-: Now, I'm gonna say, I'm gonna do the introduction.
This is Rose Norman and I'm sitting here
with Kathleen Corky Culver at her home in Melrose,
Florida and we're talking about
her lesbian feminist activism
in Gainesville in the early 70s.
I want her to talk now, about the Renaissance,
Women's Renaissance Fair that KFS,
her organization, KFS organized in 1974.
-: Okay.
I had been, for some years, in a lesbian CR group and
had been politicized
and was a feminist and then our crew,
that group kind of split off at a certain point.
Those who were interested in electoral politics
and those who were interested in the arts and land.
Then the spring of '74
two groups who had, one group of feminist
who had been straight (laughs)
wanted to explore, they were reading about feminism.
They had been in a women's CR group, some of 'em,
but they wanted to explore loving women
and we all met one day, it was like,
on Valentine's Day, or the day after,
and we all just ignited each other.
It was so exciting!
We just really liked each other
The Melrose crew had a tradition of singing,
singing together, and we did activist songs
and just general folk songs kinda,
Peter, Paul, and Mary, and then the new wave of 'em,
they had very firm roots in art,
and so we all started hanging out together and we just,
it was like surf rising, we thought.
That's where we got the idea of froth and slosh.
We'd talk and then we'd burst up with new ideas
and wanna enact them right away and we had that,
which is the basic format of the CR that we had been doing,
which is speak from your own experience,
develop some theory and then develop an action,
some way to respond to that and share what we're learning.
And as we speak from our own experience,
we found we had many of the same experiences
that we had individualized and thought,
awe, I feel different, I don't have anybody
to hang out with, I must be anti-social or something,
and say, hey, wait a minute,
that's not so and I have a right to be this
and others feel the same way,
and we can wear blue jeans if we want, or whatever,
and it's okay
to not want to play the woman's role in society
and so we immediately, did a women's art show.
We said, there's not enough, where are the women artists,
and the museums, and the books, and the writers,
so we immediately, wanted to act on that,
and we had one art show and then we said,
let's have a big one in Gainesville.
We had a little one in Jacksonville,
and amongst us, there were a variety of different arts,
and so we planned this for months,
I mean, we really planned it,
and our idea was that it would showcase women artists
and we would have painting, we would have drawing,
and it would be feminists.
We would have music, we would have dance,
we would have quilters and fabric people,
and we gathered and gathered and gathered.
We had three tents and a large stage,
and the tents, we had a workshop on changing oil
in the car and small repairs.
We saw all these ways that women
could be empowered by getting skills
that they had been denied.
We had sickle cell testing,
we had a look-at-yourself with a speculum tent,
we had lots of music, we had several women's dance groups
that were from local dance teachers.
There was only one speaker all day.
The idea was to show and to experience women's arts
and not just be talking about it
and talking about women's issues and not have a argument
and accusation be the theme of the day,
it wasn't, or victimhood.
It was all about celebrating
what we actually, have in our end.
So it was a really, there were 100s
of people in the course of the day.
It was at the Thomas Center, it's a beautiful Spanish hotel
with beautiful grounds, beautiful meadows,
a rose garden and oak trees, and we dressed up.
Some of us dressed up in little capes and had face makeup
and it was really fun,
and all women artists, all day long.
And we didn't say the word lesbian but some women
were walking around holding hands, and over the years,
I've heard many people say that's the first time
they ever saw that, out in a beautiful public space,
just the dancing, and singing, and drumming,
and art, and quilts, and paintings,
and there had never been anything like it
and there really hasn't been anything like it, since.
Because the urgency of the whole movement was under there.
It wasn't just an art event, it was
let women be all who they can be.
Later, we got an award from the African Socialist Party
because we, I think because Katura Carey was
-: The speaker.
-: the speaker.
-: How do you spell her name, Katura?
-: I think it's K-A-T-U-R-A C-A-R-E-Y.
You can see that this came
from our feminists and from our lesbian CR.
Those things played in to what our understanding
of how important what we were doing was
and we didn't have to argue it out,
it was just all over the place, real.
And people were lying on blankets and watching,
and the entertainment went on all day,
and women came from around the state to sing and perform,
and we had the Tampa Feminist Guerrilla Theater,
did their skits and they are just absolutely phenomenal.
Phenomenal!
The argument was embedded in the theater,
like they had one skit where, it was called Smile,
and they would just have these ridiculous smiles but women,
always supposed to have the coat hanger in the mouth.
And they had one about shaving,
and I wish I had the copies of those.
They were brilliant and just fantastic!
Good theater, and funny, and making the points,
the eye-opener points about women's,
at that time and
-: What was their name again,
Tampa Women's Guerrilla Theater?
-: Feminist Tampa, Feminist,
let's see Guerrilla Theater, I don't know
-: I can check that. -: what that name, yeah.
But it had feminist. -: And some of those
women are still around like,
Dee Graham and Kathy, well, Kathy Freeperson
isn't around anymore, but Pam, she wasn't in the theater,
Pam, let's see, anyway, Snake, was in it,
and they were from, we went down to visit them,
they were the Lux Liberation Front and I thought,
we got a letter from them when we were organizing
the festival, looking for women artists around the state
and I thought, my god, in this little town,
there's a liberation front.
-: What town? -: I think it
was a longer,
-: Not Tampa. -: it was like,
Lux Liberation Tea and Freedom Front, or something.
I think I could get that name.
-: You said Tampa before but what?
-: It's a little tiny town near Tampa.
-: Okay.
-: Yeah, and they were fantastic.
And it took a long time to organize all this,
and it was just a splendid amazing day,
and it wasn't at all about money, of course,
and we were just volunteering.
We gathered a few donations, here and there but it was,
and we weren't trying to make any money, we were just,
it was out of this enormous love of what,
the feeling that we had for one another
and for women's possibilities
and opening up these things
which have been suppressed a lot.
And we had probably, Republican women and we didn't
vet their politics or anything.
It was about art,
a very beautiful, joyous day.
-: It's the performers, you didn't vet
the politics of the performers.
-: What?
-: Of the performers, you didn't vet
the politics of the performers.
You were more interested in there being women
than there being, -: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
-: then there being feminists, or?
-: Like, or the paint that you,
we just tried to get good women artists and I guess,
the ones who would be in such a show where, I don't know.
Anyway, it wasn't about each
of those artists and their issues.
It was about, they are women
who are accomplishing in the arts and,
well, Arika, there was some guys drumming
and I went up to them and I said, this is for women artists
and it's a spiritual self-help,
or group like EST or something, something like that,
and the guy said, well, the women can't play the drums,
and I said, oh, come on, and the women said,
wait a minute, we'll play, and they played all day
and it was just fantastic, and I said,
well, this is the women's day here,
and it was great, it was great.
-: Do you mean those men just showed up
or there was an organization that was?
-: It was an organization, they had their area.
They were a booth, so to speak,
with blankets all out, and the guys and the gals,
but we didn't want the guys to be the drummers.
-: Okay, were they all drummers or was it just music?
-: They were drummers.
-: Okay, so drumming group.
-: Yeah, yeah.
-: And it was men and women.
-: It was a couple of conga drums, and men and women,
and they were talking about their spiritual mandalas
and things, meditation, it was a meditational organization.
-: Okay, that's what you meant about EST.
-: And see, that would've been totally,
not anything that the women's liberationist
could've handled, whatsoever, and they thought,
like Judith said to me, Corky, we decide what you are,
you're the lowest common denominator.
That was one of our final, good conversations
because I could get along with everybody
and because I thought, make it fabric art,
that could be part of what I consider to be feminism.
And they just found it really hard and eventually,
when I wanted Judith to present at a big retreat
we were having out at the Red House,
gathering different feminists around,
so we plan our next, the movements next year.
I wanted her to come talk and give her fine mind
to some issues and she just couldn't.
At that point, they really knew that the people
doing all this art stuff, and it wasn't along the lines
of they're more of what their brand of feminism.
-: Okay, I wanna stop that.
Okay, this is Rose Norman, interviewing Corky Culver,
again on November 10th, 2012,
at her home in Melrose, Florida,
and this interview is about LEAP,
a lesbian networking organization that she was part of
that is a more, is different from the Renaissance Fair,
the arts Renaissance Fair that she talked about before.
So I'm gonna ask her to talk about how LEAP was created,
how she created the name, and how it fit into the kinds
of things that she wanted to do.
There were two conferences that were LEAP,
one in 1984 and one in 1985.
Why don't you start with Michigan.
Were you at Michigan when they planned?
-: Mmm-hmm.
-: Okay, start with Michigan.
-: I think Minnie Bruce organized a meeting
about southern lesbians organizing and we talked about
a lot of different things that day
and I don't remember all of it.
It would've been fascinating to have a tape of it
but out of what we were saying,
we thought it was so powerful to hear each other
and that we needed to get together
with lesbians across the south
and continue to reach more and more with
our combination of lesbian networking,
just for feeling good about being with each other
and ourselves and also for making changes in the world,
and enacting feminist stuff.
And there were a lot of us from Gainesville at that meeting
and somehow, it evolved that we
would have the meetings in Florida.
We would have meetings in Florida,
maybe we would start there at least.
So we began.
we were networking simultaneously,
on the peace walk, thinking about getting lesbians around,
and the peace walk was made up of lesbians from all over
because we had gathered in South Carolina for the blockade
and so there already lesbians from Arkansas,
and Georgia, and South Carolina.
We were already working together,
so after the peace walk,
we started the LEAP planning meetings.
And every month, I think, we had a meeting somewhere
and each meeting, since we came
from a lot of different places,
each meeting involved staying over, Saturday night.
So we had essentially, a two day meeting,
or two night's and two day meetings,
and in the course of which, we had usually one day
which was a long CR kind of day where we would circle
and talk about a new issue and then the second day,
we called the nuts and bolts day where we were planning
for the conference which was to be called LEAP,
at that time, I don't know when we knew that
but I'll tell you how the name got started.
I was trying to think of something to call it that wasn't,
didn't have 55 letters like, The Southern Lesbian
Leadership Conference Organizational, you know.
So, I had all these acronyms and all these potent words
and I listed, I'm sitting in bed,
I had a list that was 100 things long
and finally worked out that it was Lesbians Empowered
for Action and Politics and the LEAP could capture
the exuberance that we were feeling,
the sense of change and the new world to be created
out of our deepest joys and needs,
and then our interests,
our very clear sense that the things that we were doing,
personally and that were cutting edge.
We were making changes and women's
and lesbians situations in the world
and that we were breaking new ground all the time
and there was a tremendous,
there was an energy and joy in that
and we were not,
we included in our planning that we would have issues,
I mean, we would have workshops at LEAP,
which we could have electoral politics,
we could have vegetarian eating,
we could have building boats
to go down the rivers
and spread feminism, that we were very broad-based
in our sense of what was important
and we've cared, very much to do,
as Michigan did to have disability facilities to have.
We've had thousands of feet of rugs,
that we had everywhere so wheelchairs
could get around on the sandy land.
We had a brochure that included a lot of things
about supporting the environment and the plants
to cherish and avoid, and whatnot,
and our meals were gonna be vegetarian
and we had a couple big fire pits
with big grates on them and huge pots.
-: It sounds like Michigan.
-: Yeah, yeah.
-: With the big fire pits.
-: Oh, and how it began, we were meeting,
we were having a meeting at the Red House
and we thought we were gonna rent
for a weekend, for the four day event.
We looked at a lot of camps to rent.
We looked at a lot of different places
and I have got letters from all these places we were,
because we couldn't do it at the North Forty then
because it had lots of trash that had been dumped on it,
wasn't cleaned up, didn't have a well,
didn't have electricity.
We looked, it didn't seem possible to have it there
but as time moved on,
well, we found out the place
that we'd decided on, Otter Springs,
it was gonna cost about $3,000 to rent
this whole big campground for the four days
and we wanted it separate where people wouldn't,
where we'd have our own space and then the guy said,
well, we'll have to come in a couple times a day
or something to slop the hogs,
otherwise, it'll be private for you and we thought,
that doesn't feel private and at the very same time,
and it just felt magical, as everything did in those days.
When lesbians got together,
it was just always amazing to us.
We had never experienced being together before.
Anyway, I got a phone call,
we're at the Red House,
I was in the kitchen, got a phone call from my landlord
who said that I would have to move.
My request to buy the place had actually caused the owner,
who was a lawyer in New York, to decide to come down
and refurbish the house because it was in such dire straits.
And so it was his dream to live in it,
so I can understand that dream.
It was a dream house.
So it was like a moment of magic because I could feel
disengaged from that physical reality at the Red House,
all the opportunities it had given us.
It had 500 acres, there was plenty of land around it.
It was great for all our meetings and as I got disengaged,
I thought, well, I'll move to the North Forty, longly,
and then it just, I don't know, we all just,
the light bulb went off in all our heads and we thought,
let's look at the North Forty as a possibility again
and so we did.
We went over there with the idea that,
what if we put that $3,000
we were gonna give this guy for his space,
what if we put that into the North Forty?
What if we clean up the North Forty?
What if we see if we can use that money to get electricity,
and a power pole, and a well,
and make this a feasible place for LEAP.
So we went over there with a whole new attitude
and we figured it out, that we could do that
and that was what we were gonna do, and meanwhile,
there was all these piles of trash
because there had been illegal dumping and stuff.
So what happened was, oh, I don't know how many,
a lot of women just camped out there.
We were there for like a month and a half,
just living there.
We were camping out and we'd took out
24 truckloads of trash.
We went to a clay pit and dug with our shovels
in a pickup truck, clay to make the road,
to give it a base so that it could be driven on
by a lot of cars, the sand road on the way in.
We got a well and we put plumbing in.
We had a set of showers, four showers,
and outdoor, we loved that,
and Rainbow made Statue of Liberty,
wooden Statue of Liberty tops on each shower
and they were wonderful and I think we built a shed
where we could store stuff, we had a refrigerator.
We put it all together, and then we had three horse troughs
we had for different,
we'd build a fire under 'em for hot tubs,
three hot tubs and they were all o'natural
and one was for smoking, one was for drinking,
no smoking, and one was for everything goes
or chem-free or something.
Anyway, we had three categories
because signing with the peace walk
and the peace demonstration,
we were very concerned with chem-free things.
We always provided a chem-free space after that.
And one of the first CR groups we had,
did at our meeting at St. Pete was about addictions
and I remember feeling very uptight about it
because my alcohol quitting, my quitting alcohol
had stimulated our whole interest in chem-free space.
The first time, when they passed a bottle around
at the Savannah River Peace Camp,
and it came by me and I didn't take a drink,
and they looked and they thought, wow, if she can do it,
we can do it, and a whole bunch of women,
my best friends like, Judy, and Linda Lou,
and Pam, everybody quit drinking then, to support me,
and it was fantastic.
So we continued that anyway, at this addiction circle
for the LEAP planning down at St. Pete,
turned out to be a fantastic circle.
It wasn't all about me, or just about alcohol,
it was about the way that addictions had impacted our lives,
every single life in that circle was impacted by,
it could've been a family member,
it could've been one of their personal addictions
to something and it just became clear to us that this,
what we wanted, we consider this a feminist issue,
and that we were concerned about where we were in all that,
and that the destructive power of addictions, we wanted to,
that would be one of the things that we were changing
in the world and that was a powerful meeting.
All of those were powerful and I don't remember
all the different topics but it was a great thing
to use circles and we all learned how also,
how to conduct a circle, how to listen to each other,
how to basically, that we didn't call it talking stick,
but how to listen, how to moderate,
and we would point to one, two, three, you'll speak here,
first person to speak, second,
and so we had a way of dealing with problems
and listening to each other that was very respectful
and it worked beautifully, and everyone in those circles,
you knew you were gonna get a chance to speak.
You knew you would be listened to.
You knew that it would not be dominated by one person.
You knew that people could hear each other.
And we observed the circle thing
of not arguing with anybody's feelings.
We could have different positions on issues but we didn't,
people didn't just jump in with their
version when somebody spoke.
We listened, respectfully,
there wasn't crosstalk.
We could talk about it all later but going around the circle
was very powerful and we had learned on the peace walk
that if we didn't do that, if we didn't circle once or twice
a day, the divisions start, people feel unheard,
issues arise that are not being addressed,
feelings, a lot of times if you just say your feelings,
they dissolve, kind of, I mean if you have bad things
and somebody else says, awe, I'm sorry.
Anyway, we use the circle and meditation
ever since being in jail, when we found the only way
we could break through our impasses on issues that are about
when to declare ourselves out of jail, for instance.
We had to do meditation first,
in order to get our minds cleared and calm.
We had to do circles instead of voting and caucuses
and so that method of communication
was so workable and so necessary and it kept us
from falling into all the pits of either, or, arguments
and we've heard their many points of view
and we will hear them all,
and we will hear them all, respectfully, and peaceably,
and so we continue that with all the LEAP meetings.
And we cleared up the land and we made it
kinda utopian and it was beautiful,
and the enthusiasm of some of the letters
of people who went to the LEAPs, it's just amazing to hear.
I mean, it was so much to a matter of the time,
that it was so new, all the things we were doing
and that was just the first.
We were always doing everything for the first time.
We had such a sense of our history of creating a new thing
and we were so happy about it all.
It's just amazing!
That it even happened, it was all volunteer,
it was all unfunded, it was all just out of pure spirit.
-: Where did that $3,000 dollars come from,
that you were gonna send them?
-: That's a good question.
Where did that come from?
Well, we didn't have to get it up, actually.
I mean, to get the, let's see.
-: You would've had to charge to pay that.
-: We had to get the well.
I think that probably, I don't remember how we
worked that out but I mean, LEAP didn't have to,
I can find that in the notes somewhere, I bet, I mean,
if you think about like, get out of 50 women,
getting that amount of money together
wouldn't have been that hard and probably,
the North Forty women were the large part since they
were gonna benefit from the well and the electricity.
I mean, a number comes to mind that we paid
the North Forty like, $1,500.
I'm not sure. -: And it was not
from charging people
to come to LEAP, it was from.
-: I don't remember whether we had a charge.
It would've been way low,
like 20 bucks or something, if we did.
I don't know.
-: Okay, this is Rose Norman.
It's the third interview with Corky Culver
on November 10th, 2012 at her home in Melrose, Florida,
and she's mentioned the Red House several times,
which was a place where she lived and a lot
of things happened during this period,
and so I want her to talk about that period,
which would be the period right before LEAP,
up to LEAP and I guess, subsequently,
anyway talk about the Red House.
-: Okay.
I probably got the Red House in about 1972.
I had been living across the lake
and I had always been living around it
and loved the sight of this old, it's actually,
the style of an old Maine farmhouse, maybe,
and it was built in the 1870s or 90s and the lumber,
that was before there were even saw mills here
and the lumber had to be brought down,
Florida was late settling, and it was high on a hill
and it had 500 acres around it, of hayfield,
and pecan grove, and orange groves, and open meadows.
In the spring, there were flowers, acres of flowers,
it was just beautiful, and a nice clear lake to swim in
and there was a kumquat tree in the yard,
a huge magnolia tree.
You could see the whole sweep from dawn to sunset,
of the sun and the moon, gather pecans,
and in the winter, you could go out and get a cold orange
from the tree and have your orange juice.
It was a beautiful place but totally, run down inside
with cracking plaster and a few leaks,
but it had four fire places and it was really great,
and a little back porch.
-: Is that how it was heated, the fireplaces?
How was it heated?
-: Heaters.
-: Heaters, okay.
-: Individual heaters.
-: Space Heaters?
-: Yeah, and fireplaces, yep,
there's a few funny stories about that. (laughing)
-: Well, tell me about how it played
into lesbian feminist activism.
-: Well, so there was a lot of room in it
and I've always liked to meet people and stuff,
and so different people would live there
and people from out of town could stay with me.
And it was a great place for meetings because,
I mean, say for instance, at the LEAP meetings,
they could come in on a Thursday night
and just stay all the time.
People use the different bedrooms to stay in
and then there was plenty of room all around for camping,
and it was just a beautiful place so people enjoyed
being there, and we could all eat out of the kitchen
and have fire circles and stuff,
and so we had a lot of meetings there.
Starting in the 70s, we had, one big event
was Communication Quest, which was in,
I think '78 and it was very huge
and we had the first spirituality circle there.
None of us had ever experienced that before and we had
-: That'd be the first in Gainesville?
-: Yeah.
-: Or in this area?
-: Yeah, in this area too, yeah.
-: Have you broken it?
-: I think the very first one we just,
I don't know, we just did it.
We didn't know what we were doing.
And then Flash came -: (mumbles)
-: and Flash was one of the leaders
in women's spirituality and international, and still is.
She has a huge contact with many radio shows
to this day, and everything.
We had, let's see, I mean, many of the LEAP meetings
were there because there was plenty of room to meet there.
-: So how long did that last until,
it was around LEAP, in the move?
-: It was like, '72 to '83 and that's when
the landlord decided to come down.
He closed down his law practice in New York City
to come fix up the house for his dream home
and at that point, I was lifted from that beautiful place
and it felt like a levitation, okay, now the North Forty.
I'll build my house on the North Forty.
We'll get the well in, I mean,
I was gonna need a well and electricity.
so it all just could beautifully, confluence,
of all these needs and opportunities.
-: So it was not no longer, after that, it was out of,
-: The Red House was, yeah, (mumbles)
-: Gone.
-: I had to move out then.
-: So about 10 years,
for about 10 years? -: I was there 11 years.
-: 11 years.
-: Oh, many, I mean, the parties were legendary
and full of music and we had,
many of us were really good musicians.
I'm not one but I'm a big sing-a-long person,
but we had some, Abbie is fantastic,
and Flash is fantastic, and Heather's fantastic.
We had a lot of music.
It was just, there was always,
and it was participatory music,
even when the stars were singing, everybody would join in,
and it was amazing, happy times.
-: Oh, you mentioned Farren that was at the?
-: Oh, well, Flame and I produced two Ferron concerts.
Flame had heard of Ferron, I hadn't,
and we produced, first we produced one at the Bogota
and then one in Gainesville and Ferron came down,
stayed at the Red House, and I have pictures of her here.
Everybody enjoyed it.
Minnie Bruce spent three or four days with me one time.
I'm not quite sure how that came about
but it was quite amazingly, wonderful and we talked
for three days and floated in the water
on Echo Lake and became friends, and talked about a lot,
she said that it had a big effect on her life,
our conversations and certainly, it did on mine.
-: What other stars were there?
-: I don't know but let's see, Joan Larkin, the writer.
She just got a $50,000 award this year
and she created the first Amazon quarterly,
the first anthologized lesbian poetry book,
and also, she was the anthologist of gay and lesbian poetry.
And then she visited there and she stayed there for a month
and she came back many times for our different
writer's conferences and stuff.
-: So you had writer's conferences there?
-: She was just here two years ago, living here for a year,
and she would stay with me where I
was living, for awhile and may again.
And she's a fantastic teacher of writing
and she wrote the first come out story in Ms. magazine
and of course at the pagoda,
which I was over at the pagoda every fourth day, almost.
They have a lot of stars there.
Everybody came there, Holly Near, every single person,
Alix Dobkin, but I can't remember.
We we're comfortable and you just don't quite think,
like, Lillian Fadiman was here at this house.
We know each other.
(mumbles) the people in this movement,
and certainly did then.
-: It just seemed to me what's important about it,
is because there was that place that people could go
and stay, it enabled a lot of things to happen.
-: That's so true.
The chance of being together in a comfortable place,
in a private place where you can really be yourself
and say your issues and stay,
and it's not part of corporate America.
We were sharing meals, we were sharing,
there was always help for anybody
who couldn't afford transportation or anything,
and we found out, I mean, in jail,
like boy, that was really funny.
You put a bunch of radicals together
or creative high-minded women together,
I mean, things happen, they could cook up things.
They talk and listen to each other
and they think of new solutions
and they're having fun and they're really creative,
and there's just been a whole world
where that has not been possible,
women banding together has been discouraged.
It's so potent when it does happen.
And so we had that place right, for that to happen and also,
anybody visiting from out of town, or new, or anything,
that everybody knew that they could,
there'd be a room for them at the Red House.
-: How many rooms did it have, bedrooms?
-: It had four bedrooms
and infinite amounts of camping space and stuff
and it was just, people enjoyed coming there
and the conversation level and everything was,
we were doing part-time jobs, a lot of us, at the time,
part-time teaching, part-time, we had a cleaning group
called Miss Mag, Magic, we picked up pine cones,
we planted trees, we picked up jobs
and lived on very little.
-: So how many people were living there during that period?
-: Well, it changed all the time, it changed all the time.
-: You were paying the rent.
-: I was paying the rent.
The rent was very low, like $150 a month or something
and then, I mean, Barbara Ester, Essrig was there,
Barbara Ester was there for awhile,
yeah, she was there for awhile,
and her wonderful music, her incredible music.
I mean, Z Budapest visited,
Vogel, from Key West, was there for awhile,
she did the, Snake.
-: Oh, Karen Vogel, the Motherpeace?
-: No, yeah, I mean,
she did Flash's tarot deck, she did the thankings for it.
Flash did a tarot deck.
-: Who is this, spell her name.
-: V-O-G-E-L, she was on the front page of some big,
she died and I can't remember even,
her whole name, right now.
-: Karen Vogel also did the Motherpeace with Vicki Noble.
-: Yeah, Motherpeace is a different tarot deck.
It drove the, I mean we,
this'll fit your life, cultural feminism. (laughing)
-: Yeah.
So you really can't talk about how,
you can only talk about, here's my question,
if you're saying that these CR groups is where you learn
those principles of communication that had to do with
non-hierarchy and everyone gets to talk,
and everyone knows you're gonna get to talk,
and they're taught how to listen
and how to moderate the group so that communication
can actually, take place rather than argument,
and that you carry this into, you and your friends
who are organizing and doing your accounts of activism,
carry that into all sorts of things.
You say you don't know whether the others that disagree
with you did that or not but didn't they
come out of CR groups too?
-: Yeah, I mean, they had a different,
they have, for instance, in the women's liberation people,
they have a very, very strong devotion to the idea
of leadership and they have written many articles
about that, acknowledge your leaders,
recognize and give credit to the leaders, over the year,
and they wanna make a name for themselves,
and different things, and they have beautiful arguments
for the appreciation of leaders,
and they felt that in these kinda,
they felt leaders were trashed.
They were discouraged and there was some truth in that.
I mean, at our group somebody wrote a paper about,
let's hear from everybody and not
just the person who is the most political
or the most brilliant, or whatever.
So, I mean, we did go different directions on that,
but since I stayed in that direction, now,
at the North Forty, we don't do consensus
but we're doing consensus (mumbles),
and a lot of things are still consensus,
and we still care about that sorta thing,
other land groups and stuff.
I was on the board down at Sugarloaf and we don't do that,
just voting, whoever has the most votes wins.
-: And Sugarloaf does?
-: No, (mumbles).
-: They don't, okay.
Quakers do it, I mean, Quakers do the consensus decision.
-: It is often much more efficient and it just makes sense
that it creates division, it has either, orness.
It is not as emotionally,
I mean, as respectful of all the different possibilities
and when you go around a circle,
you don't have two points of view, you have many,
and the things that can arise out of that, we felt.
I mean, eventually, we would make a decision,
okay, are we going to walk by the ocean
or are we gonna walk by the towns today,
and we would have to make some decisions,
but it would grow out of everybody saying their say.
So it takes time and it takes dedication
but we found it helpful, very helpful, in fact, mandatory,
and when you quit doing it, like the North Forty,
presently has a division going and we don't,
we never put that into the North Forty principles,
that we should decide differences by a council
or talking stick and it is in many Native American
traditions to do things like that.
-: Even in court, I mean, they have courts
that are consensus decision making.
-: Really?
-: Mm-hmm.
-: Really, well.
-: Native American, some tribe, I can't remember which.
-: They'll do it with family decisions,
like I just got a new documentary
about where I was just in Alaska, or the Indian families do,
they call it, have a talking stick,
talking circle and the little kids get their chance
to have a say and they work out things like that,
and I wish it was in the North Forty's trust agreement.
So many things in the world are,
like the pitifulness of the Republicans and Democrats.
You just get dug in and you say my side versus your side
and if there are 15 sides, it gets a little, and sometimes,
just hearing and being heard makes a huge difference.
And people will dig in, in a hurt feeling or resentment,
or a position on a subject
and how do you melt those regilities?
I found many times that these kind of talking things,
and hearing and listening, and formalizing listening
is really a lot of what it is,
and listening where you're not just arguing
with whoever says something and waiting for your chance
to put in like, sometimes, some of the listening exercises,
you just repeat everything that the other person says.
-: Repeat it back to them to assure that you heard.
-: Three days later before you present your point of view
and by then, neither of you care
about the whole fight anymore.
It doesn't resolve, it dissolves.
-: I was thinking about, where you talked about
how originally, before the split
you didn't wanna have the group,
none of you wanted to have anything to do with NOW
and I wonder if when they decided to get involved
with NOW, as a tactic, if that's what,
-: Like why they dropped the lesbians.
-: Or why they dropped the CR principles of speaking,
letting everybody be heard and listened to.
I remember going to a NOW meeting,
maybe the only NOW meeting I've ever attended,
in which one woman spent the entire time,
talking about her sorry marriage
and I never went to another meeting.
Not that I wanted to talk but I sure
didn't wanna listen to that for an hour.
I don't know if now, it's that way or not.
-: See, I don't either because we had our jobs cut out for us
and we were busy with what we were doing
and I wasn't focused on any of that.
-: Are any of the people I'm interviewing,
were they ever with NOW?
-: I could give you some names, Donna Burnell helps start,
and she was with NOW, forever.
-: Yeah, in Huntsville, NOW was the activist core in the 80s.
It's no longer active but of course,
everybody in NOW was either a lesbian
or became a lesbian, in Huntsville.
I mean, there might be one NOW person left
and she's straight which is maybe,
why there's not any other NOW people.
-: Well, we just didn't do that,
like after the peace walk with the LEAP things,
and we started a group called FAG,
which was Feminist Action, or fan network,
and we did a lot of actions in Gainesville,
like we did a town meeting, we dressed in white face
and went downtown at the city hall,
sat in the yard, a huge circle of women,
talking about violence against women
and their experiences of violence.
We also did a march on Fraternity Row.
We did a fish bowl kinda thing
where one group listens to another.
-: This is interesting, it seems like every few years,
something new, you all are doing something new.
So you do a Renaissance Fair, it's very successful.
Then you turn around and you're doing something else,
and you're doing something else, which maybe why,
I mean, there's no reason why you need
to keep doing a Renaissance Fair.
-: It was a huge organizational effort.
-: Which could be why it doesn't keep happening.
-: Yeah, and it was huge, and I don't know,
we were pushing the envelope all the time.
We were always doing something fresh and new
until we didn't, but the things we did had huge effects.
You don't have to restart the spouse
abuse shelter over and over again.
You don't have to get the committee to have rape crisis
counseling for rape victims over and over again.
It's there now, it's there.
We don't have to do that, they have an advocate now,
and there's the sexual abuse committee that started
after we did the march on Fraternity Row.
It's there forever, it's still at the university
and that committee on sexism and homophobia is there
and the North Forty is there.
Well, something we created different, The Pride Center,
I mean the women's center went down,
the feminist bookstore's teetering
right now, but it's gonna try it.
-: There, I think I've got what I need here.