 But every fall I would take time out, I would go to the women's gathering and just suck up the energy. I needed it. I went to a lot of workshops. I learned how to be more assertive and I later actually taught assertiveness training when I was at the college at the women's center. I learned how to tell my stories because there were always classes about writing and that continues to play out in my life. I got to dance and until then I had been too timid to dance. But now it's a big part of my life. It's a lot of how I stay healthy and happy. It started there. I told my first stories there. I read poetry for the first time at the women's gathering along with other members of my writer's group. Beth Root is a playwright, actress, actor, and just incredibly talented writer. She's the editor of We Moon, which is a wonderful, actually a whole set of publications. And she wrote a play called Women, The Last Revolution. I may not have that quite right, but it was a wonderful play and in it she had a number of us do different monologues. That was certainly my first acting experience since the third grade. And she invited me to do a monologue of how my life was changed by the women's movement in 1969. So that was a very memorable piece for me and I know that she has wonderful video of at least parts of that play. So that was great. In that play, I told the story of myself as a young street woman, addict, alcoholic, and occasional prostitute. It was a hard story to tell, but I wanted those women to hear it, and so I volunteered to be a part of that play. I've never been sorry. It was a hard story to tell, but after each performance, and we did a tour around the state, after each performance, other women came up to me, hugged me, and cried because I was their story, and they needed to hear it. And that gave me the courage to continue to do the writing that I've done, to honor women in all their professions, in all parts of their life, and to do what I can to inspire the kind of dreams I had so that they can come true. My dreams, ah, I had dreams, and I'm so grateful that so many of them have come true. So that was for me a big part of the women's gathering, you know, what we could accomplish. Every time I read my poetry at the women's gathering, I had similar reactions. Women would come up to me afterwards and tell me about how I had told their story in my poetry. So that was just a wonderful thing. Many of my friends today are people that I met at that gathering. After all, it did continue for, I believe, thirty-five years. It was just such an exciting exchange. And we had ceremony. I learned a lot about ancient religion, goddesses, from those ceremonies and at the women's gathering. And that fed into my own faith, the growth of my own faith, and excitement about life, that I went from a place of really not wanting to be alive to now at the age seventy-three. You know, I'm very comfortable with death when it comes, because I've had so many good experiences about that. And at the same time, I just want to live to be a hundred like my Aunt Annie did, because there is still so much to be lived and it's so exciting and my dreams are still coming true. Well, I'm Donna Lee Taylor, and I was born in the Rogue Valley. So that's how my life and my women's history started. My aunt, Ann Gorby, was actually involved in the suffrage movement in the early 1900s in Medford. My mother was born in Medford in 1917. My dad came here in 1935. So I remember the Rogue Valley well as a child. I grew up on a chicken farm. My mom sorted pears, so I was very familiar with the pear industry, which is now the wine industry, same land. I remember a sundown sign on the edge of the highway between Jacksonville and Medford. I remember that because I didn't know the words, and I was just old enough to be beginning to learn how to read, and I asked my mother about that sign. So that was a sign that said that people of color and transience were not allowed to stay after sundown in Medford. I grew up in a town that was all white, and during the summer we had Hispanics in town, but they left after the season. It was very seasonal work at that time. And of course we did have Native Americans from the Klamath tribe here, but again quite invisible. So that's where I grew up. Fortunately, it has changed, not enough, but it has changed. I find there's more diversity than there was when I was a child, but still not enough because that adds such richness to a community. My folks were different than usual. My mom was a Republican. My dad was a union organizer and a Democrat. My grandfather was a Wobbly, one of the original union organizers. They lived differently than most couples in the late 40s and early 50s in that they really shared responsibility. My mother almost always worked full-time, and my dad was a sheet metal worker. They both worked on the farm. My dad cooked, and I now know that that was unusual, but I was so, I'm so grateful that I was raised in a family where girls were treated with encouragement and love. I'm one of five kids, two boys, three girls. And we've all had rather unusual lives, and I think that has a lot to do with our parents. They gave us a sense of freedom in a town that didn't know a lot of freedom. I rebelled. I was a great student until I was about 15, and by that time I was really angry. I also started drinking about that time. I moved to San Francisco in 1968, and I'm so glad. It was a hard time in my life, but I did get exposed to other ideas, and that's why I first encountered the women's liberation movement. That's what it was called then. By that time I was in trouble with my alcohol and my drugs, and also I was very ill. I had Crohn's disease. It was not diagnosed. So I had become pretty much a street person, a throwaway, and it was a very sad time in my life. One day I went down to the Clyde Memorial Church, which was just down the street from where I lived in the tenor line, and I had breakfast. I always had free coffee for breakfast wherever I could find it, and I'd put lots of creamer and sugar in it, and that was my nutrition. What was exciting about that day is there was a little sign on one of the rooms that said, Women's Consciousness Raising Group, and I was curious. I went to the doorway and just kind of watched, not knowing what was going on, and they invited me in, and that's where my life changed. Those women gave me hope. People often say that the women's movement was middle and upper class, and I found out for myself not to be true. These women took me by the hand, and they helped me get help. They helped me get on food stamps. They helped me get on welfare. They helped me get on disability, and they gave me a reason to stay alive. They told me that being angry was not a bad thing. I had plenty to be angry about. So in 1971, a few months after my father died, I returned to Oregon, and this is where I stopped drinking, got off drugs, and missed the women's movement. I couldn't find a woman's movement in Southern Oregon. I couldn't find feminists. I was so lonely. Oh, here's a letter to the editor that I wrote probably in 1972 about women's lib. Of course, I didn't like the term women's lib. That's probably why I wrote it. So I decided to teach a class at the Free University at Southern Oregon University, which was SOC back then, Southern Oregon College. And anybody could teach a class. So I started a class called Women, the Myth, and the Reality. And women flooded in. I was so surprised. And from that class grew two women's consciousness racing groups here in Ashland. So that's how I encountered Amy Horowitz. That's how I encountered a lot of other wonderful women in Ashland, many of whom had not known about the women's movement. In fact, most of them did not know about the women's movement before that. And we started a group called the Women. I had a sweetheart back then who at that time was clean and sober, but she was a heroin addict. And she was arrested for the murder of another addict. So she was in jail for quite a while before they dropped the charges. And that's how I learned about the conditions for women in the Jackson County Jail. So the organization, the women, which was a very informal organization, protested the treatment of women at the Jackson County Jail. Their visiting hours were tiny compared to the men's. They couldn't go on jobs while they were in the jail like the men could, so they couldn't get outside. They didn't have rights to the library like the men had. Lots of differences. So we protested. And eventually, the ACLU, American Civil Liberties Union, got involved. And those rights were won. So women in jails throughout the country now have reasonably equal rights to those of men. I'm sure it's still not enough. So that was my first action in the Rogue Valley. This is about women protesting treatment at the jail. She later died of an overdose. She was an addict, but she did get out of jail. She was not guilty. And she, even though she had a life that might be considered worthless, she was the inspiration for change for women all over the United States. Her name was Marty. So from there, with the women's movement, there's times that are kind of foggy. I lived my life. I ended up with my former wife. We were together for 35 years. We got a farm outside of talent. We farmed and we built our own house. I eventually, actually in 72 or 73, I became healthy enough. I was able to go back to work, so I drove taxi. I did a few other jobs in between. And then finally, in 76, I believe it was, I became Oregon State Waymaster. I was the first woman to do that. It was actually the most boring job I'd ever had. I just weighed drugs and gave them tickets every once in a while, and they were overloaded. But I feel really happy that I was able to break the barriers down for other women. And there's now a lot of women doing that work. They're now called something like officers of weights and measures, or I'm not sure the exact title. It no longer has the sexist title of Waymaster. That opportunity helped me be prosperous enough that I could start going to college. So I finally had a home and I had a good car. And as I met Rosemary Dunn Dalton, who started Women in Transition, later the Women's Center, and she encouraged me and my partner to go to college. I started in 1980 part-time and just loved going to school again. It was so exciting. I started out with a 400 course because I was part-time and I didn't know the difference. But that was great because I started out just really being challenged and excited about school I majored in political science and psychology. And I did a minor, actually two minors, but I'm not sure that that's quite official. Women's Studies and Economics. I may have officially, it might be only one because that's the way the structure was. Graduated in the spring of 83 as the outstanding political science student and graduated summa cum laude. Got scholarships all the way through so I didn't get way down with student loans. And then went off to UC Berkeley to the School of Public Policy. Came back here and started my next career. While I was at UC Berkeley, I really became interested in more global issues. But I also was in love with a woman who really wanted to come back to the Rogue Valley. So we did come back. And because I was coming back to the Rogue Valley, I decided to specialize in nonprofit management. So that's what I did for the rest of my career. It was a great, wonderful career. Every job I got, I chose because I was passionate about the mission. So I always got to do things I really cared about. I was a volunteer program manager for the State of Oregon, first in Jackson County, then in Josephine County. In Josephine County, I started the Reduce Adolescent Pregnancy Project with Barbara Roberts, who was governor there. And she later became the, they called her the czar of the teen pregnancy reduction under Bill Clinton. So she took the success we had in Josephine County to the national level. I'm really happy about that. Josephine County at that time where I worked was the third highest rate of teen pregnancy in the State of Oregon. And within four years, that teen pregnancy rate was reduced by 42%. I'm very proud of the community that they really took that on and recognized that there was a problem. And we had eight different components in that project. So everyone had a part to play, especially the young people had a part to play in changing that. I had 13 other projects too, but that was the one that's now closest to my heart. From there, I actually left there because by that time I was involved in fighting the Oregon Citizens Alliance, which every year brought hate measures to the state ballot. And those were measures against the lesbian and gay community. So in fighting those ballot measures that were so full of hate, my immediate supervisor became aware that I'm lesbian. And she was very uncomfortable with that. So my last year with the state was very difficult. And I ended up resigning because I simply could not work under her supervision any longer. After that, I was in a really bad auto accident. So I didn't work for a while. But when I did go back to work, I started it. I was originally the coordinator for volunteers at the Abdel Ellis Lambda Community Center. And I was there for a while, and then I became the first paid director of Winter Spring, the Center for Living with Loss and Grief. I was there for eight years. By that time, I had known enormous grief myself because my friends, Roxy and Michelle, who were leaders in the gay community in this valley, were murdered. And I really had a hard time with their loss. So after I'd had a little time to recover, it seemed very appropriate to become the director of Winter Spring. It's a wonderful organization. I finally left after eight years. It was time for someone else to take on a very hard job. Being a director of a small organization is a lot of work. So in the meantime, let's see. The women's movement itself just kept on growing and changing. And it's so exciting. I always attended the women's gathering, which met every fall. And one year, I coordinated that effort. So that was an exciting part of my life. We always had a lot of fun and met a lot of fun and a lot of meaningfulness. I learned so much from other women at the women's gathering. They had great workshops of all kinds. That's where I got really interested in becoming a writer and storyteller. That is where I got a lot of support in my own life, support that I really needed. It made a big difference. And I was happy to participate in the very last one. And then actually, another group started up and we had two more after that. So that was terrific. I will mention that now the Rogue Valley Wild Women have started having annual campouts also at Lake of the Woods and they're reminiscent of that long time with women's gathering. I think that lasted for about 35 years. I'm also part of a writer's group that's been around for about 40 years. The Southern Oregon Women's Writers Group, Gourmet Eating Society, and Chorus. I believe that's the name. And I was invited to that by my friend, T. Korean, who was very, very active. She's often called the mother of lesbian erotica. And she encouraged me a lot in my writing and gave me the courage to really write the truth of my own writing. So I continue that as a poet and a storyteller. I'll tell you a bit about bringing attention to the women who started Lithia Park here in Ashland. The park is so lovely. The women of the Chautauqua Club and the Women's Civic Improvement Association originally envisioned the park going all the way from the plaza, which they also started. And this is a picture of those women at the plaza with their whale burrows and their shovels. They envisioned it going all the way from the plaza up to the top of Mount Ashland. Well, it's not quite that large, but it is a wonderful accomplishment. And they did this long before women had to vote. The businessmen in the community wanted that to be land for businesses. And over the years, they kept expanding and espousing the idea of turning that into a park. And they were successful. So in 1982, I went to visit my professor, Betty Harbert, at the hospital. She was dying of bone cancer. And she'd been one of my favorite professors teaching women's history. And she told me that day that she'd really like to see the women who started the park honored on 4th of July. And I pretended I knew what she was talking about, but I didn't. So then I started doing research. And with three other women, we did, in fact, research the history behind the park that is now continued in the literature of the parks department itself. I recently attended a meeting where they were talking about the future of the park. And I was happy to notice that in their literature, it honors the women who started it. So I'm very happy about that. We dedicated a plaque that is in the Thea Park today. It stands not too far from the plaque that honors the founding fathers. And when the women did this, of course, they needed to honor the men who had the money in the votes. I think it's really important to honor the women who had the idea. So that plaque is still in the park on a boulder, not far from the entrance. I worked with Nancy Peterson on that project, as well as Marty Locum and Marjorie Hale. And the Southern Oregon Historical Society was very helpful in that. So I love walking through the park. I go there often and enjoying the park and enjoying those memories. They also were the people who started the plaza itself, the Triangle Park, and the median that goes down Siski Boulevard, as well as other things. They really accomplished a great deal. So I did that in 1982. I also started the Betty Harbert women's history collection. That has not continued, but it was a way to get things started. And it was under the auspices of that collection that my partner and I started the first celebration of Women's History Week here in Ashland. I became aware of Women's History Week, I believe it was at that time, from an article in Ms. Magazine. And I couldn't find material on it. I went to the library at the college. And when I asked the librarian, or he may have been an assistant librarian, but I asked him to help me find information. He just laughed at me. I went to one of my professors who taught history to see if he could help me. And he threw the information in the waste basket. So we started small, but we did have displays in the libraries and at the not Stevenson Union, but the, is it Brit, the one, OK, a Brit building. So by having displays, we could get the message out, even though we didn't have a lot of people. Sue and Nancy became involved later. So this is an article about Women's History Week being proclaimed. It's March 4, 1983. And Women's History Week started on March 8. OK, we tried to make it look big, and I think we succeeded. It was actually only a couple of people at that time. But of course, since then, it's expanded so much. And I've participated in many women's history day, week, month since then. So that's been really exciting. Another interesting project I did while I was in school was the Women in the 80s conference. And I really enjoyed this. I did a piece on women's history and included a panel of women who were very involved in women's history. One of them was my aunt, Ann Goree. I thought she was interesting because she was one of the original people fighting for women's suffrage in Southern Oregon. She also was a person who, because she'd been crippled by polio, ended up single. She felt she could not carry a baby, so she didn't marry her fiance. She ended that. And at the age of 35, she was the first single parent in Oregon to adopt a child. I've always been very proud of her for that. She had many careers. The last one being a Methodist minister at the United Methodist Church in Medford, Oregon. So I invited her to come. And she actually became quite friendly with a woman whose name I'll have to add, but who was a longstanding member, former member of the Communist Party. It was so interesting to hear the two of them talk about their experiences in Southern Oregon as women who really believed in women's power and women's freedom, although they had very separate vantage points. In my career, I moved on from winter spring to working at Genesis, which was an alcohol and drug treatment center that was part of Asante. It was a wonderful treatment center. We worked with men and women who primarily had dual diagnoses. That's when a person has a mental illness and chemical dependency at the same time. And Genesis was one of the pioneers in that work. I worked with Dr. Darryl Annaba, who came from San Francisco. He used to be the head of the Haidashbury Free Clinic and is world renowned for his knowledge of chemical dependency. I enjoyed that work so much. Asante eventually closed Genesis. But there are many people here in the Rogue Valley that I believe are alive today because they received help. When Genesis closed, I moved on to Red Cross Blood Services. So I referred to myself as a happy vampire. My job was to encourage other people to give blood. And that meant a great deal to me because my step-dad, Roy Rogers, that my mother married after my dad died, was a person who had been written about because of the many gallons of blood he had donated. That was in honor of his little brother who died because there was no blood available. It was also important because as a sick young girl, I had a blood transfusion that saved my life. So that was my last job. I retired from there in 2011. I hope I got that right. And since then, I've been able to focus on travel, poetry, and storytelling. We have an organization here called The Lantern. And every month, we get together and tell five-minute stories. So I've been able to share much of my history, women's history, and LGBTQ history at The Lantern. It's been a wonderful opportunity. She was a really interesting presenter. I appreciated her so much as a professor. And one of the things I remember about her is that with her Canadian crutches, because she had bone cancer, she showed up every single day and kept teaching and teaching and teaching. She must have been in excruciating pain. But by the depth and perception of her teaching, you would have never known it. Remarkable woman. Dr. Betty Harbert, Southern Oregon State College professor of history, was a specialist in Asian history who also had an abiding interest in women's history. She hoped to live to see some kind of recognition go to the women of this area who had contributed so much to its history. Following her death, a group of her friends agreed to accept this challenge. As a result, the Harbert research collection of Southern Oregon women's history has been established in cooperation with the Southern Oregon women's in cooperation with the Southern Oregon State College and the Southern Oregon Historical Society. A project in progress is the installation of a plaque scheduled for July honoring the women of the Chautauqua Club and the Women's Civic Improvement Club, who were instrumental in developing Luthier Park, the Triangle Park, the Carnegie Library, Siski Boulevard Landscaping, and other projects. This is about our plaque dedication in 1982 at the 4th of July celebration in Ashland's Luthier Park. So I might mention that I have traveled in retirement. I've been to Kenya, England, Denmark, where my grandmother was born. Earlier, I was in the Mediterranean, Greece, Italy, Croatia, right after the war in Croatia. And there, I got a different sense of women's lives. What we have in common is the desire for freedom and the power that comes with that. And I've seen that from tribal women that I met in Kenya to the other countries I've been, and of course, back to Southern Oregon. We've come a long ways. We have a long way to go. But it's exciting to see this happening all over the world. One of the difficult things with COVID is that we have to stay home a lot. I'm an extrovert, so it's hard not to be out there dancing. But the other thing that's come with COVID is that we're more connected by the internet. I now go to meetings of alcoholic synonymous all over the world. I meet women from that. I belong to women's groups that are from all over the world. So I have connections with women in Croatia, with women in South America. And so I see that as something that we've taken advantage of out of the challenges. And so much of life is exactly that, taking advantage of the difficulties in order to grow and change and live more freely, more broadly, and of course, to always give back. I'm so excited about younger people that a lot has changed. The young women that I know now, and I know a lot of them through my storytelling, their attitudes may be different than mine. But their ferocity is beautiful. It's absolutely beautiful. And they are living the freedom that I dreamed of when I was their age. So I'm absolutely delighted by that. I love having friends of all ages. In every part of the country, none of that would have been possible without the women's movement. I'm proudly feminist. I'm proudly part of this beautiful world. And grateful for everything I experience. Thanks.