you have created in North Hero that's named after her. So Green Tara, let's see, maybe I bought that building in 2017. So it flows that there I am going back and forth to North Hero because we have a cabin there and I'm watching a building fall down for seven years. So I keep saying, well, somebody needs to buy the building. And, you know, nobody's buying it, so I buy it. So that's the beginning and it's a 200 year old structure. So of course, you know, there's there's a lot of sacredness in the structure. Plus, of course, it was a Catholic church initially. No, sorry. Initially, it was a general store. So I like the fact that it started as a general store. Then it became a church and now it's sort of an art and community gallery. When it opened and it was as I was working on it and I was working alongside the builders, it was very clear it needed to be big open space because that's what it was. I mean, it's not a huge building. So that led it to being an art gallery and I managed a sort of coffee and tea bar and then under covid, it became the tasting room for a micro brewery and they're now moving out. So next year, year seven, it's undergoing its own transformation. And we'll see. We'll see where the snakes lead us. You know, I opened the water heater the other day and there was the fattest snake I've ever seen in the water heater. That's a blessing. So warm. That's a blessing. I know. So can you tell our viewers where they can find the green Tara? So in the village of North Hero, it's pretty much only open on weekends and right now through October, Kramer can move out before Halloween. So it's only open until then, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, noon to six. There is a temporary. I've been curating the shows, but we got to the end of the. Set curated shows. Janet Van Fleet's work just came down. So I pulled out of my archives. You'll like this old ecological drawings that students made from 2016. So those are now pinned on the wall as little transformative drawings. Yeah, wonderful, wonderful. So, Diane, what is your vision for the future of our species as we experience the tragic effects of human inability to deal with climate change and protect our planet for future generations? How much time do I have left? Well, we have about five minutes, but, you know, I mean, you have been doing this your whole life. I mean, you've been thinking about this and everything that you've touched. And so here we are, you know, witnessing what's happening down in Florida and even in our own world here in Vermont. And I just would love to hear from you, your wisdom on the future of our species. And so go for it, girlfriend. Yeah, so I have both a short term view and a long term view. And the middle ground view is the one that's the most difficult that we always ask the question to. But the first part is I went back to 1967 and I'm reading The Territorial Imperative. And I'm shocked as to how few people that I know in my circle know about these three books that he wrote. And I'm gleaning so much about this Territorial Imperative to sort of inform my questioning about what's going on in all the migrations, in all the wars, in all the tragedies that are unfolding with our nation states. So so it's sort of anchoring me in a way, so I mean, I'm not angry. I mean, this is human nature. What what what. I think when I breathe deeply, it's just so much more. Than our day to day experience. I mean, I'm I'm I'm lucky. I'm I'm in a good place. And I know not everybody has that, but the ultimate reality that's behind all of this is eternal and free and pure. And that's sort of where I go to to remind myself that it's OK. There's more to it than than than the hurricane hitting Florida. That's devastating. I'm not denying that. But at the same time, there's there's a whole bigger, bigger, bigger world out there that's not a manmade world. And I think that's my connection that that's beyond our community space to the cosmic space that that gives me hope and and you know, you either have faith or you don't. And it's hard. It is it is hard. And I think I think this this boats for you to maybe start a podcast in some way that could educate people to to think this way, because it is horrific and the suffering is is beyond belief. And at the end of the day, I think people do need to to be able to look at this maybe in the way that you are. So thank you for that. Now, what words of wisdom would you want to share with our younger generation? Well, I've come back to meditation as a serious endeavor, where in my 20s, I did a lot of Zen Buddhism and meditation. And then in the, I guess, in my 40s and sort of get very busy with with my worldly life. And then I come back to it. And I would say spending time meditating is worth every ounce you put into it. And that that would be something that I would suggest to to anybody, but young people in particular, finding where the the depth is and not being afraid. Yeah, I don't know. I don't know how to tell somebody not to be afraid. There's so much to be afraid about. And yet it is sort of a choice. You can choose to not be afraid. Like you can choose to be happy. Right. And and that. And that's easy for us to be happy. I mean, we're in Vermont. We're so this is a whole different different interview with you. But I think that young people and I have young grandchildren and I hear them all the time that this is the world they're growing up in. And where will their species be in 30, 40, 50 years if the planet keeps forming? But anyway, so we're coming to the end of my show. And I just want to tell you that I'm going to go. I'm going to go so people can see both of us here. Hello there. I just want to say that your career has been one of activism and action to provide education, systems, visions and policies for a better future here on Earth. And for that, I want to thank you and honor you. And I want to let you know that your work has been deeply and influential and important to me in the work that I've done. And I want to honor you for challenging me because there were times in my career where you would call me and say, hey, wait a minute, let's think about that, you know. And I also know that you agree with me that Act 250 and the permitting in Vermont is really important because without that, Vermont would look like other places that we would not want to live. So and you've been really active in all of that. So to you, Diane Gair, I honor you and I'm so glad you're my friend. And I want to thank you for being on my show. And I miss seeing you more often. Yes, maybe we need to plan to get together more often. Yeah. So actually, I would love that. And to my and to my viewers, thank you for joining me today, which Diane Gair, and I will see you all soon.