 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. Hi everybody. I'm here with Rob Phelps, the editor-in-chief of Boston Spirit Magazine, a wonderful publication coming out of Boston. It's a bi-monthly news, arts, and lifestyle print publication and website. It covers the LGBTQ community in New England and we'll talk a little more about that during our conversation. Previously, Rob has served as Boston Spirit's managing editor and before that wrote freelance articles for The Spirit and he's been doing that since 2004. Long tenure so far and you've risen through the ranks. Before coming to Boston Spirit as managing editor, Rob was the arts editor for the Provincetown banner. You were the development editor for Fairchild Books, a division of Conde Nast in New York, where you work closely with authors to publish more than 25 best-selling college textbooks in fashion and design. Sometimes they switch to the second person. I hope during reading people's bios. I hope you don't mind. That's more direct. You were also a staff writer for the Harvard University Gazette. You received your BA from Boston University. What did you major in? English literature. Oh, good major and an MFA in writing from Bennington College, so germ for a moment there. You were born in Washington, D.C., who up in the Maryland suburbs until coming to Boston where you fell in love with both New England and your husband, a playwright, some note and we hope to have him as a guest on the show at some future point. You've been involved for 29 years, also impressive. Except for a few great years in New York City, I had some great years in New York City. It was fun. You're proud to call Massachusetts home. Very nice. Welcome, Rob. Thank you. What can you tell us? What can you add to your biography? First of all, you have a wonderful website that is full of much more than this abbreviated bio would suggest, but tell us more. What else would you like to tell us? Well, I guess to my website, lots and lots and lots of freelance writing and editing in between. Not all of all which I added because it would be too much and it would be really off the point. For instance, I never expected to be an editor in fashion and design, but it turned out when I worked with people that were experts in that, we were a pretty good match. So it was fun to edit. What else can I tell you? The bio that you read is very, those are kind of like the highlights, but all through that it's just a big, messy career of writing and editing and also personal issues that came in. Early on in my career, well, I'm a long-term aid survivor. So in the late 80s, not long after I graduated from Boston University, and while I was working at Harvard is when I was diagnosed. And that detoured my career pretty sharply. I was working in the news office at Harvard University and my first job there was editorial assistant. And so I did just about everything that you could do and eventually became a staff writer there. And around that time is when I started to develop some illness. And so basically, that changed everything. Not to get into that whole story, but I was very fortunate to be where I was in the Boston area with all of the great medical schools, Harvard in particular. There was a lot of all the new pretty inhibitors and all of the new meds were coming out and I had the opportunity to get on the trials and the tests very early. So I spent a large portion of the early 90s. That was probably my full-time job taking care of the health and participating in the trials and whatnot. A little activism in there too, when I felt strong enough. But as I got better, I discovered that I really wanted to live in Provincetown. I wasn't sure how long I would live, all of this. And so it just seems like, what are you going to do with your life? Well, I love Massachusetts, I love the beach, I love the gay community. And so that's where I went. And within a couple of weeks, I was working at the local newspaper there. And I kind of, that was an ongoing part of my career working with the banner. I actually started with the Provincetown advocate, but they were bought by the banner while I was there. So I went to the banner. And I did almost every job you could do. I never was sold ads. I probably wouldn't have been very good at it. But I would have probably given it a try if they gave that to me too. But I wrote a lot, I became their copy editor. I did a lot of stories. My first beat was the drag queen beat. So I used to interview everyone who came to town and all those who lived there. And I love to interview them first out of their character, out of the drag persona. No pictures, you know, nothing like that. And then once they went into the drag persona, then I would go to the show and do a review, but also with this great backstory of what they told me and who they were and where they came from. And that's when I started to really write the feature stories. And I moved on to other areas as well as the drag scene. But so sort of living in Provincetown, which is so, so supportive of being LGBTQ, I just, it was, that was part of the world. I mean, for me, you know, growing up in Maryland, it wasn't, that was like the complete opposite. But now, you know, as an adult, as someone who is well again, because, you know, we could do this HIV and AIDS, but we all know how that's gone. I've been extremely fortunate with that. But, but so my career was there. And my partner and I, I'm really rambling all over the place right now. You know, I think it's very interesting because, you know, resumes are so limited. And I've always felt that there should be an indendum on everybody else. For example, when I started graduate school for Miami program, I discovered I was type one diabetic. And that changed everything. But, you know, all of my grades and incompletes and, you know, so we get a fuller picture and I appreciate your giving it to us. And viewers, I think would be interested in that. I was living in Boston, as I said, in the early 80s. And I remember the activism, the AIDS activism and all those, you know, it was a scary, scary time. It was a terribly scary time. But it was also incredibly empowering. And I cannot stress how lucky and frankly, privileged I was to have happened into that job where there I was, you know, with the Harvard Medical School. I mean, it was ridiculous. And so I did feel a responsibility to sort of get out there and tell my story and get on the street and do what I could. But, you know, I signed the dotted line on a lot of drug trials. Those were pretty scary, too. But again, to get to do that was incredible. I can't wait to read Sarah Shulman's new book. Oh, yeah. You know, we interviewed Sarah Shulman in The Last Issue. Oh, you did. A Boston spirit. Yes. We have a fabulous arts editor, Lauren King, who's writing for the Boston Globe and she writes for a lot of other publications. But every issue, she's got about six or seven stories where she goes and finds what she can, you know, who's doing what. And Sarah Shulman is one of the stories and one of the interviews she did. Fantastic. Speaking of the magazine, maybe we should turn to that. I have many more questions, but we should move to the spirit. And maybe you could show us some actual issues and tell us a little more about it. Sure. Well, this is our latest issue. Actually, our very latest issue is coming out in about a week. But this is actually the, which one is this? This is the May, June issue. And our next issue will be July, August, which we put to bed about a week ago. And we've already started working on the fall. So that's why I have to check to see what date we've got up there. But in this, we have a great, we actually have an op ed from David Sicily, and he wrote the piece himself for us about the Equality Act and where it's at. So that's a very good piece of it. But Boston Spirit, we're a bi-monthly magazine. So we come out every two months, six times a year, we're a free publication. You can subscribe at our website for free to get it in your mailbox. You can also pick up copies at a couple of locations in Boston. But it's primarily by subscription. So we've got about 20,000 subscribers in the, primarily in the Boston area, greater Boston area, but also throughout New England. And also I know, for instance, my mom gets it in Maryland. So we do send it all over the country as well. Vermont, too. Oh, that's great. Well, we try to cover as much as we can and throughout New England. Because, you know, as you know, what you do, there's just so much going on, really, in every state. And we're located in Boston. And so I'd say the majority of our stories and focus probably is in this area or the state of Massachusetts. But we also, you know, our stories cover all six states. For instance, in this last issue, I got to interview state representative Taylor Small. A friend of the show. I thought you might. We love Taylor. Oh, incredible. Yeah. One of the most upbeat and inspiring people I've ever met. I know. She's fabulous. I interviewed her myself. Speaking of the magazine then, what's the average day? I know you have no average days. Nobody does. But how often, if you could select maybe a representative day of your life as editor-in-chief, right? You know, you probably take a week off after each issue or something. It slows down. It really does. The last, you know, maybe month really has been really intense. And it builds and builds and builds up until like, you know, we're working through the weekend. It's really hard. This last weekend, there were events that I wanted to go to forget it. You know, I mean, you just, I was right over there at the desk, praying that I caught all the typos and everything else that you have to do. But an average day involves working with, you know, talking with the different writers. We have, can I tell you our staff size? Oh, please. Okay. So it's pretty small, the core group of us. My publisher, David Simmerman, who started the magazine, myself, who's the editor. And then we have a lifestyle editor, Scott Kiernan and Lauren King, who's our arts editor. We have an art director who is Dean Burchell. And those are, that's the core group. But then we've got, you know, maybe about between a half dozen to a dozen and a half, really incredible writers, a lot of whom will write, you know, from one issue to the next. We also have a copy editor who and a proofreader who, you know, I send them stories out to. We have no central office. We started out with one before I got there, but it's everybody is out and about and working remotely. So it just works that way better. I meet with the publisher, you know, now and then we will have coffee together and go over notes and we're on email and zoom and, you know, you name it all the time. So an average day would be sort of checking in with not everybody because, you know, I sort of check in to see where I think everybody is. And if there's anybody who needs to speak with me directly at any point, then that's what I'll do. Also spending time just going through, you know, online, trying to find all the news that is happening either in our area, throughout New England, and or national or even international that might affect us. And trying to figure out how that that what that means to our mag, how can we can reach readers what we need to help with. I also do a daily blog post. So that's often, you know, from these stories that I'll see, or from press releases. I get a lot of press releases from the different organizations, Pride Center, Vermont, out main, you know, glad HRC. And just trying to, you probably know, that's all it's a lot to go through. But the things that you'll see that people are doing it's all it's overwhelming and so important all at once. You know, so, so that's what I'll do, you know, maybe I'll spend an hour or so working on the blog post. And, you know, I'll often have a story that I'm writing myself. So, you know, I'll be working on that. You do write a lot of copy. I was looking at your resume, and you've seems to have done it, you know, all your life writing a lot of copy for the publication. Yeah, I like to write very much. I also know that I'm better at some stories, and other people are better at other stories. And part of my job is the editors to make sure that I know which ones I really need to let, you know, or in some cases, you know, beg other people to do. So would you say it's an eight hour, 12 hour, 24 hour day? I bet it varies. Oh, it totally varies. Like around this time of year, you know, I mean, this time in the cycle where we just finished a magazine, you know, maybe I'm doing, you know, five or six hours a day, you know, but I hesitate to say that because something might come up and all of a sudden it's eight hours. It's a full time job. As we get closer, it's, you know, I need to sleep. I know I need to get away from the computer. My eyes start to, you know, go crazy. But yeah. As you know, Boston has a very rich publication history involved produced by the LGBTQ community. In fact, as I was living in Boston, when that fateful fire occurred at GCN. Oh yeah. Yeah. And the feminist public, when I was there, feminist publications were everywhere. Bay windows had just started. Where does Boston's spirit fit in that rich tradition and climate? That is such a big question. I know. And it's tough to say because I think in a way, we almost have to look back and see, you know, what we did when we've been here. I think right now, I hope that we're, you know, our mission is basically to provide a platform to amplify LGBT voices in the community. Everybody. Yeah, I know. And so, you know, I trust, I know that we're doing that from the feedback that I get from some people. And then there's a lot of silent people. And then there's a lot of, there's people sometimes that I say, you do what? Is that Boston Magazine? No. It's Boston Spirit Magazine. But I hope also being, you know, a free publication, we really, we show up to a lot of the, well, we're corporate, not corporate sponsors or media sponsors for like the GLAAD, the big HRC dinner and the GLAAD dinner and the Fenway Hall. And so, I hope that our role is our mission, you know, that we do provide that forum is where do we fit into the history of it? I mean, I remember when I came to Boston in 1984, and in the, and there was, well, GCN and when Boston Bay windows started, it became so important. You know, I used to go to the bookstores. I used to, that was like the, that was the place. We didn't have the internet, you know, we didn't. And so. A heady time in many ways. Oh, yeah, really exciting and also, you know, kind of, kind of scary because, you know, I just saw the the Boston LGBT, the history projects, did a co zoom presentation with the Boston Historical Society on on the early days of the publications. And so Michael Bronsky was there. I think that was Fagrag. There was, oh, I mean, it's escaping my mind, but there was somebody from Sojourner, I believe. Yes, Sojourner. I remember it was another feminist magazine. Oh, yeah. And so they were talking about this. I mean, there was GCN, there was Fagrag, there was Amy Hoffman was there. I should work at GCN, I think. Yeah, the stories, but also Dallas, I believe from, from the tapestry, who really, you know, foundational publications, communications work with transgender community. It's a really rich history. And I think you're a lot to it. It's really a worthy goal. And you seem to be fulfilling your mission of elevating LGBTQ voices in a world where they are not always heard in mainstream media. And may I say also, but I'm hoping that we provide sort of a forum so different parts of our community, much like what you do as well, can hear from each other. So you have younger people reading our senior spirit column, you know, you have people that don't have any idea of what's going on in the legal world reading the monthly column or the five monthly column from GLAD. You know, we just read people reading about the latest, you know, the hottest LGBTQ chef, you know, and what she's up to. I mean, just connecting. That's what I'm hoping that we have some, I believe that we do have a place in our community to do that. We do. I think you heard it. And it's really a great publication. I encourage our audience to take a look at it and subscribe. We'll have your contact information on the Chiron below. This is the time has flown by. I hope you'll look back and tell us what you're up to. Sure. Once again, Rob Phillips, editor-in-chief of Boston Spirit Magazine. Thank you for joining us. Thank you so much, Jan. Well, hi, Sue. I would like to welcome you to all things LGBT. This is Sue Katz, who if you don't know, you will know. I can't imagine you don't. But if you don't, let me read a small introduction. Welcome. Hi. Hi. Thank you for having me, Linda. Okay. So Sue Katz's business card identifies her as a wordsmith and rebel. Her journalism and fiction have been published in anthologies, magazines, and online on three continents where she's lived, worked, and roused rabble. She has been a martial arts master, promoted traditional volunteering, and partner danced more than her feet could bear. She began her lifelong activism in the civil rights movement in the early 60s and was on the ground floor of Boston's women's and gay liberation movements. Her first play was produced by the prestigious The Theater Offensive in honor of Stonewall 50. Her fiction books, often focusing on the lives of elders, include A Raisin in My Cleavage, Short and Shorter Stories, Lilian's Last Affair, and Other Stories, and Lilian in Love. Visit her running blog, consentingadult, at www.suekatz.com. And also in addition to that wonderful resume is Sue is also, she lived in Israel. Is that 14 years? 14 years. In Israel as an anti-occupation activist, anti-quando master and 10 years in London, where she worked in international volunteerism and was active politically with an incredible group of women from around the world called Women Against Fundamentalism. It was in London that she spent 10 years helping to build the queer ballroom and Latin dance community that started in the basement of the then lesbian and gay center, and which is now the biggest sport in the international gay Olympics, the gay games. So that is quite impressive, I must say. So you're originally from Pittsburgh. How did you, I know you're in Arlington, Massachusetts. Now how did you, I know you had your journey overseas, but what was Pittsburgh like and what was your family background like? So we can learn a little more about you. I come from a working class family and I was born in the project in the same, anyway, in the project and at three we moved out into a little house and then we moved on. Pittsburgh, just as I was becoming a teenager and whatnot, was really a dying city with the mills closing. It was a steel mill town. It was a coal town and all of that was closing and those jobs were going overseas. So it was a lot of misery in Pittsburgh and it was a big immigrant town and it was very segregated when I was growing up. I cut my political teeth in the civil rights movement, but I was too young to go on any of the buses for registering voters or anything like that. So we started, some friends and I, our own civil rights group in Pittsburgh, I don't know, we were maybe 14, but there wasn't even anywhere we could meet because no place would allow a group of mixed race kids to meet in their facility, no church, no community center. So Pittsburgh was kind of to me a rough place and I had won a scholarship to a posh school between my junior and senior year in the Phillips Andover Academy in Andover, and I went for six weeks and I saw New England and I saw the ocean, which I had never seen, and you know, yeah, so I decided to go to New England, yeah, and I got a full scholarship and I went to Boston University when I was 17 and 1965. And you finished there and then so you went to Israel. What years were that and how did you find that experience being, you know, working on Palestinian issues, I imagine, and how did it feel being there and what was your response there? So while I was in Boston was the founding of the Women's Liberation Movement and then the Gay Liberation Movement and I was very, very involved in those kind of politics. And in fact, from Boston, I moved to California for about five years with my collective. We had a working class dyke collective, anarchist collective, and we were out in California. From there I went to Israel. I didn't know anything about Israel. I certainly wasn't a Zionist. I had no, you know, I'd never gone to Sunday school or Hebrew school or anything, but I had never been abroad. I didn't know the first thing about anything, but I went and by then I had my black belt and in California I founded the first Women's Martial Arts Institute in California. And I left that with my partner Marni, my, you know, tech one though partner Marni. And I went off to Israel intending to go to Hebrew school for half a year, then maybe work for half a year and then come back. I've never, in my wildest dreams that I think I'd stay there 14 years, but there were, I was the first woman black belt there and the first professional martial arts master. And my career just took off. I mean, I really had a lot of success. And I built friendships in the anti-occupation movement with other women from women in black and other organizations, anti-occupation. I built friendships that just were incredibly intense and important to me. And I ended up staying for 14 years out of that one year. As for the politics, it was very, very clear. There is no, I never had a doubt in my mind. I didn't know anything when I got there, but as soon as I got there and I saw what was happening on the ground, it was so clear that this very powerful military force, the Israeli army, was occupying a very impoverished people and it was horrible. It was just terrible. So the first women's group we had was women in white against the invasion of Lebanon. And that must have been 82. That must have been 82, the war in Lebanon where Israel got very involved in their allies in southern Shatila, a massacre and horrible. And then after the anti-faza, women in black started, was sort of like an offshoot of that. It started in Jerusalem and then it was very big in Tel Aviv and it was founded in my apartment as a matter of fact. Yeah, so that was it. But I was to some degree certainly professionally in the closet again. After like being on the ground floor of gay liberation, lesbian liberation, all of a sudden I was like in the closet again. So that was kind of a drag. And I wrote when I was there. I've always written. We could talk about how I got started, but I wrote while I was there. I had my own column of self-defense tips and the history of the martial arts and different things, but they had to have it translated. And that's about money. And the newspapers got like kind of poorer and poorer and they didn't really want to translate. And a lot I left for London. One of the great appeals was that I could write in public there in English without it being a hassle. So why London? I mean, you could have gone Australia or, you know, I had, I had well, many reasons, but I had visited London, you know, as like a tourist and I picked up a magazine and it had a call for submission to a book called More Serious Pleasure. And it was a lesbian erotica collection that was going to be put out by this women's press called Sheba Press, Sheba Publishing. And I submitted a story, actually a story I had written to try to seduce this girl that I met in London. When the book came out, you know, I said, you know, that story is dedicated to you. And she read it. She said, what a horrible story. I don't like this at all. It didn't work. It didn't work at all. But I was published in this collection and I went over there to help promote and I made a lot of friends amongst a lot of writers and it just seemed like a good thing. Oh, and they were starting this ballroom in Latin dance in the basement of the then gay and lesbian center. And I have always danced and loved dancing and my parents were, you know, the dance generation, the World War II dance generation. And when I interviewed my parents, they each said of the other, interviewed them separately, why did I marry him or why did I marry her? Best dancer on the floor. I mean, really, it was all they had in common. Yeah, so when the ballroom in Latin American lessons started, and we had teachers, one named Ralph, one named Glenn, who were major professional people and competitors, I mean, really high level. And I was able to lead without it being a hassle. And it was like a dream country. That was a very big attraction. And did you find writing communities wherever you were to? My writing community. I certainly did in London. I met there, a writer named Elizabeth Woodcraft, who's a Lambo winner and whatnot. She's a very brilliant writer. And we became writing partners and now during the pandemic, and still today, every weekday, we write together on a silent Zoom. We get on a Zoom together. We say good morning. And then we write for an hour and read to each other. And then we get off the Zoom and we do it every day. Oh, that's amazing. Yeah. It's been fantastic. I've been so productive. It's amazing how much I get done in that one hour where I'm not allowed to talk or do anything else. And so you ended up back in Boston. So did you go to Boston after London? I did what? Pardon me? Go back to Boston after London? Yes, I came back to Boston after I lost my job in London due to a restructuring where they removed everyone, a whole bunch of middle managers. And I couldn't get another job because I was over 50. And it's very difficult in Europe ever to get a job when you're over 50. And I was offered a job here. And I came back to Boston for a job, which I hated, and I only lasted like a year and a half. And then I stopped it. But I came back to Boston because I still had friends here from college and from the women's movement and the gay movement. And I have dear friends who live nearby in Vermont that I wanted to be close to. And it seemed like the place to be. And I heard your name in a movie about storming a building in Harvard. Was that like something on fire or? No, no, no, that's done. Pearl. It's called the movie is called left in Pearl. Yes. Yes. I'm one of the people interviewed, one of many interviewed. It's about the best film on earth, more or less. And anybody that hasn't seen it should see it. And it was a takeover. Well, we held a building for 10 days and nights. And out of it came the Cambridge Women's Center, which is still running today. That was in 1971. Still going today. It's the longest running women's center in the country. And we won it from Harvard. And, you know, the movie, I liked the movie. It was good. And it was fun to see you there, too. Yeah. So who are you writing influences? And did you always know you were going to be a writer? I don't know. I, you know, I have always written, but not necessarily been a writer in the sense that I was a martial arts master for 20 years. That was my first career. That was my, that was a dream, dream profession for a woman in those days, you know. And, but I have always been writing. And I started writing for political reasons. Inside the anti-war movement, I think were my first political essays. And then when the lesbian movement happened, we put out one of the very first lesbian and gay magazines ever produced called Lavender Vision. I wrote a lot of things there. And they've since been reproduced. But I never really had time for books to write a book. I wrote some books, but I always got in fights with publishers and I never published them. I have always, I don't get on with publishers. And even when they've commissioned a book in the end, it doesn't happen. We don't see eye to eye. They don't like my language. They don't, they want me to tone down. I'm not a tone down kind of girl. Yes. So then tell by the title of your book, a raisin. A raisin in my cleavage. Yes. So I think, you know, this has gone really fast and I, you know, we'll have to have you on again. And maybe we'll pick out a few specific things to talk about. I'm trying to give the audience an overall view of you. So if you wouldn't mind picking something that you could read for us, we'd really appreciate it. Well, I thought I would. This is a raisin in my cleavage and the front cover is by a lesbian who is a working marble sculptor in Italy and let me use her image. And one of the things that I've really gotten into is flash writing, which means very short writing under a thousand words, stories or essays that are under a thousand words. But my absolute absolute favorite is writing stories that are exactly 100 words, not 99, not 101, but precisely 100 words. I love it. I love doing it. So I thought I'd read two of them because they only take, they take less than a minute to read each one. Wonderful. Okay. So this was the first one that I ever published and it's still my favorite. It's called The Heartbreaker. And I hope I read this well because when you have a hundred words that you have to do a beginning, a middle, an end, a storyline, a conflict, some characters in a hundred words, every word counts. So I have to read this well. All right. So I might read a little slow. Pearl fell in love at 101. And although she adored her younger lovers caresses, she'd be damned if she ever caught his name. Her roommate, Lydia, teased Pearl about her boy toy because the gentleman was merely 93. Although this fellow was devoted to her, she kept her options open. One night, after the nurse settled Pearl into bed, Lydia limped over to say her customary good night. She bent to kiss Pearl on the forehead, as usual. But Pearl lifted her chin for a lips kiss. And by the next morning, she was forced to break the young guy's heart. That's great. And, you know, I should say that all three of my books, two of them are short story collections. And one is a novel. Lillian in Love is a novel. All three are mainly about old people. That's my subject. So here is, I think it's, is it the final? Yeah, it's the final story in A Raisin in My Cleavage. And it's also a hundred words. And it's called My Mysterious Crotch Heirs. Aging is playing havoc with my body. Bumps, lumps, spots, moles, broken blood vessels and wrinkles are turning up uninvited in places both public and private. I've gained rolls of fat, dimpled butt cheeks, a neck that looks increasingly like a slinky and big honking breast that don't suit me. I was paranoid about all the fruit flies that suddenly invaded my house until I realized that in fact, they're retinal floaters. And where the hell's all my body hair? Even my eyebrows and arms are under armpits are sparse. But most mysteriously, why is my crotch hair fleeing to my chin? That's great. You know, there are really stories that, you know, for at a certain age, you can really, you can really understand. That's great. When I read that story to a young audience, silence, they have no idea what I'm talking about. When I read it to women or age, everybody falls on the floor. It's a great. I like the wrinkles uninvited. Yeah. That's great. Thank you so much. And we're going to have a link underneath the interview that tells people where they can purchase your work and how to be in touch with you if they want to do interviews or, you know, find out more information. So I really appreciate your being here. This is wonderful. And we will see you soon. And I will send you the link when it comes up and have a great day. I appreciate being invited. I've enjoyed so many of your shows. This has been great. Thank you. On a most recent episode of All Things LGBTQ, we highlighted a new activity that's occurring in Montpelier and its queer critical mass. So we thought we'd take this opportunity to invite the organizer of such a punchy-sounding event to come and talk to us about it. So please welcome to All Things Kelly Arbor from Vermont Cares. Welcome, Kelly. Thanks, Keith. So nice to be here. We're so glad, one, that you are creating this event and you were able to join us. So why don't we start with how did you happen to come to Vermont Cares and what is it that you do for Vermont Cares? That's a great question, Keith. A lot of my position has recently been defunded. We, I came to Vermont Cares in 2017 and I came in first as a client. I'm HIV positive. I'm also assigned female at birth and identify in the gender queer fluid spectrum. And so I landed at Cares first as a participant in the HIV case management program and then came in as a case manager and then came into the Montpelier office and also moved into the testing and education manager role. So for the last couple of years, that's the hat I've been wearing and through a good chunk of COVID. So we don't really like, we go out and talk to the schools a little bit, but less and less. And I grew up doing health prevention work through the dare and other programs as a kid. So I was doing stage based performative edutainment as a kid for substance, for sex and drugs. I'm like, wow, I was doing sex and drugs harm reduction before we even knew. Now we have the language. Now we're like pleasure based. When I came into that role, I went undiagnosed for a decade. And for me, as somebody gender non normative and being told that I don't have risk for HIV was like a really harmful almost, you know, I almost died. Like that was nobody should get to where I got in my health status. So now working at Cares and doing health justice work and trying to raise like the fun, which is where the bike rides come in because we've worked the shadows and HIV really well for 40 plus years with resilience and deep love with a big L. Like it's amazing. And like in the shadows because there's so much stigma for sex and drugs. So I'm like trying to take it to the streets more. I'll act up. They did things like made media, they edutained and educated the crowds and created participatory events that one might run amok and learn some new skills about community relationship building. And as a queer rabble rouser for many, many decades, I used to live in Burlington. I went to UVM. I am not fresh to Vermont. I've spent over a decade in the communities and I've always found that when an event is activity based and not identity based, you get a more diverse crowd and people connect in a different kind of way because we're sort of a bowl of nuts, the LGBTQI plus, plus, plus, plus, plus community. And you can take one thing out of a bowl of nuts and it doesn't change. But when you make and stew a community that is this beautiful, delicious soup in this amazing container, I don't know what happens out of that because it's dialogue, right? You, something new emerges out of the whole system. It's greater than the sum of the parts. So the bike rides have become this incredible activity. I've always loved biking. I love an activity that anybody can come out to. I run rides that are anywhere from three to eight miles with no major hills around Montpelier. We've got beautiful bike paths. We've been doing a loop down route to toward Middlesex that has a nice bike lane. And then we cut onto the three mile bridge road and pop over to the dog river and have a little swim moment. So there's always a little social piece of it. And our pack rides, we're like a slow chill ride. And then we swim and we hang out and we ride back into Montpelier and have our like, what's up, charliots and ring our bells and wave our flags. And we wore the interdependence day parade in Montpelier last year. And we will be again this year. So that's a really fun one. Like, that's a hard time a year for me to see the US flag go up a lot extra. So last year we made an eight by 10 foot rainbow flag for BIPOC solidarity and bringing back the hot pink and turquoise into the flag because magic, sex and art. I'm like, that's where we want to stray. Let's war back to the original. Okay, so was the queer critical mass something that came out of remote cares wanting to reach out more within the community? Or was this something that you personally wanted to do? I definitely was wearing my Kelly as a rascal hat as a primary, but I always had this conversation with Peter, our executive director who's wonderful and lets me free range, like try things out because we don't know like what prevention, you know, what's most effective prevention, that's a constant moving conversation and very individual and harm reduction, like us losing funding for testing. I don't know what my job is going to look like at cares, but I know that there's a need for this type of holistic wellness and because bicycles bring an environmental conversation, they bring in transportation conversation because Vermont's pretty inaccessible. But if you have a bike, you can take that on the bus. And I think if more people knew about these beautiful nature rides, and that's cancer prevention, this is how we keep our knees into our adulthood. We ride bikes, that's like a real low barrier physical activity. So now I'm wearing that hat as cares a little bit more intentionally and like this is an activity that we can host as prevention and bring resources, the Burlington rides, the Trans Black Lives Matter rides, I made spoke cards this year and like, you don't see Vermont cares on that pink triangle. But if you know the pink triangle, you know, it's like leading with the message and like we donated all those supplies and staff labor to create them. So yes, that's a cares activity, but we don't need to be the front like logo on some of these things. It's more about like this amazing thing is happening. And this is for our community. And who is our community? Who's showing up? We had 45 riders in Burlington last year, the first critical mass in Montpelier, we had 24 riders. It was just like in Croyabla, you know, and like elders, people with kids, somebody with a dog in a cart. It was like... I want pictures of the dog in the cart. Yes. But I want to back up a little bit because you're talking a little bit or you've referenced here and there about losing funding, not able to do testing anymore, looking at some of those restrictions to which you have alluded, what is the prospect for the office in Montpelier and what are the services that you're going to be able to provide? Definitely. And funding, like somebody to run our testing program and us having a testing program are two different conversations. And I think that's for us a shuffle. Like I still were an education manager hat, but we rarely get paid by a school. Like what school can really afford and then it's still inequitable in that what school can get me on their schedule that we can get there. I want to make them videos. Like let's just make you a nice safer sex video. We made pamphlets for HIV basics. Like let's just make them resources. And so I'm trying to make it more of a holistic like prevention. We need to talk about sex and drugs together. So our funding like is very like a little bit of everything helps fund all of our positions. So I mean, I was like, do I worry about my job? But as much as any of us would, right, we're nonprofit, like we could all lose funding tomorrow. So absolutely, we're going to do testing. We're retraining this week. And I think our first event testing because that's our bread and butter at Cares is event based testing. We have a mobile VD8, the Department of Health Certified testing van. So we can go to a field like we'll bring it to the cabarets in Montpelier. And we test in like pop up community spaces. And then we do office based by appointment. So we'll start in person testing in the next few weeks, people can start scheduling with us. And our Montpelier office is actually moving, which is really exciting for us. It's like hard to think about leaving the capital. But I'm like extra putting right rainbow flags around Montpelier and like live here. But Barry is where we've run our syringe service program for years. We've been popping up every Monday at the People's Health and Wellness Center. And now that they're moving into a new space that they're going to own in 10 years, I love that Barry is doing this. They are so thoughtful around getting people into these like projects. And People's Health and Wellness is moving down to the end of on Church Street on that little field granite worker guild. So Vermont will have an office upstairs. We'll finally have an office where our SSP is. We'll be able to test people. And we're right down the hill from Planned Parenthood. We're in the city that I think Barry is the only city that has a community disposal program across the city where there's big sharps containers that people can dispose of sharps. Anybody, all sorts of people use sharps. I use injectables. So it's like testosterone, diabetes, like all the stuff. So that's going to be really awesome for CARES. And I'm really excited about this edutaining harm reduction model of getting out of the box, going and doing fun stuff. We've got a prep cornhole. I've got a dildo ring toss. I just we made these really cute little condom distribution like cases so we can mobilize. We're going to extra be getting out fentanyl testing strips and naloxone access to folks. I organize local cabarets in Montpelier with a health and wellness resource wrap around it so that you can come and get services and see a really swanky show. Okay. So when is the move to Barry anticipated? And should we be looking for a grand opening event? I really hope that Barry Heritage Fest is going to happen this year. We're looking at fall. I think that people's health and wellness is targeting like August or September. I mean, they they stripped down and they're building out the old guild. It is going to be, oh, it's just going to be such a dream for people's health and wellness. They'll be out of the flood plain. They do such great low barrier work. And they serve the whole kingdom, which I didn't realize. So Barry Heritage Fest has traditionally been in September, I think. And then overdose awareness day is August 31st, which falls within the Pride Week of Burlington's Pride Fest. So we're hoping to do a multi site overdose awareness prevention. We did a pop up in Saint Jay with some collaborators. There's no reason why we can't do it all over the state at once. We have the staff to come out and do that with our awesome community partners. It's like, let's have a gender neutral drop and swap. Let's get folks some food, like get them the naloxone, all the condoms. People are playing extra. Do it safer. And with that, thank you so much for spending this time with us. And when the open house is scheduled, we'll invite you and Peter both back. Please. And we're going to want to walk through. Oh, definitely. Definitely. So nice. Thank you, Keith. Thank you. Thank you for joining us. We'll see you in two weeks. But in the meantime, resist.