 Welcome to our interview show in which we interview LGBTQ guests who are important contributors to our community. We want to acknowledge that All Things LGBTQ is produced at Orca Media in Montpelier, Vermont, which is unceded Indigenous land. Enjoy the show. Buddy, I'd like to introduce Sharon Thompson to our show, All Things LGBTQ. How are you, Sharon? I'm doing great. I'm very happy to be here. I'm very happy to have you. I've been looking forward for this for a while. Sharon, I just want to tell you, is a writer, editor, and co-founder of Lesbian Home Movie Project. She co-edited Powers of Desire, The Politics of Sexuality, and wrote Going All the Way, Teenage Girls, Tales of Sex, Romance, and Pregnancy. Her articles and stories have appeared in eclectic range of publications from cosmopolitan to heresies and feminist studies. She grew up in Akron, Ohio. She attended Carnegie Tech and Columbia University and lived in New York East Village for many years. In the early 2000s, she moved to Hancock County, Maine, where she co-founded Lesbian Home Movie Project LHMP with B. Ruby Rich and Kate Hornsfield. Lesbian Home Movie Project is a nonprofit corporation that collects preserves and documents, home movies, and amateur films and videotapes shot by or depicting lesbian lives. The archive's earliest collection was shot by Ruth Storm, 1988 to 1981, 1988 to 1981. It currently holds over 400 films and videotapes. Well, I'm very impressed. So how did you decide to do this? Did you happen to have a few or you just thought, wow, this would be a great project? Most of my work is feminist work and lesbian work. It's been kind of serendipity. And this project began when an acquaintance from New York came up to Maine because she had inherited the cabin of a friend of her mother's who she knew was a lesbian. And that woman's last lover had been Ruth Storm who shot our earliest collection. And the films were, it was a little complicated, but ultimately the films had all been in the cabin. Ruth Storm had been a school teacher in New York. She had retired to Maine where she'd visited many times with her last lover. And she'd edited, slightly edited the films. So they were all there and we all loved them, everyone who came up. And I started showing them to other friends, not thinking that there would be more footage, thinking that this was really rare. It was an extraordinary thing to be able to see. And the friends started saying, well, I have film or Susie has film. And so then we realized that although the LGBTQ archives and standard archives all across the country had virtually no lesbian film, that it might be out there and that it needed to be retrieved and identified or it would just be thrown out or some confusing reel of film at a yard sale. And the whole social milieuse that they came from, the histories, the personal histories would be lost. So then we set ourselves up as a project just to do that, to collect as much of that footage as we could find. We found over 400 pieces so far. And I know there's a lot more out there. So we're really hoping to find it before the people who understand what it is have died. And you can restore most work, right? Yes, and actually the earlier the better, because film lasts better than videotape. And in the north, we found more in the north, although we found a lot of videotape in the south, because the northern climate is better for film. So Ruth Storm's films were 16 millimeter from the 1930s through the 1960s. And they were just in a cabin that sometimes when they weren't there was minus 20 degrees. But you'll see them beautiful. And in them, lesbians from Korea, Maine, and other parts of Maine, and from New York gather and have fun. And the little clip that we're going to see shows it appears to be Ruth trying to set up shots that depict moments in her life or in their lives. So there's a moment when she passes a book to an older woman. And we know, because we have, we've seen the book that she did, she herself did give books and inscribe them to students of hers and to lovers of hers. So it's a shot from her own life that she has had reenacted. And other people in the footage, I'll identify them a little bit more after you've seen them. But, but we know a lot about them. And one was a writer, sculptor and violinist. They're, they're fascinating. That's amazing. So shall we watch clip one? Let's watch it 1938. Hey, well, that was a really good clip. I mean, it's amazing. And what a great thing you're doing here. And let's put out the call that anybody who has these film to please get in touch with Sharon, we will have her website up so that if anybody needs to reach her, they can. Great. Okay, so the book and the, and the people there. So who was the, who was the the artist and violinist in this? That her name, it's a somewhat invented name was Chenna with Hall or Chenny Hall. She, she's the woman who climbs the ladder in the clip and then also is on the rocks when the taller woman comes over and and to join her. And the taller woman is the filmmaker Ruth Storm. She appears to be directing somebody as to how to shoot the shot. So my guess is she had the camera on a tripod and another of her friends was behind the camera, maybe a woman named Griffin or possibly Miriam Colwell. Miriam Colwell was a local manor. She grew up there and she and Chen with Hall became partners and lovers and they remained partners for their, for the rest of their lives. And are some of their books from this clip from the people who wrote it or is this, is that from another clip? He's not in the clip, but I sent, well, I think you're, I said, well, I can, this is a book by Chen with Hall, The Crow and the Spruce. Yeah. And this is a book by a friend of theirs who's not in the clip, Ruth Moore, who's a very well known woman writer from Maine. This is a book by her partner, Eleanor Mayo, another Maine writer. And this is a book by Margaret Yorsanar who received the, was the first woman to be accepted into the Academy Francaise. She lived in Northeast Harbor. She saw artwork by Chen with Hall at the local library and she and her partner Grace Frick rented a car and drove from Northeast Harbor to Korea, Maine, which involves going all the way down to Ellsworth and then back up the other side and just knocked on their door to introduce themselves. All lesbians and all just, you know, so filled with creativity and with conviviality. And it's amazing they found each other in Maine, you know, which is fairly rural, I would think, especially back then. It would have been much more rural, rural than it is now. Yes. And how they recognized each other, that's a little mysterious. A little bit of word of mouth or maybe the content of, you know, whatever they were looking at. But yeah, that's amazing. Well, and also they were traveling in pairs. So, you know, when one woman's female couple came upon another female couple who was, you know, making some kind of presentation or then they just thought, hmm. I think we still do that a little bit today, but probably not as much as back then. So, we have a second clip, which is Janice is a Gal Perry. And you want to tell us about this clip? Sure. Well, first Janice Gal Perry is a lifelong Vermonter. She's a performance artist, an internationally known performance artist, but she's also won several Vermont Arts Council awards and NEA awards that are associated with the Vermont Arts Council. And she became friends with a woman who, Karen McCourtney, and became partners with her for a certain amount of time. And she had not done, she'd done kind of casual performances in bars and women's gatherings. But when she met Karen, Karen set up her first feminist performance, which is what she then went on to do. So, this is early on in their relationship. They are traveling through Baltimore. And you'll see, they're just playful. And Janice took some of the footage. Karen believed in passing the camera around. So, they're kind of a wonderful feminist film principle. So, some of the footage is going to be blurry, whoever was behind the camera wasn't that good. But Janice took wonderful pictures of Karen. And Karen took some wonderful pictures of Janice. And you'll see. Okay, let's watch the clip. Wow. That's incredible. I'm just like amazed that this is even possible. Well, that is quite amazing. That was 1978, which was post-Lavender Menace. But to be going through places like Baltimore or there's some footage from Belfast, Maine, and just kind of being so open and so clearly, you know, it's not romantic footage, although there is some romantic footage in the Karen McCourtney's. But the affection and the, you know, just the liking that they had for each other is so apparent. Nothing is being hidden. And we don't, that's not the way queer people today think of lesbian feminists. And it's not, and it's not the kind of historical reading of times before we had real rights. But you can, you can feel, you can feel the freedom to come in the way they felt about themselves. I'd be very happy. I love to watch that footage. And also Janice is hilarious in the Batman costume with the Glockenspiel. Did you find anything from like the Cape when Massachusetts, I know there was a huge lesbian artist and community in, in, on the Cape in Provincetown. Lesbians, a lot of lesbians were there. I was wondering if there's any there that haven't been uncovered yet or. Well, I'm sure there is some that hasn't been uncovered, but we do have a wonderful collection shot by Janet Perlman. And she shot in New York and she shot on the Cape. And she shot and, and she shot from when she was still in high school into her years in New York. And, and, and there's some Cuban footage too. And that's, that's quite amazing. But I'm sure there is more on the, on the Cape. There's a split between, it's a kind of class split, but it's not exactly a class split between, and it's partly a historical split between women who, when they got behind the camera felt that they were artists. They were on their way to being artists and professional filmmakers and women who just didn't feel entitled in that way. And what we're collecting is kind of the footage of women who didn't recognize, I would say, I don't think they recognized how good they were, and how important what they were shooting was. And they didn't feel that they could, you know, go to HBO or go to MGM. And, and that that would have been very difficult in any case. So they shot for themselves and their friends. And that's, that, that differentiates this footage. Janet, and Janet is one of those people. She, she, she, she could have been a professional. She studied editing, but she never quite, you know, made that extra step and she had other things to do. She was a librarian and an archivist and, you know, had her own career. Yeah. And so if people wanted to see these clips, or they wanted to use them, they would go through view and ask permission and get, and get the films if they wanted to use them for, I don't know, an educational project or for any. Right. There's some of the footage is on www.lesbianhomemovieproject.org. And that's footage that we're very careful with the filmmakers and the videographers. They have to give permission for any use. And different filmmakers and videographers feel different kinds of limitations about that. We just licensed some footage that a coach Lorraine Sumner shot. She was a lesbian mother who had a hard time, but she put together a living through lots of physical education, teaching and coaching jobs. And she was also a semi-professional softball player. And she, and so we have her footage and we just licensed some of it with her permission to the queer director Tom Cailin. But it's very important to us that the filmmakers get credit. We really push for that. I feel that many of a lot of this footage is of a very high quality. And they did something great when they filmed their friends. And so that's one of the requirements, sometimes there's other requirements. But I'm not alive anymore. I mean, I'm sure many of these people aren't alive anymore. That would be the person who originally gave you the film. Well, some of them have been surprisingly long lived, like me. And that's an interesting point because that's an assumption a lot of young students and film students find the footage that we have online and they decide that these women are so old that they must be dead and that they have just found the film like it was on a beach. And they there's a little bit of an inclination to take it, re-edit it into something and and claim it's something else. And then often they make very beautiful little films doing that. But it's not what we want. We really want these events and these filmmakers and videographers to be recognized for their work. So we're careful about that. That's good. And I can see that happening, you know, people just downloading them and doing whatever they wanted. And so what is the upper year that you're looking? I mean, like anything before 1980 or before 1970 or you don't really. Before digital. And a lot of our footage was shot by cameras that were out of date when it was shot. The Karen McCourtney collection she bought that her camera her super eight camera in a pawn shop. So it had already been retired from whoever had made films with it first. And that out of sickness is one interesting aspect of the work. But once something is digitized that's a kind of another ballpark. So and we're we're involved in saving footage that probably won't be saved otherwise. And I want to say that we pay for it. We don't charge. We share rights during a filmmaker or videographers lifetime. We accept all kinds of limitations on who can see it or when it will be shown. And because it's all about saving the footage and saving the history, so so it won't get lost in time. And with them, we return to the phone film donors, digital copies so they can often they're getting to see something that they haven't been able to view for 2030 years. And if they're if everybody's lucky and the friends are still around, everybody can get together again and laugh over all times. Well, really, thank you so much, Sharon, for being on the show. This is just an exciting project and so worthwhile to be saving all of this beautiful footage. So thank you very much. And anybody out there, come on, see Sharon and over your stuff. We only ask that you help us understand what it is. Yes. So thank you so much. I really appreciate your work as well. And we'll see you soon and we'll talk again. Take care. You too. Bye bye. I would like to start this interview with a quote and it's from Robert Cross. The afternoon knows what the morning never suspected and that was a quote that was used by today's guest when he wrote an article about LGBTQ seniors. So please welcome from the Fenway LGBTQ Aging Project, their assistant director, Bob Linscott. Welcome, Bob. Thank you. Great to be here. Thanks for asking me. Oh, I am so glad you could join us. And as I shared with you prior to our starting taping, in Vermont, we're having a growing conversation about what it might mean for LGBTQ Vermonters to age in place. But I think I wanted to start with the article you wrote was in 2014. So you've been working with elders for a while now. I started in 2006, actually. Was that at the Fenway as well? The Aging Project moved over to the Fenway, merged with the Fenway in 2013. But we were before that our own organization and we were housed at Ethos, which is one of the aging service access points in Boston. Okay. So would you tell? And then prior to that, I had been very much involved with LGBTQ youth through the whole GSA movement and with the head, been on the board of the organization, CLIS and K. Lesbian Straight Educators Network. So I've got full span here. I was going to say you're hitting both ends of the spectrum. Oh, yeah. So you mentioned it being an independent project that then merged with the Fenway. Could you tell us a little bit about who the Fenway is? Because not everyone in Vermont may be familiar with them. And what prompted you to merge services? So the Fenway Health is a federally qualified health center. And our specialty is the health and well-being for Lesbian by gay transgender intersex, the whole LGBTQIA community. And the people that are in our neighborhoods. So their mission is all about not only about it's not only about health, but advocacy and policy work and research. So they've been leading. I mean, they've been involved with the whole since the beginning of the AIDS crisis and now working with PrEP and all of this and working towards vaccine and tremendous amount of policy work as well. And so the LGBT aging project came on board when they really wanted to, Fenway's commitment is so deep that they wanted to look at the whole entire lifespan. And so they, right about the time we came in, they also took in the Sydney Borough Health Center, which is mostly focused on youth, LGBTQ youth. And even younger than that, because Fenway is very much supportive of family planning and insemination and all that. So we're the full lifespan. So they've got from children all the way to our older adults. So that's how we came in. And we nestled right well, very well into the education division. So we're in the Fenway Institute, which is the Research and Policy Division. And that's right what we do, because the LGBT aging project, we often call like the three legs of the stool, one of the legs is education and training. And so our mission is to make all the Elder Service organizations make to make sure that they are culturally competent so they can know to reach out and be welcoming and inclusive to LGBT older adults. There's no need to reinvent the wheel and create the separate program, you know, separate aging program for just LGBT elders. Because here in Massachusetts, our aging service network is excellent. It's really, it's quite good. So why can't, why don't we just go and make the existing network inclusive and welcoming? So, so, so that's so much of what so we'll get in and we'll do trainings with these aging service access points like where we have been with senior centers, with councils on aging. And then we will also do work in terms of policy for ourselves to make, you know, what are some of the policies out there? For an example of that right now, we have the first in the nation LGBT aging commission at the state level. So we are really deeply looking. So we've got representatives from all aspects of the government on the commission looking at, you know, health and wellness and medicine and public health and senior centers and senior living and, you know, all of this and housing. So that's the policy. And then also the third area is in terms of, you know, community. So we really do actively work to make sure that we are helping LGBT older adults themselves support community and create community programs and social groups and things like that. And if my research is correct, the Fenway sponsored three community forums, one in Boston, one on the Cape and one in Pittsfield, meeting with LGBTQ plus elders to say, okay, what do we need to hear? What are the issues that are confronting you? Right. What kinds of things did you learn? What is it that the elders shared with you saying this is what we need for services? The what you're talking about, we did the very beginning of the commission as we all the commissioners were gathering and doing the research about what are the issues that current issues for facing LGBT older adults all across the state. We went around in a number at the beginning, we went to, oh, Lord, we maybe five or six of these listening sessions all around the state. And then we did later midway through we've circled back again after a number of years, we did those three down in the Cape and Berkshares and in Boston. I think there are lots of different issues. And I think the probably that you will relate to exactly where you are in Vermont, housing was probably one of the biggest ones because this older adults, LGBT older adults get to a certain age. There's a huge fear that raises in there about, oh my God, what if I have to go into an assisted living or a nursing home and how will I be treated? And is it going to be homophobic environment? So the housing was one of the biggest issues there. But another one is just accessing programs and services. And exactly what you were saying is the issues in Vermont is people do not want to feel that they have to drive all the way into Boston to connect with other people. As you age, that's not possible anymore. Either transportation, transportation, mobility, there's just too many factors that make it challenging for people to drive, come into a city and park and things like that. So those are a couple of the bigger ones. And I had read that one of the things unique about our communities is that we tend to age alone and have more physical mental health issues related to lack of access to health care and services in that sense of isolation. Now, I understand that the Fenway got a grant from the Eastern Bank Charitable Foundation, and you were using it to improve or make technology more accessible to your elders to help reduce that sense of isolation? Yeah, I'm not sure which grant that one is. Is that the one recently during COVID? Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, we've actually, our response to COVID and it's been, and I think we're no different than anyone else. Everyone had to reinvent the wheel overnight and start from scratch because we have worked so hard over the last nearly two decades creating all of these programs. We've got, you know, we've got a, where do I put my meal side calendar? It's like, I don't know where it is now, but we've got these amazing meal programs, LGBT-friendly community meal programs, they're 24 of them all across the state. So these are like congregate meals for LGBT-owned adults. We've got those happening in all these different corners of the state. We've got different, we've got lifelong learning organizations for LGBT seniors. We've got social groups. We've got all this LGBT bereavement groups, caregiving groups, things like that. And then COVID came and overnight everyone was back, you know, we're starting from zero again because this community is dealing with one of the challenges is social isolation. And now everyone was shut in. The whole world was shut in. So we had to figure out how to get all these people reconnected again and trying to, I had a full head of hair before this, before trying to teach a whole group of older adults how to use Zoom and computers and webcams and, but we did it. We started small. We kept, we kept working and working, trying to get more people. And what, what our success was, I trained a small group of older adults and then got them so that they could reach out to different circles. And it was, that was the missing link was having older adults training other older adults because when I was a younger person, they would just be too embarrassed to say, I don't know how to do this. I'm, you know, can't figure it out and they just wouldn't do it. But they felt okay to ask another older adult, like, I don't understand, where is the microphone? What do I do? I'm lost. And so that was really helpful. And then through Eastern Bank, we got some funding to get other tablets to get to people that didn't have access and ended up seeing a lot of those folks were folks that were visually impaired that had a really hard time trying to see on a little phone or something like that. So, so that's where, that's where that, that came through. Even those of us who can wear glasses to do correction, both little screens on phones or not all that user friendly. So as Vermont tries to look at how to be supportive of our LGBTQ elders. Do you have suggestions as to how to develop resources? What, what were the things that worked really well for your aging project? And what are the things that we might want to avoid? Right, good questions. So I think that one of the things to avoid is the feeling like you've got to do it alone, because you don't, you know, you're surrounded by supports and resources. And, and I think that the one of the most important things is to connect exactly as we did here is as much as you can following the model of what was done in places where it has been successful, but to engage with your existing elder care network in Vermont, come to those agencies and work with them. And I think most they, every one of every older service agencies are mandated to serve all the people in their communities, not just white people, not just whatever, affluent, everyone, everyone, including gay, straight, everyone. So they, every elder service agency also has to do a needs assessment and do a plan for X number of years in some agencies, it's five years, 10 years, whatever. And they need to look at all the different subpopulations in the area. So the more that in Vermont, you can get into those two individual agencies, because then if they can create programmings out of your senior centers, your local senior centers and councils on aging, then there's stuff happening right there and that people don't need to go to the bigger cities or anything drive, drive somewhere. And what is often, especially when you're talking rural areas, there may not be a huge population in one particular corner of Vermont. But if you do regional programming, where five different communities band together and that there is a each one takes on a different week and we're going to do, we're going to have this regular coffee hour at this senior center on the first Monday. And then the second Tuesday, we're going to be over here and there's a game night at such and such. So you've got things that are right in your area. So you don't want people driving more than 15, 20 minutes or whatever like that to, you know, out of their way. I think the other thing that's going to be very interesting is that we, I don't think there's after COVID-19, there's going to be, there's no turning back for this whole online thing. So where our biggest project right now that we're working on is a virtual LGBTQ senior center. So I think programs will always be haven't had the hybrid model, they'll be in person options and they'll be, they'll be virtual options too, because hello, we're in New England, like the weather, the winters here are disaster at times, especially for people that don't want to be out at night or don't feel comfortable driving in bad weather. If I get three flakes of snow, half the people from our meal sites will say, I can't go out, I can't make it, you know. Yeah, and you're saying that on a day when we're encountering wind chills of 20 to 30 below. So the concept of going outside is not that appealing. So what if you had the option to do one thing differently, what would that be? I'm trying to think of what are the pitfalls that we could avoid. Yeah, one thing, one thing is from the very beginning, start with a commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion. We, when we first came on, it was, there was only white older gay men there, and it took a while to like engage the women, to get engagement. And again, once we engaged the women, it was still older white women. So, and it was, it was years into when we realized how come we don't have any people of color, older LGBT people of color here. So you've got to from the very beginning, have that commitment to reaching out to all the different populations to make sure they're all know they're included umbrella, you know, that's, you know, gender diverse, transgender, all, all of these communities need to be there from the very beginning. And then you had asked earlier about that the housing, you know, one of the housing pieces. And I know you've seen some of my articles, I don't know if you, I don't know if you saw the one about the, where it's kind of making the joke about what we can learn from the Golden Girls. Did you see that article? No, I didn't. I'll have to look for it. So, so one, and this is again, shows the importance of having a connection with these, these aging service access points or ASAPs that we call, I don't know if they call them ASAPs or not. But they, one of the things that a lot of these, the, the aging service access point is they're responsible for all the older adults in their catchment area. And there is such a big push, we're finally trying to turn away from like the, the days when nursing home was the only option, like that needs to be last resort now. So there's much more of a demand to age in place. And so that becomes challenging when you think about when you, when you think about people that are aging, you know, by themselves, which is so many of our community are aging by themselves because they're, they're not partner. They don't have children. They don't have grandchildren. And many are estranged from their families or distant from their family. So we've lost 80% of the caregiving right there. So, so what many of these ASAPs here are doing are doing these aging in place models. So we have one right here where I am called JP and in, in Jamaica Plain and it's called JP at home. And so it is basically all the network of different homes and together they, the, through the agency vets out different providers and things like that and support services and meal, you know, meal delivery and home care and house cleaning and things like that. So people can age right in their home and the services are shared between all the people in those different communities. And so, so I think that it's important to think about that when you, when you, and what I was saying about the golden girls model is, you know, that's wonderful that you've got all those women aging there, but that's horizontal caregiving. Those were all, we only saw the happy side of it, but we never saw the time where there was, you know, two hip fractures and, you know, there was someone was going through chemotherapy, like, what if all four of them are down and they're all aging, how they support each other, but to be, to be able to age in place in your own home and be supported by an agency to know that they're looking out for you, they can send people over to shovel, they can get the groceries delivered, they can so, so these things are important. And if you want to, if we can come in and do some talks of some of the aging service leaders in your area, happy to do that, you know, with the aging project, happy to come in and give talks about how you kickstart this and get this going, because you can't wait, you really, you really can't wait. This is our current, our current population, sorry, our current population of seniors, you know, we need to make sure that they are taken care of. So, yeah. And with that, I need to say thank you for spending this time with us. I definitely will get in touch to talk about training, because that's also been a priority for us here is ensuring that those people from within the mainstream organizations who are providing services get that type of cultural awareness training that they know where to go and where not to go. Yes. So with that, thank you. You're very welcome. Anytime, anytime. It was a pleasure. I'm going to keep you to that. Okay, you got it. Hi, everybody. I'm here with Cindy Watson, CEO of Jasmine in Jacksonville, Florida. And Jasmine stands for Jacksonville Area Sexual Minority Youth Network. Thank you, Cindy. Thank you, Anne. It's delightful to be here. It's wonderful to have you. And before we start, I want to shout out to our mutual friend, Rachel Desalets, who's an ally of the show and of all things good and activist in her own right. So she brought us together for this interview. So, hi, Rachel. Hi, Rachel, who's been a friend of mine for over 30 years. Really? Yeah. Rachel's a real powerhouse. She truly is. I'd like to start by reading your bio, which is from the website, and the website will appear periodically as we talk. And then we can go from there. Cindy started her career as a community organizer in Arctic Alaska, helping native Inupiac women claim their right to safety and freedom from domestic violence and sexual assault. Are you from Alaska? No, I grew up in South Carolina. Well, there we go. She honed her leadership skills in Vermont in the 1980s when she served as executive director of a rural women's center as champion for women's safety, economic advancement, family and social support. Her work in Northeast Florida has spanned over 25 years and includes advocacy for legal justice, health access, and child safety with Jacksonville area legal aid, followed by her role as founding board member and eventually the CEO of Jasmine, where she holds the vision and guides the resources to realize Jasmine's dream of creating a better world for LGBTQ young people. Thank you for your work. Thank you. Thank you. It's been an inspiring journey, you know, working with a lot of different marginalized populations, but this work at Jasmine really is close to my heart. As a lesbian, you know, it's always been kind of an important piece of work for me. Tell us a little about your time in Vermont. How long did you live here? So I came to Vermont in 82 and was here about eight, about nine years, or was in Vermont about nine years. I came from Alaska and, you know, I had been in Alaska for a couple of years as a Vista volunteer, so that was my work in the Northwest Arctic. In Vermont, I very quickly, I connected with the Umbrella Women's Center and just met the most dynamic, powerful, brilliant group of women in the Northeast Queendom who were doing great community work in response to all kinds of women's issues. So that was a privilege for me to serve in that role as the executive director. It's how I met Rachel. I met a lot of really great folks and I learned and I learned so much in Vermont about community organizing, about building community, about really listening to what women need and what people need. One of the projects that we took on was working to raise the issues and needs for lesbians in the community and that was in the 80s. So that was, you know, that was pretty new. We had a really powerful community group that guided that process. We did workshops, we talked, we did advocacy and actually at some point we hosted a training that outright Vermont presented in St. Johnsbury to a group of folks in the community and that's how I learned about outright and I really began to understand how important it was to work with young people who are LGBTQ to really provide those supports because young people can be very much more vulnerable when facing bias and oppression and rejection. And so, you know, that planted a seed for me in Vermont, one of the many seeds that I brought to Florida. How did you happen to move to Florida and found Jasmine? Well, I got, in Vermont, I met my now partner, Garnett, and she was from Mississippi. I was from South Carolina and at some point we said, you know, we're born Southerners and there's a lot of work to do in the South and maybe we need to move back South and do some of this work. So it was a very intentional decision. You know, we came, Garnett's an attorney and now practices law in Georgia. So we wanted to be in that sort of Georgia, Florida area and we landed in, we had friends in St. Augustine and a women's community called the Pagoda. So we landed at the Pagoda for a few months and then eventually settled in Jacksonville. And within the first year, I was working at Legal Aid, but I began to volunteer with a group of folks, young people and adults who were creating Jasmine. They wanted to create safe space for gay and lesbian youth. They were running support groups in the public library and really decided at some point that the young people in Jacksonville needed more than one hour a week in the public library. They needed a lot more support, needed to do a lot more work in the community. And so that's when I really got involved and helped to incorporate the organization. So, you know, the articles of incorporation were signed in my living room, you know, on coming out day in 1994. And we marked that as our sort of launch to do this bigger work. I have to tell you, when I first got to Jacksonville, I really did not like it was such a hard transition from Vermont for so many reasons. But, you know, Vermont just has such a such an engaged and sweet spirit when it comes to doing social change work that was not present in St. John's Berry. But I mean, in Jacksonville. But I got inspired. I really just figured out if I wanted to do social change work in the South Jacksonville, Florida was a great place to do it because there was a lot to be done. And so I just dug in my heels and began to organize and created now after 25 plus years, we've created this amazing community organization that's very well known and regarded well. And, you know, it was really we have a place at the table in a medium sized southern city to address, you know, LGBT and issues around racial equity and justice and health justice. We do a lot of work in the health space. So we're we're doing some really great work. Yeah, with young people. And now you have a budget of $2 million and 22 staff members and you know, the year is so true. Yeah, we've really beginnings. Yeah, we have really grown. You know, a lot, a lot of changes started to happen when marriage equality came through, you know, when we finally as a LGBTQ community got marriage equality and then Florida finally opened up. I think that really gave the space created the space for a lot of people who were supporters and allies to really come forward and step out and become engaged and invest in this kind of work. And so it's been those really big investments that have made, you know, made the difference over time. Well, one of the common interview questions these days is how have you been responding to the pandemic? It's been a major adjustment, I imagine you have three buildings and a lot of you had you had a lot of walk-in services and tell us how you. Yeah, so before before COVID, we had just we had just opened our third building, which is dedicated to responding to youth experiencing homelessness. So many of our young people, particularly youth of color and particularly those with HIV, are rejected by families and end up being on the street or very unstably housed and bouncing around. So we had just opened this beautiful renovation of 100-year-old building to be a welcome center, the front door for and to a way for young people to come in to connect to get basic needs and also to link to all the other services in town with real advocacy by our care coordinators. So when when we had to shut down for the pandemic in the middle of March, we really everything had to shut down, as I'm sure happened in Vermont and everywhere else. But we maintained the youth the youth center for youth experiencing homelessness. We kept that open for for several hours a week so that young people would be able to get hygiene. We have showers there and would be able to to stay clean if they're on the streets or unstably housed and we could give them hot meals and help them get connected. So we got several youth off the streets during the during that immediate shutdown and into hotels so they could be safe. You know we've since then I think in May we began to open up with clinical services because we do a lot of sexual health services and HIV testing and we offer PrEP and several of those kinds of services. So we were able to reopen some of those very slowly and carefully. The only thing we have not been able to reopen yet are our youth center group kinds of programs and we do a lot with high school students. They have their gender and sexuality alliances, their GSA clubs on school campuses and we do leadership training and we support them and go to their clubs and work with the teachers and work with the administrators to really make sure that that is a viable support system for young people. That has had to pause because schools have not been in operation. When they are they don't have after school clubs. So we're having to be very creative like I'm sure outright and every other organization with our online programming with our with our groups and chats and all those things to stay connected and to be a resource for young people. It's had a tremendous effect on our on our work. Oh yeah it's got to be a particular challenge because if youth is homeless they don't have internet access. So you can't do zoom meetings. Right right they don't have stable even if they have phones they don't have stable access and so there's there's lots of challenges. Yeah actually zoom meetings for for the young people that we work with is this doesn't really work. We've had to find other ways to connect. We can't wait to be able to fully open our center again but but you know young people do stop by. We do have certain hours that young people can stop by. We're very careful about the numbers of kids who can come in but we have Wi-Fi all over the campus so you know there's a lot of they can they can still come and get connected which is really really important. You are so right and broadband access is I don't know if you remember is a particular challenge in world for a month. So some people are really kind of out of luck during the pandemic. Yeah you know we one of the one of our slogans for 2020 was pivot is the new plan because pivot is what we did all year long with every kind of youth service with every fundraising event with every meeting I mean everything had to shift as you I'm sure you well know and we have a we have a really strong group of folks who are connected with Jasmine the young people are very resilient and the adults are very committed and dedicated and and so we've been able to you know not just survive but be innovative and creative and find ways to to do things differently that are still very very impactful for young people. What are some of your current projects besides being able to reopen? Well we had a dream to add a mental health initiative at the beginning of 2020 we actually had funding and we're ready and then when when the pandemic happened we're like oh my god how do we do that but you know and mental health issues are so critical suicide rates are up I'm very worried about young people as I'm sure you know people are worried about a lot of folks because the isolation has been so extreme and then for young people who've had to who are at home who've had to be housed in places that might not be affirming and safe you know there's a lot of depression and and you know even the potential for violence and so we're really concerned about the impact the pandemic has had on young people's mental health so we have actually been able to develop and and begin to expand a mental health program that offers some virtual counseling some limited on-campus groups really small offerings and and you know some other one-on-one services and I'm really proud of that as a matter of fact we have a partnership with Smith College in Massachusetts to send interns to send their MSW interns for you know for to help to assist with the mental health college isn't that great you're developing you have a national profile then obviously too we have we have a we have a jasmine satellites all over the country because when you run a youth center for over 25 years many young people have come up through that and and then they're alumni and they've gone on to all kinds of places and they take you know jasmine in their heart and you know put in a plug so we've had we've had staff and youth go to Smith and be in their their graduate programs there so you know oh well we know this great place in the south it's called jasmine in Jacksonville so yeah we we do have connections all over the country for that reason that's fabulous so what do you have any future goals you know in addition to just beginning to reopen and really support young people we actually we we have an immediate goal to complete our campus we have three buildings they're all over a hundred years old we did a full renovation of the third building and now we're going back to the we call them j1 j2 j3 now we're going back to the first two buildings because they need some upgrades to really round out accessibility and safety and we need to expand our clinic and then these three buildings are on a corner and there's an inside sort of a backyard that we have a beautiful plan to turn into a really wonderful campus space and place that young people can we're with outdoor classroom with stage with a zen garden with the kinds of things to round out the experiences for young people you know urban youth don't often spend time outdoors in the south it's too hot a lot of the year and it's too buggy and then even and then this time of year it can be what we think of as chilly okay it's 65 degrees outside right now so it's it's sweater day for us people you know i'm not in my backyard but this is a picture of my backyard right now so having outdoor space for young people is so important that's a that's a Vermont thing being surrounded by green and trees and you know breathing fresh air that is so healing in and of itself and that's that's the other piece of this campus completion that we're working on the safe place and we we feel like an organization like jasmine in a city like Jacksonville is this important a part of the institute is an important part of the social and the fabric of the community as the airport or the library or the school system there has to be a place for LGBTQ young people for youth of color to really feel like this is their space and this is their home and we can be that beacon of you know of pride and celebration for all of them so that's what we're going for i couldn't agree more these are worthy this is such a worthy project um and i hope you'll come back again and tell us more about it as you progress and achieve some of these goals before we close out are there any last words you want to share with the audience um you know i just because this is Vermont i just want to say how really grateful i am to have had the privilege to to live in vermont and to learn in vermont and to love in vermont it's such a wonderful inspiring place deep in my heart and so it's just a thrill to reconnect in any way possible um if there are any old friends that that see this i'd love to hear from folks um you know it's i carry it with me always cindy watson thank you for joining us thank you an thank you for joining us we'll see you in two weeks but in the meantime resist