 I hope so. My name is Jeffrey. Good afternoon, everyone. My name is Jeffrey Harris. I'm better known in the preservation world by my nickname of Free. As just a quick introduction of myself, I'm an independent historian and historic preservation consultant based in Hampton, Virginia. And for the Old School National Trust for Historic Preservation folks, I was the first director for diversity years ago for the organization. And it is a pleasure to be with you all today and back at a preservation at a national preservation conference the past forward to talk specifically about LGBTQ historic preservation related issues. So with that said, let me begin to move on and introduce the rest of the panel and we can begin with Dr. Megan springing. Oh, I'm sorry. Oh, there you go. I'm Megan springing. I worked at the National Park Service. I was the editor of the LGBTQ theme study for the National Park Service and the National Park Foundation. I am currently director of engagement for the America 250 foundation. We are working towards 2026, which is of course, the 250th since the signing of the Declaration of Independence. And we are working to make it the largest and most inclusive commemoration in our nation's history and making sure that everybody is meaningfully included. So I'm really glad to be here. Thanks for the invitation free. My pleasure. Shane. Hi. Hi, free. Hi, everyone. Hi. Hi, Frankie. Hi, Megan. I'm Shane Watson. I'm an architectural historian based in the San Francisco Bay Area. I was the co author, co director of San Francisco's historic context statement for LGBTQ history with Donna Graves and Donna and I also co authored the San Francisco chapter for the National Park Services LGBTQ America theme study. I am the founding chair of the GLBT historical society's historic places working group and I'm super happy to be here. So thanks for inviting me free. My pleasure, Frankie. Hello, everyone. It's so nice to see all these great other queer people on the screen that we're going to be talking about all this stuff. My name is Frank Fenyone. I am founder and principal of twisted preservation cultural consulting. We do a lot of work internationally looking at marginalized narratives expanding history sites, understandings of what the stories are. Before this, I ran the historic house trust for the city of New York, all of their historic sites and before that, the Philadelphia Society for the Preservation of Landmarks and also right now I'm CEO of Old Salem Museums and Gardens and the Museum of Early Southern Decorative Arts in Winston Salem, North Carolina and free as always. I'm happy to be here and happy to have this great conversation today. So thank you all. So I'm really glad that you all have joined us for this conversation. It's always a fun, key, talking about LGBTQ preservation issues. Anyone who has been to past national preservation conferences or past forwards know that we can cut up a good little rug, having a good time talking about serious topics, but laughing and joking at the same time because that's what we do. And it's important to do that because it's good to have that sense of balance when dealing with challenging issues, when dealing with difficult topics, and when dealing with the general vicissitudes of historic preservation. I should add that I also contributed a chapter to the National Park Service Theme Study and I wrote specifically about African American LGBTQ historic places and why they matter. So with that in mind, I wanted to begin by noting that this is the five-year anniversary of the publication of that monumental piece of work, a first for the federal government focusing on the preservation of LGBTQIA plus historic places and really giving the opportunity for the federal government to, you know, place a marker in our field, in our subject area to say, okay, here's some basic information. It's going out in the world. What, you know, here's, do with it what you will. So with each of you and anyone can start, how do you feel five years on about doing, you know, about what we did, then what happened then and what you've seen in the interim period between then and now? Anyone can start? Guess I'll start. I am so proud of that work and I am so proud of the efforts of so many people who went into that work. And, you know, there were some there were some challenging conversations and possibly with some folks who are here in the audience today and I appreciate every single one of them because it made it better, being it more inclusive, made it better, and a lot of folks showed a lot of grace when I stepped into things. Yeah, I can't believe it's been five years already. I do also, I want to just say that the theme study with some revisions and a little bit of new content has also been published in a three volume series with Bergen Books and my co editor, I see her in the audience. Katie Crawford Lackey is is stalking us here in this meeting today. So that that work continues to live on and and do things. So, I'm really, I'm really excited. I mean, I know it hasn't done all the things for everybody, but I'm very, very proud of the work that came out of all of that work. Okay. Yeah, so I was going to like kind of my main point today was going to be we haven't seen so much direct response to the theme study in San Francisco because we do have the context statement in place. But one thing that I have seen at the grassroots level, which it just really, really moved me is when the folks were creating the what used to be the Comptons Transgender Cultural District in San Francisco, it's now just the transgender cultural district. But that group of organizers, community activists really look to the mention of Comptons and that transgender history in the San Francisco chapter of the theme study as a like a rallying cry, thinking or you know, saying things like the federal government believes that this place is important. Everyone here in San Francisco needs to understand the importance. But I just loved that they not only that they read it, that they knew about it, because it's pretty obscure, but that they used it and they were empowered by it and I can't think of a better example than that. And you know, at the time when when the launch of the initiative occurred, I was director of the historic house trust in the city of New York and one of the sites was the Alice Austin house and at that time the Alice Austin house was not telling any narrative of Alice and Gertrude's 50 year relationship. And in fact, even Alice Austin's photographs were interpreted as Victorian kind of fun, not really same sex, same gender issues in the photographs. And as soon as I knew about the unveiling of the initiative, we had just hired Janice Monger, who's just an excellent executive director. She was the new executive director at the Alice Austin house. She knew that I really wanted to kind of push in this direction. I got us a ticket on the train. We went down to DC. We sat in the audience while they unveiled the initiative. And since then Alice, Janice has told me that that was the thing that gave her the kind of validation. She already had it herself, but it gave her the validation to move in a very strong direction for the Alice Austin house. And I'm happy to say that since I've left, the Alice Austin house now walks in the pride parade in New York City. And that's just an amazing thing. If you had any understanding of what that house, you know, back in the early nineties with the lesbian Avengers storming their fundraising because they weren't talking about Gertrude and Gertrude, a picture of Gertrude is on the family wall now in the Alice Austin house. So I mean, that's just my little kind of that happened. And it was real. And it was an effect that maybe you all didn't even weren't even aware of. What happened at Vizcaya? I'm not sure. I'm sorry if I'm going off track. Yeah, I saw that as well. And I have to admit, I am not sure. It's so am I because it's popped up a few times. Is there any way to get in touch with them? Well, well, that could it could be we were, you know, we're kind of having a free form conversation. But toward the end, we could just do a Q&A. And perhaps, you know, someone who knows about the Vizcaya story could share that with the rest of us, please. So it's I have to admit from my vantage point in Virginia, the Commonwealth had really begun efforts to examine LGBTQ history in the state and trying to begin the process of identifying places that already may be may have been on the National Register, but also identifying new places. And one of the places that ultimately gets talked about now is the is as your rest south, which is located in Ettrick, Virginia on the campus of Virginia State University and historically Black College University here in the state. And it was the home of a Mausoleum Meredith, a self self taught architect in who did a lot of work in the international style for herself and her partner Edna Mead Coulson, who was another professor there at Virginia State University. And that seems to be a nice, wonderful touchstone for, you know, a real marker for LGBTQ history in the Commonwealth of Virginia. And it's a point of pride I have to admit for me that it's an African American story that it is an African American, you know, same gender loving story that, you know, that that is sort of the when you think of Virginia and LGBT history, that is a site that pops up for the most part first. And and how cool is that that we have that so having written about that particular site for my chapter, which I will admit for everybody out there hearing, that was a daunting task. I remember when I got that email from Megan, and I thought to myself, Lord Jesus, and happen African American LGBTQ historic places really, how am I going to do? How am I going to do this and not just set a fire? You know, and on a super tight deadline on a very tight on a ridiculously tight deadline, you know, so it became it was a genuine labor of love for me, because it was an opportunity for a growing an opportunity for me to put both my academic history training and my historic preservation experience together in a nice academic work. It was it was amazing. Oh, I see Susan, Valentino is here now. And yeah, someone is working on an NHL nomination for Azure S South. So that's that's amazing. But you know, here we have Frank. Yes. No, I just I don't want to interrupt. I just I'm raising my hand. Yeah, no, go right ahead. Okay, now you got me back where I was teaching. I'm sorry. It's been years since I was in a classroom. So I really would love I really would love to throw this out for all of us to talk about and because of where my work and my public history practices, it's really big questions. And that is that there are established history sites that we all know have queer narratives that we keep bashing our heads against the wall, trying to get those sites to tell the stories. Right. And then there are entirely new unlandmarked on 501c3 sites, right, that that are kind of a fresh start. In my I'm an old man. I'm 56 in my time in public history. The the attempt to make established history sites tell the queer story is so daunting and so difficult that it does veer it pushes me into trying to just tell the story where somebody already hasn't laid their flag, right. And I'd love to hear what you all think about that because that's my that's kind of where I live with my public practice. I'd love to hear what you all think about that. Sure, anyone jump in, please. Anybody? I'm sorry, just to quickly clarify what you're saying. So you you're talking about a site that has been recognized as significant for another reason, a site? Yeah. And then we come in and we go but we know that the original owner was queer and had a 50 year relationship about, oh, well, we don't have enough historic documentation. This is not the narrative that we tell. It's architecturally significant. It has nothing to do how many times have all of us heard that their sexual orientation has nothing to do with the landmarking of the site or the period of significance. And it's just kind of update and we refuse to update that narrative to include that information with that we know. Yeah. And so that I'm throwing out is a discussion. So when you're bumping up against this issue with people, who are you talking about like the municipality or National Park Service, I have not experienced that. So I would love to know. I would probably say municipalities, certainly private organizations run by boards of directors. And I would say there are more history sites not owned by the federal government than owned by the federal government. So the truth is the power of this LGBTQ narrative has to come from the grassroots private area. At least that's my thought. Megan, what do you think about that? Yeah. I mean, there are some significant places where they've come around. I'm thinking of Hall House in Chicago. I'm thinking of Val Kil, the NPS site, Eleanor Roosevelt, the Glass House. There are places that the conversation has, and Alice Austin's house. They've come around and the world has not ended because they're convinced that the world is going to end. And that their funding will drop. That's their big bloodshed. And maybe it has at least initially. I don't know what all the numbers are, but I think a strong argument there because people also will go but the children and we don't want to offend people. And it's like, no, actually, you are choosing who to offend by keeping these stories out. It is not an apolitical decision. Silence serves the oppressor, et cetera, et cetera. So I think there's queer folks, and I'm 50, so I've got a bit of a long look at where this all is coming from. But I think we have always learned to keep our heads down when the space is not a safe space. And so we have tended, we, me, whatever, to just be sad or mad about it quietly and just go away instead of contacting the board of directors and saying, excuse me, hello, what is this? This is crazy. And I think that that kind of pressure can move things. I mean, it certainly can move things in the federal government. You contact your Congress critter and raise a stink and all of those things. But I think that we've sort of just learned to keep our heads down. And that's a really interesting concept that as the queer community were used to being pushed into those in-between spaces. And it's very, at least for me, I'll speak as you were doing, I'll speak for myself personally. As a public historian, there's always that voice in your head which is, well, maybe they're right. Maybe this isn't true. Maybe DuPont wasn't queer and winter tour looks like that because it was a straight man. I mean, you do try to convince yourself that the dominant culture actually has it fully correct. And it does take a little bit of kind of rethinking and constantly rethinking and maneuvering. But you do, somebody used the term gaslet. It's absolutely true. I can't tell you how many times working on a project if the historic documentation is not there, which by traditional dominant culture methodology, it's a written document signed by the person that says, I am a gay or lesbian, which of course they're not going to have done. They won't tell the story. And so it is, it's just a, we don't have to dwell on it, but it is a place where, for instance, this work by the National Park Service finds a difficult wall, if that makes sense. I think bringing, oh, I'm sorry, go ahead, Shane, and then I'll jump in. I was going to kind of bring it to the, I was going to bring up something related to the theme study again, but go ahead. Yeah, no, please do. Please do because I was going to move, I'm going in a slightly different direction to bring it back to an earlier point that was made. Also building off of what Frankie just talked about, but so now that I've had a half of a cup of coffee and I'm waking up. It is earlier there where you are. That's true. 1pm. Like if we take a couple steps back and sort of realize what we created with this theme study and in the window that we created it, I mean, there was so much desperation and anxiety about getting it done before Obama left office, which I think was real. Had it extended into Trump's administration, it wouldn't have happened. I think we all agree. So that alone for me is the fact that it even exists is still sort of incomprehensible. It's amazing given what we've come as queer preservationists. It's, if we just look back to 2009, I say 2009, that's when I was working on my master's thesis when I sort of started looking at what was going on nationally. And I found or I was given a response from the National Park Service to the first Stonewall National Register nomination. And it was Jay Shockley from the New York City landmarks sent it to me, faxed it to me. Actually, that says a lot of how long it was. But it was terribly homophobic in response. And straight up, no, no, there was no sugar coating in that. None. It was like, okay, great. This is gay, but you know, proves that it's worth it to me. So if you kind of look at it, come in such a short period of time, it does give me hope. But at the same time, Frankie, I am exhausted as, as a lesbian preservationist because I feel like that there aren't many, I don't know many of us, I haven't found many, but and I'm sure you feel the same way free. And you Megan, but and then some of who was it who wrote the, the, the post for the National Trust recently who talked about burnout and historic preservation, it was yes, Reina Reagan. And she specifically mentioned burnout by underrepresented minority groups. And I feel that way. And I just wanted to anyone else wanted to if anyone therapy about that. So, so two things. One, there was a point made about talk, you know, as a request made to talk about LGBTQIA bus queer professionals in the field and I remember when I entered into preservation, you know, from the academic world back in 2002. I remember having conversations, you know, discovering that there are all these, all these gay folks that were here at the National Trust and then I go to the conferences, they're all these gay people. And then I just kept wondering, well, do we do do we are there is are there a lot of people who do our own historic places? You know, do we do we turn and we turn our, our skill set on to our own history on to our own community. And of course, there were people who were doing that. But it felt as though that sort of early odds to mid odds period, there seem to be almost a bit of a shift where a lot of us started looking at our own historic places and beginning to really, you know, go with a little more force to go, hey, we, you know, our history is obviously relevant. We've had places that were listed earlier than that. But, you know, we really could use what we, you know, what we bring to the table to our history as other communities were beginning to do. And we were in even better placements by virtue of being embedded already within the very, you know, from the top to the, from the highest run to the lowest rung of the preservation, you know, field, we were all there, you know, bring and could bring to bear what we could, and still meeting that resistance that Frank has talked about, you know, even with that being the case with having that that availability there. So it is it has been, I think extremely important that we exist within the field to move the ball as the sport, you know, the move the needle, move the ball as forward as we have, recognizing still bringing up, you know, the that wonderful article about burnout that burnout is real. And, you know, bring in, you know, African American issues, you know, API issues, Latin, Latinx issue, you know, you do run into a multiplicity of walls, and that can get you to feel absolutely and utterly burned out. And, you know, I joke about how we drink preservation is drink a lot, you know, and you drink with the successes, you drink with the failures, you drink in between, you drink because you just need to get through that day. And sure, you're not archaeologists. Yeah. Try be try look try being in a story in this right now. So, you know, it's and you do we come up with our we come up with our own versions of coping. And it was really nice to see somebody just put into words, that general sense of like, Oh, yeah, absolutely. And I, I, I responded immediately when I saw it in the historic preservation professionals group on Facebook, like, thank you for this. It needed to be acknowledged, you know, thank you very much. And recognizing that that the communities that the communities of color, you know, and, you know, the non traditional communities, sort of outsider groups have a particular sense of that. It's, it's so true. But even with that in mind, I think that, you know, moving to another point that we had that had come up earlier was just sort of talking about the idea of working with looking at new places, as opposed to dealing with, you know, existing, you know, landmarks listed spots. I think that that is actually a wonderful opportunity. You know, as we're doing these different context studies, as we're finding new places that deserve recognition. That is an opportunity for us, I think, to really, you know, sort of put the weight of what we do into those spaces to become, you know, templates in the end for these places that are a bit resistant. And as we see more municipalities, you know, I'm working on a historic context study of LGBTQ historic places for the city of Raleigh, North Carolina, something I'm sure that people who live in Raleigh would be like, wait, what? And there were people who were genuinely surprised when we launched that, you know, and saying, wow, this is amazing that, you know, the city is doing that. Atlanta is doing something similar. Other cities are doing something similar, and they're not the traditional, you know, just down the eastern seaboard or down on the west coast. We're starting to see, you know, the south, we're starting to see, you know, the interior of the countries get there. And I think that by beginning to turn our focus on, you know, these other communities, these newer places that aren't designated, we have an opportunity to really get a good smattering of LGBTQ historic places around the country. And I've even suggested, let's look at famous people, you know, who move to cities. How about we go back to where they're from? Blammark those places that are associated with the famous LGBTQ folks, but where they're from and do that. And I will be quiet so that Frank can go. No, that's all right. I just, I want to, I just want to jump onto that and say that in doing the research on queer sacred spaces that my husband and I are doing, one of the things that just keeps popping up in the study Megan also kept, it kept popping back up and that is the unusually intersectional and oddly configured places, not even architecture or spaces, just even the rambles or a street corner or an alleyway, the kind of absence of a place is in itself. When we talk about queer importance, like, like we're only able to go in places that they're not paying attention to, which means that they're in between spaces. And I want you to try to landmark an in between space. And I'm sure it's happened. I mean, you know, I'm generalizing, but it's really difficult to not have a massive theater in the art deco style that you can landmark and say that blah, blah, blah was queer. You know, so I'd love to talk about how to truly and accurately depict importance in the queer community. Johnny and I are really leaning into the idea of behaviors and activities as worthy of landmarking rather than structures and spaces. But I don't know what that would mean in terms of a landmarking process. But in many cases, when that behavior ceases, that space ceases to be a queer space, unlike dominant culture. And so I'd love to hear what you guys think of that. I think that relates also to when you think of places we've lost. As you were talking, I kept thinking of the Red Light District in DC, along South Capitol Street that I certainly enjoyed when I first moved back to DC as an adult. And all of those in between spaces that existed for so many people in that. And now there's the baseball stadium that's there. So what do you do with a, you know, what do you do with a space like that? You know, yeah, it'd be nice to be able to plant something smack dab in the middle of, you know, home plate and go, yeah, by the way, you know, these things were here and these activities didn't happen. But yeah, I, it's, but I often, as you were saying that, I thought about all of the places that are missing, that are gone, or even places that have changed. Malcolm X Park, Meridian Hill, you know, which was a huge cruise site for African-American gay men, same gender loving men, you know, all of that. But you know, I was there earlier, you know, earlier in the year and just marveled at, wow, it's changed. It's different, you know, which is interesting. But how do you tell that again? But they still, they busted a bunch of folks, gay men, theoretically for cruising in Malcolm X Park. Yeah. Two years ago. Oh, did they really? Yeah. Try to keep it going. Okay, yeah. Yeah. I just, you know, it goes back to the, I go, and I think the idea of these fleeting moments, the shifting landscapes is yes, but also dominant culture also, right? Like, that's why we have periods of significance. Because it says in this, in this moment, so if we're looking at something like the ramble, you know, in Central Park, or, you know, whatever cruising neighborhoods, like, that history is still there of a particular time. And I know integrity, right? Like, I will, I'll bring up, I'll bring up the, right, the bugaboo in the room is the, is integrity. You know, like, all of these marginal spaces, when they become less marginal, lose their mar, their, you know, integrity of place from when they were marginal spaces, right? So like the meatpacking district in New York City is now full of, you know, fancy pants, places that I can't afford to even look at, never mind live in, which was not the case, you know, in the 70s and 80s. But yeah, and that the thing about doing our own history, and how tired it is, or tiring it is, and the wall that we keep bumping our heads against, it's, you know, and as a woman, I've run into this, right, you do women's history, it's like, because you have a self interest, if you're doing, if you're black and you're doing black history, it's like, well, you must have a self interest, doing queer, doing queer history, you must have a self interest. And that is used to sort of poo poo the work, right? It's like, well, you've got an agenda, and so whatever. And it's like, but you know what, if you're damned, you're damned if you do and you're damned if you don't, right? Because if you're queer and you're not doing queer history or black and not doing black history or whatever, then how, how, how very dare you, right? Like, so you're damned if you do and you're damned if you don't. So you have to just sort of do the thing and, and hopefully something like the theme study gives some legitimacy and cover to folks who want to do that work, right? It was never conceived of it. I see Stephanie Tuthman is on the on the call and this a lot of the theme study doing is Stephanie. So thank you. But it was never meant to be a beginning in it. It was never meant to be the end of like the release of the theme study was never the end of the project. It was just the beginning. Right. Yeah. But yeah, it's a very, very large jumping off point. Yeah. But I've struggled, right? I struggled my whole life with this, like, well, you just have a self interest. Yeah. And it wasn't until I was well in my 40s that I was like, well, screw that. I don't care. I'm going to do what I'm going to do. It's interesting. Yep. That's an activity until I was my 40s. Yeah, but you know also somebody who's running a history site, there have been comments on social media about the gay president of old Salem or the gay president and his boyfriend are trying to turn the site into their playground. Like you can't as somebody who's out and I just try to be who I am authentically, you can't be out and be a public historian and try to tell history without being attacked because everybody is hyper sensitive to the fact that you're going to try to push the gay agenda. And the notion of whatever that gay agenda is with landmarking or historic narrative seems to be synonymous with a lot of people. And I'm not even sure what that means to me as a queer person, you know, but I do feel like people are really vigilantly aware that as an openly gay married man that I'm going to try to bring that agenda to history sites or in this case landmarking or telling the narratives through interpretation. Because of people who will, who will tell the story. Like we are all here. We're telling our histories here. If we'd, you know, Megan, if you weren't involved in the theme study would have happened at, you know, I'm just wondering like to what extent did your involvement because your queer actually make it happen. You know, like we, we have to write our own history because no one else seems to be interested in it. And that's what we're doing. We are pushing the queer agenda in preservation, because no one else is going to push it. Well, and as was pointed in the chat, every, every person who does any kind of any work like this is pushing some sort of a self-interested agenda. They'll have a particular perspective. They come with their own biases to a site. If, you know, I'm interested in music-related historic places, guess what? If I end up doing a national register nomination for a music-related historic place, pick a genre, you know, I'm going to be coming at it with that particular bias that that particular place is of importance. It is relevant and it deserves this landmarking. Why would that even be, you know, and when you think about it from that perspective, it sounds silly when you have someone come for you about, well, you have an agenda. Well, so did you, so did somebody when they were, you know, when the first sets of sites were listed. That was an agenda. Yeah, but that white, right, that, that white middle class kind of urban I should have probably said upper middle class. Experience, right, is, is, is, is the, is the American norm. It's the, it's the unspoken, it's, it's never spoken. It's the, it's the thing that we judge everything else against without saying we are comparing everything against this. It is like this weird unspoken mirror void thing. What's the phrase? It's omniscient and omnipresent. That's way better than weird mirror ball sphere thing. Hey, free. So what, where do you were asking us this question before we actually got on? So this, this discussion has been about like where we are, where, where this great study took us. We're sharing some stories, war battles or whatever about where we are. Let's talk a little bit maybe about what we see from our experience. You really started to slow your role to keep achieving that. Wait, you're going to have to repeat that because you kind of went into a, a slo-mo sorry something or other. I'm interested. You mentioned this to us to think about, and I think it's a good point. What in the future? Yeah. What, what do we need to think about to keep pushing? For instance, everything that was in that theme study and all the work that we've all been doing and people who might be more emerging professionals behind us. What's our suggestion about how to keep this momentum moving? I genuinely think that one of the, a central issue that, that we really need to tackle are these, are the, the parameters that, that we keep running into, the rules, if you will, of what is deemed relevant? What is, you know, what is integrity? Well, we can, we should be able to play with that. What is, you know, what is considered, you know, relevantly historic? We should be able to consider, you know, expanding, you know, what it is, how it is we come to a conclusion that something is worth designating because everything is just not going to fall. We, we long have needed, I feel like I'm rambling, we've long needed to go, go up to, through, around and down all the existing rules that we have in place for getting something designated listed, you know, deemed historically relevant. We need to go back through all of that stuff and just say, look, this is, we, we, this is stale. Is stale, is tired, it's played. We need to come up with some new things. We need to come up with new standards. We need to re-examine that which got us here because we're losing out on identifying and, and recognizing places that are relatively significant to a wide variety of populations that exist out here. You know, not just LGBTQIA class. It's, it's every, it's, it's every, it's every other group, even down to white folks need to start breaking things down by a category. This is my historian's mind going in, you know, labor history. Well, what do we do with, what do we do with a mine, a mining site? You know, what do you do with a, a blown up mountain top? You know, that can be historically relevant. What do you do with that? You know, how do we talk about integrity in that space? How do we talk about integrity when it comes to immigrant communities? And I'll even be nice enough and stick to the 19th century ones, you know, so people can feel comfortable. You know, how do we deal with those sorts of things? Because those places often were transient. You know, places, you know, were, you know, like we, like we experience, you know, places that were temporary spaces, places that now have nothing in them, just land, just space. So if we begin the process of, I believe, almost doing coalition building with all of our peers who are running into similar walls, I think that's the beginning point. You know, say, look, here are commonalities. Let's go to the powers that be and say, you need to change this. You know, and, you know, we can look through our friends at the National Trust for Historic Preservation. Let's do a queer presentation conference. Just a, just a queer preservation conference. Oh, you say that like nobody else has work. Or has to pay bills. Right. Exactly. Not doing that. No. You know, I did not, I haven't won the lottery yet. I'm sorry. It hasn't happened quite. But it's, you know, it's queer history is American history. Yes. But women's history is American history and black history is American history. All of it. Look, we have to, on one hand, you need the, the, the lane, right, where people are focusing and we're doing queer history, but you also need the lane where people are doing American history and including it. It's always the idea of integrate, of bringing, you know, you have your specialties and your fields of specialization, you know, but it's, it's always been important, at least from an academic perspective, academic history perspective, to bring all of that information back into the general narrative to really tell that story going forward. And it looks like we lose Frank. Temporarily, maybe. But it always has been, I think, relevant to want to marry that narrative because the narratives that we know are insufficient. They don't tell as full a story as they could. So it's always important to, you know, yeah, we have people, you know, I'm African-American, African-American, that's what I do. However, I know that the information that I learned as an African-Americanist needs to go back into a general narrative because it gives us a better understanding of what was going on in the historical era that I'm dealing with, generally speaking. We can do the same with regard to LGBTQIA plus or queer, you know, whichever one comes quicker, you know, in terms of saying it. So I say that as a challenge to all of us who are here in the room, that as we, you know, sort of go, as we go forth doing our work, really try to challenge ourselves to tell those different stories that represent our community, but always having an eye and reasserting those individuals in those places into the broader American historical narrative because that's where it belongs. You know, people need to know that queer side of, you know, whatever era we're talking about, that queer side of town. And, you know, it's, and it's not easy. Lord knows it is, it is not easy. And even with regard to something like funding, you know, we can push those boundaries, we've tried to push those boundaries as well, you know, convince people to do that. But some of it we may have to do for free. And I'm free. Someone said, do you have any advice as a young queer person looking to enter the preservation field? That's a really good question, right? Because this work has to continue and hear somebody asking what advice we might have. Go, someone. Well, I talked a lot. No, someone else go. No, you started. Go. No, you started. Go, Shane. Well, I was going to say, you know, we do want to convince everyone else, all other Americans, that LGBTQ history is American history. Not all Americans are going to be interested in this history, but who will be our younger queer people who, who need to know about this history. It's vital. It's crucial to their survival. I kind of felt like I was clueless about LGBTQ history before I started doing this work. And I kind of found myself like even coming out more as I learned more about this history and kind of realized like what we've been through, what people have been through before us, how lucky we are to even be having this conversation right now. So most importantly, it is kind of important for young queer people to keep identifying these places, keep uncovering this history that's been hidden for so long. But yeah, that's not exactly an answer to the question of how do I get into queer preservation? Someone wants to take that. Just do it. My recommendation is, you know, in San Francisco, there were no lesbian landmarks. And I was like, we got to get a lesbian landmark. Let's do this. We need a context statement. Let's do this. So my advice is, if you're interested and you can get some funding, which is number one, do it, you know, go to your local planning department and work with them. I guarantee you there will be someone there who's receptive of something like this. So reach out. Don't assume that someone else is doing it because in our case, no one else is doing it. So Margaret Middleton wrote a really good piece about queer sensibility. I'm not sure where that was, but and that really stuck with me because no matter what I'm doing, I always have a queer sensibility about it, whether it has nothing to do with writing a queer narrative. I know that I have a unique perspective on what I'm doing. Maybe for a young queer preservation, it's preservationists, it's embrace that queer sensibility with everything you do. And that will have an effect on preservation as a whole. If we can find that link, it'd be great to put it up. It's Margaret Middleton about queer sensibility. Might be in the public historian, but it's a really good piece. And I put a link earlier to an article. So for those who don't know, I'm a historical archaeologist by training. And I posted a link to an article called Why Standpoint Matters by Alison Wiley, who is a philosopher of science and slash archaeology. And it is the sort of short version is we all see the world through our own lenses. And when you come from a place that is not the dominant culture, then you or from whatever your background is, right, you see the world through your own lens, and you're able to ask different questions like as a queer person, it's like, well, okay, you're talking about like, in an archaeology example, you're talking about these like pre-human hominids, right, living in these family units that oddly mimic the sort of, you know, man, woman, 2.4 kids and a dog, like, that's crazy. So tell me why you have the right, you were able to call out these assumptions that color everything we do is the sort of short version. And yeah, sorry, historical archaeologists for the folks asking, I do our archaeology of the post contact period. Unfortunately, if I'm looking at my plot correctly, it is roughly 420, which I believe was the allotted time that we had. And I want to make sure that I'm getting that right. If not, then it's on a 430. But I did want to at least get in really quickly, sort of practical things to a young to young queer person who's going into preservation, please definitely look at internships. Those are always important. You want to, you know, I started off as an intern at the National Trust for Historic Preservation when I was in my PhD history program. And, you know, unfortunately, I just got a note that we did in fact reach time. Internships, internships, internships, reach out to the professionals that you know of or that you see in fora like this, and move forward with that. Just reach out to us. We'll all be happy to speak to you. Thank you so much. I knew we were going to lose track of time and have a wonderful conversation. But thank you all for taking the opportunity and the time to listen to us, you know, get back together, you know, love on each other, you know, and talk to you all. I hope that it was helpful to each of you. I hope you continue to have a wonderful conference. Stay safe out there. COVID is still going on and take care of yourselves. Thank you very much. Thank you all. Thank you all. We didn't get your questions answered. Come to our queer conference. Yeah, we all have that money for that. Please come to our conference. Bye. And David, do we just do and today to the tech, do we just all sign off?