 Hello and good morning to you from where I am in Ashlandia and I am happy to be doing this with you And I'm an 80-year-old woman Speaking of what it is to be alive for me. So here we go. I'm with Alphus And I've been asked to talk about my experience as a woman and I'm grateful for that The tone of who we are and the estrogen of who we are and the depth of the birthing possibilities that we have births in many different ways and For me birthing a human being wasn't the form I took and I knew the vision and the dreams I wanted to go for as I moved along in life And then I have had an opportunity to live them and to live all of the dreams that I've had and that's a pretty remarkable opportunity and So I I come to you this day in the cold of winter with a sunshine To share a bit of that the beginnings of knowing the womaness of myself and Unfolding that started to take place when I decided to be a teacher and I taught junior high and car high school. I was teaching at Los Alamitos High School in California during the John Birch times and I wanted to say too that I'm 80 years old and It's real important for me to say that so that you have a perspective of What you're looking who you're looking at now To who I was when I was looking When I was looking like this So you see how youth and time take its toll and I would say that Being the age that I am I am came in to me one morning to honor the fact That I am now an Old woman an older woman and hopefully before I leave here. I have the gift of being an elder You don't necessarily go together. Maybe So I need and label myself except the truth of my age on the physical plane So I started at Los Alamitos High School And I bring this up because it was when I was in my early 20s So the passion of being alive and the desire of creativity. I was speaking speech and drama and communications so it was a daily demand school and I could flexible scheduling so students could come in and we could They could do or Schedule in when they wanted to it was a public school But doing the drama and and the we did 60 productions in one year Now this means that I had a big enough room That we could flex students in during the day so students other students could do their pieces For everybody that wanted to come during different Schedulings and I was living at the beach. It was beautiful. I Was friends with my students because I'm in my 20s. What do I know about being an adult? luckily not very much And so I had a lot of time with my students and I went to the Big Sur Folk Festival at Esalen and And that was remarkable being there with Joan Baez and Crosby stills and Nash and John Sebastian and being at Esalen where it was had and having all that input and having all the input in those those years in the 1970s And I know late 60s the late 60s With Ram Dass Paramahansa Yogananda the Tibetan Book of the Dead and and the psychedelics and The gift that marijuana was for some and not for others The gifts of psychedelics were some down and not for others, but the influence those things had on the cultural contacts of Martin Luther King and You know and if you don't you're hearing about it So I was gifted with incredible opportunity and desire and Then when I was 29, I knew that I wanted to move back to the country to the land Because of the input that I had and with all of nature and living at the beach and the consciousness and And I didn't know for sure what that meant and Then then I found Ashlyn through a wonderful dear friend Who decided that it was important that That she moved here, and I thought well, she's a wonderful person in my life, and that seems like a good place So I journeyed with her here, and it seemed like exactly right and that was 1970 okay, are you with me? Whatever age you are So when you look at elders now You're looking at you as a younger person Deciding who to be Because we all were doing that and So being here was a chance to unfold as an artist So I'm coming to you in this video or film. However, it's called nowadays as an artist as a social Transformer worker person and Woman and as a human being With a story that I hope keeps inspiration alive in each and one of us who are watching this And if you look at some of these photos of and pictures of what I have done And my website lavelfuss.com It will inspire you to trust yourself I know that visions can be real But it has to be because it's from your deep self and not too much from the ego of I'm so bitching You know You know I did plenty of that I'm bitching Well, now it's like I'm looking back and going. I'm glad I had the energy to do this stuff And and I'm glad I know the people and have given love and received the love Now what's important about that whole introduction? expression Is where I landed and what that has brought? That was all that energy that I began this with that got me here and now we're here and So and that being here meant I moved here in 1970. This is the herstory and the history of Ashlandia Ashland was a very small town It's always been a spiritual center in its own way Even though it housed Ku Klux Klan via Medford for quite a while early on It held the hot springs The first nation people used the creek salmon came up that creek and We were the first I guess major influx of hippies or alternative culture people and and I moved here in a big truck and bold Wonderbread school truck that I fixed up in a beautiful May van living van inside and Those of us that I was associated with a lot of them were had been professionals be in their journey to here Dennis and company owners that weren't doing any of that anymore that were That were really wanting to be somewhere that they could participate in community So the influx went here and it went out to Out to Grants pass and pass that were a lot of the earth the earth-based real earth-based women and men were living They were called hippies then and they were in the country that way And then there was a lot of the women who owned and were buying land and were being women on the land And I had those women as my friends besides the women that of us who lived in town Now I was living on what was caught is called Oak Street Now Ashland's a really grown community. You can imagine in 40 and 50 years Oak Street was a dirt road Hershey was a dirt road Mountain was a dirt road and I lived on the dirt road of Oak Street and a barn With the house servants quarters next to it that had been part of the main estate So I was gifted without the long story of it or bought This big barn with the blacksmith shop the little house next to it and One of the people that I had done some work with built a fun interesting shaped building on top of those two on This dirt road Now for some reason and I promise you it's a soulful unknown except by the nature of it seeing it happen in my life People started coming to visit me Or needing a place to live For maybe two months or three months or whatever And it didn't seem like please don't get it mixed up with people it got formed with people who were Really leading to find their way and wanting to find a place to land and Start a life in a way that served them instead of the city And this big it So we started building little places on the side or off the barn and they could live there for a month or two for like twenty five dollars a month and Dennis DeBay who's a famous infamous blacksmith now lived upstairs and one of the air in the house and he he He had a big wood burning stove because he's a blacksmith that I had in the big barn studio and People started to stay and I have to say The hundred people it was really more than that, but you'll think I'm exaggerating the hundred people That live there over 15-year period I Didn't ask anybody but two people to move There were men different men and women and everybody took care and Yes, it was not a commune. I didn't this I don't live in that format and I was reasonable and kind and there was nothing I had to do To enforce anything So there was that gift as part of it having this land come to me Having people come and live there, too You know, maybe there would be as much as about ten at a time with the facilities that were there And that's when I started being an artist with wood and so You're going to be shown these images I Was starting with smaller wood, so I started doing the wood carving There was a friend who lived there that had some wood carving tools and chisels and mallets and I just started and Playing around with them and These beautiful things were coming out of me like a walking cane and a wall piece And I did everything by hand. There was no power tools And then I started doing big signs for downtown and then I started I went to the coast and on the way There's the Jedediah Smith There's a place that has all this wood and they had giant slabs of redwood That were like three and four feet wide and ten feet long And I stopped and I now I was really full of what I could be when I could do and so We I stopped and I had my pickup and I Had them put three of the large three feet by eight feet redwood slabs in the back of the truck. I mean, that's how much Energy, I mean, I don't even have testosterone And I'm not a big body. I mean I was into all the you know the rightful eating, you know stuff and Started carving these large pieces, which you will see Out of ancient redwood struck down by lightning This is out of that two thousand year old redwood that's struck down by lightning and You'll see the picture where this is not all turned black But no matter what you put on something if it's outside in its wood It's going to turn and this is a this was done like a 40 30 or 40 years ago 30 years ago So it's been outside a lot in different different sculpture parks And then they wouldn't take it anymore because it wasn't like shiny So as you notice now the parks will all have them with shiny things and no more wood creation The waves of time and space Amethyst crystal is at the bottom This is the Tibetan turquoise Women were for the practice of compassion and remembering the earth the crystal Amber, but I go into how this whole women's this whole transformational energy field of The estrogen moving in women and the spirit of creation Helping unfold Who we are as Women on this planet in a cloistered enough environment That wasn't separate us in its living space its community and start really owning and breathing and singing our Wonder and there were country women who had land that they were living in Cottages and sharing what it was to be in community that way and They would come to town and my barn was big enough to have gatherings there and A place called positively 4th Street where women's theater could be put on and women's concerts So we could hear what do we sound like what is our tone What does it feel like to have sisters and Feel that bond and have music created by us and women's gatherings Michigan's women festival it went for years Ashland we did a women's gathering for 20 some years At Lake of the woods Women of all toenails of their choices in life We've got had a big mother drum made because early then in first nation From my understanding women were not encouraged to play the drum it was the man's instrument So I wanted a big drum for us and so did some of the other women we went in on a community pay buying and a wonderful man named Randy Made us a big mother drum this big and Six can play at a more at a time and had a stand built and that was how we opened and did our gathering with drumming And I was this is a You know lots of places of Canada Six at a time and so it is And I was being a musician with four other women with guitar and drums and flutes and Writing our own songs. They may not make me and just improvisation Lee doing it with no melodies We knew that we made up and And at the gathering we would have be doing our own music sound system set up and then some just out by the trees and Then the Oregon's women's festival was taking place and That carried on By 1970 a women's gathering started in Northern started in Canada Now we've had the the Washington's women's festival 150 200 women came to that and Then that shifted and so some of us from the States and Canada got together and created a cross cross bound cross border women's festival on In Vancouver on Vancouver Island at Lake Cowichan Now what's so wonderful about this is that it gave women a chance from all walks of life to come together for five to seven days in nature in nice little caddages with nice food being made for us through workshops and music and With the Native American flute in the big drum The morning I would play the Kathy would play the big boom boom on the big drum And I would play the low-tone flutes into a reverb and echo With a lake Cowichan behind me and the trees the evergreens and the ravens flying over and women coming out of their cabins with their shawls on and I was back in time so the essence of the women's circles and community was taking place and that was just the last 20 years up to now So I guess I was 60 when I was doing that up to a to 80. Well, I stopped at 75 because I had to but It went five more years From women being young to elders Now the gatherings are starting up again with young women here and women now have a way to find each other in Community because we're knowing how to talk to each other without just thinking that Well, I'm in that click and you're in that click of men and women women women older people You know, I mean I'm an elder or an older woman and Now the people who are my age then are this age now so whoa Our herstory went from Perry Como to Bob Dylan you know, so now There is a beautiful blending and men and women Are finding ways of I think finding more integration Because I'm trusting that we as women have had a chance to bring more self-worth in I Came in as an only child and my mother was a grand format for letting me be me and From somehow getting that from her to do to do my dreams and it's been encouraged in my life and I hope this lets men and women because all of us need to trust That it's just not our hormones alone That cause us or let us or give us the we of us It's our soul being willing to be discovered. That's that's what I know right now