 I'm Deborah Gordon-Taslow. I've lived in the Rogue Valley for over, gosh, I got here in the beginning of 1972, so almost 50 years. When I arrived here, I was 20, I'm almost 70 now, so I arrived with my first husband. I had married very young, and feminism was a new thing to me. When I had gotten married in 1970, I had figured out that I would learn how to cook and make dinner every night from husband, etc., etc., and that quickly devolved. I had an older sister who was a little bit of a revolutionary and a college graduate by then, and she was sort of schooling me in feminism, which was a new thing that Mark, my ex-sister, and I would have to share the chores. I remember when it was his turn to do the dishes, I would let those dishes pile up until he did them for days and say nothing, and then it was my turn after he did it, so I was schooling him in that. So I got involved in the early feminist movement in southern Oregon by way of the Women's Health Center, and I'd gotten here in 1972. So in 1973, I went to a benefit garage sale for the Ashland Women's Health Center that was held down in the basement of, I think it was called the Pillars or the Owl Coffee House. It's kind of where the Intaj Indian restaurant is now, but underneath. And I walked in, and there was Amy Horowitz in a pair of roller skates, and she was flitting around, and she saw me. I was wearing an Israeli embroidered top, and she had been to Israel a few times, and she skated over to me, and that was the beginning of my involvement with the Women's Health Center, which was, for the first time, we had an off sheet. Amy was the VISTA volunteer. She had somehow arranged to get paid to organize the Women's Health Center, and so we had offices that were up above, not the plaza, but where it used to be the Ashland Steakhouse, which was one of the only restaurants in Ashland, the Steakhouse Cafe. And we had these little, you had to walk way up steps, and then there were office buildings there, and then we had a little suite of rooms. So I'm saying we, because it was really Amy who had organized it, and then it was kind of a collective of women, but she was the paid organizer. I think, you know, what was amazing about that time was, I remember thinking, there are all these women here who have not ever seen parts of their bodies, like we have gone to gynecologists who are men, and we have been told how to take care of our bodies, how to have babies, how to, all of that. And we were now, even though we were not medical professionals, we were saying, oh, these are our bodies, and we're going to find out. We would actually climb onto these, we had exam tables, and I remember we would have like training sessions. I remember volunteering to be the model, and getting up on the table, and there's all these women with their, you know, with a speculum and flashlights, like giving exams to me. I would never do that now, but it was so exciting to have this happening that we were learning, oh, with a mirror, this is what this thing inside me, my cervix looks like. We had no idea, and Amy was at the helm, and we would have meetings, just these meetings were the first time that I had ever had meetings with women, you know, that were all women, and they were lesbian women, straight women, older women, not, I don't remember anybody, to me, old was 40 then, right? But there were women who were in there, Amy and I were in our 20s, and there were a lot of women who were in their 20s and 30s, and then there were some in their 40s and so on. But we would all talk not only about the organization, but what we were going to do, but talk about our lives, and that in itself was revolutionary. Some of us were married, most were not, I had gotten married pretty young. So, you know, we would, I remember talking, we would talk about sexuality, we would talk about abortion, I was mentioning to you later that the health department, the Jackson County Health Department was involved through Amy, and the health department director Al Kearns would come and talk to us about how to do what to do, and I can't imagine that he would give over all of this stuff to lay professionals, but he was very supportive, I mean he was genuinely supportive, not just because the health department had directed him to, and I have to say that Amy has a lesbian, had a way of attracting men, and there were a lot of, she has a lot, and continues to have a lot of male supporters who are very into helping whatever Amy wants, because she's magnetic. And so he would kind of train us in what to do. I don't recall being involved in doing a lot of the medical stuff on clients who came in, I was mostly kind of helping with the organizing, and with grant writing, because Amy and I discovered very quickly that we were simpatico, and one of the ways that we were simpatico was that we were both writers, and we were both articulate. So we would sit down to write a press release or a grant, and she would start a sentence and I would finish it, and we would write grant proposals and press releases, and she would send, I remember her sending me out to talk about the Women's Health Center. She sent me out, there was a women's conference, and this was probably one of the first at Southern Oregon University. It was in the student union, the rogue room, rogue river room, and so I prepared a speech and so on about what the Women's Health Center did, and then I remember like nobody came, and I had this speech, but it was just, you know, there's probably about 10 women there, because either it hadn't been advertised or there wasn't quite enough juice generated yet for women to want to come. One of the things that we did, Amy and I and a couple of other women took a field trip out to Kiliman, where there were communes, and we went to the Magic Forest Farm, because another woman, Jean Sargent, who was a close friend of Amy's at the time, she had lived there and was now living in Ashland, and we went out there to specifically to meet Jim Shames, who is now the director of Jackson County Public Health, but he started, he and his wife-to-be, Heidi, started the Tekelma Health Clinic. He was a doctor and a very young doctor, and we all arrived there, and everyone was walking around with that their clothes on, so we took our clothes off, and we went to the Women's Health, not the Women's Health Clinic, but the Tekelma Health Clinic, and Dr. Shames gave us some instructions on how to handle things and so on. So that was my experience with the Tekelma folks who had come from all over to live this ideal life on a commune, and then their idea of free health care for the community was something that we wanted to connect with and then use some of that model for our clinic. I don't know anything about the displaced home workers, but the women in transition, which happened later in the late 70s, I happened to, after my divorce, I lived with a woman named Derdra Sartorius, who had been part of a commune here and so on, and Derdra, who I'm still kind of in touch with too, who lives on the coast now, was one of the first people involved with WIT, Women in Transition, and of course the big mover and shaker there was Rosemary Dunn-Dalton, which I'm sure you know about, right? You know about Rosemary, and she really created the Dunn House, but this program was based at SOU, and Derdra was one of the women who worked with the WITs, the Women in Transition, and there was a whole group of them who ran a counseling center or a women's center at SOU in the later 70s for many years, so, and I'm not sure what happened with that program, but that there were all these women at SOU or associate, I don't think you had to be a student to come in and use those services, so there was mostly counseling services helping women to, you know, figure out the logistics of their lives and particularly women who needed help or shelter or support in whatever way that was, and there was a whole group of women who were involved with that, but there was this heady sense of taking control of our bodies and our lives. I don't remember if the book Our Bodies, Ourselves, had come out quite yet, but that was a very important book for many of us. Ruth Alexander, who was one of the women on the Boston Women's Health Collective, ended up living here many years later. Our daughters were friends in the 80s. Anyway, 80s and 90s, she still lives here, but she's not well anymore, but anyway, there was this whole sense of we were doing this, and I remember there was a little bit of a disconnect because I was also a college student, and I remember being in a, like, it was required to take, I don't know, communication, speech class in whatever liberal arts curriculum I had, and I remember being in this class and everybody, they were all like 20-year-olds like me, many of whom were male. I remember giving a little speech about feminism and about how I had discovered that my beauty wasn't my only asset and that how intoxicating it was to not have to shave my legs or my armpits or, you know, wear makeup, and I remember the horrified looks of the young men in that class, and I wasn't doing it to be shocking. I was just like saying, wow, this is this thing. They were like, no, I can't be. So, you know, I was living in that world and also the world of women being involved with women's health center. You know, I remember, you know, we would talk about things, we would talk about abortions, we would talk about sex, we would talk about our particular, like we would talk about infections and things like that. And, you know, I remember one time I was getting, having, going to get an IUD inserted. I remember Amy and my husband came with me, but it was very much in contrast to when I first had an IUD, I was having one taken out and another one put in because I had the Dalcon shield, which was determined to be dangerous. But when I had first had it put in, I remember when I was, I don't know, 19 or something back in Los Angeles, going to Kaiser Permanente and saying that I wanted an IUD. And I remember, you know, waiting in the waiting room and the doctor came in and he said, I mean, this was the conversation we had. He said, here are the ones that I've taken out of other women and he threw a bunch of them on the, on the table and said, if you really want this, I'll do it. I said, well, you know, I, here's, I haven't been able to use birth control pills because they make me sick and I don't want to have another child. I don't want to have any child and et cetera, et cetera. And he said, fine. And he shoved it in. I, I passed out from the pain and the guy was so insensitive and that was a fairly typical response to women's, rather than having a conversation, what can we do about birth control? How do we, you know, whereas now what was happening was when I went this time, Amy came with me, Mark came with me, we, it was like, we're taking care of you and we're going to talk with the doctor about what you want, why, why you want it or don't want it or, but that was a very new thing. You know, my sister had recently had a baby and it was revolutionary that she had Lamaze classes and she didn't have a home birth like I did a few years later, but she had natural childbirth. That was like revolutionary. It's still not everybody does it, but women were, you know, still being sort of, you know, locked into stirrups and drugged and, and the idea was that men were in charge and now men weren't in charge. You know, we were saying we have some say so in our bodies and our lives. I'm trying to remember who else was, was involved, you know, besides Amy and I in the health department. There was a woman named Julie Chapman who was very prominent. Judith Wright Visser still lives here and was very involved. I don't remember. There were women from all over. Cisco Davis who was Jane Davis at the time was involved. There were not too many women that had children of course because they didn't have too much time, but it was kind of a variety of women and a group effort. You know, and eventually I, you know, Amy left. That women's health center became the Ashland Community Health Center. I don't know if you know that and Kathy Shaw was one of the, I think she was the executive director and my friend Julie Tidalbaum who was Julie Schwartz then worked as a technician there. I don't know how that happened, how that transition happened. And I think, you know, I got busy with finally trying to finish college and other things that were going on in my life like a mother dying and a divorce and so on. But I think the whole gestalt of what was happening stayed with me and in that sense, you know, I became in the 80s and so on. I became a storyteller. I became a teacher and a storyteller. I remember my first teaching job in 78. I taught third grade in Central Point and I remember we had career day and on that day we were supposed to talk about careers. And Central Point was not quite as highly conscious as Ashland. So in my, we had to do activities that had to do with careers. So my activity was, I did a survey with third graders and we had different groups rotating in and I listed a bunch of jobs and said, what do you think of male or female when I say these jobs and they would check it off? And then we talked about the stereotypes with these little eight year olds and nine year olds. And I remember the other teachers thinking this isn't a career day activity. This is that Ashland teacher with a feminist. But it was eye-opening, you know, to the kids and then to talk about, well, if I say doctor and you say female, what is, why wouldn't a female be able to be a doctor? And it was really interesting to have these discussions and see what the boy said and what the girl said and so on. So I carried that in and when I became a storyteller, very quickly I realized that all of these stories that I was telling, and I was telling them to kids and now I tell more to adults that all of the heroes, and these were mostly European fairy tales and so on, folk tales, all of the heroes were male. And at the same time, I was realizing that stories have a deep influence on our psyche. I was reading, you know, Carl Jung and Bruno Bettelheim and so I started looking for collections of stories that had women who were more than just passive princesses waiting to be rescued. So that became a thing of mine that I would, I went around after, after I started having kids in the 80s and then became a professional storyteller, I would go and tell stories at schools and stuff and that was my, part of my specialty. So, and it remains that to this day when I tell stories and I tell stories in, my husband now is a rabbi, different husband than the first one. You know, we've been married for about 40 years and my specialty is telling Jewish stories now and spiritual stories, but I kind of, I change those with my storyteller's license. In fact, I'm working now on a collection with another group, with a group of Jewish women who are taking some of the old traditional Hasidic stories and changing the endings or featuring women because even God language, calling God he, all of that and having the main characters be men has a huge influence on girls who are listening to these stories. You know, it's really discouraging to have your role models only be, you know, passive and sort of helpmates rather than active heroines. So, you know, there's still so much work to be done. You know, we just had a, you know, our new vice president is going to be a woman. You know, countries all over the world have had women leaders, but not the United States. So, I mean, sexism is so incredibly insidious and pervasive, you know. So, you know, I've seen a lot of changes. We've had women mayors here, we have another one now, but women certainly have more of a strong voice than they did in the 70s, but there's still, you know, a deep sense of sexism that has permeated our culture that, you know, that we still have to deal with. Yeah. The women at the Women's Health Center were women who lived here, although, you know, they were, they had come from other places. I remember sitting at a meeting and there were all of us kind of hippie women sitting there and in walked. Oh, what's her name? Annette Pugh and Annette and Lance, who are both dead now. Annette was also a young woman a little older than us, and she was wearing a beautiful dress and walking in very wriggly, and she owned a whole part of town, town she and Lance, and Lithia Grocery was the main one that she owned, and she walked in and said, I would like to help, and we were like, you would. You're a woman who has some stature and some money and some, and she said, yes, I want to be involved. And she came in and I don't recall her being involved later, but I don't know if she donated money or if she got involved in an activity or whatever, but she was local, but she had, they had moved here from somewhere else. And all of the other women lived here. And including those at the gathering, I don't recall there being other women, but there were plenty of women in Southern Oregon who were interested in coming. So Amy was really responsible for saying, let's have a women's festival. And she, I talked to her recently and we've remained friends for 50 years. I'm the godmother of her daughter and so on, but she says that there was an original meeting of women's space that I don't know about it. But what I remember was having a big, we decided to have a big gathering, and it was what's now called Camp Latgawa, then it was called Soda Springs, and or at least we called it that. And we had several meetings to organize that. I mean, there aren't many people who can organize a big event, especially, I mean, Amy was 21 years old, but it was, there were hundreds of women and we had all kinds of workshops. So this came out of Amy's work with women's health, but it really was the outgrowth of feminism and the women's culture that was evolving. And I remember we had a lot of meetings up in that health center to organize this conference. It was a weekend, it was like a two day, yeah, because there was one overnight. There were workshops on, I remember going to a writing workshop, I remember going to Sylvia Goodman, who was a Rykeian therapist in town, and she had a whole workshop. I remember trying to remember the name of the woman who was in charge of food, but we all brought all kinds of food and she cooked huge meals. I remember spending the night in a cabin. I remember staying up all night talking with other women. I mean, there were so many things that were going on there. And I remember I made a huge banner and I have no idea if this banner still exists that said women's space. And I had gotten the idea from my sister, but I had all these made of fabric women's symbols on this huge banner. And then I made a big circle and then around that I had, and I'm not a much of a stitchery person, but back then I was motivated. So we have this huge banner in fabric that said women's space. Apparently it became women's source after that. That was the only gathering that I went to. And 20 years after that, so that was like in 72 or something or 74. It was before Amy, I must have been about 74. Yeah. 20 years later in 94, I was part of a true kind of an improv group called Playback Theater. And we were asked to come up to the, it was a Girl Scout camp by Lake of the Woods. And they had the 20th reunion of women's, it was called women's source. And we came up and there were about, oh gosh, I don't know, there were, there were maybe, there were less than a hundred women, but it was a good size group in a hall or whatever. And then we did a playback performance of women's stories through the years. A lot of my friends now who were in, you know, 60s and 70s. I mean, I don't mean the 1960s and 1970s. I mean, we're, we're older now. And you know, we, we've mellowed a bit, but we're still, I think, adamant about being in charge of our lives and our bodies. So some things have changed and some things haven't. So you and I were talking a little bit about the issue of right to life before. And I would say that in the 70s, for the first time, you know, we were talking about, you know, abortion had not been legal. And I was saying to you before that in the, in 1968, at 17 years old, I had an abortion on a kitchen table in Sunset Boulevard, which was a horrifying, terrible experience. And when I got to Southern Oregon and in the 70s, and it was the first time we were really talking about abortion, I was talking with women who were having abortions and kind of taking it, not for granted, but very grateful that now we could get safe and legal abortions. That was a huge step. And you know, I'm a rabbi's wife now. And so I'm a, I would say a spiritual religious woman, but I'm adamant about right to life. I'm not right to life, but right to choose. And you know, I was saying to you before that I have a nephew who was a big mucky muck in the narrow organization in New York. And we've had conversations about this because I have what would call a religious view that includes a woman's right to choose, which I think too many fundamentalists is unthinkable. And you know, my belief is that at the moment of conception, there is life, which is a position that's untenable in terms of fighting for abortion rights. But I can reconcile that because I feel like it's part of the incredible abundant life force that is God. And it's available all the time. Life is everywhere in the trees, in the grass, in the birds, and being offered all the time, all the seeds that are dropping from the trees. And I throw out a lot of those seeds. And I feel like a woman has the right to say, thank you, God, for the sacred offer. No, thank you. This is not the time for me to bear life. I think women are the sacred holders of life. And we have to be given absolute sovereignty over our own holy bodies and totally are capable of saying no. And to me, that's not any kind of sin at all. It's just a saying, no, thank you, not right now. And there will still be abundance. So you know, I've also, you know, thinking about, I haven't done this yet, but in terms of having, you know, ceremonies that honor life and honor the choice of abortion, you know, complete with prayers and rituals and so on. I've been part of doing mikvahs after abortions and miscarriages and so on. Mikvah is a ritual immersion. We have a mikvah bath in Southern Oregon and with women and as part of a lot of women's ceremonial work that I'm involved with as the wife of a rabbi. So I mean, I don't know if you want to include any of that or if that has anything to do with the history of Southern Oregon, but that's kind of how it's manifested in me as a spiritual woman who would still call herself a feminist. You know, my daughter, by the way, who's just turned 39 the other day, is a midwife and she has a PhD in women's studies and she has a birthing clinic in Uganda. She implemented it, started it, funds it, but it's run by the traditional birthing attendants there. And, you know, I like to think that my spirit of feminism inspired her, although she's a pretty much self-made young woman, but, you know, she's working in an area of women's bodies and is a very strong feminist and is very influential in that area in the world. So that's kind of a little effect. And Amy's daughter is a young feminist as well. She's a lot younger, but yeah, I like to think we've spawned this generation of women. That's the only way I can take credit for, you know, probably Rachel, my daughter's done more in her life than I have in my life and I love that. I love the fact that she's out there doing the work. Well, I don't know. I would say that, you know, now almost 50 years later, we're looking at a world that in many ways looks very different. We have a woman vice president. We have women news anchors, etc, etc, etc. But I feel like there's still a lot of work to be done. You know, like I was saying, we have women news anchors, but they're, you know, still have to be very gorgeous and sexy and so on. There's still a pervasive sense of who women are and women's place. And if you talk to any of these women, they will tell you that they have had to work tooth and nail to get where they are. So there's still a lot of work to be done. I mean, we have right now we have abortion rights, but they're really threatened. And we have the Supreme Court that's come in the new. So I'm banking on the strength of the younger generation, like my daughter who is a feminist and a midwife, like so many of the young women that I know, children of my friends who are doctors and lawyers and are doing amazing things in this world. And you know, I think that we sowed those seeds and we were really lucky to be at the vanguard of, wow, we could actually do things for ourselves. We could take control of our own bodies. We can, we can perhaps direct the conversation. So I hope that that directing of the conversation has manifested in a larger conversation that's still going on, but that has, you know, a little bit of the blossoms from the seeds of what that we sowed in the 70s.