 Welcome to our interview show in which we interview LGBTQ guests who are important contributors to our community. We want to acknowledge that all things LGBTQ is produced at Orca Media in Montpelier, Vermont, which is unceded Indigenous land. Enjoy the show. Hi, everybody. I'm here with John Kalecki, friend of the show, legislator, activist, performer, writer, par excellence. Welcome, John. Oh, how nice to be with you again. Thank you very much, my friend. We're here to celebrate the publication of Because Art, this wonderful book that you've seen on the screen already, I think. Let me start with a quick description of it for those few of you who don't know about it. And I encourage everybody to go out and get it and read it. I loved it. It's very provocative and mind-expanding and interesting. Cultural, social, and political commentary on leadership, disability, equines, Buddhism, AIDS, art producing, philanthropy, and legislating. These are some of the topics. Critical analysis of such artists as Ron Avey, John Cage, Douglas Crimp, Keith Herring, Peter Hujar, Donna Ann McAdams, Kevin McKenzie, Michael Otaki, and Sarah Schulman. Interviews with such art luminaries as Allison Bechtel, Trisha Brown, Janice Ian, Bill T. Jones, Tony Kushner, and Meredith Monk. That's just a glimpse of this rich collection that you're really not going to want to put down. But some of the essays are short, and so I encourage you to put it down between the intervals. Of course, readers can do whatever they want, but there might be an impulse to rush through it because it goes so quickly. The pace is really fast. The other option might be to read it several times, which I have available myself. In any case, let's start with a little conversation of your biography, John, which is very illustrious and action packed. If I may quote you from a recent interview. In the 70s, I was a dancer. And as a dancer, you learn sometimes you're a soloist, sometimes you're part of the poor, and a group improvisations always stronger. And so input is really important. I think that resiliency and flexibility are really central to an artist's process. And then you continue to explain that your background as a dancer has made you a better legislator. But let's go back to the 1970s during your period as a dancer. And let's look at a picture now of this gentleman in stripes. In 1973, you moved to New York and began your life as a dancer. You grew up in Chicago, right? I grew up in Chicago and I was invited to study with the Harkins Ballet for the summer in hopes that they would take me into the company. And I was so at 20 years old, I got a one-way ticket to New York City. And there I was. And I was an excellent dancer in Chicago. And I got to New York and it was like, I'm not an excellent ballet dancer on the world stage. I'm a good dancer, but I wasn't excellent. But if you think about 1973, it was an extraordinary time in the art world. First Stonewall had happened, 79. So so many political things have happened. And so 69, yes, 69. So so many things that happened. And everything was exploding, all the notions of what classical work is and the whole postmodern movement happened in with the Meredith monks and the Bill T. Joneses and all these people were just making new nascent work. Patty Smith one night at St. Mark's Church. It was a New Year's Eve and it was a everyone had five minutes to help with the poetry project and up comes this tiny little nape of a person and sits down on the piano and she sings Gloria and just blows my mind. That was Patty Smith in her beginnings. And so I found myself encountering these artists, working with these artists, having an incredible time, questioning all my concepts of what a dancer would be, what a performer is. I also was cast in a play called Coming Out, 1973. I think it actually was the first gay history play. And it was extraordinary for me, we were at Washington Square Park that year for the gay pride parade that ended in Washington Square Park. And because Coming Out was performing, we were introduced and it was just really thrilling to be on the stage. And up next was Bette Middler came out and sang Friends. And for this kid in Chicago to be in New York and watch the world open up in such a way and allow the queer world or the gay world, as it was called back then, to open up, that I found community in a very different way. So I performed, I toured in Canada. I danced with Winnipeg contemporary dancer. I came back to New York. I performed with Gene Erdman's company. I tried my own work. It was tortured. It was clear that I wasn't going to be a gifted choreographer or a movement maker, but I love dance. And so I got to work in an administrative way with Laura Dean and then Trisha Brown was an extraordinary time. It was, we're now in the 80s. Let's pause. 1979 when you go to the Himalayas. Well, also at that time in the sort of postmodern world, many people became interested in Buddhism. And the Philip Glasses, the Patty Smith, the Meredith Monks. So these were people that I was around. These were people who were interested in this journey. And certainly John Cage had been very influential to think about what were these concepts of the Eastern thought and how they could kind of impact the way art practice was happening. And so I also became interested. I sat with a Zen teacher. But what was for me, and this is in the book, he said, I'm too old. I can't take another student on, but you come and sit. And it was profound because I would go every weekend and sit and want him to be my teacher. I want an authority figure and that wasn't it. It was a perfect Zen experience. So I went to the Tibetans to get more teachings and it was much more interactive. And then suddenly I was like, well, I'm not going to dance anymore. I got my degree at Hunter College in psychology and early childhood education. But I decided that I'd go up to the Himalayan mountains to a monastery because there were 40 kids who were being schooled as young monks and nuns. But I realized if I could help them learn English because at the time I was working in Chinatown in New York, an afterschool center where the kids could only speak Mandarin and Cantonese. And it was amazing to watch because within six weeks, these kids on the playground could be arguing or playing in English, even though their parents couldn't speak any English. So I saw how it could work. I do not speak Cantonese or Mandarin, but I could see how we could teach people English. And so I heard that they were looking for someone to come. So I went. I said, I'd like to do this. And so I went off to a Tibetan Buddhist monastery in Rumtex Akeem. And when I got there, they were thrilled. But the visas that I could only say for three days, because at that time, Akeem was between India and China. And everybody was fighting over Akeem. And so today, Akeem doesn't exist. India took it over. So Akeem was wiped off the map. India controls it now. But back then, it was a separate country. But it was very volatile with the political situations. So they really didn't want Americans there. And I don't know if you remember, the queen of Akeem was a woman hope cook from New York. And she had to leave the country and they unfortunately killed her husband and the child because they didn't want a king to be there. So there I was in this monastery with these kids. And so they said, well, we'll ride Calcutta and we'll see how long you can stay. And so I got to stay a month in this monastery in the middle of the country and said, no, the American has to leave. So I decided not to go back to New York. I went to San Francisco. But the time I was there, I was there, the night Harvey Melk was assassinated, horrifying moment in our lives. Who arrived, if I recall. Yes. And the same week, Jonestown happened where 900 people were kind of mass suicide, were poisoned to death. And Jonestown was from San Francisco as well. So I was very scared by the violence. And then, remember the Roshi, the Zen teacher who wouldn't speak to me? He was coming back from Japan. And I was told he wanted to come visit me. So I was like, so excited about this. And so what happened is the plane arrives. I was going to meet him that evening at a reception at the Zen center. And apparently he didn't feel well. And he went right to the hospital. And he dropped dead in the hospital. So it was kind of a pure Zen experience here. I was expecting to be finally recognized as a student. And instead, I was at the end of the service, given his ashes and said, you need to complete the journey to New York to bring his ashes back. So there I was back on a plane in New York. And I'm thinking, what am I going to do in New York? This is crazy. I thought I had left New York. But I returned. And that's when Laura Dean and Tricia Brown invited me to run their companies. And so I went from being a dancer after my vision quest, I became an administrator. And that was a profound experience. And being a dancer helped me because being an administrator, I really didn't know what I was doing. So every day it was like a great rehearsal. And I would figure things out. And I was there at a very seminal moment in postmodernism and dance with Tricia Brown because in the early 80s we're there now. And she was working on a piece set by Bob Rauschenberg and music by Laurie Anderson. And it was extraordinary to watch this piece come together. And you felt it. You saw it. You knew this was going to be a masterpiece. And indeed it was. And it was extraordinary. And it kind of changed modern dance because it was lush. It was beautiful. So it was such an honor to know these people, to work with them, and to have that experience with them. And you traveled to Europe and Asia with the Tricia Brown Beach Company. Well, I traveled all over the world. And what was fun about it, of course, after the New York premiere of this piece, it was called Set and Reset. This is pre-Internet now. But I put Backpack on. And I put the Press Kits in the Backpack. And I got the list from the Merce Cunningham Company of presenters and theaters in Europe that liked his work. So I got myself a URL pass and literally it was like Willie Lohman going from city to city with a backpack filled with Press Kits. And you know something that worked because people didn't really know Tricia at that time. And years later, Tricia said to me, and I write about this in the book, that Europe gave her her career because European theaters and European governments spend a lot more on culture than American stew. So she got commissions over there. We were able to earn more money on tour over there. So it was really, and then from Europe, then the world opened up. And it was a great time to be there. And a memorable insight. I've learned from the book that Europe was often much more supportive. Yeah. So now let's go to the end of 1980s. And you arrive at the Walker Art Center as the curator of performing arts. Well, the culture wars. Well, I think it's and I think this is one of the reasons I wanted to put this book together. And you know, it's a compilation of my writings from the last 30 years. But my writing really began. I mean, I talk about these early years, but it really began in earnest in the early 90s when I was at the Walker. But also, you and I were living through the AIDS pandemic. And by the late 80s in New York, when I was there, something terrible was happening. And we couldn't get our arms around it. But our friends were dying. You know, the hospitals were a nightmare for us to go visit our friends because they were often in isolation, or they were so full that they just would be in a hallway. And our friends were wasting away. And, you know, AIDS, there was malfeasance is the word I can only use about our government's response to it, pharmaceutical companies response to it. And what was interesting is that the art world became very politicized at that time. So, you know, I have a piece about Keith Herring in there, I have a piece about in the book, I have a piece about Peter Hooger, the great photographer in there. I've interviews with Bill T. Jones. And I have Sarah Shillman's about her Act Up book, which just came out. And that's in my book. Because what happened was that artists, the artist community in New York was galvanized, as I was, trying to figure out first how to hold on to our dear ones who were dying, and then how to deal with this grief. And then how to motivate into action. And so Act Up happened in New York and around the country. And, but there was a real artist centeredness in the Act Up group. And so, visual AIDS happened. And Grand Fury, the collective happened. And many artists start making work in response to AIDS. And so, of course, in 1988, I went to the Walker Art Center, which was a contemporary art center in Minneapolis. My job was to present performing artists. So what I did was present the emerging new names. And they were powerful. They were cathartic. They were angry. And it was people like Karen Finley. It was Bill T. Jones. It was Ron Athe. And it was Holly Hughes. It was Tim Miller. All these people are in this book of sort of reviews of their work, my experience of working with them. And what happened was that suddenly these artists who had been working on the fringes were brought into the mainstream like a Walker Art Center. And it ignited what we call the culture wars. And, you know, it was Senator Jesse Helms was screaming in Congress that, you know, Ron Athe's a cockroach. And how can public dollars support this work? And it's like, well, gosh, everybody's a taxpayer. So why should it be your taste? And they were very organized. Yeah, again, this is pre-internet. So it was mailing lists. The Donald Wildman American Family Association gave out my home address and phone number. And I was getting all these letters saying I was going to go to hell. And that, you know, it was a very frightening time because there was such a movement to really silence these artists and to deny them grants. And what happened is corporations moved away from supporting individual artists. States moved away. The National Office of the Arts stopped pretty much their fellowships for individual artists. So America turned its back on its individual artists in response to the culture war. So, you know, the arts community lost. We lost a great deal. And at the same time, we were losing a generation of artists dying from AIDS. In your interview with Tim Miller, I think he says, you know, I was under siege by the government, but the fight against AIDS was much more important to me. Yes. And let's go to reading you with thought you might do that touches on that period. But I, what I did is, as my friends began to die, I started writing pieces. And they were allergies to them. They were me trying to heal myself as well. And so I, these became films I've made. And I've made three AIDS related films in the nineties. And I've been very blessed. They've been shown around the world and they're losing library collections. So this is a piece that I wrote in 1995. And it's, it's a three part piece, but this is one part. And it's called one part. And it's called stolen shadows. I was in New York and went to a movie. Afterwards, I walked from the theater on the upper East side to Greenwich Village, where I was staying with Sunday morning. And the streets were empty. I passed 60 second and second, where I used to live with Bill. Not too long ago, I've been listening to his concerns about his plummeting T cell counts. Further down on Lexington Avenue, I passed the apartment where Gary and his lover lived. Gary left that apartment and moved to Florida after his partner died. Just across the street was Christopher's apartment where Stephanie was now staying. I can still recall reminiscing with her, listening to how much she missed him. Crossing over to the West side, I ambled into Chelsea. About a mile north was Manhattan Plaza. Kevin moved there after Don died. I wonder who lives there now. Now that Kevin is gone. On 24th and 9th, I passed Vito's apartment, where I often stopped on my way home for the latest gossip from the Hollywood closet. How angry he'd be if he were still alive and how little has changed. A few blocks further downtown, and I was in the village. Here, on every block, I looked up and saw a shadows of those taken from me far too soon. Images of my lost ones surrounded me, overwhelmed, stunned, and numb with grief. I tried hard to hold on to some of my stolen shadows. And this is excerpt from a video, and I think you have a picture that we can show as you do the reading. Yeah. It was a terrible time, and I think all of us are irrevocably affected by it. I remember Paul Manette's wonderful love alone, and I was teaching it in New Orleans at the time, and I thought, am I going to cry in class? I mean, it's that kind of subject. Well, you know, when that film was shown in Los Angeles at Outfest, I got a note from Paul Manette's lover. Paul had died, and he thanked me, because he said he felt the film represented their relationship as well. So I was very touched by that. Here's what's important to me about this, is that when I show these films, or when I lecture colleges about the culture wars or other aspects of things in my life, this generation of queer folk have really no idea of what happened. Right post Stonewall in New York, or when Act Up happened, and certainly have really lost the reality of what AIDS was like at that time in our lives. And so, to me, I hope that this book, I'm telling my story, and also, you know, as you read, I feel that by profiling these other artists, one third of the book is really profiled of artists, that I'm telling, I'm writing about them, but I get to tell my story in writing about them. And that's, so it's three parts of the book, one of these essays I've written, and some of them are formal. One was a commencement dress that artists to others are excerpts from my videos. The second section of the book are these critiques of artists, you know, but they're the artists I mentioned, Peter Hujar, Keith Herring, Bill T. Jones, people that, you know, I knew I thought was important. And as you'll see, as you read some of the names, it's a lot of queer artists in here. So, there's a queer through line, there's also a disability through line, there's a lot of artists with disabilities, there's Kenny Freese, Judy Smith, Terry Galway, Eli Clair, Vermont, Eli Clair's in them too. And then the third section of the book is interviews with artists that I've done over the years. And you mentioned a number of them. And, you know, Tony Kushner's interview in the book could be about today, about Israel and Palestine and what's going on, and about how artists need to be political. You know, it was it was done, I think in 2004 or something, you know, it's great to hear Janice and talk about what it means to be an artist. And what's the role of an artist in society. Tim Miller does the same thing. He talks about artists are the first responders. You know, he talked certainly about AIDS, but he talked about the Me Too movement. And certainly now with Black Lives Matter. So he, that seems relevant to me. And, you know, the last piece is a wonderful, two Cory Irishman Bay area, Brenda Way and Alonso King. And it's called choreographing community. And what I liked about that piece, it's about, they are choreographers who also have schools, and they made it possible for others, other artists to be presented at their schools that we trained at their schools. And part of what I've tried to do as an administrator, or when I was running the Flynn, for instance, was to make sure it was for the community that communities were invited in. And I think the same thing happens now that I, my second term in the legislature is this interest I had and the avant garde and the marginalized artists and my experiences with that world really informs how I do my work now. So I am working on homelessness issues, working on homelessness bill of rights, but it really just comes out of my AIDS activism or my disability activism. I'm working on compensation issues and the exemptions to the minimum wage that FDR put in place were all race-based, to exempt domestic workers, to exempt farm workers. So we're trying to address some of this stuff now. And so to me, that's part of the whole of this, and that's, you know, as you, as I put this again, the first I put it chronologically, and then it didn't make sense because it didn't tell the story I wanted. I wanted it to be this mosaic of my life, artists that have impacted my life, and how in the end it's all about transformational change, that each person can make a difference. And so my hope in this book is that you and I can relate to this book because we live through it. The next two generations, I'm not sure these histories have been written. And so to me it was important, especially some of these artists like Areza Abdo, who was so incredible. He's been forgotten because he's not been written about. So in trying to write about these people, I want to put a mark in the world that Areza Abdo lived and he was important. He was the Arto of our day, and AIDS took him. Well, the second time I met you when you came on the show in your conversation with Keith, you mentioned AIDS, and I thanked you afterwards because it is a danger. One of our local gay theater companies put on a play called Borrowed Time, and I raised my hand in the talk deck and said, haven't you heard of Paul Manette's memoir? And there were some older gay men in the audience nodding vigorously, but they hadn't. So the question of amnesia is really pressing in this regard, and that history can't be lost. It's too important. Well, and we have a great organization supporting queer youth in our state. And what's been amazing is pre-COVID, 91 kids came to the state house to meet without legislators. And that's pretty amazing. In my life, that would have seemed inconceivable. I mean, there I was in San Francisco when Harvey Milk was assassinated for being openly gay. And there weren't many role models at that point. So we have role models now that we didn't have before. But I think it's important for people to understand the two generations ago what it was like for us. And I hope that some of the next generation will read some of this and see, okay, you can now aspire to be Becca Ballant, our president pro temp. But that was a radical notion. And it was impossible notion, even 20 years ago, 30 years ago, 50 years ago, when I was growing up, it didn't exist. So it's an interesting time. And that's why I wanted to go back and talk about some of this stuff. And it's stuff that, you know, everything in the book has been published somewhere. And so I thought it was interesting to go back. Then, as I was looking at it, everything been published with different editors with different editorial styles. So I then had to go back and copy edited for consistency, because I wanted to not tell a story. So you will see in the very back of the book, when it says about the text, if I say, these pieces have been slightly edited. And I thought that was important to do. I didn't change the stories, but I sort of fix some grammatical mistakes in some of my early writing, and copy editors helped me make it consistent throughout. Because that's a danger in essay collections, you know, repetition and chronological confusion and so forth. And I love that you dated each piece, so we can place it. But you do create a very effectively, I think, the idea of a mosaic. And it's really, it's really provocative. And, you know, it opens your mind, it opens my mind. And I would like to ask you, well, let me just, let's turn to your role as a legislator. And we have a picture before you now, before us now of you in that position. And I'd like to quote you to yourself, if I may, from your arts advocacy through a politician's lens piece. Living in a rural state, I witnessed the devastating realities of income inequality, people living through generational destitution, addiction and trauma need the arts to help with healing. More money is not needed to diversify audiences for major institutions. Investments need to be made to enable all community members to be enriched by art and culture in order to live more resilient lives. That's such a wonderful sentiment. And you try to enact it in the legislature. Well, I do it. But I want to go back to, you know, when I was 20, went to New York and got cast and coming out. People would say to me in the arts community, well, is it art or is it politics? And I was like, well, why can't it be both? And I think from that early age, I could see art could be a really change agent. That it was that it should be a change agent. And really, if you look through history, Guernica is a profound painting about war. You know, it's a statement. And so you can really sometimes we take the history out of this, but it's art should be a change agent. And so I just feel now that I'm working in the legislature. And what's missing is an integration of arts in people's lives, because it can help people. It's helped me, it's helped my friends, it's built community in a different way. And so it can help heal people as well. And so I really feel it's essential that arts need to be integrated in community. Let me quote you again. This is timely passage about our current moment, imagining a post pandemic art world. We are in this liminal moment, imagining a post pandemic art world. The opportunity in this crisis will be lost. If in hindsight, we simply rushed to put everything back together the way it was. That's another profound insight. There are many of them throughout. Well, thank you. Thank you. And, you know, I think given that I've lived through these generations of things that I felt it was important to say it that in the 60s, art was reinvented, you know, and I lived through it in the 70s. But, you know, Peter Brooke told us that all we needed was an empty stage. And that we need to begin again. And so that was part of that. Another piece in there is I was able to draw from my lived experience during the AIDS pandemic in an essay about when early COVID was happening and talking about the lessons we learned from AIDS. And I hope we can bring that compassion and that caring for each other forward in the COVID experience. And I think firm monsters have embraced each other and taken care of each other in a very profound way. Other states, not so much. And nationally, it's a romantic in many senses. You know, if I may, another thing that was in the beginning of the book, but it is a through line in the book is around disability. Because 25 years ago, I was paralyzed from the neck down. I had a tumor inside my spinal cord. And so there was spinal surgery. And I unexpectedly, I woke up quadriplegic. And the surgery went haywire. So I found myself in rehab hospital. And for six weeks, and then I was sent home in a wheelchair. But what was interesting to me is that when they would pick me out of the bed and move me to a wheelchair to move me into kind of rehab therapy that they were doing, it seemed I don't have any sensation of my legs, even now 25 years later. But it seemed that somehow my body could figure out how to stand up. So one day I said to them, and I write about this in the book, bring a mirror over. I think I can learn to stand up visually. They're like, what? And I said, no, as a dancer, we rehearse with mirrors. We learn to like work with the mirrors. And so I said, just bring it over. What does it matter? So they brought it over. And to get the walker, I had crutches, braces on both legs, I'd stand there. And I was able to use my visual sense to figure out how to stand up. And that, okay, now this is what it means to be straight, standing straight. And then after that, I, they had the parallel bars and I would kind of move and begin to move my legs. And so I'm so lucky that I'd been a dancer because I don't think that I would be able to walk and stand up. Now, I walk with a cane. I've walked with a cane for 25 years. But this dancer in me was able to figure out a different way of moving that my body couldn't do it. And so, you know, I'm lucky the occupational therapists are like, well, this is great. Let's try it. But that dancer has remained in my life, very important. And of course, you wake up quadriplegic and you become politicized immediately, right? Suddenly, you see how the world treats people with disabilities in a very profound way and how inaccessible the world is. And out of my experience, I actually wrote a book with Bob Guter. It was a collection. It was called Queer Crips, Disabled Gay Men in Their Stories. And as we were putting this idea together, there was already a women's disability book that had come out. So I wanted to focus on just gay men at the time. And it was really important to me because I had to find community. You know, we're talking about community. There wasn't a community that I knew about. So, you know, and so I went and, you know, the book took three years to put together all the queer presses didn't like it because it's like, I don't know, you got to have buff boys and lipstick dykes and it won't work. It won't sell. And all the disability presses turned it down because there's a term inspiration porn that you want all people with disabilities to be inspirational. Aren't they magical? Look at that. Isn't that special? And it happens that this inspiration porn, but it's like, that's not the realities. It's about depression. It's about when you get horny, what do you do when you're disabled? If you're deaf, you can't really go into a gay bar if it's dark light because you won't be able to read people's lips. Imagine rolling in a wheelchair into a gay bar and being seen. And so there's one piece in the book on someone hiring a hustler. But it's about the realities of depression. It's about the realities of just surviving and Eli Clair is in it. You know, Kenny Freese is in it. Raymond Lucic is in it. A number of people. And what was great for me and very validating is that it won a Lambda Literary Award. I know, 2003 or 2004? It was published in 2003. I think it won it in 2004. For best anthology, for something that no one said would have a place in the world. But, you know, queer studies and disability studies still use the book. I think I got a $3 worth of check this week. So it's someone still buying it in the world, which is great. But it was a way for me first to build community and then share community into the wider world. So that's one of my questions. What's your community now, would you say? Is it? I mean, we're unified beings and you've certainly embraced a lot of communities during the time and are operating and making new communities now with this book and so forth. But how would you describe your community? I was trying to think about it with myself and there are a whole lot of different communities. I don't know that there's a unitary maybe the art world. Well, no, I think it's a wonderful question. But you know, it's the reason I put the book together as a mosaic is I feel our communities are mosaic like because I grew up Irish Catholic. My father sold cattle at the struggle stockyards. So it was working poor Irish Catholic. I have four other siblings. So I have that community. I have, you know, my dance community. I have my queer communities. I have my disabled communities and they're all plural. I have my legislative communities. I have my art world communities. And I feel like all of these lived experiences that I have or you have, I mean, you're part of my community, you know, just I bring them all along. And I also bring along all those that have gone before me. All those that I've lost. And so that's really a part of this is I wanted to make sure that I call out at least the Kevin's, you know, the Christopher's, the people that I know that have died, because they are my community as well. Well, let me quote you again to yourself. This is about your writing in VT digger about a week old talkies book, the body in Fukushima. And you and she did a wonderful performance piece that we mentioned when we talked to Donna McAdams. But at the end, you say about her book, but it also applies to yours. Art performs life in this evocative book, reminding us that the role artists play in commemorating losses can never be underestimated. Art is indeed where hope lives. And I think this book is testimony to that. Is there going to be a sequel? Well, no, I think that I called my archives of my writing. I've been very blessed. I've published, I think, over 300 pieces. And I felt this was a great selection from that. So there won't be that. I don't think so. You know, as you know, I make films and I do other kinds of thing. I felt that this was my artist's project right now. And it all started actually when my my youngest brother Bill told me that my dad had given him the cassette tape. And I had never heard this cassette tape. And I said, what was in this cassette tape? And he said, well, dad gave it to him and said, just in case anyone wants to learn about my life. And so I thought that was a beautiful impetus for me to kind of put together something. And it's like, oh, it's just perhaps if someone wants to learn about my life, but it's my lived experience versus my life. This is about my communities. This is about the eras that I, you know, the 70s, the 80s, the 90s, you know, postmodernism, AIDS activism, culture wars, you know, going off to the Himalayan mountains. So many of us back then did vision quests. And some people moved to Vermont to be in communes at the time. I went off to the Himalayan mountains, you know. And then, you know, disability is a key part. And I am, it's very important to me that as a legislator that I make sure those voices are heard as well. And all these disparate voices that I try to bring forward with me. No memoir then? No. Not immediately, maybe. I mean, it's been an incredibly interesting life. And you're right. It's not narcissistic the way some memoirs have been accused of being, although it's kind of our narcissistic memoirs kind of oxymoronic. But, you know, you're always reaching outward and creating community with the book, as I said. And how did you decide to put it together? Was it your father's cassette tapes? Yes. I thought, well, this, what would my cassette tape be in the world? So I thank my brother Bill for that. Before we leave, I'd like to ask you to read from one of my favorite sections of the book involving raindrop. Well, okay, let me set it up first, if I may. I mentioned my father's old cattle, the strong without carrots. And what he had to do every weekend is go to farms and talk to farmers and convince them to give him their cattle to sell, because that's how he made his living. And my father and I had a very contentious relationship, but I loved going on weekends with him. I know my other siblings hated it, they didn't like the poop and everything else about it, but I loved it. And one day, we were in Millsville, Illinois, and it was pouring rain. And we went to this farm that had cattle that my father knew. They also had shepherd's ponies. And I was mesmerized because I watched a pony being born into pouring rain. And her name was raindrop from the rain. And so that raindrop, I was eight years old, I think, became my best friend. And every time my father would go to that part of Illinois, I would go with him, and he just would leave me off in the morning. And I would just play with the pony in the field, run with her, I loved her, and the farmers would ring the bell when it was lunchtime and I would come in if I was cold or something. But most of the time I just stayed out in the field with the pony. I loved this animal. And so, you know, this went on for years, and the Mrs. Handel died. And they didn't have us. And I'd be, you know, in high school, I got busy. So I didn't visit raindrops as much. But fast forward, you know, we talked about me becoming paraplegic, where I have not really used for my legs. So you can't ride a horse with no strength in your legs. But I did one day say to my husband, Larry, let's go find shell and ponies. I said, no, as a kid, I love ponies. And I just want to visit them. So we were living in San Francisco. So we we found this great farm and moss landing by Santa Cruz. And we visited them and they mostly had fields where they were growing strawberries and things, but they had a herd of about nine or 10 shell and ponies. And they said, you know, next next weekend, we're showing them at the Santa Cruz County Fair. So come. And so we went down to the fair. And they were driving ponies and carts. It's not races. It's like the dressage kind of things where they were showing them. And I looked and I said, Larry, I think I can do that. And so from that moment, I got a trainer. I went down to that farm and they taught me how to hitch up a pony and a cart and drive it. Because when you're seated in a cart, you don't use your legs. You just control the animal this way with the reins and stuff. So I became, let's say, obsessed with with Shetland's once again in my life. And when we moved to Vermont, the farm that we were at Moss Landing, they it was poor. They knew about my raindrop as a child. And one May, I was pouring rain and their mayor Mam Zell had a new baby. And it was the exact same coloring as my child with the raindrop. So they named the pony raindrop. So that was in 2007. In 2010, I moved to Vermont to run the Flynn Center. And as a going away gift, they gave me raindrop. So I I trucked her out to Vermont. And she now I learned how to hitch her up and we drive around the cart of the barn. And so I'll read a piece about that if I if I may. And as you read, we'll show you we'll show the audience a picture. No, perfect. Being a novice at midlife is both gratifying and humbling. Acquiring new skills is rejuvenating laughter rather than embarrassment failure and learning from mistakes, propel improvement. My competitive self is satisfied with a training session well done thrilled that raindrop and I have done our best for that day. In working with my pony, I must first understand the world through her eyes, her smells, her experiences, her fears, and her relationships. Equine logic is quite different from human thinking. I try to see the world as she does. Human vision is focused straight ahead. Horses see at 350 degrees, encompassing peripheral vision. Imagine the world opening up in startling ways. Space and light are transformed. No place is more important than another. The images behind are equal to that in front. As I drive her in the ring, I must embrace the entire arena and look beyond the animal before me and perceive the environment as she does. At the barn, the virtues of simplicity are revealed through the quotidian of mundane chores. My executive director self has no gravitas here. Status is irrelevant. It's hard to be grand mucking out stalls or pounding through ice and frozen buckets. The teenagers know more than I do and I often seek their advice as well as that of an old friend in her 80s who rides her 29-year-old gilding every day. Given my physical limitations, I'm dependent on stable mates to get me safely in and out of the cart. So that's from that section. And when I'm in that cart, I'm not disabled. I'm dancing again, going around in circles, making figure eights. I'm running again. And I have to say that a rangerop is my spirit animal. And I'm so grateful to go to a happy place every day that has nothing to do with that I'm a legislator or had nothing to do with that I ran the Flynn. It's that I have to be fully present with that animal and really understand the world through her. I can't impose my will on this animal. It has to be a totally shared experience. And as dancing, I think this informs everything I do every day. Any last comments? Well, thank you for having me on your show again. I love your show and I just want to say that the book launches, actually the public launch is going to be happening on September 23 at the Pride Center. Justin is going to interview me about the book and half the books for sale there and half the proceeds are going to be for the Pride Center, which I'm thrilled to support, of course, I think is very important. And then the next week on September 27, I'm going to be at the South Berlin Public Library. And I asked Mark Redmond, who's the head of spectrum, which is for homeless youth in Burlington. He also has a new book out and I said, why don't we do this together and talk about leading these hybrid lives about writing. And his book is called called. And it's about his service for his entire career for homeless youth and supporting youth to find a safe place for people. And the first chapter of my book is called Call to Serve. And it's about my vocation and supporting artists and marginalized voices. So I thought there was an incredible synergy, even though about different communities. But I said, let's do this together. So anyway, that's September 27 at 530 at South Berlin Library. Elaborating in every aspect of my job is very commendable. And I really appreciate your joining us and I encourage everyone to read this wonderful, elegant, smart book. I'm to go to the readings that John mentioned. I'm certainly going to do that. Thank you. Thank you for joining us. Oh, thanks for having me. I love you. And I love your buddies of all things LGBTQ. And I so appreciate what you've done for our community. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I know we're signing off, but I, you know, you mentioned that you joined the legislature who embarked on that career as a way to get back. And I was thinking of this show, we're both we're all retired. And it's our way of trying to give back, you know, so we're all in it together. Well, and what I appreciate also is your historical threads. And your contemporary stuff as well. You, you are interviewing people who are making change in our communities right now, but you're now drawing back on the histories. So you, you really are allowing a full embodied voice of queer history to be seen. So I really appreciate the work you're doing. It's really important. Well, thank you, John. And thank you. You'll have to come on again to tell us more of your projects. I would love to do that. And I appreciate your support. And thank you for everything you've said about my book, because art, it means a great deal to me. Well, it's all true. Thank you for joining us. We'll see you in two weeks. But in the meantime, resist.