 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. People who might recently have visited Buchsviller in Montpelier might have seen a new CD on the shelf, Garden Dreams. And this is part of the notes for the CD. Aaron Marcus and Sam Sanders have searched for and found 18 exquisite poems, mostly by contemporary rural artists. And Aaron has closed them in original music, partly structured, partly improvised. This album can be a healing journey for our time, one that will stir the emotions, open the heart, ground the soul, and awaken the senses. And I am pleased to welcome back Aaron Marcus and joining them, Sam Sanders, to talk about Garden Dreams. So welcome. Thanks, Keith. Thank you, Keith. And actually, we have, this is so exciting, because this just arrived a couple weeks ago, but we actually have the albums now in our hands, which is so exciting. We've been waiting for a couple, I don't know, a year, six months from actually the recording process. We recorded it in March. Oh, my goodness, that was about, okay, so I want to back up. You have the CD in hand. What was the inspiration to do the CD? That's a great question. So I should, yeah, so the CD is lots of spoken word poetry set to music. And I guess it was born out of, I guess, a number of projects that involved setting poetry to music that we've been doing over the years, starting with, starting with a band that I play in Frost and Fire, that the name Frost and Fire is actually a quote from T.S. Eliot's Four Quartet, which is a poem. And it inspired Sam since it's one of Sam's favorite poems. In fact, he rarely goes places without carrying that poem with him, or that book. It's true. My passport is inside that volume. Because I know that way I won't lose my passport. At that time, we decided wouldn't it be neat to actually do, perform that poem, speak that poem and somehow put music to it, since that was the name of the band. And since then, we've had another bunch of other poetry and music collaborations as well, with other folks who've really inspired me. And I guess that was kind of at some point we realized after my last solo album in 2018, where we put two such poems on the album, one by Susan Reed and one by Danny Dover, I said, I want to do a concept album that's just entirely this. Because we have so much, we so we just started writing material together. And I should also mention, it's not actually not just Sam performing poetry on the album. Our friend, Amma Payman, farmer Amma, also performs her own poem, track seven on the album. And that's incredible. So for the poetry that is included in Garden Dreams, how did you find those poems? A bunch of ways. One thing is that our landlady, Susan Reed, is a poet. And she had, as volumes of her poetry that she shared with us, she puts her poetry online in one way or another. And we're always, for years now, we've been scanning her poems to find some that we can put music to. So that's been going on a long time. A bunch of the poems that are not by Susan we found during April in Montpelier, what do they call it? Poetry Month? Poetry City. Poem City. Poem City, which is really wonderful. When poems got hung on all the windows of businesses all over Montpelier. So we would like walk around Montpelier reading poetry and see if there was anything that really struck us. And then we'd see how the poets felt about our using their poetry. Yeah, that's how actually Sam saw such a poem. And it was like, Aaron, you have to come over to, I think it was on Bear Pond Books or maybe one of the neighboring stores at Windows. And he said, you have to come and read this one. So we both went out and read it one day a couple of years ago. So, Aaron, when you were looking at the poetry merging with the music, was it your experience of the poems that inspired and influenced the music? Or did you have things running in your mind and you were looking at poetry that might match it? Yeah, you know that I would say the process varied a lot from track to track. It was kind of a lot of it was just sort of following our gut. And some of them, especially because I mean, this is not, we're not making up a genre. It's not like people have never set poetry to music before. But I think the way that we're doing it, we didn't really have, we didn't entirely have models of how to do it. I do, I've performed with a group called Night Fires and they, there's some inspiration certainly from that, sort of that style as well. But a lot of it was finding poems that really spoke to us. And I think certain, not all poems we found worked, at least in the way that we're doing this, not all poems were friendly to be set, being set to music. One of the things that was really important, sort of throughout the process is the music has to serve the poem. The poem is, you know, the primary focus and the music has to serve it in some way and maybe in the way that a soundtrack serves a movie. And so, and so in that way, some of the music was, I'd already written and I just realized that it might fit really well with a poem that we found that I was trying to figure out how to, you know, sculpt. And, but in many cases, I actually was writing the music in real time around the poem. And I might ask Sam, read the poem, okay, read it again and again. And by maybe the third time, something was already taking shape, like there was something magical that happened. And then we would just follow that until something else magical happened. To some extent, that I would make a suggestion here and there about something that needed to happen in the tone of the music, you know, what kind of mood it should be in. And we generally were on the same page around that. Yeah. And it's not entirely through combos. It's not like I wrote out every note on a script or something. It's, I would say it's about 50% improvised in every time we do it and about 50% of a structure that, for the most part, a structure that we sort of agree on ahead of time in terms of about where things align. But it's very fluid. Especially since I forget what we said we were going to do. I know how that is. And your comments go full right into the question I was about to ask, which is, did you ever involve the poets in the composition of the music? Because I know Susan Reed in particular is well known for her musical ability. Did you bring her in and say, okay, so what do you think of this? And how do you feel that it reflects your poetry? Yeah, well, she is an amazing musician, and she doesn't play on the album. Sorry, though, that would be great too. Maybe another album. We did, it was really important to us to involve all of the poets in the album in so much as we wanted, we wanted them to, well, I guess we couldn't involve Emily Dickinson. But it was really important for us to involve the poets and share with them as we progressed. This is a draft recording of kind of the direction it's going. How do you feel about this? And sometimes, yeah, sometimes the poets would give us feedback of, you know, I pictured a little more like this. And I would say the most in-depth version of that is working with, Susan, I'm sorry, is working with Amma because she's reading her own poem. So then it was very direct. It was, you know, this is her poem and what's your vision? And how can I support that? An exception to this would have been your work with Danny Dover. Because Danny actually, they gave performances and Danny actually recited his own poetry. Yeah, that's true. Yeah, we, originally, when those were crafted, they were actually crafted with Danny speaking the poetry. So you actually, you got to have a workshop with, you know, people around to create this. So Sam narrating the poems other than he was already in-house and people who listened to VPR over the years will decidedly recognize that voice. How did you bring Sam into this project? Or had you worked on similar projects before? Well, it started with my band Frost and Fire that it was actually his idea to, because he loves those poems, to read those poems and have the band narrate, I think we just sort of, we both love them. And we said, why not try doing a little soundscape with them? And I think it just sort of grew out of that. Every time we've done it, it's just felt really good. And I guess we didn't say this, but we're partners. So sometimes working with a partner can be really challenging for us, though, and especially during the pandemic, giving us sort of something to focus on and a sense of creativity in the times that we were actually feeling creative, because that wasn't always the case during the pandemic. But I think having something to be creative together is actually pretty much every time we work together brings tears to my eyes. It really softens us, I think. And also we had a wonderful engineer who came to the house and worked with us and actually lived here for a week. And he turned out also to play the role of producer to an extent. So he was right there with the poetry and music and commenting on what worked and what didn't work and made suggestions about stuff. This is Dana Billings, this is me. A sweetheart, by the way. So there's this CD. Is there likely to be a similar one following it? And once COVID lessons and we become more comfortable in public environments, might we be entertained by some live performances from the CD? I hope so. We've done some performances online up to now. We will be, I believe, it might be a little premature, but I think it's likely we're going to be doing something during Poetry Month in Montpelier and or Randolph. I don't know if that's official, so I don't know if I should have said that. But keep your eyes peeled. And yes, I think once we feel like there are venues we can perform and we need a piano, so it has to be an indoor space, really. But once we feel like we can perform, we hope to do that more of these. And in the meantime, the CD is a great way to listen to it. We really love the recording process. I think came out really beautiful, just the sound quality. With Alma, because we weren't in a pod together at the time we were recording, she's standing out in the hallway speaking into a microphone and I'm playing on the other side of the door on the piano. We made it work with your phones and it came out beautiful, beautifully. So as I need to say thank you, I want to acknowledge that not only is the CD available at Buchbiller, but people can get it online as well. Yeah, we have a Bandcamp website. That's actually right. I think it's right here. We will make sure that Zach clearly displays it during the interview so people can see that. Okay, so erin.marcus at bandcamp.com. It's easy to Google, actually. Bandcamp is not hiding in there and our CD is not hiding. We're not trying to be difficult for people to find it. Yeah, and this actually on the back cover that is Bertha. That's the grand piano who lives here, who recorded the album with us. Oh, I forgot about that. That's a credit we ought not to have forgotten. Like Bertha was born in 1891. So Bertha is an old piano, been completely refurbished and it's one of the most beautiful pianos I have ever listened to. The first time that I heard it, tears came to my eyes. Yes, or heard them because Bertha actually uses they, them pronouns. So thank you to Bertha for supporting you and thank you for spending this time with us. And in April, I may be looking at posters for announcements that I didn't know. Oh yeah. Yes, keep an eye out. And Sam, did you want to say anything about all the gentle ones that track in particular? Well, okay. Well, we have one track that consists of two poems. One is by Tennessee Williams and I've known that poem for decades. We have jumped through flaming hoops to get permission from the Tennessee Williams estate to use it. And it's followed by a poem by Michael Kiso Moore, who lives in Minneapolis, that is about the losses from the AIDS epidemic. And the Tennessee Williams poem is also, it dates from 1948. And it sort of paints a picture to an extent of gay life in 1948. And then we've, and it's not a happy poem. And then it's followed by an even less happy poem about the losses from the AIDS epidemic. I think it's maybe the most beautiful thing on the CD. Friends of mine who have heard it have said everyone should hear this. Thank you for reminding us of our history and how we've come to this point in time. Thank you for your music to help us with our own healing. And thank you so much for this time. Thank you, Keith. Thank you, Keith. Hi everybody. I'm here with Miranda Perez, a lesbian social service worker and a new friend of mine. Miranda and I first met when she interviewed me for the lesbian history archives and now the tables are turned and I am interviewing her. Welcome. Thank you. I'm happy to have you. You hail from New York City and in 2018, you got your BA from Tufts in clinical psychology and American Studies. Since then, you've been working at the Theater Development Fund, TKTS. You're a patron and I'm very excited to talk with you about that. You're also an administrator at Dorot, your program administrator and working for the volunteer services. We'll talk a little more about Dorot and its contribution when we get to it. I had a comparable job in fuel assistance in Cambridge. I was the energy emergency preparedness coordinator. It was an demonstration project, so it only lasted a year, but we dealt with homebound and making emergency deliveries to people who were homebound. So we'll talk more about that. In addition to that, you have worked at the Miami Music Festival at the summer treatment program counselor at the Florida Internation or University Center for Children and Families. I'm kind of stumbling through that. There's a lot to cover here. Big names, long titles, yeah. And at Tufts, you were the director and submissions committee member of the monologues. So this reflects, in my view, a dual interest in the arts and social services. So you're a little bit of a renaissance person. Yeah, the way you picked that up from my resume, I guess now it's there, but that's 100% me that those are the two sort of worlds that I straddle and thinking through career paths and future decisions. I'm always between those two. When we met earlier here in Vermont at Rebel Rouser, we suggested that you become a playwright, that maybe in your future. Let's step back to your background. Were you born? New York City. New York City. Yeah, born and raised. Where'd you grow up? Washington Heights, so Upper Manhattan. And you mentioned that you were the president of the high school GSA. From that I surmised that you came out in high school, but I could be wrong. Yeah, no, I didn't actually. So I was raised in New York by a single mom and my dad lives in Miami. And so you see on my resume, a lot of my jobs over the summers were in Florida. So I don't really identify with Miami as a place of being raised, but it's definitely a place where I have connections and people and family. So that's sort of just a piece to add in. My dad is gay, and he came out when I was two years old. My parents got divorced just right before my second birthday. And my mom, we were all living in Miami at the time of my mom and I moved back to New York. So my dad came out to me when I was like four or five. So I knew about him my whole life. It's a very big point of conversation in my home. My dad likes to talk a lot about how he came out to me at a young age and how he thinks that that was very important. Parents, I guess, for him when he was doing that, when he was sharing that with me, it was very contentious. It was a big decision for him to share that with me. But I think him and my mom really wanted to be open and honest with me. Also, growing up in New York City, a lot of my mom's friends, her gay men, she was very involved in the arts and in the opera world. And then the theater world as well. She went to she went to Juilliard and for opera. And she came. And so I think there's they're very involved in the arts. And I think along with that you have a lot of relationships with queer people. And so those are the people that I grew up with. So when I was in high school, I joined the G yet that the truth is in seventh or eighth grade, I kind of knew that I was I might be something I might be queer, I might be I might like women, I don't know, there was questions. And so when I went to high school, I I guess it was the the president of the GSA I had was my like first big crush. But she was by I think but and so yeah, there was a lot of stress for me and that but I joined yes, the GSA essentially to be closer to her. And but but also at the same time, when asked why I was there, I would say because my dad is gay, and I your support him. And I have all these gay men in my life. And I'm here to sort of learn more and be more of an ally to them. So I joined the GSA under that guys. And my two best friends in high school were also joined the GSA with me and they my my second year of high school, I found out that they were in a relationship, our whole friendship, and I didn't know like they were, they got together like the beginning of freshman year of high school, and we were all friends of three of us for the first year, and they didn't tell me they were together until the second year. So there's some some tangled webs in all of that. But that's why I that that's the my story with the GSA. But then my senior year, I became the president of GSA. So that was I was a member, I think since freshman year, but wanted to take a leadership role, we had three presidents when I was being very flat, you know, flat leadership minded at that time. So people kept graduating or people kept quitting? It was the president, the people who started the group were this girl that I had a crush on and her friend. And they, they graduated. So they needed someone. And so three of us who had been involved, very involved, decided that we wanted to share the role. Well, you organized the first pride march in the school, is that right? Yeah, it was a pride day. It was a pride celebration. Yeah, it was the first we put like posters all up around the building of like queer, like role models. We partnered with this really wonderful organization called Live Out Loud, I think, and they partner with a lot of, at the time they were partnering with a lot of GSAs across the city. Gay Straight Alliance is across the city. And so we had speakers come in every month. That was like my real like queer education. That's, that's where that all started, you know, it's the first time I had ever had a conversation with a trans person. First time I had really, you know, seen a lesbian in a working, in a, like a professional, had a conversation with a lesbian that was a professional in the world. And we learned about her life and her journey. And so Live Out Loud really brought a lot of resources to us. And then we also even connected with other GSAs and saw what they were doing through the Live Out Loud. And then, yeah, we, we decided to have our own pride day celebration. That's great. Yeah, it was beautiful. Speaking of education, in college, you taught a history course about history that isn't taught in high school. Can you tell us a little about that? Yes, yeah. So my second major was in American studies. That was really my sort of passion. That was my focus. I did, I double majored because I felt like I needed to have American studies to sort of amorphous. A lot of my friends who were in American studies are now either getting PhDs to become professors or do something in that world, scholars and journalists, writers. And neither of those at the time were things that I thought, I, like that just was never what I saw myself doing. So I was like, okay, I really love this community of American studies. I love my professors. I love what I'm learning. But I'm also going to have another major just so I can go off and do something after school with that major. But so that class was called, it was my friend, really, who was the, she was doing, she had more of a focus on education in her major. And that was really what she wanted to do. She was also writing her thesis about education and American studies. So she was the person who really started this class and I co-taught it with her kind of following her lead. A lot of the class was us talking about what we had learned in our American studies courses. So different readings that we had to had in these classes and things like that. So for example, we taught one section was on Native American residential boarding schools. So we, the title of the class is what's hiding in our history. So that's something that the, you know, we, I didn't learn that in elementary school or high school or whenever we learned about, you know, whatever colonization, however they teach all of that in school, which I don't remember because I've rewritten all of that in my head to just to the, to what I know now. But so we, yeah, we taught a whole section about that. And another example, we did a class on queer culture, queer history. And we taught it through the lens of music, because I had taken a class called queer pop. And it was that class was incredible and very transformative and just sort of going through the power of music to the queer community. And so we wanted to teach about queerness and we taught it, we taught it through that lens, because that was something that we, I don't remember if my co-teacher took that class, but it was something that I could at least speak to and share about me shared like country music that has queer undertones because or it was straight or flat out queer, not straight out queer, but just country music that told a different story, because that's a genre that people think a certain way, oh, country music is for ex people and dance pop is for people in the LGBT community or whatever. So we tried to flip that narrative a little bit as well to just really show the ways that there's so much more to all the history to all all the things that we're experiencing. It sounds like a great class to teach and be a student at. Let's go to your current occupations. I have done all the research about Dorot, the organization you work for now. It's named with the Hebrew word for generations. It's a dynamic partnership of professionals and volunteers dedicated to enhancing the lives of homebound and homeless elders and fostering friendship and respect between the generations. Since 1976, Dorot has provided food, companionship, education, and cultural enrichment to thousands of elderly New Yorkers and those who care for them. Located on New York's Upper West Side, Dorot is a non-sectarian culturally Jewish agency open to all seniors, caregivers, and volunteers. How did you happen to get a job at Dorot? So after graduation, I worked with children. My first job out of school was working at that summer camp that you referenced at the in Miami working with kids with ADHD. And I thought that after college, one of the options that I was going to pursue would be to go to social work school, become a social worker, and potentially work with children. At that point, most of my experience had been working with kids, and that role was working with kids with special needs. And so that job was working with children with ADHD and other behavioral diagnoses. And so I did that right after school. And so then afterwards, I came back to New York. I thought maybe I'd moved to Miami, but I chose not to. I had to come back to New York. I can't stay away too long. And I was looking for a job for a few months. The story that I tell about how I got back to so I volunteered with Dorot in elementary school. I went to Jewish day school, first to sixth grade. And I and part of our education was to volunteer. So we would do things in Central Park. We would, you know, we would do a lot of different service projects. And one of them was with Dorot. And what we did was we would visit older adults in their home and have like an hour with them, learn about them, share about us, because Dorot is all about having social connection, as you said, and combating social isolation and forming these intergenerational relationships. So, and that was a very, that that experience had a huge impact on me from a young age. My mom was actually the chaperone that did for that, for those outings. And so she and I have a shared, shared experience that we have reflected on throughout the years. And so one day I went to Zabars in New York City after after graduation, I'm job hunting, I want to leave the house to like look for jobs. And I go to Zabars and I am sitting at like the counter with probably with the locks and bagel and locks and cream cheese sandwich. And I pull out my Kindle. I'm going to read it and this woman, this older woman sitting next to me, she looks at me, she's like, Oh, I have one of those. I don't even know how to use it. How do you use that thing? Can you show me? And we just start talking and I start showing her the different pieces of Kindle and all that. And she said to me in that moment, I wish you were my neighbor. And something clicked for me in my head. I'm like one block away from Dorote, Zabars is right across the street from Dorote. And I thought, let me see, let me see if Dorote has any job job openings. I applied and within like a month and a half, I was employed after like five months of searching. So for me, it was kind of like this light bulb moment of how I ended up at Dorote. Career wise, I, I because I was trying to decide if I wanted to go to social work school. I thought, let me, let me have a, let me find an opportunity to work with a different population because at that point, I'd only work with kids with special needs. I thought, okay, maybe I'll go to school for, for that early, early education. So let me, I'm going to work with older adults and see if that's, that's something that feels like a good fit. So now I've been at Dorote almost three years, working mainly with volunteers, connecting them with older adults. We haven't been able, we're not going to have time to get to one of my favorite topics, your work with TKTS. So we'll have to invite you back to talk about that. But as the interview draws to a close, let me ask you if you have any last words for our audience. Yes, yeah, I wanted to just in the vein of speaking about Dorote and even in this conversation in the, my time with you with the Oral History Project through the Lesbian History Archives, just encouraging people to connect intergenerationally. I think we, that was my feeling in Zabars that day that I was not connecting with the whole generation of people and I was missing out and losing a lot. And so that's sort of my, my current learning that I'm sort of unwrapping and unfolding and would encourage others as well to, to forge those connections and find people outside of their immediate generation to, to connect with and learn about. Rhonda Perez, thank you for joining us. Thank you for having me. Everybody, I'd like to introduce Karen Strach, who has written a very important novel and I actually, yeah, I guess it's, would you consider it a novel, Karen? No, it's nonfiction. Nonfiction, right? It's, you might call it creative nonfiction because it's an interesting read. Yes. And it's a, it's a story that, you know, you don't hear about at all. And so let me tell you a little bit about Karen. She's equally at home with pen and paper, paintbrush and canvas, needle and thread or hammer and nails. She is an all around Renaissance woman. She is the author of the groundbreaking book on a previously undiscussed topic, married women who loved women. Now, in its third edition, she is also the author of a writer's journal, what to know before, during and after writing a book in the shadows of the Wonder Wheel, a mystery novel set in Coney Island, New York, tangled ribbon, a lesbian paranormal romance, grandpa and me and the park in the city, a rhyming picture book for children, potatoes with appeal, 105 mouth watering recipes. You are a Renaissance woman. And so your book, you want to tell us a little bit about how you got started and, you know, okay. Well, I always had a secret dream of being a writer. I got back my first paper in college and it had a C on it and I asked my professor what I could do to improve my writing. And he said, honey, some people are writers and some aren't and you're not a writer. I didn't pick up a pen for more than 15 years. And then I kept hearing his voice in my head, you're not a writer, you're not a writer. Then Robert Redford came to town and I was an extra with the movie, The Natural. And every night I came home and I was bombarded with questions. How did you know what to do? How did they dress you? What did you know, what went on? And I said, I'm so tired of saying the same thing again and again. And a friend of mine said, well, why don't you write it? And I still heard this college teacher's voice in my head. I can't, I'm not a writer. So he said, put down everything that happened. I'll make it into a story for you. Long story short, that was the very first piece I wrote. It was in Women's Day, major piece in Women's Day magazine. Anyway, I was 44 years old and I was having coffee with my best friend and I looked across the table and I thought, oh my God, I'm in love with this woman. And I never had thoughts before that I was a lesbian or anything like that. And our friendship was based on such openness and honesty that within a week I'm telling her, I'm in love with you. And she said, oh, you're in love with the idea of sisterhood and feminism. I'm in love with you. Anyway, my feelings were not reciprocated and I went on a quest to find out. And I started talking to people and to women and they started giving me their friends names and referring friends to me to talk to. And I realized that I was not the only one. And I started writing as a catharsis for myself. And the book became a catalyst for great many women. It's called Married Women Who Love Women. It started out as an article for Ms. Magazine. And I was at a writer's conference and we were talking about titles and I mentioned that as a title. And I realized, oh my God, I've outed myself in front of all these people. I'm going to be here all week and now nobody's going to speak to me. Anyway, slowly one woman raises her hand and she says, how does a woman make that discovery? And then someone else raises her hand. What kind of men are they married to? How do their children deal with it? How is sex different with a woman than with a man? And I realized their questions, everyone had the same questions. And so those became my chapter titles. And I started speaking to women. And I realized it was too important a topic for an article. It needed to be a book that was in 1998. People were buying the book and hiding it under their jackets or changing the flaps, you know, reversing the flaps from other books so nobody would know what they had. I ran into one woman who told me she bought five copies because she would read it and then throw it away because she couldn't let anybody see it. And then she wanted to read more of it. And so she kept doing that. Now everybody's buying the book. It's just, it's an interesting read and it's an important topic. It's now grown to its third edition and it also includes a chapter on transgenders. So it's, our world has changed a tremendous amount since I started the book since the original, the first edition came out in 1998. And the third just came out. And the third is, is the new edition with transgender. Right. It's called married women who love women and more. This is actually, this is the cover of the book. You can see that. That's a third edition. So when you, you told your friend and she, it wasn't reciprocated. Did you continue to be friends or did you think, well, you know, I can't really do this being in love with her? We, we continued to be friends. She didn't cut me off. But each time I was near her, each time I heard her voice, I was like quivering for lack of a better word. I had no idea what it meant. And actually, now this is many years later, we're still Facebook friends. She's moved away. So I haven't seen her in many years. But I believe I write my book was very well accepted because I don't point fingers. I just tell it as it is. And I sort of believe that I was chosen to write this book because I write simply and honestly. And the first edition had come out and I was doing a talk and a woman came to me clutching the book and sobbing. And she said, I would have come through any weather, any distance to tell you your book saved my life. She had fallen in love with another woman. Now this is in the 1990s. And she thought she was the only woman in the world that ever happened to. She didn't know who to talk to, where to turn. She decided the best thing she could do for her husband and children was kill herself. And she prepared for her suicide on a night when she knew her family was going to be home late. And she was walking past a bookstore from work for what she thought would be the very last time. And they were just putting my book in the window. And when she saw the title, she knew she wasn't alone and she decided not to kill herself. Now how synchronistic is that? So I believe I was supposed to write the book even now years later when I tell that story, I get goosebumps. It's like it's like this was meant to be. And so you had, how did you contact these people? I know this was, you know, a little bit before like computers and, you know, oh yes. So how did you find these women? I put up flyers in various bookstores. I, if I went to the movie theater, I put flyers in the bathrooms. I didn't know if anyone took them away or threw them away, but I put them in supermarkets. I hung them on the on the bulletin boards. Basically, I first started talking to people. I called now National Organization of Women to see if there were any groups for people like myself. And they put me on to Connie and Ruthie. I don't know if you're familiar with them. They were very big in Brooklyn with women's domestic rights. So I went to a meeting at their house and then they were doing a talk at the center at the Gay and Lesbian Center. Years ago it was called Gay and Lesbian Center. Now it's LGBTQ, you know, et cetera, et cetera. And I'll never forget going to that center for the first time. There's almost no parking in Manhattan. But for some reason, there was a parking space right there. And I thought, let me drive around the block first. And if it's still there, then I'll go. I drove around the block three times and that parking space remained there. So I went into the building. And I mean, I could visualize my heart just going like this. And people would know. And I walked in with my head down and they said the Lesbian group, you know, I couldn't even say the word. And so they brought me into this Connie and Ruthie's group. And I just started talking to people and one woman would tell a friend who tell a friend and they would call me or they'd give me their numbers and I would call them. And still I didn't know it was going to be a book. I thought it may be an article on it. But there was so much information and so many women in their stories were also very important and so very different. They were like and they were different. And so the book came to be. And I know from reading much of it that women made all different kinds of decisions about how they were going to deal with the fact that they were lesbians. And you know, that's really fascinating. You know, because as I said, I was married and came out and left my husband. But a lot of people didn't or don't and they redefined their relationships or, you know, I, and the human aspect of that of like how we respond as people to particular situations is really, I found really moving in the book. Yeah. And I know you decided to stay. I'm in a redefined relationship. Yeah. Right. And that it, that it worked out for you in that way. Right. We have two children and we have two grandchildren that we desperately love. And he's, he's a unique man. You know, he just, I, I know him since I'm 16 years old, I wouldn't throw him away and he wouldn't throw me away. And I'm out to him. I'm out to my family. And it's just, this is the way it is. Got the bit if he weren't around anymore, there wouldn't be another man in my life. But we have our separate rooms and we're just, we're very compatible. As a matter of fact, my daughter said several years ago, she says, I think you and daddy have the best marriage I know, because you actually talk to each other. And she had said, you know, I don't want to know what you do behind closed doors now with your friends. And I didn't want to know what you did behind closed doors with daddy before. So my family is quite unique. They truly practice unconditional love. I think that's the key. It's not like I'll love you if you go to school and become a doctor, I'll love you if you marry this. They just, they accept me for who I am. And it's, thank goodness, our world is waking up and more and more people are becoming accepted and there's more understanding going on. And yet there's still women that are going through the same thing that I went through these many years ago, you know, the terror and the fear of coming out. And I imagine it must be, I mean, I don't know, maybe this is a prejudice on my part, but it seems to me if you would have more difficulty if you were rural, or if you lived in, I don't know, states that were really, yeah, middle America. Absolutely. I interviewed one woman who said, if my husband or my neighbor heard me say the word lesbian, they would blow my head off with a shotgun and they wouldn't be in trouble. And unfortunately, there's still people in those pockets around our country. What I did find when I interviewed people, I started out with a fact sheet. How old were you when you found out the education levels, religious persuasions, things like that. And most of the women I interviewed had some college. The ones who called me earlier who didn't eventually didn't want to be interviewed, they were afraid. The more educated the woman, the less fear she had. So I thought that was a biggie. But what I also found interesting was, I said, when you first realized you were attracted to other women, was it a physical connection, attraction, or was it an emotional attraction? And all that identified as lesbian said, I have to say almost all who identified as lesbian said it was an emotional connection followed by physical. The ones who truly identified as bisexual said it was a physical connection, a physical attraction. And sometimes an emotional came from that. So it was funny because the editor said, well, we don't need that in the book. I said, that's one of the most important parts of the book. And what happened is many women initially identified as bisexual because they were still living with husbands, and they were they were doing what they were supposed to do sexually with their husbands. So they thought they had to call themselves bisexual. And they realized it was just, you know, that that was not who they were emotionally. So things change. Yeah. And I imagine a lot of people are still trapped in in, like I said, in rural areas or places where they're just terrified. A lot of women have met in churches. A lot of several women I spoke to are Mormons. It's not one sect or another sect. It's just it's a it's a human feeling. I know. And doesn't it make you think like when when are we going to be able to let people be on the sexual identities in which we can all feel comfortable? You know, it's it's when you're given crayons and you're you're given red, yellow and blue and asked to choose your favorite color. You're choosing from a limited variety. When we were growing up, we were told little girls are going to marry somebody like their daddy. But now, thankfully, because of television and because of the media and magazines like people magazines, girls at a very young age know they have options. And so hopefully things will be changing. You know, gay marriage is legal. It's just it's a tremendous difference from the 90s. Yeah. And so do you have a writing schedule? And what are you working on now? Oh, I am working on a story about a 13 year old ghost. And I'm loving it. I am trying this is for the last three days since I'm in Florida. I'm trying to get up and write immediately before I do anything else. What I normally what I usually do is I fuzz around on the computer and I look at Facebook and I check my emails and I don't start writing till like three in the afternoon and then I'm tired already. So I'm really trying to be more focused. And I'm speaking to people to see who's had paranormal experiences. Have you had any? So but it's it's an interesting story. It really is. And I'm loving it. But each of the books that I've written, I'm a very eclectic writer. And that's not good if you want to make sales because like I wrote a mystery that people love and they're waiting for a sequel and waiting for a sequel. But after the mystery, I wrote something in an entirely different genre. I just I just many years later finished the sequel to the mystery. But I just like to be writing what I want to be writing at that point instead of staying in one genre. Is this a young adult novel or is it? No, it's for everyone. And now you know that you mentioned it. I thought, well, yes, I did have a pair. I like the bed in my mother's house when you stayed over used to shake. There you go. I said I can't sleep in this room anymore. But yeah, that was I guess the closest thing I would say. I had dinner with somebody yesterday and she said no, she's never had an experience and through the meal. And then she says to me, you know what, I'm just thinking. She says I was driving and my car kept getting pulled to the right. And my father always drove on the very right side of the road because he had one good eye or something. Anyway, my car was pulled over and I didn't have control of the steering wheels just went there. And then right in front of me a tree fell down. Had she not been pulled over and stepped on the side of the road, she would have been under the tree. So she says, I think my father was saved, it saved me. So things, different kinds of things come up. So we'll see how I incorporate everything into the story. It's a story about a family who's killed and the little girl does not go up to heaven with her family and the mother says no, you have to stay here. You have to bear witness and the child doesn't know what bear witness, she doesn't know what a mother is talking about. And this is what has to come out in the book, that it was a murder. And so I would suggest that everybody read this book, who has any interest in, you know, human psychology or human emotions or, you know, anything having to do with how we experience ourselves. And so get the book. And I was wondering if there's any last words you have for the audience? Well, I'd also like to mention another book of mine. This is called Tangled Ribbons. And this is my lesbian, paranormal story. And a lot of my story is in this book, you know, this one is fiction, but it's a story of the relationship between two women. And as I'm writing, all of a sudden it says, but I knew that. And I thought, who is this I? And I realized, oh, my goodness, my character has a spirit guide. And then the other character kept saying, what about me? What about me? And so I had to give her a spirit guide who turned out to be an evil guide. And unless they could find out why she was evil, why she was keeping these two women from being united, their worlds would end. And so it's, did you ever read the book, The Hours? Yes. This one has a twist ending, something like that. So it's, I recommend that book for anybody who's into lesbian reading. Okay. We have a book for, maybe we can suggest that we read that for a book. That'd be wonderful. And then if you ever wanted me to come up and speak about it as the writer, I'd love to do that. I mean, New York, you're not so far in Vermont. You can drive up here, what, four and a half hours? Five hours, I don't know. Something to think about. We'll invite you in October when it's the leaves are changing. It's a date. Okay. So thank you very much for coming on the show. And thank you for writing this book. Thank you for having me. Thank you for joining us. And until next time, remember, resist.