 Hi, welcome to the All Things LGBTQ interview show where we interview LGBTQ guests who are making important contributions to our communities. All Things LGBTQ is taped at Orca Media in Montpelier, Vermont, which we recognize as being unceded indigenous land. Thanks for joining us and enjoy the show. So summers coming, COVID restrictions are being lifted. June, some of us remember that as Pride Month. Might there be something happening in your backyard that you would like to take part in? And we have two guests today to talk about exactly what might be planned and how you can join in. So please welcome Elaine Ball and Kel Arbor. Thanks for having us. I was going to say if either of you say something, your face could show up on the screen. Okay, so Elaine, we're going to start with you because it's my understanding that the effort to put together a Central Vermont Pride Festival started with you and actually started about a year ago. I did start reaching out to people last June about a Montpelier Pride specifically. And I think more has grown out of that. That is totally outside of my purview and I'm thrilled to see more things in Central Vermont being planned. But Montpelier Pride specifically as a location was really important to me as it being the state capitol and having it take place during Pride Month. So the dates are the first weekend in June, the third through the fifth of June. And there's events being planned throughout that weekend. But the main big Pride event draw a focus of the weekend is going to be at the State House lawn on Saturday, the fifth. We're planning for it to be really a day of performances and music and celebration. We are looking to get the local GSAs involved from the middle school and the high school and have the youth there. Tucson, St. Negritude is we hope planning to be the emcee of the day and leading the festivities. And so people can start arriving around 10 a.m. and it'll be going all day long. There will be booths representing local nonprofits, a food truck at least from Woodbelly Pizza and probably other food vendors as well. We are coordinating with the farmer's market that is happening that same morning just a few minutes away, a couple like less than a block, I don't know, really close to the State House lawn. The farmer's market will be that morning. And so that's kind of the main draw event of the weekend is Saturday, June 4th. And it's traditionally been the critical mass, queer critical mass bike ride. So definitely we're going to have a Friday night bike ride. And then the Shakespeare performance sort of popped on top as did the Vermont Symphony Orchestra has been chomping to do a little performance. And that might be, for me, the highlight in the downtown. Is it the Episcopalian, the Stone Church, the beautiful Stone Church? So do we know what night that is yet, Elaine? Is that Friday or Saturday? It's going to be Friday the 3rd, the Vermont Symphony Orchestra. Yeah. What time? I'm pretty sure it's going to be six or seven. I need, I'm still waiting for confirmation on the time. And I'm also pretty sure it's going to be at Christ Church, like you said, that beautiful stone downtown building. But we're also waiting on confirmation for that. So awesome. This is sounding as though this started out as is essentially a fairly simple, let's recognize Pride at Montpelier. And other people have stood up and said, wait a minute, we want to be involved as well. So, Kel, you made a reference to Shakespeare. And I know that on Front Porch Forum, there has been an appeal saying, can you help us with costumes and props? We're looking at doing a performance in Montpelier. Could you share a little bit about what you know about who Shakespeare, Vermont are and exactly what are they planning? Yes. And Keith, even though this is the kickoff of organizing a formal Pride Fest on the Statehouse Lawn, we did a Queer Field Day a couple of years ago on the Statehouse Lawn. This arts community has been burgeoning, especially over the last few years of the pandemic and creating more and more space to be together. So, Shakespeare has risen out of some of those community performers that have done our cabarets out around town. And also some folks that are involved with the playback theater troupe. That's been a newer crew that's arisen. That's a storytelling project. So they have this incredible endeavor. They're doing four performances over the 345 and then one on the 10th, the night before the Central Vermont Drag Ball and the Berry Pride Fest. So we're going to kick June off with a saturation. Shakespeare is Romeo and Juliet is going to be their show. They are locking down their venues right now. They have an incredible, gigantic cast. They have needs for prop help and customry, like you said. And then come out and enjoy the show. It is going to be such a treat to have a local Shakespeare. Troops pop up and do this where they either like queer up the script or the actors or the scenery. So they've shortened it. It's not going to be a three-hour play. Nobody but the real. It lasts that long. And I know that they're going to do an outdoor Hubbard Park is on their radar for that Sunday afternoon, the June 5th. And then I'm not sure where we'll do a Bar Hill or like a closing party, but maybe at Bar Hill or another spot to do like an early evening Sunday rap coming out of Shakespeare that we can have a little like dance party hang out. So there's going to be an incredible performance. The crew that has gathered is in Croyabla. The people that are building sets are, they've drawn out woodworkers, these amazing writers, these incredible orators and these beautifully gender and sexually diverse critters from the woodlands. I'm like, Sandra, Vermont, you've just been waiting. They've been waiting for people like Elaine to step up and say, great, I'll help organize a time and a date. And then a person like me that's like, what else can we put in one weekend to really build it up? How do we coordinate and collaborate? And then we all meet together. The Pride Center is definitely supporting and figuring out how we're going to participate and involve to make this something sustainable for Montpelier. Organizers come and go. We know that. But to embed something like this, we can get together and have a field day. I'll bring my badman. I got bocce ball. We'll bring some cornhole. Before it totally escapes me, you made a reference to a central Vermont drag ball on the weekend of June 10th, 11th in Berry. Now, I know that you have helped organize this in the past. What could we expect this year? And you also mentioned a Berry Pride. Yes, it's a very exciting. And the Berry Rainbow Bridge is doing a grand opening ribbon cutting on June 4th at 11 a.m. So we are just burgeoning in June month, which feels really awesome. And it feels right for the Berry Montpelier area. We are a cultural and political hub, central Vermont. So it just makes sense that we welcome the month. I actually haven't been involved with organizing the drag ball before. I had to cancel it to start the pandemic. The old labor hall in Berry has been the location for the last several years. It just really fits with who we are as a drag community to host it in the anarchist labor hall. And it's been a community-organized event. And I feel really passionate about, as an organizer, how do I help keep that space going and use it as a space to have access to tips and tricks and a drag closet? So Pride Center staff will be there from five to seven on June 11th. We'll open the old labor hall for a little get-together, a little get-ready party. We'll have drag tips with Richard and Justin, my coworkers. We have a drag closet, a by-donation drag closet so you can come and sift around. We've got wigs and just to get together and get ready and get into our confident gender, beautiful selves. And then we've got an incredible stage show lining up with some performers. I am looking for community performers. I am looking for people that drag is not. I'm an X presenting as a Y. Drag is a gender performative expression. Very open. And I think Central Vermont loves that. And I really encourage people to reach out if they're interested in performing. We're happy to meet with folks and help you figure it out. You've got an idea. Great. Let's work it out. So the show will set at about eight o'clock. The stage show, Babe's Bar will be there, Tending Bar, Woodbelly. We're still trying to figure out a pizza option. And then Barry reached out. They heard about Montpelier Pride and they were like, we want a pride. I'm like, pride for everybody, baby. I'm like Oprah. You'll get a pride. But I do truly feel like every town in Vermont should have a pride. There's 12 months. There's 13 counties. I have a dream. And I love when it's community organized because I know that Barry has the organizers already there to sustain a festival like this. They have great downtown queer supported businesses. So I'm really excited to see Barry's Pride Fest come together. Lisa Loretta and Erica, whose last name I do not know. Real. Real. Thank you from another way, chatting with them. And they're going to do that during the day on June 11th. So Shakespeare will end their run June 10th, Friday night at the old labor hall. June 11th downtown Barry pride festival. And that evening, Barry old labor hall center Montdrag ball, baby. You mentioned that it was also the grand opening of Rainbow Bridge. What's Rainbow Bridge? Rainbow Bridge is our new downtown community center for LGBTQ plus folks in Barry. Greg Forbis, a community member has rented out the old Barry senior center that's next to the Made in Brazil restaurant. Beautiful space. It's already set up as a community center. I think it's a short term commitment, but long term potentials for Barry. Greg is looking for queer and LGBTQ plus board members. He would love to get more folks on the board and involve that are part of our LGBTQ plus community. It's partially why he's opening the center, the lack of community connection. So I'm excited to have a venue that I can pop up HIV testing and game nights and come out and just, you know, hang out and not have to run the space all the time that he's there to help refer people and have computers like we have. And teams are already popping in off the streets. Drag ball center Montpry, we're reaching out to the team networks to try to get more teen performers. And we are all ages friendly spaces. Like I organize outside of bars because of the alcohol issues. And like there's a few bars that feel safer, but nothing feels as safer as an open park where we're all together and can be accountable in a large group and hold each other. And it sounds as though Rainbow Bridge is something that's being created from within and specifically for the LGBTQ plus communities. And it's not a, oh, we will give you some space over here. Or we were an afterthought. We were in the forefront. Right. And it also sounds like all of these activities are a true opportunity for Central Vermont's LGBTQ plus communities, members to meet each other and start doing our own little informal organizing. And, you know, we have a group of queer poets, maybe we can get together and support each other and do workshops. We have people, you know, who are interested in activism, we have people who are interested in doing drag. We finally get to spend time with people who share our sense of identities. Okay, before we started taping, Cal and Elaine, you were both telling me about all of the other pride organizing that was happening across the state and my jaw just dropped. I've been in contact with the people at Queer Connect in Bennington that are planning an event for Sunday, June 26. But, Cal, you were talking about a People's Pride in Burlington, an event at Castleton, Bethel, which is the Babes parking lot. Yeah. Can you share a little bit about who else is doing organizing and where people might be able to get access to information about them? Totally. And I was just thinking, this is why I put everything on the Pride Center of Vermont website on the events page. The events tab at the pridecentervt.org website is an events calendar. So for LGBT community happenings of any sort, I like a one-stop spot. It's one small thing we can do for the community. Having the Juneteenth events too, I don't want to miss that June 17th. There's a Black Joy show that my drag friend Red Rum is organizing in Burlington and then the 18th of June, we will see Juneteenth events. I don't have details, but I know they will happen. Saturday, June 25th, traditional Pride. We don't use this weekend all the time because it traditionally has been Boston, New York. We compete. So for folks to really like be here, I think early June will be great because folks haven't left for the summer yet. So for me, the first weekend in June actually feels more akin to Montpelier Pride. But I love seeing these June 25th traditional Saturdays. So Bethel Babes Bar and Bethel is hosting June 25th an event, the People's Pride in Burlington that popped up last year. That is an awesome community event that will be happening again. And then Castleton is doing a Pride Fest, Anita Cocktail. It's like the Browns Farmland. I forget that. Is that the, they have a great outdoor venue that was a beautiful Fest. I am so here for Rutland to have a downtown Pride Fest and I'm like, they're on my shortlist as is Hardwick. But White River Junction's Pride date is set for July 30th. July 30th or June 30th. July 30th, White River Junction's late July. And then Burlington Pride actually is pushing back. We're moving back to the waterfront. I am so excited to see us go back to the waterfront and we're going to be Sunday, June 18th, Saturday, June, sorry, September 18th, 17th, 18th weekend of September. So we'll be a little later in the fall, but I love coming off that Labor Day weekend. It's beautiful in September. We can't rely on weather in June. It's actually a crapshoot. So for something in Burlington, September is a more likely dry, less rainy time. Students are here. It's a quarter of our community. It's just like, and people haven't traveled, they're not traveling for the summer. So I'm actually, I've sold myself on, but I want to see June Pride too. I want to see Pride every month of the year. I'm not going to argue with you on those points. Okay, so you will both be sending me all of the contact information so that, you know, people who are interested in becoming actively involved have that opportunity. Elaine, you said that for the Central Vermont Pride Festival, the beginning of June, that you've already been doing Saturday Zoom meetings. Is that correct? Yes. Thank you. So we have a planning committee that is around 30 people right now, and not all of them show up all the time, but that's like my list of contacts that I send out messages to. And so if you'd like to be added to my list of planning committee people to help us with this event, you can email me at elaineballbt at gmail.com. And I'll add you to that list. And you can join us for planning committee meetings. So online planning committee meetings over Zoom are happening every Saturday at 11. There's like a recurring Zoom link I can share with you. But we're also starting to meet in person sometimes at local restaurants, different places. So the next meeting in person is going to be at Fox Market in East Montpelier this coming Tuesday the 19th. And I can, you know, share more information. We're thinking 430 in the afternoon. Join us at Fox Market. It's an adorable, wonderful, new, queer-owned space. And they are blessedly donating all of their tips for the month of April to Montpelier Pride. So we're really excited to be partnering with them and having our next planning committee meeting there. Okay. Are there some specific things that you're looking for people to help with, specific aspects of Pride? Definitely. There are things that, you know, individuals are welcome to take on that are really of interest to them. There's a few organizations already that we've started collaborating with. And if someone wants to take on that relationship and continue those collaborations, that would be really helpful. For example, the Kellogg Hubbard Library and Art Walk are just a couple that we're in conversation with. But if you would like to come in and say, oh, I want to talk to all of the artists of the Art Walk community, I want to go and talk with them about Pride. Or if you want to take on Kellogg Hubbard Library and their partnership without Right Vermont and plan some poetry readings or whatever else is going to be exciting to you that weekend, we would love to see people take those on. Another big thing that a few people have expressed interest in, but we don't have officially organized yet is an actual parade. So we're organizing this event on the State House lawn, but we don't have a parade actually planned yet. So if you're interested in helping us plan a parade, we know of a few organizations that would love to create a float to be in the parade. And I think people would really love doing that. Alrighty. And with that, it sounds as though my social activity schedule is calendar is filling up fast. So thank you so much for spending this time. Thank you so much for the work you're doing. And I look forward to inviting you both back for the next events. Thanks so much, Keith. Thanks so much, Elaine. Yeah, thank you for having us. And thank you so much, Cal, for everything that the Pride Center is doing too. On a recent episode of All Things LGBTQ, I shared that I had received a phone call from Sage Main. And the message was we're just checking in. How you doing? Okay, that got my attention. So I thought it's been a while since we've talked with the people at Sage Main. What prompted them to make those phone calls? And what did they hear? So joining me today is Rem Knight, who is the program coordinator at Equality Main working on the Sage Main project. Welcome to All Things LGBTQ. Thank you. I'm so happy to be here. So I want to start with how did you happen to come to Equality Main and why the Sage Main project? And I understand there might be a bit of a Vermont connection in there. Yeah, I don't know where you get your intel, actually. So my Vermont connection, which is maybe what you're talking about, I went to college in Vermont. Did you know that? Like maybe Marlboro College? Maybe Marlboro College, yes. Marlboro College. To be a preschool teacher? Yes, yes, yes. Well, preschool, I actually majored in theater performance and directing at Marlboro. I taught preschool because my mother was a teacher. I think so often we do what our parents do. So my mother was a teacher. I grew up with teaching. My first jobs were as an assistant preschool teacher. And then I majored in theater. I taught theater. So yeah, a long education background. And at some point, I ended up, I thought, oh, maybe I want to be a nurse. I don't know where that thought came from. But the first step at the time I was living in Colorado, the first step to go to nursing school is that you have to become a CNA. And so I became a certified nurse's assistant and ended up working in an assisted living community and loved working with an older community. Was like, oh, maybe this is actually where I want to be. So I spent the next 10 years actually working in senior care. I started as a CNA and stayed in different assisted livings and nursing homes for about 10 years and ended up working as the program director, the activities director for different assisted livings. And of course, doing theater on the side and teaching. I taught some kids acting classes. And I am also part of the LGBTQ community. My wife and I live on the West End in Portland, Maine. We have two kids. And so when this job posting came up at a quality name that was specifically looking for someone to work with older LGBTQ adults, I thought, I just can't imagine a more perfect job. It's sort of a community that I love working with. I love working with older adults to begin with. And then to have the added benefit of working with queer older adults, it was like this job was made for me. I couldn't, I wasn't even looking for a job at that point, but I had to apply. So that's how I ended up coming to a quality name as a program coordinator who is specifically focused on our SAGE programs, which I think you, you're all familiar with, but we provide advocacy and services for older LGBTQ adults living throughout the state of Maine. So that's where I came from. That's my Vermont connection. You didn't even mention that you knew that. You're sneaky. Well, people who watch our interview show on an ongoing basis know that every now and then I'll pull a rabbit out of my hat, such as when I was talking with Speaker Ryan Fecto, it made a comment about an initiative that didn't pass in Maine because people had overlooked the bear trap initiative that was on the same ballot. But so other than advocacy, are there very specific programs that if I were an elder living in Maine, I would approach saying Maine, SAGE Maine, saying, can you help with? Yes. So we do, it's sort of threefold. We do advocacy. So anytime that there's sort of something legislative that we think really impacts the community, equality, Maine works to pass whatever legislation that might be. We do programming in the form of connection. So we have, during COVID right now, we have bi-monthly happy hours that happen the second and fourth Wednesday of every month. I'm looking at my calendar up here. Second and fourth Wednesday of every month is a virtual happy hour. We have a speaker series that I think you've attended. So those are ways to provide connection during obviously COVID times, which is a tough thing to come by. And then we do outreach. So you mentioned the SAGE Calling program. So we ran, if anyone's watching and doesn't know what that was, we ran a volunteer phone bank and called every person that we had in our database as being a part of the SAGE community and just called to check in and said, you know, how are you? How are things going? And then this last round, this is the second time we've done it actually, this last round we also specifically focused on, do you, have you had any trouble getting vaccinated or boosted? Do you need any resources to get there? And we were, our volunteers were sort of armed with, if you're having a hard time finding a location here, I can help you find somewhere that has a vaccine. I can help you make an appointment. Do you need help getting transportation? And then we asked about, try anything, we asked about boosters, oh, masks. Do you need masks? Can we mail you masks? We have N95 masks, is that helpful? And then COVID tests. So this call was really, it was like a wellness check. And also, do you need any help accessing things to stay healthy right now during the pandemic? This is actually the second round of calls we did. We did another at the beginning, I think February of 2020, before I was here. And that was also sort of a wellness check of how are you doing? What needs do you have that kind of art being met? And it was, it was really cool, the conversations that we had, a lot of people were like, I'm doing fine, but thanks for checking in. Thanks for calling. It's good to know that you're paying attention. Thanks for having my, you know, those, those kinds of responses. All the way to some people who said, you know, I don't know how I'm going to pay my heat next month. Do you have any resources? And so then, or I had a really bad fall and I think I might have to go into an assisted living and I don't know how to navigate that. Do you have anyone who can help me? So there were a few things that popped out of that that then we could take and really say, you know, how can we help these individuals within our community? And what resources can we provide to these people who are really needing some extra help right now? And then there was a whole group that we're just like, no, I'm good, but thanks for checking in. And also let me know if I can help you in the future. So another cool thing that came out of it is so many people who were like, I am glad that you're doing this. And also I'm happy to help do this in the future because one of the best things for me about the LGBTQ community in general is how much we support each other. And one of my favorite things about working with Sage is that the people who are a part of Sage are so focused on how can we look out for each other? How can we be each other's family? How can we be each other's support? So many of the people making those phone calls were also members of the Sage community. And we had several people who were like, add me to your volunteer list, I'd like to help you in the future. So it was a really cool program. I'm glad that we did round two of it and we'll bring it back in the future for sure. It sounds as though just the phone call in it of itself had a very positive outcome. So is this something that Sage Main might consider doing on an ongoing basis? You know, once a year, every six months, just phone banking saying, hi, just checking in to say, hi, anything we should know? I think so. I think that there's always going, it's always nice to have an excuse to just check in, you know, to just check in. And I do think that you hear from people who wouldn't have reached out otherwise, but who got that phone call and were like, I don't need a mask, but I need fuel for heat. I need help getting an assisted living, you know, and who didn't have somebody to reach out to. So yeah, those calls were cool. And I think we'll definitely keep those going because the benefit was huge. And the interest, I had so many people who were willing to volunteer, so many people within the Sage community who were very interested in making phone calls to each other, you know. And the volunteer group itself, because it was comprised of many older adults and many younger adults, I think there were even some, we did it all on Zoom. So we all showed up one afternoon on Zoom and I gave everybody some instructions and they went out and made phone calls and then they came check back in at the end. But there was one day where even after calls had ended and everybody left, I had two women who were in their 70s and one younger woman who was probably in her 20s who stayed after just to chat and just to share experiences. And the younger one was showing the older women the dating app that she was using that was specifically for lesbians. And the older women were so excited to hear about this. There were just cool connections formed all the way around through the Sage Calling program. So yeah, I can't imagine that we won't keep that going. So if I'm remembering correctly from my conversation with John Hennessey a while ago, SageMain has chapters around the state, but you also work collaboratively with other organizations so that it's not either EqualityMain or SageMain who is shouldering all of the responsibility, you can get people to work together. Yeah. So Sage, there's Sage Nationals or Sage USA and then there are affiliate chapters throughout the country and our affiliate chapter right before COVID came to EqualityMain and was like, can you absorb us so that we have sort of the strength behind EqualityMain? And so that's one of our advantages now is that like when I send out a volunteer call instead of it just going to SageMembers, it's going across all of EqualityMain. So yeah, I do think that it really opens up the opportunity for more intergenerational events, which is something that is also in my opinion pretty important right now and also something that people are really looking for. I think older LGBTQ folks and the younger LGBTQ folks are both looking for that connection with the other group and trying to find ways to reach out. So that's one of the biggest advantages that I think EqualityMain has in sort of like housing Sage, which is now a program of EqualityMain. That's going to I need to say thank you for doing that because if we are not talking with other people from within our communities, nobody else is sharing that information or that history. So could you talk a little bit about your speaker series? Who are the types of people that you invite to come and present and how the decision is made about which speakers to invite? Yeah, our speakers are people. So the speaker series happens on the second Friday of every month and it's open to anybody. It's all virtual. And we just look for people who can speak to issues that directly impact older adults in Maine but from an angle that is LGBTQ friendly or aware or adjacent at least because there are like for example next month I have someone who's going to talk about advanced directives, creating advanced directives. But to have that conversation with the LGBTQ community, you have to be very aware that many of these people are not married, don't have children, don't have the sort of traditional heteronormative like a line of succession or hierarchy whatever you want to call it to assign those things to. So you want to for that conversation it was important because we all need to make advanced directives but I want to have somebody who can talk to this group about it with that awareness that they're not coming with the same sort of preordained again heteronormative understanding of what creates a family and can help us have that conversation about how you can make those advanced directives with whatever your family looks like. So that's that's how those are the considerations we make when we're putting together the speaker series or asking people if they'd like to speak because can they talk to something that's relevant from an angle that is aware of the specific needs of this community. So are there any other programs that Sage main is looking at developing or potentially offering in the future? Yes I have a secret one that's not official yet but I can tell you a little bit about it because I'm really excited. So maybe I don't know I think it's going to happen it's like 90 percent certain. So Sage is partnering with main senior farm share which is an organization that teams with local farmers to get seniors living in Maine sort of a discounted or a free farm box of a free share of produce from that farm. So we're partnering with them to do a program hopefully towards the end of the summer where we'll have main based chefs do a one hour virtual cooking class but registrants who sign up and it'll be a capped size will get a box of the ingredients that they need for that recipe and as much of it as possible from whatever their local nearby farm is so they have all those ingredients to complete the recipe that's them being taught by some some pretty I'm really excited about some of the chefs we have aside on and that's I can't exactly give that away yet because we haven't written anything in stone but we have some really incredible chefs in Maine who are interested in working with this program. So that's an upcoming event that we're looking at that's not we don't even have a name for it yet but I'm very excited about that and that's virtual some of our things some of some of what we found during the pandemic especially is that there are so many people in Maine who are living rurally that that all of a sudden had accessibility and connection to other people within the LGBTQ community that they didn't have pre-pandemic. So our we actually gained a lot of new people during COVID who wouldn't have been able to come to a lot of in-person events prior to COVID so we're maintaining all of our virtual programming and then also adding in-person things so one of the big things that was happening prior to COVID that people are just itching to get back is monthly community dinners and that I think will be the first thing that comes back hopefully we'll have one in Bangor and one in Portland coming up within the next couple months and those are events where we typically partner in the past I know we've partnered with the different local area agencies on aging to provide catering and food so that there's I mean all of our events really have a low barrier for attendance because we don't want anyone to have to like stand at the door of a restaurant and say I can't pay this bill can you cover me you know like that nobody wants to do that so all of our events are free if possible or really really low barrier for attendance and so yeah that hopefully will be will be going here I'm again looking up on my calendar within the next couple months we'll have our first meal scheduled again and then we also tend to have speakers at those events. Thank you so much for spending this time with us and thank you so much for the work you're doing. So people may be looking at the image over my shoulder and thinking that looks kind of familiar but not quite right that might be because this is not Vermont Statehouse in Montpelier this is Maine's Statehouse in Augusta and joining me today is Representative Laurie Osher welcome to all things LGBTQ. Thank you so much glad to be here. So I know your schedule is very busy so why don't we start with a little bit from you about how someone from Philadelphia ends up with a doctorate in soil science and then ends up in the main legislature. Thank you so much for asking I loved to be outside as a kid I was a Girl Scout when I went for my master's degree in soil science one of the I was the one of the only women in the program and there were no women professors and one of my teachers asked me so how did you get interested because they had all had a background in agriculture came from rural parts of the country and I said I was a Girl Scout which to me made a perfect sense that was the way a person who lived I grew up on a town just on the edge of the Philadelphia city line and the way to get out and explore the outdoors was to be in Girl Scouts and I went to alternative high school because I wasn't sure that there was anything in regular high school that was attractive to me because I wanted to be a farmer or somehow related to agriculture and I specifically was interested in international agriculture because I'd had been enough privilege that my family took up me to do a bit of traveling and it seemed clear that there were people who were not eating I also saw people in Philadelphia that were not correctly not well housed and I didn't at that time see how connected all that was but I went to ag school first I went when I was a teenager I lived in Israel for a year between high school and college I lived on a kibbutz and then I went met a soil scientist while I was working on the kibbutz and I helped him with his research I was a research assistant and so I actually went to college I made had already made the jump that it wasn't just agriculture that I was specifically interested in soils I think they're fascinating and so important and so I studied agronomy which was crops and soils as an undergraduate and then I did my masters in soil soils and land use actually soils and geomorphology so it became a soil mapper for the federal government worked for the USDA soil conservation service and then for the forest service over then for USAID I mapped soils in Peru and then for the forest service I mapped soils in Alaska and in Colorado and then when I moved to California for the forest service I was a watershed staffer staff officer which means I not only was in charge of soil mapping but also watershed issues input to land use plans so you know if you do this particular plan what how will impact the soil and the water and then I went to get a PhD at Berkeley because I was very interested in how soils can mitigate CO2 in the atmosphere so plants naturally pull CO2 out of the atmosphere and if we partnered with plants to make sure that the CO2 that they grabbed and turned into biomass when more of it went down into the soil and got stored a soil organic matter we would be able to address the atmospheric CO2 problem so I went to do a PhD and that's what I studied I studied land use and soil carbon sequestration and so with the PhD in hand I've got uh did a postdoc with with the EPA and then I got a job at University of Maine teaching soil science and that's what brought me to Orlando. And somehow in the midst of all of that you became a solo parent of a musical and dance twins. Yes so yeah I always wanted to be a parent actually so it actually impacted my thinking about whether I was a lesbian because at my age or at least my experience uh I was a fit competitive figure skater as a kid and my coach was gay and my parents were very pleasant to him and there wasn't a lot of homophobia but it also was assumed that that people who had kids were straight and so I always knew I wanted to have kids and uh so so when in my 20s I was became very sure that I was a lesbian I was actually wondering how that was going to work out how would I have kids and uh and it was a big science project to make to find how I was going to do that and uh I uh so I have singing dancing twins I gave birth after I got to U of Maine I was 41 and uh as I said then if all of my academic pursuits turned out to have double the the uh the productivity that would be great as an academic if you go to work on a research project and you get one you get one paper out of it that's great but if you could get two that would be better so I uh so and and I have found lots of lots of talented uh the thespians in my family but that's not my my heart has not been in performing myself but my kids are are performers one is in theater in college for theater and the other is for music composition and music production and uh I keep saying that I'm not doing global climate change for my day job anymore and so I rely on them to write the great climate change musical hopefully it'll be about soil carbon storage musical and like as Hamilton did for um excuse me as Lin-Manuel Miranda did for Hamilton then my my kids could do for uh soil carbon storage but we'll see okay I hear what you're doing for the debut so as as a professor at the University of Maine I understand that you're offered some time on the Orono Town Council but what made you decide to run for the Maine legislature well I so I was at the University of Maine from 1999 to 2008 and uh we had an irreconcilable differences divorce which from my perspective was very clearly a active homophobia and other things that caused me to no longer be in their employ and but I really loved Orono I actually chose the job because I thought Orono would be a fabulous place to raise kids and as I said since I was a kid I always knew I was going to be a mom I was just trying to figure out how it was going to work and uh when I interviewed at Orono I thought this is the most fabulous place to raise children and so when the or the university and I were um had our irreconcilable differences I stayed in Orono which meant I had to come up with another way to make a living and uh I I've always been interested in how individual people can take action to address our climate change problem there's certainly a lot that's out of our control but certainly there's a lot we could do and so I had already been as a hobby fixing houses to make them more energy efficient and so that's I launched a business where I make buildings more energy efficient and I've been doing that since 2009 I guess and I I thought that when my kids were 18 they would fled into a music musical theater career and they'd be in New York and I would follow them and there's certainly plenty more jobs for a person with a PhD in global change science with a specialty in soils the closer you get to New York or Washington DC or other uh bigger bigger venues for people who discuss climate change so that's I thought I'd leave town but they they made it clear that they they love Maine and they love Orono and uh they thought that wasn't the greatest idea and of course I want to be close to them so I came up with something I could do that would use all of my skills I've been an advocate for the environment for my whole life and so I'm used to talking going to DC or going to Augusta um being on picket lines and uh and writing writing op-eds and uh so I already had a lot of training as an advocate and it became clear to me that I could also take all of the skills that I had and maybe help make a policy because my hope my PhD was actually thinking that we needed to have policy about carbon storage but to make that policy we'd have to have research and uh I started my PhD 30 years ago and only now is it really topical that the that the government might pay people to do the right thing in land management uh so so I guess I was a bit ahead of my time for my PhD but I anyway so how how did I do the I looked around uh we have term limits in Maine and so fabulous legislators or any legislature legislator legislators can only serve for four terms in in each house and so that meant that we would be having an opening in orno because the the fabulous legislator we had an orno could only serve for eight years and so I look like when my kids were graduating high school would be about the time to run for to represent orno in the legislature so I took emerge main class in 2017 with the idea that I would be running for office in 2020 and uh and my friend local friend said oh please run for town council there's an open spot someone who was an academic just took a different job and if you're going to be an emerge why don't you run for town council so I ran for town council uh actually even before the emerge class started and won and with a 70% of the vote and then uh I ran for reelection a year and a half later and so I just actually today is the end of my four and a half years on the council and I've been in the legislature a little over a year so uh doing both at the same time is a lot of work and in Maine we are not um remunerated very well and so it's been a lot of work for not much money I saw a similar to academia and uh or at least being a graduate student in academia and uh anyway so I I am very glad that that I decided to do it because even though I've been an advocate for so much of my life I have the chance to really introduce policy and then advocate it for it with the other people who make the votes and and I love the job so as a first term legislator you did something that's sort of out of the tradition you helped establish Maine's LGBTQ plus equality caucus what did you see as being the need for an LGBTQ plus equality caucus were there issues that you were looking at promoting or things that you wanted to ensure didn't happen uh good question I uh let's see one one reason was last year which was when I got the idea uh they I'm right for forgetting her name but uh Rachel Levine when Rachel Levine was um nominated to be the assistant health secretary she had been in Pennsylvania I'm a Pennsylvanian and she um was nominated by Biden and legislators in Pennsylvania were were saying terrible transphobic things about this woman who was so talented and just such a doing a fabulous job in Pennsylvania would do a fabulous job for us at the national level and I immediately and I have a friend Brian Sims who's in Pennsylvania and he made some public statements and he made those statements on behalf of the Pennsylvania legislature's LGBTQ equality caucus and I thought that is that is important you need to have a group that's there if something terrible happens so they can quickly get together and say we as a group think this is not acceptable behavior and I have been in experienced uh being the target of unacceptable behavior without having a group behind me and it's it's really hard it's hard to be a target and it's hard to be a target and be uh out on your own and so I thought immediately well no one's attacking Ryan Fecto but we have a leader right here in our state that uh with the wrong person with somebody who's going to be a bully like that like that had been a bullying like the person who'd been bullying uh Rachel Levine it seemed really important that we would get together uh so that if anything any target any any one of us any one of us was targeted we would be a group united uh our state because of Ryan Fecto and he had already the year before in the previous session he had um he had put in the conversion therapy bill which passed in Maine one of the first states in the nation uh we of course uh had marriage equality before the rest of the country had marriage equality uh we have a lot going for us and we have right now we have a democratic governor and democratic leadership democratic majorities in the house and the senate so it wasn't that we were in a defensive mode certainly there were uh trans anti trans children bills uh you know trans rights for children in schools bills that were introduced in our legislature which we defeated uh in this last session uh this present session but I just thought it was important that we would get together and I there were nine of us so in a legislature with 185 people that may not be you know full representation because we are we have no trans members uh but we you know there were nine of us and actually some some one stepped down because it didn't it couldn't do his the job that a new job that he got and also being a legislature uh because we're term limited several are not able to run and others others who are not term limited out have decided not to run so actually we'll probably have fewer next term than we have now and so I call it the LGBTQ equality caucus and in in the legislature this is new to me I always thought of being an outsider that a caucus was like there was a democratic caucus and there was a republican caucus and there might be um yes I didn't think of a caucus as being a group of of people who teach each other but in in the main legislature each smaller caucus like the housing caucus or the children's caucus uh or the mental health the behavioral health caucus they're actually a place that as as a former academic I would call a seminar series they host seminars uh where where the legislators can learn about issues some of them the issues we learn about are specific bills and others are just informative about issues and so uh I started the LGBTQ equality caucus specifically so that we could become we the nine of us could learn together be there in case we needed to support someone who is being attacked that's part of our community and also so that we could inform others the original idea is that we would be the honorary chairs and then we would invite other people to join unlike the federal level legislative LGBTQ equality caucus we don't have a web page where people put their names that they're members so it's same with in main our housing caucus that we have weekly meetings where we learn about the issues of housing in our state and there's no membership lists so when I say I'm part of the housing caucus you can't go to a web page and see that I paid my dues or signed up and that's the way our equality LGBTQ equality caucus is I have many people who contact me say I want to be part of it you know my daughter's a lesbian or I of course I want to be uh supporting whatever you're doing uh but it's it's less formal than that part of that is we have we get paid very little and we have very little support from staff and those staff because so many of us create these caucuses the staff has been told that they're not supposed to staff our caucuses so each what I would call a seminar series that's developed by the legislator and if I would have a web page that I have to build my own web page I have no funding or staff to build it and so that's part of what keeps it a bit informal in main thank you for joining us and until next time remember resist