 Hello, everyone. Good afternoon. Thank you so much for being here. Welcome to the library. My name is Kevin Darlene. I'm one of the librarians for the Hormel LGBTQIA Center, and I am excited to be here with you all this afternoon to get to watch this special sneak peek of Sally, a documentary film in progress, and to hear from our amazing panel of Sally Gearhart's friends and colleagues. I have just a couple of announcements, and we will begin with a land acknowledgment. This is Eloni Land. The San Francisco Public Library acknowledges that we occupy the unceded ancestral homeland of the Romitush Eloni peoples, who are the original inhabitants of the San Francisco Peninsula. We recognize that we are the uninvited guests, and we affirm their sovereign rights as first peoples and wish to pay our respects to the ancestors, elders, and relatives of the Romitush community. I would like to invite you all to join us Wednesday, July 26, at 6 p.m. in the Hormel Center on the third floor for the event Show Us Your Spines. Six queer and trans BIPOC artists and writers present work inspired by the Hormel Center's archive and book collections following their six-week residency with the library. Please sign up for our monthly e-newsletter to find out about new LGBTQIA events happening each month at the library. And there is a sign-up sheet for that at the back table. And now I would like to introduce the director of Sally, Deborah Craig. Deborah is an award-winning documentary director and producer. Deborah's most recent short, A Great Ride, a 33-minute documentary about lesbians and aging premiered at the Frameline Film Festival in 2018. Deborah currently teaches at San Francisco State University, as Sally Gerhard did. And I will let Deborah take it from here and introduce the rest of our panel. Thank you. Thank you so much, Kevin. And I really appreciate seeing all your faces out there and so many familiar faces and some I don't know yet. I just wanted to quickly tell you the sort of sequence of events is that this will be a panel discussion interspersed with clips from the Sally film. This is a work in progress. So we are getting there. We're not there yet. So feedback is welcome. But we're looking forward to the time when we can have you back and show the full film. So in addition to interspersing clips of Sally and the film in progress with some discussion with our really accomplished panelists, we really want to focus on both showing Sally's past accomplishments and her contemporary relevance, which I feel like is every day I read the news and I think we need that spirit. We need that kind of warrior spirit now of fighting for justice now more than ever. I want to, I'm going to, Ruth is kind of my partner in crime here in keeping us all on track as best as possible. So I'm going to do some introductions and she's going to do that as well. I really have the great fortune of having been able to meet and work with Cherie Maraga in this project. Cherie was a student of Sally's and also is now an internationally known recognized poet, essayist and playwright. Her career began in 1981 when she co-edited the groundbreaking feminist anthology this bridge called My Back, which I think has been taught in probably hundreds, if not thousands of classes since then. She's the author of many other works, including a Chicana Codex of Changing Consciousness, Waiting in the Wings, Portrait of Queer Motherhood and Native Country of the Heart, among other works. And this August, her 1983 collection, Loving in the Warriors, will be reissued by Haymarket Press of Chicago. She's also currently a distinguished professor in the Department of English at UC Santa Barbara and with her artistic partner, Celia Herrera Rodriguez, she founded La Maestra Center for Chicana Indigenous Thought, Art and Social Practice. And we also have Jewel Gomez. Jewel is a playwright, novelist, poet and activist. She is the former director of the San Francisco State University Poetry Center, American Poetry Archives and a former president of the San Francisco Library Commission, yay. Yeah. Among many other places that she has guided through hard times. So thank you for all of that. She was recently the subject of a documentary called Jewel, A Just Vision, which is fabulous. If you haven't seen it, you must. It's wonderful, so thank you. And a friend, and a friend of Sally's, so. And also I want to introduce Ruth Mahaney to you. She taught LGBT history at City College of San Francisco for over 35 years, was a member of the Modern Times Bookstore Collective for 35 years. She's lived in San Francisco since 1971. She met Sally Gerhard in 1971, which seems like an amazing accomplishment until you find out I've met people who knew Sally since 1948. So she has a good record, but not the winning record. As she and Sally both sought SF State and both were members of the Lesbian Caucus, a group of lesbian activists attempting to advocate for lesbian rights with city government. I also want to give an acknowledgement to the fact that we have some many incredible luminaries in the audience. And if I went to describe each one of them, we would run out of time to do our panel, but just a shout out to Midget, to Rink Photo, to Roma Guy, et cetera, et cetera. It's just some, I think to me what I've come away in the process of making this film is we have a room here full of people who we should be making films about. I don't know how we're gonna get the money to do it, but I'll figure that out later, okay? So in terms of introduction, so I said we're interspersing with clips. The first clip we're gonna show is a trailer to our film. So apologies to those of you who've already seen it. If you haven't seen it or even if you have, this is our introduction to Sally. So that was Sally at about 83 or 84, so. I'm aiming for that. One thing I forgot to say before we showed the clip is this is a work in progress, and so many of the photos and film clips that we have in here, we have not gotten permissions yet, but we were working on getting permission to those. And so that's one reason that this end is being recorded, but the clips will not be being shown, but just a heads up on that. But now I wanted to turn to the panelists and ask them my first question, which is what is the number one impact that Sally had on you? And I think Cherie, you had something that you wanted to read, and so why don't we hand it over to you? This is what you just called my back. I decided to read this because I think it says it best in answer to that question. Sally Miller-Gillard Hart, the lesbian feminist activist and the author of Wonderground was actually the first to recommend bridge to Persephone Press, which was the press that published the book. I skip a lot and I talk about other influences. And then more personally, what is not known about the history of bridge is the role the book played in my own evolution as a student and a public thinker. Perhaps I speak of it here for the students who hunger for that life of the mind to go public, to create actual testifiable change in one's life. During the summer of 1980 when I went east to find a publisher for bridge, I was completing coursework in a special master's program in feminist writings at SFSU. Under the generous tutelage of Sally Gerhardt and her then partner English professor Jane Gerco, I had designed my own program. There were no graduate studies programs in women's studies at the time. Upon my return, I was due to write my thesis, but when I came back from Boston, I came back changed. I had already come to realize that the project of bridge had not only taken over my life, but also my life purpose. A standard master's thesis was no longer viable. And I made my case to my advisors. Within the context of the late 1970s, utterly white middle class dominated genre of feminist writings mediating by white instructors, bridge was a logical and necessary critical outcome to my feminist studies. The book was an enormous collective fill in the blank of so much that had been missing in my education. It was what never appeared on a reading list. Its labor was my thesis. And my true teachers Jane and Sally concurred with a 10 page paper to justify the project. This bridge called my back writings by radical women of color became my our woman of color thesis stacked somewhere in manuscript form on the library shelves of SFSU. I honor Jane and Sally as models of an old school feminist teaching practice where professors were willing to break the rules to allow their students a change of mind. I've been meaning to thank those two women in print for 35 years. I think sometimes we don't know what a particular period is giving us. And I think that was true of the 70s while you're in it. You know, it was a time of title nine. It was Roe v. Wade. And there was also, I just was reading up on this and I saw that the Supreme Court actually struck down rules against women being on juries in the 70s. So some states had those as rules. And so all of that to say is like this room that has all of these activists in it, the 70s were like that. Everything was bubbling up. Things were happening all across the country. And one of the things that happened for me was getting a free ticket to see a special screening of Word is Out in 79 or seven, I guess. And that was, the film itself was just so stunning for me. I saw my first black lesbian, Achebe Powell, who just left us recently, but I saw Sally. And the thing about Sally for me was she had all of the elements that I thought I would have sometime. She was a writer, she was politically active, she was a teacher at a university, and she had that voice. So when I saw that, I thought there's a possibility for me in the future, professionally, politically, and personally, just her embodiment of all the things that I thought I would grow up to be. And my great regret was by the time I got to work at San Francisco State, she had retired. So I just kind of wandered the hall seeing if I could catch her scent. I had a really hard time figuring out one, you said the number one, I was like. I didn't have the library until 8 p.m., so. Sorry, we're not here till 8 p.m. So I thought I'd talk about her connection to trees and animals. So Sally and I used to, Sally would be invited to do lectures at various places. And she sometimes took me with her and we would sit on stage and sort of talk about feminism, but disagree with each other. So it was, I was the Marxist feminist or the Socialist feminist or something like that. And she was the cultural feminist. So we would proceed to argue with each other on stage. And it was fun because the audience would get really freaked out and wanna make peace between us. And they would, question and answers, they would come up with some way to unite us and make us friends again, which was never really a problem. But she did bring up things that I often didn't bring up. I remember her bringing up experimentation on animals at San Francisco State. And she came totally freaked out one day to a meeting that she had gotten the vibes of the animals speaking to her as she was walking past the building where animals were caged. And they were screaming to her to save them and she was going to have to do that. I'm not, I think she may have tried at some point to release or someone did to release animals from cages at state, but. And just before she died, I went up to visit her and we were sitting out in front of her little room there. She was no longer on the land. She had been, we moved her to Yuccaia. And, but there was a huge tree in front and she told me that the tree had been, they'd been having a conversation and that the tree told her it was okay to go. And the tree was having a hard time being in the city because there was traffic going back and forth and she was worried about the tree. But that the tree had told her that it was okay for her to go. So, so I think about sort of trying to remember to bring those things into my social list, whatever I think I'm doing. So, thank you all for those, those, yeah. I think you see already Sally was so many different things and that's what we really hope for the film to show. And Jean Crosby's not here, but we have her saying, I think trees might have been more important to Sally than people. So, we are, you know, in our film, we hope to celebrate Sally's accomplishments and there are many of them, but Sally was a complicated person and a very, very many faceted person. And I don't, didn't have the advantage of knowing her from back in the 70s. And so I was just, I met her in 2014 and it sort of felt like every time I visited her, I learned something completely new. And I wanted to really make extra sure that that's reflected in the film. Her complexities and some of the challenges she faces, whether it's intellectual challenges or life challenges. And so what the next thing we're going to show is a clip on separatism. Yeah, Sally was pretty funny, huh? So we are going to look at some of the positives and maybe the challenges also that came with separatism in the film itself. And maybe that clip looked more at some of the, you know, need for separatism. But again, in the interest of bringing the dialogue back to what's happening today, where in some ways it feels like we're maybe backsliding, I guess my question is, do we have a renewed need for some kind of separatism today? If any of you have thoughts on that? Well. You leave in. I did leave in. Well, as one of the interviewees said, I think it's less about separatism. And I think that has always skewed the conversation because it's kind of like a reaction to the male dominated culture. And I don't have a new word yet as a good feminist, I should, but I'll work on it. There's, it's more about, as Sally said, wanting to be in the company of other women and figuring out how we reflect each other and then strengthen each other, I think is more the point. And I think that's always going to be needed. It's going to be needed for any cultural group that has been oppressed or dominated by another cultural group to find each other, to reinforce each other is vital before we can reach out and make coalitions, which I do think are possible. So I would rather be emphasizing the positive aspect of women connecting with women to reinforce, reexamine, reify our value. Rather than have it be a reactionary thing of let's lock men away from us, it's more like let's get together with each other. I think it's, of course, the trick with separatism is that you were separating from your, within the context of your own familiars. I made it very painful. And on one level, you required a huge amount of courage and it also made it very difficult, as you already said, Jewel, about cutting off your families of color or anybody that felt particularly strong relations with their family. And at the same time, it exposed that many of our families are actually the site of the first knowledge of being oppressed, particularly as women, the double standards, incest, sexual violence, all of that. So like we were saying earlier, I feel like that the movement was really important. Ironically, kind of where your brain, where my brain has gone in recent years, and I was just talking with my partner said it, today we're driving over, and I was trying, I would say, why is it that, I was talking particularly about Mexicans, but then we started, I said, yeah, but in Africa, and then we're going all these places, right? I almost feel like the visceral relationship to misogyny is greater than ever, that I feel it on the daily. And all my feminism, 40 years of feminism or more, I feel it almost more viscerally now because I'm 70, and I saw what happened in those 40 years that I had thought initially was so progressive, and that I thought we healthily got through separatism, but then it became neoliberal, and we can go on and on, like we could do the whole analysis of really what happened in many ways that sabotaged the women's movement. So as long as something stays radical, you got an agitation going that's really important. And so there's a place for that, there remains a place for that, because what also what keeps, there's nobody like, you were saying, Cornell showing up, he may not be the man we want, but he at least kind of moves the argument a little farther to the left since now, the right, the Democrats are the right. So I say all of this because I feel like when you're asking what about now, we need feminism more than ever. We also need not to have such an assimilationist view of what it is to be queer, and that's what we get from trans folk, not all trans folk, but some very, very radical trans folk, and usually those are trans women of color. So what we're looking for, we all have to be looking for is that how do we stay radical even at our respective ages, wherever we are. And that, so yes, so I look at the things that make me uncomfortable, even, I'll tell you, even seeing all those women like that still makes me uncomfortable, not because I don't love my body and love women's bodies, but because I always was like, no, cleavage is really good. I really like cleavage, and you have all that exposed, there's no cleavage, but it was very uncomfortable in the first Michigan women's festival that I went to, I just said, so it's different, people have different senses of what's sexy, right? And also that's the great gift of Sally, right? She had a little too much for me, but she'd always tell me, she'd always confide, and what do you think about this, what do you think about that? And I always thought we, back in the day in New York, I thought we were really cutting edge, like cutting edge sexual people, but anyway, all that's to say is that I do feel it's needed more than ever, however we decide that is, and sometimes I have said that some of the most radical feminists I know are older heterosexual women of color, and I'm saying that because they're at it. They have already been disvalued, unnamed, poor, I mean, all of that, I mean, I'm making really big general statements right now because they're agitating, right? And I just want to do that, because, so my thing about where we have to be at now, whatever you see that radical spot is, and it's agitates you, that's where we need to go, because I always then have to check my stuff and say, why is this other sister who's another Chicano lesbian just like me? And I said, no, she's like pure neoliberal. That's not my ally. But that, you know, like that African American, heterosexual, no longer actively heterosexual, because who can handle that for that long? No, I'm saying, I'm talking about older, older, right? And I, and she got the, you know, I'm saying, I'm using these as, you know, as these representatives. So all of it is very complex and that's what I loved about Sally. We fought too, but she was radical. She was radical, it was the perfect name for her. And that being too much, I think, is where a lot of the value is, because we need to go a step out in order to make any kind of social change, to make people even notice they need change. Somebody was talking about Phyllis and Dell when they were making the film about Phyllis and Dell. Somebody said, oh my God, Dell, she's so annoying. She's like, oh my God. And it's like, she had to be in order to make social change. If she was just a nice young lady, nobody was gonna listen to her. So I think that being too much, having to go to the far side and embrace all the women you could and find yourself, I do think it's still important. And I think it's important for every group. And I think the trans movement has really challenged feminists to really think, well, what do you believe in feminism? How does your feminism fit today? And the young people who are coming up with a totally different culture and aesthetic. And the thing about feminism is it's always growing. I mean, it started out as very white and middle class. It didn't stay that way that long, but it did start out from a place that was unfamiliar to most of us. And I think we're still evolving what feminism means. And that includes how we think about separatism. Ruth, do you have, we have just about a minute before we need the next one. Just my only thing is that I feel like a lot of us are really scared right now that so much we're under attack. And so the temptation is to put aside the differences we have with those that we can unite with at all to fight what seems like such a bigger enemy. And somehow we have to figure out and remember to still have those arguments with each other but not reject each other, not like throw each other out and say, okay, you can't be here. And I feel like that's the challenge ahead of us now is the separatism in that mindset for us needs to still be there. But we also really need to be uniting with all kinds of people right now because it's scary out there. Yeah, yeah. That's a great segue to this next clip because what I wanted to say is that, you know, again, Sally was always sort of a puzzle to me and as Ruth said, Sally could always see at least two sides, if not many more. So Sally did sometimes identify as a separatist and make some very radical statements, I think the most famous of which is, we should reduce men to 10% of the population, which for some reason didn't go over that well in some crowds. And again, it's a way of waking people up whether you agree or not agree. It's a way of looking at and saying, what's happening now is not working and being so very radical and willing to go to the extremes. And Sally had another side and, you know, for want of a better word and making this film, we're calling it, we're just talking about it as reaching across the aisle. So this next clip will show Sally really and her connections with her Willets community. And again, I think it ties in so nicely to what we've talked about as we need to find a new feminism, we need to be radical and we need to, you know, connect with people who are different from us and love one another and Sally shows this, I think so beautifully. So the next clip would be great thing. So either of you wanna talk about Sally's reaching across the aisle or however you wanna talk about it. Do I have to talk about that? Okay, all right. Talk about something else if you would rather. Yeah. Always optional. I guess I just, you know, she's just, the word that keeps coming to me is courage, you know. She's someone that had such tremendous amount of courage and I just like you do the first time I saw her was when the word is out. That's all I need to see. I mean, I went down to San Francisco State, I went looking for her and I first, I found, well, I had been and had a being in English. So I went to Jane Gurkel cause she was in English and I knew like, I knew that Jane was, I don't know, I'm not sure how I knew that but the Jane was with Sally and I went there and then I said, I wanna do this major, I mean this master's degree cause I'd been reading, it was, I'd just been reading and reading and trying to find lesbian literature, all this stuff and I knew there was nothing and what I found often was quite alienating to me but I was hungry, hungry, hungry. And I, so I go to Jane and I tell her and she goes, I go, is there a way I can, what can I do with you? She goes, we don't have a feminist studies master's and then she said, but maybe you can design your own program. Well, sure, okay. It was a good old days but I'm saying this story because then she says, but wait a minute, you have to meet my Sally Gerhard and I'm like, that was it, that was it. I mean, that's what I had gone to Jane for and the two of them I worked with but what I wanna say is that I think we had moments, many, many years right after this period of time and I went back and I taught at San Francisco State and then she had gone up and it was those days, it was like that going up to the land and doing a chainsaw, doing all that for the first time. I really love that she was butch. I mean, I don't know what she did in bed. I am not test, I can't testify to that but I love that she was butch and that she made me proud of that out of my own internalized homophobia I have to say because I thought, man, you be a drug addict, you're gonna be sick, you're gonna spend all your time in bars and I had every batch since the time I was a little kid. It was so significant, I'd already come out so it wasn't about that, I was ready, I was way out but to have that, the quality of that person and the way she moved unapologetically, how she sat unapologetically, all of that, I'll never be that tall but I wanted to live up to it. Anyway, I just have to say that I was young and I go back to New York and I moved to New York and I carried that. I had a lot, a lot of resentment against white lesbians and white feminism, it really hurt me a lot and not intentionally, I'm just saying is that the absence was just horrible to be queer and not see your own people and then to have to go find your way. Well, I went to New York, I found my people which was beautiful but I always held Sally as that significant juncture in the road and I think probably most of the people that you would talk to about her, that's what's important is that she came in at a significant juncture on your path. I honor her, I love her for it, I saw her afterwards, I came back to California and periodically saw her and it was always like that. It was always just home again, thank you for seeing me, I see you, you see me. Great gift, so that's what I wanted to say. I had this idea while I was watching it, you know how in the back in the day, gay men would say you're a friend of Dorothy and it was like a secret code? I think we got we're a friend of Sally's. You just have to say that to anyone and you'll get a big circle of friends, I love that. I'm gonna do a thing, write a thing about that cause every time I saw a friend of Sally's, I thought that ring could be so big. But to your question, you know, Audrey Lord talked about this and I love that Sally, it's in Sally's consciousness about not ignoring our differences. I wish I, I'm not really good at remembering quotes cause Audrey had a lovely quote about it and that Sally understood we're all gonna be different from each other, that's the nature of humanity and one of the glories of humanity. But in order to overcome our fears, too often we try to diminish those differences. Oh yes, we're just like you, you know, the civil rights movement, you think of all those people dressing in suits and ties and the, never forget in Philadelphia Barbara, what's her name in the women's movement and she was wearing that skirt. You know, the famous picture and here's the big dike in the skirt demonstrating it, I'm thinking, oh, she looks so uncomfortable. And she was, but we had to prove we were just like everybody else and that is our biggest error because you can't really see people unless you can see who they are, the differences that make them who they are. It doesn't mean you're necessarily gonna agree with them but you will always find something to talk about and I think that has been the key for Sally in developing coalitions. I mean, you know, I never met Harvey Milk, someone who I admire in retrospect but I can't imagine he was the easiest guy in the world to be a worker with, you know. But she was able to work with him because she recognized his value and recognized what he was about and how he was different from her. And that is really for me the most important lesson about thinking about working across the aisle, being able to see the differences and figure out what you have in common that you both could use to move things forward. Sometimes won't be that easy. I can think of names I could say right now but I won't because you all know who they are that I will not find much in common with but I think that is going to be the key because as we go forward we have to make coalitions because the bad people are bigger and have bigger guns than we do. Just that last point was really good like when she talked about, when the woman said about what they had in common, the one that she like and that she could under, she said, well now then you have to understand they really believe in what they believe in that and I said thank you. It's like all of, we forget that all the time that other people, you know all of that. I just thought that delicate thing that she was able to perceive that in people and respect it and once you got that going anything is possible, you can disagree but you're ultimately respected and not in any kind of just okay way but in a profound way I'm saying and I think that's because of her own background that the rigidity of her own background, that was it. Go ahead, I'm sorry. I just wanna add one quick thing about Marge in the film that, what was the book that Marge gave her autobiography? I think she gave her, so Marge Hanley is Sally's friend who's staunch Republican, you know rancher family, et cetera and she gave Sally, I think it was the biography of Ronald Reagan when we went to film her she had a big signed picture of Ronald Reagan in her house. And she wanted Sally to read it and Sally gave her something about lesbians I think and asked her to read it and so she said she would but only if Sally would read the biography of Ronald Reagan. So Sally took it and said she would only read it while on the toilet. I think that she crossed the aisle but didn't cross over to the other side. I'm just gonna do a time check. Do we have time to show, we have one more clip that's just two minutes that is on the wonder ground and then I have a question about the wonder ground so I'm just checking Kevin, do we have time for that? Yeah. Yes, okay. So let's go to our next clip. So this is the last clip. It's just a short clip about the wonder ground which we haven't fully animated yet but we're taking small portions of the wonder ground and so we're so lucky to have such prominent and accomplished writers in this panel that I really wanted to show that clip and ask the question that what is the role of stories whether you're writing an essay, whether you're writing a play, poetry, a fantasy novel or making a film what is the role of stories in movements for social change and maybe, Jul, you can start us out. I wanna quote something from wonder ground because I looked it up because I remember when I first read it, it gave me permission to think about writing speculative fiction. She and Joanna Russ really just launched me into that idea. So, but the wonder ground is not one of those fluffy lesbians all romping through the fields of daisies never getting bitten by mosquitoes. It was a really intense work. I mean, it still is. So I went back because I remembered being a little bit shocked because I was thinking about fluffy lesbians. And one of her characters who lives in the woman's land says my enemy by definition cannot receive my love. My enemy by definition is the one I kill. It is not in his nature not to rape. It is not in my nature to be raped. We do not coexist. And what was important to me was she was looking at the issues that women are facing very realistically, very hard edged. And it meant that what she was gonna try to create in that story was gonna really be relevant to the women who were reading it. It wasn't gonna be something that exists on some plane up here, pink, cloudy, marshmallow-y. But it was going to grow out of the blood that women have shed in order to survive. And the stories of how we survive, how we surpass are needed in order for us to do anything to go into the future. And I mean, I think that's one of the reasons you see a lot of books being reprinted. The understanding, we need those stories. They didn't just come out and they're done. A lot more presses are doing vintage imprints so that they can bring back some of the feminist books that were important to us. Because those stories are the, I don't know, kind of the magic carpet that we can use to get up and look over the landscape while we make social change, I think. Oh yeah, stories, there's everything. It's just, thank you for saying the thing about these reprints and vintage, et cetera. Partly, I still teach and my students are at this point mostly largely Latino and other folks of color. And the ones that come in, particularly if they're first generation, they don't even know what to read. And so all these, it's like we forget because we have 40 years of reading and what were the works that impacted our lives. And so suddenly these older books, it's like there is, I have to say, I really feel like there's been a giant sort of jump ahead without having done the homework of what was established before. And that's why they're being reprinted and that's why these newer generations really do need the work. I am surprised how much they need the work, how new it is to them. I mean, they can say intersectionality like it's pouring out of their mouth just like that. And they have no idea what it means. They have no idea how hard it is to win that position. And even then with their bodies right there, need it. And they can say it and they got all the theory and, but what was beautiful about those early works is that they were based first and foremost in practice. And so when you have a fantasy like underground and she says, I think we're doing it, right? And she said, I think we're doing it. So it is a, and it's kind of like really, and I think this has to do so much with the relationship to activism, which Sally had, is that if you're actively involved and you are a writer, your story's changing and evolving as you go for that very reason, right? So you're saying, am I living up to my dream? Or am I living up to my critique? I'm not one, I'm not a very good fantasy writer except I wrote a dystopia. What does that tell you, right? But I'm saying, but it is, it is, it's the bars always being raised and what you're really saying, the bar is really lowering. You're going deeper and deeper. And the beauty of Wanderground is that it is a real, it is in many ways, both the realization and the dream that Sally has offered for the world and the books that follow as well, but particularly that text. I just wanna say quickly that Sally, I mean, I think you're proving her wrong, but there was a moment that she and I had a discussion and she said, I think I'm gonna have to burn everything I've written every 10 years. And I was like, oh really, what about Wanderground? And she said, there's no sex in Wanderground. That was a big mistake. She should've put an addendum. Well, actually, if you read Sally, most people just know the Wanderground, but Sally wrote other fantasy novels, the Contu and the Magister, and I think was writing, working on a big trilogy in the last years of her life. And so I'm not a fantasy novel person. I can just never remember all those names. It's like reading a Russian novel. But I have read the Contu and Men are only 10% of the population in the future. And there's a lot of sex. So there you go. She did write a sequel. I think we're doing pretty okay. Time wise, I had tried to leave about 20 minutes for Q and A when we're down to 10 now. So I think, Kevin, unless, do we have time for 10, 15 minutes of Q and A? Do you think? Okay, so we're open for business if people have questions. Sharon. Sharon. They're bringing your... Thank you very much. Okay, thank you for gathering this group together. I wanna mention, so I got comments for a couple of people and some thoughts for you about things that I would like to see you change in your film. Not change, but things that I would like to see you, because it's in progress. So I'm accustomed to working, showing things that are in progress and you get feedback about what's working and what you'd like to see more of. I wanna thank Jewel for talking about the idea about going forward. I think one of the questions in working with allies is with allegiances and across the lines is how do we agree on which way is forward? I think that can be a real sticking point. So that's a thought for all of us. Cherie, I appreciate you talking about Sally being butch and making that present. And you talked about her background and the importance of her background and I would like to see some more of that in the film. And I don't know, I'm sure you have some of it and we just saw little clips but I feel like that's really important to talk about that background, where she grew up, the skills that she learned there, how she reacted and responded to those and how she carried the skills forward in the work that she did in the lesbian feminist community and in politics in general. Yes, great point, we're working on that. Okay, so I'm glad to hear it. And Cherie, your statement about her being a little too much, I think that is, and Jewel, you picked up on that too. I feel like that's really an important insight. I would also say the comment about the nudity and the complicatedness, I feel like it can, it felt like there was enough nudity that it was distracting from, that the sensationalism of it distracted from the importance of the work. So I would consider how many of those images you use and how frequently you use them and how you use them. And I think that is everything for me. Thank you, I'm really glad to see this work and thank you. Thanks so much for your thoughts, yeah. Somebody else, okay, go for it. You need the mic. I think it's hard enough to know the importance of both separatism and reaching across the aisle and what you had to say to Jewel about happening in that work, being a member of the enemy, I really appreciate and wanna think of ways that can happen especially on other levels today. I don't know if it's more of a feeling or a fantasy just by myself picturing the potential role of story and metaphor and symbolism in that, in bringing opposing viewpoints together, especially in a world where we perceive and not listening yet, no possibility of communication happening. I just would love to see us sneak that in there in a science fiction, fantasy, novel, movie that has important, clear, true messages but they're underneath and maybe you can't say, well that's their thing. Thank you. When we go on, there was somebody over here. I don't know where, before, there, okay. Where was she born and what year did she die? She was born in Virginia in 1931 and she died in 2021. Beautifully done, short clips. It's so interesting to see the process of film and the fact that you're willing to be vulnerable enough to share it with us, it's really great. I think one of the things that was so moving to me in addition to hearing everybody, of course if I didn't say that, you know. But really, seriously, one of the things that was so moving to me is that seeing film and we were in such a visual culture at this point that even storytelling is visual, is that this is a film about Sally but it's about so many others and the folks who are here right now and that's so important and I so appreciate that in the future when we get to see this and in the future beyond that, when others get to see it, though hopefully their interest in their imagination will be piqued and find out more about so many women. So by doing a film about one, you're doing a film about so many and I think a little bit that I knew of Sally that would have really appealed to her. Yeah, absolutely. Thank you, that's such a great comment. We really, really wanna make sure not to just show Sally as this icon up in the clouds but to show her in the community and interdependent and really working with other women and influencing other women and being influenced by other women. Keep those nude pictures, yes. So on that subject, I just have a quick question. The whole movie footage is really quite amazing and I'm curious where you got that and where that resides now and how much there is apart from what you've used. So there was, you know, we don't know if she was topless or not the woman behind the camera, maybe but there were several women who were on the land regularly that filmed a lot and one woman who both filmed and did a lot to ensure that footage was saved was a woman named Carla Bloomberg who was Sally's friend from back in Texas and then another woman, Dorothy Hacker who we interviewed for the, we interviewed Carla for the film and we interviewed Dorothy Hacker for the film and both of them met Sally back in Texas and both of them were never a long term on the land but were up there sometimes filming and very, very fortunately, a lot of that footage is available to us either through the Sally's archives at the University of Oregon in Eugene or directly through Carla Bloomberg. So, you know, just a plug for archives, those of you who have photos, footage, et cetera make sure that it ends up in an archive somewhere. That's why I was asking where it is not because there's a lot of... Let me check if some of, I don't know if any of this is not yet in an archive but I'll double check to find out but thanks for the tip. Back there, in the plan? Oh, of course. Thank you, Jim. Thank you so much. I'm not the most top-notch fundraiser so I forgot to say earlier there are postcards in the back. We always need funding. We've gotten grants, et cetera. We've been working, me and Oregon on Dean who are here I've been working for free for five years on this project because there's not oodles of funding for gay and lesbian projects. For some reason, Hollywood doesn't come bang down the door when you're doing a film about a lesbian separatist who traipses around the wood topless. So there's a postcard on the table as you walk in the door. It has a short description of our film. It has a website on it, it has a QR code on it and donations of any amount are extremely welcome. We've gotten a few larger donations from folks which are very, very helpful. We get many, many, many donations of $25, $50, $100 and those all are very, very helpful. And we've also been doing house parties locally and potentially we might do some in Los Angeles that have been really, really fruitful both in terms of raising money and just raising awareness about the film and getting us some feedback about the film in progress. So any and all of those things are really, really helpful. Don't feel daunted if you only have $25 to give. We really, really appreciate. And if you have, you know, I'm channeling my partner here she just would get up and say just cough up a couple of thousand dollars, you know. If you have money or know people who have money and we are gonna make it to the finish line but it's and we're getting there but it's a lot of hard work and it does take money. So thank you so much for that question. I just wanna thank Deborah and on Dean in York you wanna raise your hands at least so people can back there. We're working so hard on this film and really, you know, making it happen. So yeah, did you have one more thing? Yes, thank you. Thank you, Tracy. I usually scared to talk about money because I think people will freak out. Our budget is about $600,000 and we've raised about half of that miraculously. And so, you know, Tracy's been gracious enough to give me some advice. So again, if any of you have thoughts about people who might be able to donate more significant amounts and do a house party and or do a house party, please check in with us, contact information is on the postcard. You can come just find me or you're gonna on Dean are there in the back. So we are gonna make it. I know some people worry about funding little films that don't end up crossing the finish line. We're absolutely gonna cross the finish line. We hope we're not crawling across it. No, we'll be trotting across the finish line. We might not be, you know, doing a five minute mile, but thank you, that's a great question. We'll have a house party line right here. Are those of you who are gonna do house parties, okay? Yes, yes. Thank you, Tracy, yeah. And thanks to the San Francisco Public Library also for their support and patience and for really, you know, support of the queer slash LGBTQ slash all of the letters in the alphabet community. In these times, you know, these trying, trying times we feel so, so lucky to live in a place like this where we are welcome and supported. Thank you all for coming. This is such a wonderful collection of amazing people. So thank you all for being here.