 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 Judith Katz, writer, educator and activist extraordinaire. I have been following her work for many years and I'm a big fan and I'm delighted to finally have you on. Welcome. I'm very glad to be here. I'd like to start by reading your biography in the second person if I may. And we can pause as we go along through it. Your official training is in playwriting. In the early 1970s you worked with Len Berkman as an undergrad at Smith and again as a grad student in the early 80s where you ultimately received an MFA from Smith in theater. In between you worked as both an actor and a playwright under Megan Terry and Joanne Schmidman at the Omaha Magic Theater. You went back to Northampton then and founded Chrysalis Theater Eclectic with five other activist, writer, performers and ultimately came to Minneapolis to join at the foot of the mountain. And that is a theater that was one of the impetuses for your move to Minneapolis, is that right? That's correct. You ultimately worked with a group of escaped actors and writers from at the foot of the mountain on a serial lesbian soap opera called Topeless Minnesota. If we have time I'd like to talk more about that. It sounds like great fun. It was great fun. All that time however there was a novel working inside you. In the middle of the 1980s, from the middle of the 1980s until it was published for the first time in 1992 by Nancy K. Bariano's Firebrand Books. You were working on a book that would ultimately be called Running Fiercely Toward a High Thin Sound, a wonderful novel. Thank you so much Ann. As you know my LGBTQ Book Book Reddit and we loved it. That book and we weren't the only ones. That book won that year's Lambda Literary Award for Best Lesbian Fiction. Four years later Bariano published your second novel The Escape Artist, which I just finished a couple days ago. I loved it. I'm so glad. It follows the exploits of a Jewish sleight of hand artist and her concubine lover as they worked to outsmart a gang of pimps and strong men in 1920s Jewish Buenos Aires. Both novels have recently been reissued by Bywater Books. In addition to the 1992 LAMI, you've also received grants from such organizations as the National Endowment for the Arts. In 2018 you were named to the St. Sinners Hall of Fame, that wonderful festival in New Orleans where I lived for 17 years. The birth of the St. Sinners Literary Festival. But I'm not a member of the Hall of Fame. Your plays have been produced by the Washington Area Feminist Theater, the Omaha Magic Theater, Chrysalis Theater Eclectic, and At the Foot of the Mountain. Short pieces of your fiction can be found in Sinister Wisdom, Evergreen Chronicles, Common Lives, Lesbian Lives, as well as the anthologies, the original coming out stories, and that's where I first saw your work and thought this is a writer to watch. I was 29. I also read your piece in Tasting Life Twice, Literary Fiction by New American Writers. Most recently your works appeared in the online journals Tablet Magazine, Lambda Literary Review, and The Seattle Lesbian. After a couple of decades of adjunct teaching at University of Everywhere, I like that. I've done a little adjuncting in my day also. University, Minneapolis College of Art and Design, University of Minnesota, et cetera, et cetera. You settled into a study job advising English and gender women and sexuality studies majors at the University of Minnesota, but you recently retired from that. That's correct. I retired right at the edge of the pandemic beginning. So I can't really tell you what retirement is like from this end because everybody was in that same situation. Good timing. I'm sure it was inadvertent. No, I didn't predict the pandemic at all. During this whole time, I said to myself, I'm so glad I'm not teaching, but we have omitted one important recent project that you've engaged in, the Sinister Wisdom Special Issue of, it's issue 119 to be a Jewish Dyke in the 21st century, which you edited with your friend, Alana Dyke woman. That's a great job. It was really a wonderful experience and a great way to come back into the publishing universe, to come back into the Jewish lesbian writing universe because we had wonderful submissions, too many to choose from actually. And also it was a really good way to kind of see what younger Jewish lesbians were thinking of and to sort of stay in touch with old friends and to reconnect with the writing of people I never actually met in person, but that we were able to put to that journal. We're both very proud of it. If you could move a little closer, I think to the screen, it might be clearer yours. Okay. Okay, better, better. Let's start with your early life. Before Smith, where did you grow up? All right. I grew up in Worcester, Massachusetts. I went to the University of Massachusetts in Amherst, where that's where I came out right as the, right as the Jewish, not Jewish, right as the queer movement, lesbian movement, women's movement was just really starting to pop and happen there. Women's studies was just beginning as a course of studies. I worked with Lee Edwards and Arlen Diamond, who, you know, Lee Edwards asked a really stultifying question in this class she taught called Woman is Hero. She asked how many women, how many women in the class identified with the narrator of Moby Dick? All of us raised our hand. She asked how many men identified with Jane Eyre? Nobody raised their hand. And that was it for me in terms of understanding feminism, literature. That was beginning of an adventure for me. All right. It was, it was mind boggling. And so, and then I kind of more majored in lesbianism coming out. I was like, I called myself a professional lesbian. I would, I was one of those people who would go to classes at that time. And I would like sit in front of the class and I would say I'm a lesbian, ask me a question. And they, you know, so that that was how I spent my college life. And then there is a couple in New Salem, Massachusetts, one of them is no longer on the planet, Doris Abramson and Dorothy Johnson. Dorothy ran for years. I'm out of touch, so I don't know what she's up to now. But she had a youth bookstore up in New Salem. And Doris was my one of my theater teachers. And they encouraged me to contact Megan Terry playwright and go work with her. Because I've been working with this really wonderful man who a lot of people still involved in television theater movies, Lynn Berkman, worked with, I got to work with him as a playwriting teacher. But then, you know, sort of like there's a gap between when I went to graduate school and finish my undergraduate work and went to Omaha to work with Megan Terry and Joanne Spindon. And it was an experimental theater. I actually more got involved with drugs than anything else while I was there. But I did learn a lot about acting and what a play is from Megan. And then I just came, went back to Northampton to work with Lynn and get a master's degree, which was a good thing because that permitted me to do a lot of pageant teaching around all over because I have this like advanced degree. So and that during the 70s and 80s and 90s, you could do that. It's like, you know, what's original, it's like living sort of a non-conformist life. You could sort of be a bum and make some money at the same time. So you got your BA from UMass Amherst and then the MFA from Smith? Yes. I see. Go ahead. No, you go ahead. I'm done. Well, have you always wanted to be a writer? I think so. I think starting, the first thing I remember writing that had any consequence was I think I was in the fourth grade and I wrote a poem called Parents, which actually, even though it was kind of a romantic poem about Parents, that was kind of predictive of what the rest of my writing life was going to be about in a lot of ways. So, yeah. And I wasn't such a good reader until actually after college. I had a hard time keeping concentrating. But then once I got interested in writers, primarily writers of color like Zora Neale Hurston, Toni Morrison, Alice Walker, and actually Jewish guy writers like Isaac Beshev, a singer, and Shalem Alephem. Then I could understand, I could read these books and understand the stories and then start to tell my own. So they were influences, you would say? Oh, absolutely. My influences, I have recently spoken about how one of the things about the Jewish male writers was I feel like I was writing against them, reacting to them, that they were, you know, but they weren't. Well, let me back up a little bit. When I first thought I was going to be a writer, I was actually more influenced by writers like John Updike, these Waspey white guys. I wanted to write just like them. But then. They were all great, remember? Right, in the 50s and the 60s. Right. John Updike, there's a picture of John Updike on the cover of Time Magazine that I had hung up in this little secret place that I had that now is what I wanted in my life to be on the cover of Time Magazine and I guess look like some Waspey. So then what happened was when I was living in Northampton in between when I came back to graduate school, there was a person at UMass, her name, I believe she's she's teaching in Canada now, Deborah Britsman, who turned me on to these Jewish writers, these Jewish guys old, you know, like older than me by a lot. And I was like so excited by this writing, it was like on fire. And the same was true from reading people like Zora Neale Hurston and Toni Morrison. It was like these characters were emotionally driven. They weren't they weren't repressed. In fact, if they had been repressed, life would have probably been a little bit easier for them. And so that's that's what excited me. And that's when I thought, okay, that's that's how I need to write that will be my true voice. And and so that's and so I read a lot of that work. And I for anybody who's interested in like, well, what's important to be a good writer? One of the main things that I'm sure you'll agree is you have to read and you have to allow yourself to be taken. You know, I was at that the point that I started reading all these Jewish guys, I was like, I don't read them. It's like, well, too bad, I gotta. And so I did. So yeah. What's interesting is that they're all fiction writers and your first interest was in drama. Right. And it's dialogue, you know, my first interest was in the drama because I could write dialogue. I might and this is one of the things one of my connections to Rihanna was when we're both living in Northampton. She came home with me for either Passover or some feel. She sat with my mother, my father, my brother, my sister, my grandmother and me. And then on the way back to Northampton, she went, I totally understand why you write plays because because and and you might know the Grace Paley quote about how she became a writer was by sitting under the table when she was a little girl and just listening. And that's because frankly, I often couldn't get a word in edgewise with my family anyway. And, you know, that there's a way that they speak that's very, you know, juicy and also emotionally fraught. It was like living in a drama, actually, a lot of the time, not a very pleasant one. I must say as the younger person, but I was struck, however, by the history and the escape artist in particular, which is what I read most recently. And so did you have to do a lot of research for that? I mean, it's really historically informed. Well, I was I had a really good time doing that research. And it actually came by accident. There are three factors involved in where that book came from. One was thinking, thinking about my grandmother's maxim that there was no such thing as Jewish prostitutes, which I didn't believe could possibly be true. Then I had one of those like weird experiences that sometimes you have in the library where a book kind of jumps out at you. And in the Minneapolis Public Library, a book jumped down and he called the Jews of Argentina. And I kind of look, look, look through it. And there was some stuff, a very little bit of stuff about gangsters, prostitutes. That book was probably the most clean cut of the books that I got to read. And then I also I got to go to Argentina. And Argentina, one of the facts factoids in that book that I found was that Buenos Aires had, I think, the third largest Jewish population in the world. That was including New York, and Los Angeles, and I think even Tel Aviv. And so what was so and it I have a friend, my friend, Amy Kaminsky, has written two books about Jews in Argentina, the most recent one has just been published. And so we I went the first time by myself and just walked around. And then I've been two more times with Amy and her husband Kenny. And Amy is very good at pointing out like there's a Jewish star there, there's a this was a synagogue here. And so I got to do the geographic part of it. And then just as my book was, you know, as I was finishing a draft, Nancy Mariano pointed out another book. So it was fun. I mean, the other thing I'll tell you is one of my theater experiences that you may ask was I was one of the prostitutes in three penny opera that I think sort of brought to life. So I love to play. Yeah. So so that so that was like the research part of it was actually great pleasure. And then to be able to process it into it didn't really come together for me, though, till I saw it as a play, almost that the wordello became a stage set in my mind. And then I couldn't go from there. And also, you know, it I doubt that some of the cheeriness of it is accurate at all. I'm sure that these women that I wrote about had miserable lives. But it was actually great fun to write that book. And what I really especially liked about it is that climax at the end where they actually escaped. What would you repeat that when you especially liked about it was what? The last part of the book where they actually escaped during a magic act is like that was my favorite part to write. And I have no idea where that came from. I just want to, you know, hear people say that wrote itself. And I always go, no, it didn't. But in this case, I have to say it was wonderful. I love the ending. And, you know, there used to be an ML, I was involved with the Modern Language Association. And there used to be a panel every year, I couldn't put it down. That was the case with this book, I couldn't put it down, the momentum and the pace. And I think you conveyed the misery of the life. And then, you know, we may have some, we shouldn't have said how it ends. But Well, you know, and I have to say, I'm so grateful to Sam West and Amacant for bringing both of my books back through Buywater Books. Like they are doing and all through the pandemic as well. I feel like those two women and Buywater have managed to maintain a community through social media and through the work that they're just continuing to do. The number of books that they're putting out every year, they're great. And I don't know where they get the energy. But they have done a terrific job of keeping that press going. And we were, we're trying to get Sam on the show, but because for various reasons, we've had to defer her visit, but we're hoping that we'll be able to talk to her sometime soon. Because they are doing great work, you're right. I guess, let's talk about your writing group and your support system. Do you have a community of writers who support you in Minneapolis? I do. Well, first of all, one of the things about Minneapolis that is really interesting is we have this organization called The Loft, which is it's a physical space. It's a space that supports writers through the McKnight Foundation, gives grants, I've been fortunate over time to have gotten McKnight. But also, and they over the years to their credit have managed to diversify the people who are coordinating that place and also who they're supporting. So when I first moved here, it was like, okay, there's a bunch of white people writing about Cabin. And now that's very different. It's being directed and run in a very different, much more diverse way. And it hasn't been without its struggles, but they're doing fine. And there's also a new group that formed since the George Floyd Murner called Black Table Arts Organization. That's for African American writers and poets. There's an Arab American Arts Association here. So there's a lot of different things going on here. And Playwright Center, it's pretty vital place. And even through the pandemic, there have been lots of opportunities to have readings and performances and so forth. Personally, I have a small group of friends. One is Ann Follett, a filmmaker, my friend Leslie Morris, who is, she's in the Academy, but she's also a really fine poet, and has been working on a long memoir. I can't even really define the genre so much. It's like poem memoir about a long illness that she suffered, a mysterious illness, and also about her, just her connection, her personal connection to the Holocaust. And then Carol Dines, who has two books coming out. One is a book of short stories, and the other is a young adult novel that I just finished reading that's really quite wonderful. So all through the pandemic, we've been meeting via Zoom. In fact, we have meeting on Sunday, just to check in. And they've been real encouraging to me because coming back to writing, it's I, you know, I never really understood what Writers Block was. And I'm not saying that what was going on for me is Writers Block or has been Writers Block, but I've been only over the past several months able to really dive in and say, yeah, I'm a writer again, because I was, I was having chemotherapy on and off for about five years. And just recently, feel like my brains unclogged. So I'm well now. And finding writing that I did in 2007, that is like, blowing me away. Family oriented. Also, I mean, and you had asked about my family, and what it, here's this other really interesting and weird thing. This novel that I kind of rediscovered, I used to call it my novel and it for, I call it the atomic age. One of the actions of that novel was that one of the characters, a brother, has a commit suicide basically on a by accident on a motor on a motorbike. Not long after I had established that in the fiction, my actual real live adult brother died in a motorcycle accident. And that was kind of also like, wait, what is happening? Is this, am I predicting this? And I just couldn't go on with that. And now, in this piece that I'm working on now, I'm finding even members of my writing group who should know better are saying, well, I know that that happened to your brother. Well, it happened to my brother, but this brother is not my brother. You know, there's, and so, you know, and if anything, what I, what I'm doing in terms of family stuff right now has more to do with the geography, like Worcester, Massachusetts as a backdrop, just like it was in my first novel and running fiercely toward a hyphen sound. And the geography is very familiar to me. So, it's like placing characters and maybe some circumstances in those places. I don't know if that makes sense, but sure. And you brought a reading sample for us to listen to. Is that correct? I do have a little sample from what I'm working on. Yes. Love to hear it now. All right. Well, I'm going to tell you a little bit. This, this part of the book or the story or the story that I'm swearing I will get done by the summer and start to send out. It takes place in Tel Aviv in the 1980s, right around the time that, right around, yeah, in the 1980s, right before the first in Tifada. And the character, Dina, this first person has been asked to come to Tel Aviv to help take care of her estranged father. And her father is estranged partly because he pretty much left the family to be with this person named Betty Shay who was converted to Judaism. And he's been in love with Betty Shay forever through like three marriages. So now he's married to her and he has some kind of dementia. So I'm going to read this shortly after Dina gets to Israel. And Betty Shay will also be called Latya. And I'll just read you a little bit. Okay. Betty Shay was waiting for me on the other side of customs, looking more tan and fit than I had ever seen her even in summer. She preferred to be called Latya right out of the box. And tiny though it was, I couldn't miss the minuscule six-pointed star that rested in the hollow between her collar walls. She spared me the embarrassment of a hugged greeting by holding out her hand, then left me to haul my own luggage to her tiny car. It was filled with, sorry, I was filled with reluctant respect as she raced past many buses and delivery trucks, motor scooters and charrutes all the way from the airport into greater Tel Aviv. And I was particularly grateful that as we pulled into our parking space between two Volkswagen Beetles that she did not once tell me not to be surprised at the father I would see. Indeed, all the way up in the compact elevator, I imagined a decrepit Larry Griff, flat on his back, attached to tubes and oxygen masks. Betty Bacha stuck an enormous key into the lock and the metal door slammed open. Standing just there in the frame, a shrunken, extremely good-looking Jewish Frankenstein was my father, Larry Griff. It was clear in that moment that he not only did not know me, but had only a vague sense of who Betty was and had no idea what he was doing standing in the door. That, I said, dragging my suitcase with a bump into the living room, I extended a hand. He looked past me toward the stairs. He thinks you're here to take him for a walk, she told me. Really, all I wanted to do was find my dad and go to sleep. Wonderful. Thank you. And we want to close right now, but we want to thank you for coming and invite you to come back anytime. You're always welcome. Well, thank you, Ian. It's been really kind of fun to have this conversation and also to just connect up and to see that copy of Joan Byron's of Jeb's book right behind you. And that's the other thing I wanted to say. I know Jeb from not from her photography first, but she directed my first play at the Washington Area Feminist Theater back in the Wayback machine. All connected. There's only 500 lesbians in the world. Very true. Well, come and join us again. It was great. Thanks. Okay. Thank you. We just saw the first half of our biennium come to a conclusion, at least temporarily. We thought we would take this time to talk about what were the things that passed that are of import to Vermont's LGBTQ plus community. There were 605 different pieces of legislation that were introduced, 81 of them passed both the House and the Senate. And here today to talk to us about those bills is President Pro Tem Senator Becca Ballant and Representative Emily Kornheiser. Welcome back to both of you. Thank you. And since it's going to be the three of us talking, I'm hoping that you will both share time and space with each other as I will try to do as well. But first I want to do a shout out to Becca and in the most recent issue of the advocate, she may have been identified as a champion right here, as a champion of pride. So congratulations. That is so exciting. I wasn't sure whether I would make it in. So that is super exciting. You were the one to tell me. There we go. Okay. So of those 81 bills that passed both the House and the Senate, we know about age 128, which was the ban on using a criminal defense based upon a trans and gay panic defense. But what are the other bills that we should be following? Can I just put shameless plug here? The fact that we worked remotely the entire session and we were able to pass 81 pieces of legislation is remarkable, remarkable when you, you know, people may not understand it takes about three times as long trying to do this work remotely. So I just, before we even talk about what we did, I just, our team, not just legislators, but our IT team, all of the folks, the lawyers, all the people who worked, you know, so it's tremendous. So I'm going to give, I'm going to give Emily the first chance to talk about legislation that's important to her. Oh, thank you. Yes, you're welcome. The first one that jumps out at me is we did some really serious rewriting of the definition of sexual consent. That was, and at a time when across the country we're seeing so many issues become part of culture wars, seeing a lot of loss of rights by folks. This was a really incredible opportunity to look at where we are as a society, at least in Vermont, to say that consent is real and that can be communicated. And the, you know, in addition to sort of the particular impact that we know sexual assault has on the queer community and that we know that more queer folks experience sexual assault and are less likely to receive treatment or go to the police or seek support around sexual assault, this is going to be an incredible bill for those reasons because it, you know, it does some police reform and it further defines sexual assault to really be focused on consent particularly. But the other thing that I think is really exciting about this bill in terms of queer history and particularly COVID is that conversations around sex, around safe sex, around what consent is, around pleasure, around what someone wants and an ability to actually talk about that in a relationship, even if it's a short-term relationship, is something that the queer movement brought to America. And I think that's particularly important for this bill but it's also particularly important for COVID as I think everyone is now practicing navigating what risk looks like and how to talk to friends and family about risk and history and all of that. I see that all really wrapped up in this incredible history of consent and risk that we see epitomized in this new sexual assault bill. So I'm very excited about that one. Yeah. And Emily, to follow up on what you said that that's something that our community sort of brought to the world when we reflect on the last few weeks and looking at all the memorials around when AIDS first became apparent in the gay male community in New York and in LA and in Boston and thinking about how these conversations around consent and our past history, you know, that was part of my growing up as an out gay woman in New York and thinking about how we've been having these conversations for a long time. We're telling other people how to do it in really healthy, supportive ways. And so I'm so glad that you tied that in because it's something I've been thinking about a lot. One of the pieces that you all did and some of it was related specifically to COVID and the needs brought on by COVID, people within the LGBTQ plus community are really looking at the monies that the legislature has designated for affordable housing and thinking in terms of what that will mean for our community. Are there parts of that funding that we could utilize to create LGBTQ plus specific housing, either low income affordable or perhaps looking at our elders community? And so one thing that I wouldn't want viewers to know is that just the sheer size of this investment in housing, we're looking at 190 million dollars of investment and we've never seen anything like that. And so I think a lot of what we do is we balance these parishes of the creative and the practical for example and the short term and long term. And so I'm really excited to see those conversations around how do we make sure that any affordable housing that we build is going to be accessible for our community. And it does that look like a housing development specifically geared at queer elders or is it that we have to make sure all of the housing that we're building is accessible and supportive and inclusive of everyone within Vermont. And that includes all of us in the LGBTQ community. And I think I'm really looking to like make more space for ourselves. That's sort of what I've been thinking about in, I don't know if you saw, I had a press conference the other day with senators and we were all talking about the work of the Senate. And I took that opportunity to fly my pride flag because I'm going to try to take up some more space. I want us as a committee to not just look at where we can fit in and say, you know, any project that we are paying for with state dollars should be something that feels accessible to us. And I know Emily thinks about this a lot. I do. And I'm, you know, the one particular population that I think is disproportionately impacted by the housing crisis right now is queer homeless youth. And often we can help them find vouchers or shelter space. And sometimes the shelters can be really carefully designed to feel safer to those kids who are struggling. I think more than, I don't think there's a time in life that's harder than that particular time when you're, you know, and generally, you know, queer youth are homeless because of family trauma. And just it's a terrible time. And it's a particularly terrible time to be homeless. And those kids get vouchers, but then they can't find housing. And so I think this, you know, there is an opportunity with our housing trust to really carve out specific spaces for those youths so that they can feel really safe and integrated and find community amongst themselves at a time where community is so important for them. You also did some important work about inclusion and equity in our public schools. You know, originally, it started out in the Senate as a very narrow focus on looking at how discipline is utilized. But I think, thank you, Rebecca, and then, you know, the work on the house as well, it got expanded to include all underrepresented youth. Could you talk a little bit about that? Yeah, well, that is something that is near and dear to my heart, Keith. I don't know if you know this about me, but I was a middle school teacher for years. And I now have my own middle school or my son is now in middle school. And we spend a lot of time talking about sort of who schools are designed for and who fits that model who doesn't. And so I think being a mom of who is nervous, a mom of a year, and thinking about what my experience was in middle school as someone at 11 who knew I was queer and was bullied and and did not feel like I had allies within the bill to go to. I don't even know what my life would have been like if in middle school, I knew that people were watching out for me around being bullied. And what that does to you when you're still trying to figure yourself out? And what do you do? You fit cultural norms, then you lash out. I know that at that time I became a bully to try to protect myself because I didn't feel like I had avenues for support. And so it is really exciting to be thinking about school discipline in a different way. And of course we know that people of color and male students disproportionately get expelled, get disciplined, get put in what we call the planning room, which basically means, you know, a form of isolation. And so it is a very important bill to me and would love to hear Emily's perspective on it as well. Yeah, I didn't become a bully, I just stopped going to school. And so I got classes and was suspended and would just sort of like take the train into New York and go hang out places where I felt comfortable. And as sort of school discipline escalated, what's really clear to me when that happens, and it happens, you know, even in our elementary schools, is even though I think a lot of teachers don't think this way, the current system of suspensions and expulsions and planning rooms and discipline sort of centers the child as the problem rather than the community or the system as the problem. And this is really a first step in saying the child is never the problem. It's the environment's ability to meet the child's needs. And so that feels like the beginning of a really important transformation in how we meet kids. I appreciate that perspective, you know, turning it around, not how the child has failed the system, but how the system has failed the child. Thank you. So you might have done just a little bit of work on broadband. Yes. Yes. Might you have something to say about it? Absolutely. Huge and best band. And again, as it relates to our community, how do we connect with each other in ways that are supportive and helpful and meaningful when we feel socially isolated, when we are living in rural communities, right? We need to feel connected to a community larger than our town, our state, even our nation. And so this is something that we've heard throughout the pandemic that queer kids really, really suffered. High school and college kids who felt disconnected and not necessarily feeling safe at home. And so trying to get all of those, you know, as we say, those last mile connections has, of course, economic reasons, telehealth reasons, you know, certainly education reasons, but social reasons that can be a matter of life and death for so many, so many of us in our community. And so we have always said in Vermont that the thing that was holding us back was that we didn't have this huge investment of dollars that was needed to finally get people connected. And so we have the money now, and hopefully we will be able to get it done finally. And it is, somebody asked me, a reporter asked me the other day, do you ever worry that you're, you know, you're going to get it wrong? And I said, well, yeah, all the time, like, what do you think, you know, what do you think it is to be to be here. And I think the speaker and and I and the governor all carry that same stress or which is we have the money now we want to make sure it's invested wisely. But it is really, really exciting to think we might be able to finally thread this needle. I was going to say, and associated with the expansion to broadband, you also pass some bills about putting in place a provision to continue some of the telemedicine services that were available in COVID, which particularly for members of our community who live in rural areas was truly a lifesaver. So before we run out of time, because it always goes too quickly, I would like if if you could talk a little bit about next year and the constitutional amendment that will be discussed by the House has already passed the Senate, and what people might look for as that goes out for a statewide vote. So just to bring folks up to speed, we did pass the reproductive constitutional amendment, reproductive liberty, reproductive freedom, both in the House and the Senate last biennium and the way that the any constitutional amendment drive goes, you have to have two consecutive legislative bienniums past the same language. And so it has passed the Senate, we have queued it up and passed it over to the House. And Emily can talk a little bit about the scene over there and we'll we'll come next. But I just want to remind folks that I'm not someone that actually believes very much in Vermont exceptionalism. We tell a very good story about ourselves about who we are in terms of of how how progressive and better than a lot of other people that we are. And oftentimes on the ground, it actually doesn't look that way at all. In this instance, I am so proud of us that when so many other states are going in the opposite direction against, you know, reproductive liberty and and we as as those who identify as as women in particular, though this is inclusive of all genders within the language of the the constitutional amendment, we are planning a stake in the ground of Vermont saying, absolutely not as goes the Supreme Court in the, you know, at the federal level that is not the way that we're going. Come on. And so this is some of the most important work that we've done to say that we have control over our own bodies. And then I am very excited about this moment too. It's it feels incredible to know that that's sort of ahead of me this year as I read the news across the nation and to even know that we could be a safe haven for folks from other states. And so we'll pass it on the house. I don't think we foresee any struggle or challenges with that whatsoever. I think we just sort of wanted to wait to be able to give it its due and stew attention and looking forward to passing that. And then the referendum of the voters, I know there's a coalition being led by Planned Parenthood that's working really hard to prepare for this voter referendum. And they're doing a really great listening tour and collecting stories of Vermonters that they can share with other Vermonters about the power of this constitutional amendment. And so if folks would want to participate in that storytelling event, you can write to one of us and we can put you in touch or you can find on the Planned Parenthood website. Okay. Thank you. This is an incredibly important amendment. And to your credit, you did this in advance of the U.S. Supreme Court's decision to take up the case that may be a direct challenge to Roe v. Wade. So thank you so much. And I really, I want to give a shout out to Senator Ginny Lyons in my chamber. There are others in the House, but who really had the foresight to say we don't know what's around the corner at the federal level, but we do know what our values are in Vermont, so we can lay those out clearly. And so I give her so much credit for the work that we did in the Senate on this bill. Yes. And with our remaining time, both of you have put, both of you have used social media and public outreach to keep constituents involved and informed. Could you both share a bit about what these are doing and how people might be able to access that? Great. Emily, you want to go first? Sure. So folks can go to my website. It's EmilyCornhizer.org. If you spell it wrong, you'll still find your way there. There aren't even very many names close to mine. And so if you go to EmilyCornhizer.org, you can find my Twitter and Facebook Instagram feed, but you can also get access to my weekly TV radio show. It's a podcast. We're on public access. You can find it on YouTube, as well as on our local radio station every week. It's called the Montpelier Happy Hour. It's a whole hour. And we go into the story and background behind bills. Like what are the narratives we tell ourselves as a legislature and as a community that leads us to the point of passing legislation. And it's a really fun conversation. We go really deep. We explain some legislative process. We make some jokes. It's a great time. Sometimes I get to be on that show. Sometimes Senator Ballant comes on and that's extra fun. I think she was just on last week, if folks want to go back and find that very special episode. Pulling back the curtain and showing how a bill truly becomes a law. So, Becca, what do you have going? So, I would love folks to check out my website thatcaballant.com. Did a lot of work last year updating it. Had a local artist and designer in the Burlington area do the website. And then the photography was done by another local person in the Greater Rutland area. It's, I think, quite a good website at this point. You can also find my Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram feeds there, connect to them. I have a personal page and a political page on Facebook. Love to interact in both those ways. As you mentioned before, I also have a blog which you find information on there as well. But really, one thing that I want folks to know, Keith, is that Emily and I love our work. And we are so excited that we get to represent the queer community. It is like, it's thrilling. And I know I can speak for both of us because she's one of my besties, so I know, I know she does care. It's true. Thank you. And with that, thank you. And get it on your calendars that when you're getting ready to go back into the session, you may be invited back to talk about what to expect during the session and how we might actually be able to participate in person. So thank you for your time. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for joining us. We'll see you in two weeks, but in the meantime, resist.