- This is Rose Norman, and I am in Alapine Womyn's Community in New Mentone, Alabama interviewing six women who live here now, but who lived at the Pagoda in Florida at various times during its existence. And we're gonna begin by talking about, or just getting a sense of where they were from. Five of these people were not born and raised in the South. So I'd like for each of you to say your name, where you were born and raised, and then we'll come back to those who were born in or think of themselves as southern. - My name is Barbara Lieu. I was born in New York State in 1945. I first moved south in the early '70s and then came back permanently in 1976. I consider myself a Southerner, however, Southerners consider me a Yankee. (chuckles) - I don't. - Do you want me to even though I'm-- - Go ahead, yeah. - I was Jean Adele, and I was born and raised in Pennsylvania in a little tiny town called Jim Thorpe. It used to be called Mauch Chunk, but that's too long a story. And what else did you wanna know? How did I get-- - When did you get to the South, and do you consider yourself a Southerner? - (laughs) When I went to the Pagoda is when I went to the South. - What age? - What age? Oh gosh, 30, I was in my 30s, I'd say about 38. I had been married and had children and was divorced. - That sounds like a good story. (laughing) - Wait, after that, didn't you come and never leave? - Pardon? - Didn't you come and then never leave? - Right. - I mean, that's amazing. - I flew. - Did you come for a visit? - She did. - Yeah, I came for a visit, I flew back. (laughs) I flew back, but that whole visit was something else, but everything fell into place. My place sold, my lover, my partner at that time, wanted to see men again, my youngest son was graduating from high school, and my job at the prison was ending, and you all said that I could come down and live at the Pagoda. - Had counters for you. - And Emily was there and could've found me a job. I was down in two months. - Yeah, I know. I remember it was meant to be. You were meant to be here. - I drove down in my car, and I flew down for a weekend. - I think it was 1980 or '81. - Yeah, '81. - But you were the one who said you don't think of yourself as a Southerner. - Well-- - Even though that's 30-some-odd years now. - I have my whole family, and I have a lot of ties up north, and my grandchildren and my family are all up there, and I think I still see myself as northern. And I don't consider this south-south, I mean-- - Alabama? - You don't consider Alabama South? Whoops! - No, not where we live, not where we live. - You live in a little pocket of not-the-South. (laughs) - Well, the rural South is a little bit different from when you go into a city, and we found this out by living here, the rural people seem to accept almost anything, well that's another story. - Some rural people. - I'm talkin' 'bout on the mountain. - Bama has a long history of accepting outlaws, starting back with the Native Americans hiding in the caves so they didn't have to go on the walk to Oklahoma. - Got a lot of artists up here, it's a different culture up on the mountain. - This is its own place. - We live between the veils. - Yes, we do. And it's even, in patriarchal terms, we have a veil, because our county is Cherokee. It doesn't claim us because we're at the tippy-tippy top on the borderline of Cloudland, Georgia and Alabama, Mentone, so we have a Georgia phone number. We have an address in Mentone, and Cherokee, which would be where our officials would want to have some concern about our activities, they don't even claim this place, so we're kind of like no-man's land in a way. Along with the fact that there are, you know, there's a magic to this mountain. That's why my aunts came here. This mountain is full of fairies. It's the only place other than Scotland that has 'em, according to her. - So your aunts were the ones who founded the original community here? - Well, yeah. - Not this community. - No, but what happened was the camp was started in the early 30s, and she bought the lodge, one of the few lodges that had been built back in the Victorian age, because this place was a resort for the rich people that came with the railroad. - Miles away. - Yeah, and she looked all over to find a mountain to start this camp and said this was the one that had the fairies, and that's why she bought that lodge. So she started that and ran it for 37 years, and it was called Alapine Lodge Camp for Girls, and I got to go for free, and in a women's space for three full months for free. And I experienced women's space that stayed with me. And then, when she had a heart attack, they sold it and became a boys' camp, and that just really broke me. But always, I yearned to be here. This is my spiritual home, and when we bought this place, and the long, lengthy process we had to go through, 'cause my aunts I think had put a nice spell on it. So many clouds on all of the pieces that there were several lawyers who couldn't clear it, and we spent time with magic, meditation, with my aunts, and got this property, and when we first went down to the Cherokee County, there was a gay boy who was in the office who pulled out Alapine Village that had gone defunct in the 1977 or whenever. There were other things that happened here, and I sat here and bawled, just bawled my, I mean yes, they started this community. And the reason I came up here, 'cause I don't think anybody would wanna come to Alabama. (laughing) Every time I said, "Hey, it's in Alabama, "but it's not really Alabama." It was because when my grandma died, right before I met Fayann, we've been together 25 years, right before, my aunts came to me every night in dreams, calling me and calling me. And we had picked a spot out. When my grandma died, I bought a little cabin in Mentone with my mom, and we came up here, and we wanted some land across the way that was just beautiful and covered with rocks. And Barbara said, "This is not accessible. "We have to find another place." - So did Kay. - And so did Kay. (laughing and chatter) It was so good to say that because we would've been in the middle of a golf course and a ski resort and everything, so we had a lesbian friend that went to camp with me that I had a crush on who was a realtor and her sister, and they're the ones that showed us this land. So this is where we ended up because we saw that it was much more accessible and that it was already an old, developed, so we were grandmother-ed in by this gay guy to not have to pay big amounts to be some kind of a developer. So I would credit my aunts-- - That's a great story. - To some degree, yeah, and we all when we came, felt like, "Oh yeah, this feels really right." - But we're gonna be focused on Pagoda for this interview. I'm thinking I'm gonna probably take that stuff, and maybe I should start a new interview later to-- - I'm so sorry, I did get off of Pagoda, didn't I? - No, no, no, I can, you know, with the magic of electronics, I can move it around. (laughing) - You got the information. - I got the information, yeah. And it makes me know where I wanna go with it, too. And coming back to Fayann, you're another one who wasn't born and raised in the South, but feel like a Southerner. - Right, my name is Fayann Schmidt, I was raised in Ohio. My mother's people came ashore at Newport News, Virginia, and a couple generations later, moved to Knoxville, Tennessee, and then my grandparents were in Ohio. My father's side, when they came to this country, came to the southwest part of Kansas near the Oklahoma border, so that's what I always felt as home. And my father then, during World War II, moved to Ohio and met my mother, so they stayed there. But when I think about home, I always think about my family and Kansas. And so that's always my reference of where I'm from. - And your community. - And your feeling of being a Southerner is because you had family that were from the South or because you've lived in the South for 30 years? - Yeah, I've lived since the mid-70s in the South in Florida, or St. Augustine, Daytona Beach, Jacksonville area, and then here, but when we took vacations, we went home. We went to Kansas, we saw the family, we were part of that. That was part of our heritage. It was not the Ohio environment or culture. - And you think that Kansas is Midwest, so it's not really southern is it? - Well, I don't-- - It's in like-- - Would you say close to the Oklahoma line, to me, that whole line is South, Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Arkansas. When I think of the South, I think of that area. But Midwest, yeah that's true, as my shirt probably looks-- (laughing) Or maybe it's more Midwest than, I don't know. - Yeah, well if we get somebody from Kansas who wants to be interviewed as a Southerner, we will definitely interview them. Got some Missouri and Arkansas, believe me. (laughing) Texas, so far not, but we think it's Southwest. - See, but Kansas isn't the Southwest. - No, I was Texas, but yeah Kansas-- - It's an interesting question. - That is an interesting, and the Kansas Nebraska, no let's not go there, and Ellen? - Ellen Spangler. I was born in a small town in Central Illinois, Bloomington, was a small town then, I don't think it is now, in 1934. But I moved to the South, to Jacksonville area when I was 20, and so for nearly 60 years, I've lived in the South and feel like I'm a Southerner. Also coming from a small town in the Midwest, it was really conservative, really a lot of similarities, but I feel much more connected to the South. - And say your year of birth. - Yeah '34. - She did. - Oh you did, okay, sorry. - Short version? - Yeah. - I was born in Miami, Florida. My mother and my grandmother and her father, all were, and her husband were all involved in politics in the very early stages of the development of Miami. And I heard a lot of stories, and my family was a political family. They ran different offices. My dad was a state senator during that time when the Panhandle was considered the South, and where Miami and lower Florida was not really considered the South, in terms of how their values were. That's how he got elected, and he was only one of two that was progressive, and I was very involved in his activities when he ran and very much involved in the civil rights movement from the side. And so, my mom, you know I'm a Southerner, but people would say because of all migration in such a wonderful warm state, there are probably more, and especially with the Spanish input, there's a lot more people from not southern in their origin, from the North, you know, so the sky, what do they call 'em? The'll come down in the winter and-- - Snowbirds. - Snowbirds, and then a lot of variety of Hispanics of all different kinds of continents, so I don't feel when I go home now, I feel kind of like I'm in another country now. Coming up here, I knew this was the South, and it was my haven and my safe place, and I love my aunts, and this community, I would say, was even more important in determining that than my home in Miami, as far as feeling, 'cause that's a city down there. This was, you know, just so nurturing and Southern. We got on the railroad, you know? And came up from Miami and got off in Valley Head and came up to the mountain, and we were definitely in the South, could see it's the real South. And, like we say, this mountain is, my uncle and aunt lived here all their life and buried in Valley Head. So when I first came up, I was family here. A lot of the people that have since passed knew a lot about Alapine and my great aunts, and they accepted her lesbianism. And there were a lot of lesbians up here, but then they got together and had salons. Martha Berry from the college was part of that group. Zora Neale Hurston used to come up here. There was a tea house that a lesbian ran that I found when my great aunt died that talked about women's space at her tea house where they would come and have salon based on similarities that had happened in Europe. So when I met the big guy in the community, Nancy's daddy, who recently died-- - Jack. - Jack Jones at 90-something, he said, "If your Alice Mae Vicker's daughter, "she was quite a woman and a lesbian too, "and if it was okay for her, it's okay with me for you." And of course, his daughter Nancy is, and she has her own space a women's camp. And so yeah, this is South, definitely. I'm South in every way, every way, progressive South. (laughing) - It is progressive South. - I'm Emily Green, and I was born in '46, and I did start out living in Arlington, Virginia, so I guess I started my life in the South. My mother grew up and was from Asheville, North Carolina, so I have that side of me, and we went often to see the relatives, but by the time I was five, we moved to Cape Cod and then Massachusetts, until I was 15 when we moved back down to the D.C. area and lived in Maryland at that time. Most of my adult life has been in the South. I spent a year in Texas, I've spent, I don't know how many years, 30 years in Florida, and 10 years up here. And so, I basically was the one in the family who went south. (laughing) The rest of my family's all up north-- - And anyways-- - And they don't have any desire to come down to the South, but I've learned a lot from living down here, and I have a lot of contact even with my southern relatives who live in Georgia and North Carolina still. So, I consider myself more Southern than I do Northern, but I do consider the North very much a part of me. - Part of that is because you travel to the North to do activist work that is vital and is one of the few that's healthy enough to do it. I keep telling her, "If I get better, "I'm gonna go with you one time." - I love it-- - Can you see me with my cane trying to walk? - You want to mention what that activist work is in case we don't get back to it? - Well, recently I guess, just to tell you the recent stuff, I've been involved with the tar sands, the XL Pipeline, went to Texas where they have the camp, and that group, wonderful group of probably 35 or 40 young people (chuckles) yeah, I can say "young people" 'cause I'm old, who are so dedicated. They'd been there since July, and I just was so inspired by going and living for three days in their camp, cooking meals for them, washing dishes for them. I didn't get out on the front line 'cause I couldn't at that point. I also have gone to D.C. three times now, once in 2011 when they had the big gathering on Freedom Plaza in D.C. - Occupy. - It really wasn't Occupy, that's what was called NOW D.C. They actually started forming before Occupy in September. They started back in the spring organizing this gathering that was gonna happen in October, and it did October 6th. And it was a gathering for many different groups of things that people wanted to see change, but their whole motto was "Stop the machine, and create a new world." So they were really encompassing a lot. Recently, I went to the inauguration, not to go to the inauguration, but to protest, to protest the drones, to protest the climate change that is not being addressed by Obama's administration, and just to really try to be part of that voice that was showing him, "Hey, there's "another way to look at this." The second time, I went for what was really a wonderful gathering of 40,000 people run by Bill McKibben, organized by Bill McKibben, for Climate Forward to stop the tar sands in the XL Pipeline. It was a bitter cold day, 40,000 came out for that day, and Obama, I have to say this 'cause I think it should be, Obama chose to go and play golf with the CEOs of the oil companies on that day, and he has yet to make one comment about the 40,000 people when he says he wants people to show him what they want. He has yet to make one comment about that day when 40,000 people showed up, walked around the White House to try and tell him, "We care about what's happening "on this earth, we want to stop the pollution." And so anyway, that's-- - And D.C., that was this year? - That was this year, oh yeah, both the inauguration and the-- - That was the inauguration in 2012. - 2013, in January. - January 2013 from the election from 2012. - And then the first one was in 2011. - I have to add that part of the reason I think you went was also so you could have a lot of fun 'cause there were a lot of balls. - Well, it's true, you know, I had got to go to the Peace Ball where Amy Goodman, Alice Walker, Angela Davis, Ralph Nader, the lineup of people that they had at this Peace Ball. It was the alternate ball from what all of Obama and his entourage were having balls. We had our ball. (laughing) - So, if I can't dance, it's not my revolution! - That's right. (laughs) - You can see why before you put the recorder on, when I said, "The Pagoda was not a lesbian feminist activist "place," why Emily spoke up, because Emily's been an activist since back then. She was involved with Seeds for Peace. Even though Pagoda didn't carry a banner, she's been carrying a banner for 30 years. - See, we consider activism just forming Pagoda. That was an activist-- - Yeah, it was. - Cultural activism. - It was. - Cultural activism, I mean, forming a lesbian writer's group, that's a cultural activism. - I just wanna be clear that for most people's idea of activism, it's what Emily does and we did not, very purposefully, and if you're interested in what was the Pagoda, that's an important distinction. - Okay, and we'll be sure to, we will get to that. Okay, I wanna stay the path a little bit more and go to the women's liberation question and ask, I forgot who wanted to talk about that. Morgana, obviously, and Ellen, okay. Anybody else wanna talk about being involved in-- - You can just say I started out in Women's Political Caucus, moved to Charleston in 1976 and went looking to get involved and ended up being involved with NOW in Charleston, South Carolina before I moved to the Pagoda. - Could we hold off one second? I have to turn the tape over. - Okay, let me pause it. Then, let me, okay it's going. - Now, just say that was Barbara Lieu who talked about Women's Political Caucus and that. - Good, okay, so we're gonna hear from, let's hear from Ellen first. - Okay, and this is Ellen Spangler, and in Jacksonville, Florida, again remember which is much like South Georgia, in 1970, and I had four kids, two of them were preschool, two of them in grade school, and I was trying to take one college course at a time. And I was taking a speech course, and I made a speech about when women got to vote. We were supposed to do the research, and after the class, the woman teacher asked me to stay, and quietly, she said to me, "There's a handful "of us that are organizing "for the women's movement here in Jacksonville. "We're having our first event in three weeks, "and I think you would be interested in coming." And so she told me when the meeting was, and so in 1970, I think there were 14 of us that demonstrated on the steps downtown of the Federal Building, and it was whatever the anniversary date that everybody was celebrating then, maybe the day that the vote, I don't remember. But we got very little media coverage, of course. (laughing) But-- - August 26th is Women's Equality Day. - That's what it was, yes. And I was in, and I was in solidly, and pretty much gave my life to it for the next many years. And my kids were helpful and supportive of my doing that, but I won't get into the Pagoda. - What did giving your life to it mean? Just going to meetings all the time or-- - Say that again. - What did giving your life to it mean? - I meant hours, energy, creativity was how to help women move out of some of the awful holes that we were in, like I was really key in starting the Refuge Home for battered women 'cause I was one, had been one, and we were the 13th one in the country. - In Jackson? - In Jacksonville, yeah. Among other things, we opened the Rape Crisis Center against all kinds of odds from the hospital and the whatever else, you know. There was a small, active group, but we were fearless, and-- - And you also worked for a woman when I first met you. - Yes, I was, part of how I supported myself. - Yeah, do you remember first attempt at my belly dancing pamphlet was run off-- - Oh that we-- - That you helped me do in her office on the mimeo machine. - Right, right, we had a newsletter, and-- - In my office? - No, in the woman she worked for. - Oh. - That I worked for. - Yeah, I think that's kinda how I met you, and then after that, of course, we had our women's collab-- - I think I met you in Tallahasse 'cause I kind of traveled around the state when there were things going on-- - The ERAs and stuff, yeah. - And I think I first met you in Tallahassee, and those of us that were active kept trying to connect and support each of the things that were happening. - Well, and also you talk about the women's collective. I mean, that was a very activist thing, too. I know Leslie lived there, and a lot of the original buyers of the Pagoda were part of your collective. - That's true. - And you built the stage for us, so-- - Okay, you're a little jumpin' ahead, she's not quite ready yet. - Well, the collective part, though. I mean, we went to you because you had the collective. - When I was in Jacksonville, I was one of the first out lesbians, in terms of being interviewed on a radio station and so forth, and that was more into the middle-70s. In fact, I changed my name from the married name to a different last name to protect my kids, because at that point, they were subject to really a lot of discrimination if people knew their mother was a lesbian. - So they kept their old last name? - Yes, I actually took my mother's maiden name because I only knew her mother, who had been widowed and had two daughters, and they both just had daughters, so that felt like connecting to a women's line, the Spangler. And I was working for this woman who did paralegal things, and so I did my own divorce papers and could just say I went back to my name of Spangler, and anyway, among other things, she was really supportive of helping women do their own divorces and-- - I remember her, she was a fighter. - She fought the Florida Bar, yeah. - Well, this sounds like a whole other story. - It is an interesting story. Say what her name was just for the records. No, not Ellen-- - Rosemary Furman. - Rosemary Furman was a very important woman in Jacksonville because she gave women legal power when nobody had legal power. - Actually, they changed the law so people could do their own divorces, so that really helped women, yeah. And she nearly went to jail in the process of that, which panicked her. - But she was tough. - She was, she was tough and-- - And was also funny. - Yes. - Do you remember her funniness? - Oh yes. - I didn't see her except when I was there with my thing to print, but she was funny. I remember I really liked her, she was very funny and warm. - Clearly, I need to set up separate interviews to go into more depth to this stuff. - There's a lot of stories. - I'm gonna be here until sometime tomorrow. We can talk about this afterwards. Okay Morgana, you've got the-- - Okay, well I'm gonna try to go through this quick 'cause I got a long history here. Like I said, I always had been involved in politics, and I've considered myself a feminist, well when I was little and I made the scooter that my brother got to ride in, and I couldn't make my own because they didn't allow girls to enter. And I had to watch him win first place when it was really me who built that sucker. (laughing) Remember saying to my mother, "Something's not right here." And my mom was a feminist, I mean, she went back to school, you know, as soon as she had the kids, after the war, and became a nurse, and was always very, very much a feminist. - Soapbox derby? Is that what they were? - Yeah, soapbox. - Yeah, there you go. - Can't remember. I think I was eight years old when that happened. And so anyway, and I ran for student senate president in junior high, and I lost by one vote. And then, I ran for student president in high school, and I also lost by two votes, but they made me the chaplain, so I considered that the beginning of my spiritual development. - Excellent. - Yes, I was the chaplain of the school, and in the morning, I had to read, you know, and at the time, they wanted me to read some biblical stuff, and my dad said, "That's illegal, you can't do that. "You get in there, and you read inspirational stuff." So I felt like I was doing something to confront the system that way in separation of church and state. So anyway, in 1965, I graduated from high school, went to Florida State University, had no idea really that it was gonna be radical, and I wasn't a radical when I was married to my high school sweetheart two years later, but at that point was when all of the information, and I have them all actually, I kept 'em in a box of resources of every pamphlet that came out, the Myth of the Vaginal Orgasm, you know just everything. And so in 1968, in my junior year, I joined the student senate, and I won, and I started the first daycare center on campus so women could come and leave their kids. And partly formed with another guy, the CIA, Committee for Immediate Action, and that was literal, and it was the beginning of the whole protest against Vietnam. And I always had this little fear in the back of my mind if I get too radical, my dad's gonna freak out 'cause by then, he was a federal judge, had been appointed a federal judge. And so I was like the ruling-class little girl, and 1969, the next year, I did a lot on campus though, as a feminist, but in 1969 is when I got arrested because Angela Davis came to talk to campus, and the university said, "No, you can't go." And the ACLU came, and they actually had a sit-in and were there to pay the bail, and my heart was pounding 'cause I wanted to sit in there so bad. - I'm confused. - What? - Angela Davis came to campus-- - In 1969. - And who wouldn't go? - Oh the school said, "No way." - She can't speak. - Oh, she came to campus, but they wouldn't let her speak. Who brought her to campus? - Student senate, I was in it. - Oh. But then, she got there and they wouldn't let her speak, so there was a sit-in. - The powers that be. - Well, yeah, and talk about the South. (laughing) Florida State was in the middle of Tallahassee, and they had a posse on horseback with guns and the whole, I mean it was pretty scary. And I made the decision, because I'd always heard if you get arrested, then it's on your record. You're gonna not ever get a job or whatever, so I said, "I'm gonna go out and collect bail money." And my sister was at school with me, my younger sister. She and I were together, and we were collecting money to bail out the people, and a cop grabbed me and threw me into the paddy wagon box. I went, "Well, shit, why didn't I just sit in "if I'm gonna end up in jail?" And they were all looking at me like, you know. So finally, we're in jail, and my sister calls my dad and said that they had put me in jail, and he said, "I know, I'm on my way up there. "The cop said she was throwing rocks, "and the FBI was watching, and he said the cop lied, "and he got kicked off the force. "And I'm gonna come get you outta jail." I said, "No, don't come get me outta jail! "I'm the only one in here, there's a ruling class! "There gonna think, I can't, you gotta leave me!" "Gonna give the ACLU money, don't take me outta here!" (laughing) That was my big radicalization 'cause he came and took me out, so what did I do? I said, "I'm no longer in the CIA, I'm gonna be with SDS." It was really radical, and it was starting to form. And a lot of people in there, and a few women, were very much SDS, and at that point, we hadn't had the infiltration and all that that went on. That was in 1970, and in SDS, we for a year until 1971, joined the Crate and Box factory worker's union fight. They did a boycott, and we would march in the streets. And we also closed down, well, in SDS they wanted to appear that they were open to feminism, because it was at that time where there were lots of people writing about, "Well, we don't wanna do your coffee." And they did that with Amazing Grace, which was SDS's newspaper, and I wrote all the articles on famous women, but it was really same old story, treating us, they were misogynists. So I said to them, "You know what? "You should make me president, "and then you'll show you're with the time." And they did, and then Kent State happened, and we wanted to shut the whole place down for four days. So we took over the Roxy building where my husband was outside marching, 'cause he was in the army at the time, or ROTC. And they were gonna arrest us. A posse came, and the Dean of Women stopped them and said, "No, we're gonna have a meeting "of the faculty senate, and we want the president "of SDS to come tell us why we should leave this shut down." So I had to get up and speak in front of the whole senate, and I was fired up. I mean, you can tell her passion, when she talks about, I said, "You know what, I'm not the leader. "They wanted me to be the president 'cause women need "to be in roles like this, but all I can tell you is I'm not "in control, I mean if you don't let this happen, "I can't be responsible for what's gonna happen. "We've been nonviolent, but you don't let this," You know, it's the Martin Luther King thing. So they shut the whole school down, and all the faculties shut the classes down. That was the high point of my life, one of 'em. (laughing) - No offense, Fayann! (laughs) - That, and dancing on the lesbian float in New York. I could've died after that, and I would've been happy. (laughing) But anyway, lemme go quick here. - I didn't follow, when you were invited by the Dean of Women to speak, where did you speak? - I spoke at the faculty senate gathering in a huge auditorium with every single teacher in the whole university to tell them why they should not come to class for four days and why they should shut the school down. And that was in support of Kent State. They'd killed four people, so I appealed to them, you know, "We really need to mourn, we need to grieve. "I mean, there's people so mad, they might burn "that building down instead of just taking over it." 'Cause we had taken it over, and they knew we were serious. Much later, I met a woman who said, "Oh, "you were my favorite radical!" (laughing) 20 years later, I met her, she was a home ec teacher. (laughing) But anyway, so the thing that is interesting about this is that Dean of Women was lovers with my mother. - Lovers? - Lovers with my mother when my mother was in Sigma Kappa, 17 years old, very precocious. My mother skipped four grades. She was in college, second year at 17, and Juanita Gibson was her name. And when I first came to school, she called me in her office and wanted to know, I mean I was just a wide-eyed idealist social welfare, you know, until I saw all this mess the system was in. But she told me, you know, "I loved your mother "and your father, and I'm just wondering "how they were going." That's who got me to speak, who knew that I would be the speaker. Okay, I found out much later at the Pagoda when my mom came, and I was with somebody that I don't even remember who, she says, "Well you know, "I just don't get it, you know?" And I said, "Mom, you shouldn't knock it 'til you try it." She opened up her mouth, "I did try it." I said, "You did?" She said, "Juanita Gibson and I." And I went, "Oh my god, she was your maid "of honor at your elopement! "How could you have done that to her?" (laughing) I got goosebumps, so anyway-- - Were they at FSU when that happened? - Yeah, it was a women's college at the time, and that's where she met my dad, and then the war came. So she made a big mistake, but-- (laughing) - But you wouldn't be here if she hadn't. - That's what she said all the time, "You wouldn't be here." So anyway, what happened next, I'm gonna go very quickly through, it was the worst period of my life. And it's something I wanna write a book about before I die. I was involved in this Crate and Box factory. This was after we had closed the school down, and still very active as a president. And we had meetings all the time, and other women got involved, and CIA kind of disappeared. And it was a photographer who was taking pictures of everybody in the marches and at the meetings, and I was still straight, I thought. I mean, I'd had girlfriends all my life that I made out with and everything, but in my mind, I was still straight. - And were you married? - Oh yeah, but we were separated. He wouldn't speak to me. He was still on campus at the time. And, well I'll tell you real quick, I felt I was basically seduced by this guy and fell in love with him because I lost my mind, literally, because he immediately started giving me hallucinogens without me knowing. - This is the guy you married? - No, no, no, no! He was a nice boy who went in on ROTC and who received, because of what the government did to me through this infiltrator that I fell in love with, he was sent, during Vietnam, to Garmisch, Germany, the R and R center as an accountant. Now tell me that wasn't because they were giving him a little help after breaking our whole marriage up and everything. - So I think you need to start back and tell that in a direct line, that there was somebody who infiltrated SDS? - Yes, and I fell in love with him, I mean the guy was like Che Guevara, I mean, beautiful art, and we had a house. I never questioned, "Who's paying for this house?" This big house, and we started getting into heavy drugs and orgies, and it was really horrible, because I finished my first year of graduate student as an assistant professor and I taught the first women's liberation on campus that was legal, and women's first course that was recognized whereas before, off-campus with the Women's Center. - Like ad hoc. - It was alternative, yeah. And I had written a book that my, this was a very radical department. We studied Marxism and all-- - What department were you in? Are you in graduate school? - Social philosophy in graduate school, and that was the year I was into Ronnie, but I was also still holding on. - He was the infiltrator. - Right. I was writing the first compilation anthology of all of those articles I had collected through the last three years, and Dr. Fawn was putting it together, and he was gonna publish it for me. And he was gonna help write the introduction. And what did I do? I was so into drugs at the time, I left that. I dropped it, I went with him, with-- - Ronnie. - With Ronnie. The whole SDS fell apart, everybody was freaking out on drugs, his wife at one of their meetings sent a letter saying he was an agent of the government, watch out for him, and I said, "Oh no, she's just," you know, I really had lost my mind. It was the one time when I really lost my mind, so I left. I left everything and went to New York with Murray Bookchin, who was an anarchist communist writer at the time and had-- - Wait now, you're with Ronnie now, or you've left Ronnie? - No, no, Ronnie-- - Ronnie took me! - Ronnie took you to New York. - Oh yeah, he took me and a few bunch of us. - Who's this Murray guy? - Huh? - Who is this Murray guy? - Murray was a well-known writer who was an anarchist in the sense of communities, how to develop anarcho communism in a way that's like we'd think of today, grassroots work and you know, getting rid of the 99, I mean, he was before his time. - What's his last name, sweetie? - He died about four years ago. Bookchin, B-O-O-K-C-H-I-N, and he has books out that are really good that we were reading, and we were in a study group along with his collective-- - In New York? - In New York in his apartment, we got an apartment, I don't know who paid for it, I didn't, you know, I was like. But on the way up as we hitchhiked to New York to have money, I sold my whole china, silverware, glasses, all my stuff from the wedding, and I had the money to help us get up there. And we would stop along the way at these houses that were like mansions and stay, and then we would go on some more. And when we got there, we joined that collective, but then, it split up, and so we just formed our own collective, and then Ronnie started bringing in more radical people into it. And the whole thing was communal sex, and that was revolutionary because you got over being bourgeois, you got over marriage and all those institutions, and of course, boys got to fuck a bunch of us. But it was an introduction to me for the lesbianism. And I was like, "Oh my god, if these guys would just leave, "this place would be fantastic!" (laughing) So I worked on Wall Street, and two of the other guys, also girls, worked as secretaries while the men played music with different rock bands 'cause Ronnie was also a rock singer. And I lost about a year there, and then I had a nervous breakdown because the girls all went and got IUDs so we wouldn't get pregnant, and Ellen, who did not like me, this is a different Ellen, took out hers and got pregnant. And they broke the news, "Oh, we're having a baby! "You're gonna raise this baby!" And oh my gosh, I said, "No, I'm not." And it wasn't very long after that that I had a nervous breakdown, and Murray put me on the plane, and I went home. And I went back to school after that, a brief stay to get myself together. My mother was a psychiatric nurse, so she let me have a bedroom and Cinderella and the wild animals and the whole thing that we did with ILA, you know, let's do that. I went and saw my husband briefly, but I went back to FSU, and who was there? The whole collective had come back, and he was there again. And I swore-- - He, Ronnie? - Ronnie, and I swore I didn't want anything to do with him and that there was some kind of brainwashing that had happened, and he would come to my window when I lived in the women's collective there, what we were making a women's center that started in the powder room and ended up having three buildings that used to be for married housing. We had a library, we had a art room where we make t-shirts and we printed magazines, and we had a coffee house. I mean, we really, at that point-- - Oh, at the women's center? - That finally got through, and that was the beginning of that, but I lived in a women's collective on the first floor, and at night, he would come. - I don't wanna hear any more about him. I want you to not talk about him anymore. - Okay, well but what I'm gonna say is that I finally got more and more involved and became a lesbian, and it was no longer in my life. But it was very difficult for me. I knew I had been brainwashed, so I had to really stay away from him. And 1972 was when I was in New York, and I went back and started the women's center with Dorothy, and with I just said with Yanesta, started those classes. - Okay, tell me who started the women's center? - Dorothy Allison, Nesta King, Yanesta she calls herself now, Judith Jones, and myself, and others, but the four of us, we wrote like a hundred letters of peace demanding this, you know, and then different hand-writings, and they gave us these three buildings, and it was a really big success. And that was when the first class was taught of the alternative class as a goddess class, and that was Dorothy and myself. And that was right when WITCH came out, Women's International Terrorist Conspiracy from Hell, so we were witches, and we taught witchcraft, and we read about it, and we were into the goddess. And that was going strong, but I needed a job, so I worked at Goodwill Distaff House with women for about a year, women that were deaf, multi-handicapped, some were let out from the institutions for mental health. It was really a wonderful place for me to be with them and have feminism and work with people, but they fired me because they had a gal who went in my room. Unfortunately, it was a part of the building when I was off-duty, and found my love letters, and they kicked me out as a lesbian. So that was the end of my involvement in Tallahassee, and when I left, the bookstore was still goin' strong. The women's center was still goin' strong. Even 20 years later, they had a reunion and invited Nesta and I to come and speak, and it's still going strong, so that feels good. Then, I left, that was devastating to be fired as a lesbian. I didn't have the energy to try and confront it, so I went back to Miami for a while and fell in love, completely, totally in love, and that's when I knew I really was a lesbian. (chuckles) I came through the feminist way, you know? And my lover did not want to leave when I wanted to move to St. Augustine. That brings us to the Pagoda very close, because in 1976, Rena Carney, who was one of the workers in my Distaff House, who was a lesbian. - Say her name again, Rita-- - Rena, R-E-N-A, Carney, C-A-R-N-E-Y. - Carney, C-A-R-N-E-Y. She was hired by me because of sign language abilities, and there were deaf women in there, so we became friends. And she and her lover, Cathy, I knew very well. Well, when she graduated by the time I left my job, she was at St. Augustine to work, Rena was, and her girlfriend, to work at the School for Deaf and Blind and I was back in Miami interning with Poldi, who was a dance therapist 'cause I'm a dancer. And I wanted to do dance therapy, and I was really pulled because she was getting involved in other things and-- - She who? - Poldi, and she wanted me to take over her therapy classes that were locally, but I said, "You know what, "I started having dreams about St. Augustine. "I saw the marshes, I saw the school." I had never been there before, and so I just borrowed money from my grandmother 'cause my mom didn't give me anything and went there, that was in 1976. Okay, we're almost at the Pagoda. 1976, we formed a theater group called Terpsichore who was the muse of dance, and Cathy was an artist, and Rena was a great actress. I was a dancer, and Suzy Chance, who I met when I went-- - Who was a grunt. (laughs) She carried things around. (laughs) - Yeah, we made her play the bird in the Persephone thing, and everybody would laugh when it wasn't supposed to be funny, it was always supposed to be-- - Can I get a spelling of those names, the people that were in Terpsichore ? - Oh okay, well I know-- - Yeah, and can I just say I'm not sure that you wanna publish these names? Rena lives in Melrose. You can get her permission to publish her name. Cathy is not-- - Cathy, I don't remember-- - Rena would know where Cathy is probably, but why don't we just say Cathy, Rena, and-- - Why don't we edit this in the editing phase, then? You can just-- - It was a connection I had made before with someone who was a lesbian and in the theater, which is what I wanted to do too with my dance, and so they called me and said, "Get up here. "We just bought a house, there's one "down the street for $9,000. "It's fantastic, two-story Victorian." - Wait a minute, before or after you-- - Can we do a timeout? It is 4:00 Georgia time, 3:00 Alabama time. We need to consider that if we're having a potluck that we have to do some cooking, and then coming back. - Well, I'm actually done. - No, I'm not asking you to stop, no, no, I'm just telling her. She asked for somebody to do a time check, so I say we probably have an hour. Anybody, can we go 'til 5:00? - Sure. - Yeah. - That's Georgia time. And then we can come back here at 7:00? - Why don't we move on into you starting Pagoda? - Well, I'm at 1976 when we were Terpsichore, yes, we traveled around and performed, and one day, we drove by the Pagoda, which was for sale, four of the cottages. - Wait a minute, I'm still lost in the, Rena Carney was sent to St. Augustine-- - To intern, yeah. - And you started having dreams about St. Augustine, but you'd never been there, so you borrowed money and went there-- - She told me, "Come." - Okay, well let's go back and say she told you to come. Was that before or after you started having dreams? - She told me to come because she said, "This is "where we can do women's theater, and we're here, "and I'm here to live, and Cathy's with me. "And let's do our theater, and we can move around." And we also wanted a local place to set a theater up, which is why we went looking and found the Pagoda. - Yeah, they actually lived in St. Augustine before they found the Pagoda. They had-- - Right, homes. - Rena and Cathy lived in a house, and Morgana and Suzy lived in a house in Lincolnville in St. Augustine. - Which was a black district-- - And they saw an ad in the paper. - Which was very inexpensive. - Suzy is your lover from Miami? - No, you know what, she wouldn't come up with me. It broke my heart, but she didn't-- - Where'd you meet Suzy? - I met Suzy at a party in Jacksonville where she was playing her guitar, and I played guitar, and I said okay and so we got together. And Suzy was neat, but she never really wanted women's space or separatism, and neither did Rena or Cathy. - But they saw an ad in the paper that said, "A beachfront cottage for sale." - Four, because you had to buy all four. - But you went to buy one-- - That's right. - And when you got there, you found out that they couldn't be subdivided, 'cause they were on no property whatsoever. And so, they bought all four, and this is a picture of what the cottages looked like when they were first built. This is Reeses' cottages, this is the gentleman and his sister and niece who built them. And then, this is what the owner that owned them when Morgana got there had converted them into, "The Pagoda," and she had put these horns on each of the cottages, we called them horns, to make 'em look like they were Japanese, and they got there-- - And also the crescent moon-- - I'll scan these. - And they got there, and she said, "What about four cottages?" - Yeah, and $1,000 down and $6,000 is all they cost. It was like a miracle. - All of 'em? - Each. - Each of them was $6,000. - So I sold my car, and somebody borrowed this and that, and we bought 'em, and then we wanted to start doing the theater, but as soon as we did is when the others opened up, and that's when Ellen came into the picture. - Right, let's give a little clarification. They did buy the cottages, but they needed a place to live, and you weren't living in the cottages, so they rented this main building that you can see right here. This building was on the street, and behind it were the four cottages that they bought. - Was it a motel when you bought it? - It was a motel, it had been built in 1936. - Yes, and there were men in the cottages, and we used to make 'em leave when we-- - You're getting ahead of yourself. They got there, and they bought the cottages, and they rented the main, what we ended up calling The Center, what became Pagoda Temple of Love. They rented that building from Jane. She had moved out into some other cottage because there had been a bad fire in that big building, and she was reluctant to stay there. - She was the owner. - So they were able to rent. She owned the whole thing, and she sold them the four cottages, and she rented them the big building. And somehow, Morgana, who as you can see, creates things-- - I'm gonna ask that we quickly wrap that up so I can change tape. - Yeah, we'll stop at this part. - Okay, but I won't get this. - Morgana, who creates things got Ellen to come and build a stage in the garage downstairs. Now, we're gonna take a break. - Yeah, I'm out. - Take a break, and then y'all can go on from there, 'cause I wasn't there, but I've heard the story and-- - Yeah, but you-- - What'd I miss? - You missed the fact that as soon as we got there, we started doing-- - Can you hold your thought, just for a second? - Get the other strip the guy had bought-- - You can tell that as soon as she changes her tape. - Now when it came up, we went and found, and we said, "Ellen and your collective, "you buy these cottages." - No, that's not quite how it happened, but we'll get there. - Can we wait just a second? (overlapping chatter) - So you built that before you-- - She's trying to-- - No, but I'm just gonna clarify for you, did you build that stage before you actually bought a cottage? - Yes, because we came, I'll do this again when you have the tape, Val and I came the day the folks who owned the other strip came to say to you, "Do you know anybody who would wanna buy this?" And then, Ellen had already built a stage because when we got there, you were rehearsing on the stage for your opening. - That's right, we had our opening. - So we'll get it clarified what came first. - And that was our big opening, right? Berkeley Women's Music-- - Okay, you can start. Can you say that again? - Keep going. - So you bought the four cottages, and you rented The Center Building, and you knew this collective from Jacksonville that Ellen was a part of. She had women living in her house, lesbians living in her house, and how did you get Ellen to come and build the stage? - Well, I don't know. - Okay, there's a piece of my story. At the same time that you all were buying those four, Suzy Chance, I had moved out of my family situation 'cause the kids' father said he would, for a change, be in charge of the kids, and I was in a little apartment, and Suzy was a roommate. We were not partners, and the group in Jacksonville, we were kind of getting worn out from all the political stuff, and we said, "Gee, we wish we "had a coffee house or something where we could just gather "for pleasure and have a dance and do whatever." And people were kind of thinking about, "Where could we do "it that the police won't come and whatever?" And Suzy's telling me what's going on there, and I said, "I'm gonna go check it out "'cause we're only 30 minutes away, "and actually it could be an advantage, in many ways." And so that's how, it was through Suzy that I came and looked at, and said, you know, "Could this be open "like a coffee house, can it be for any women, "lesbians and other women to come and do social things?" - It was always women, right. - This downstairs was a three-car garage down here, this building that eventually became The Center Building that they were renting and living in when they bought the four cottages. And so, Ellen got the two-car part of the garage, left this third part out, and created this stage in this double garage. - A little theater. - But it fit 50 chairs, and Rena knew all about lights. We had a great light board and gels in there, and it was right at the time when the cultural music revolution was happening. And the very first women that were going on tours would come through the Pagoda, and many times, Barbara was a producer then-- - Okay, let's not jump ahead. Let's stay with Ellen's building the stage. - Let me finish one of the things-- - Oh okay, but then you bought something. - Because my coming in was different. I never lived there full-time, but I was, I think, the only person with carpentry skills initially, and these cottages were all run down. - (chuckles) Where did you get carpentry skills? - What? - Where did you get carpentry skills? - Oh, that's another long story, but lifelong-- - She used to make dulcimers. - She grew up with it. - Yes, and in spite of people trying to stop me 'cause I wasn't a male, but anyway, so every weekend or Friday night, I would come with all my tools and help do repairs and teach. And you were one of the-- - Right, but we're still getting ahead of ourselves. - Okay, that's right, you weren't there yet. - We only have four cottages and renting the building, and Morgana somehow gets an agreement from the Berkeley Women's Music Collective to come and perform at the opening. They closed down the cottages on 7/7, '77. They bought the cottages and went to the closing. - I wasn't clear on that. Was that our cottages? - The four cottages on 7/7, '77. - You're saying that there were three strips of four cottages each and the big house. - There were a total of four deeded lots 55 feet wide by 60 feet deep, I'm sorry, by 260 feet deep, and on the first and second and fourth strips, there were four cottages. But on the first and second strips, which are the ones that we ended up with initially, there were four cottages and a two-story building. So they were taking strip number two with the four cottages. They closed on 7/7, '77, bought the cottages, and by November, they had an opening for the theater that Ellen built in the main building with Morgana and Rena and a couple of other women performing a tap dance to Leaping Lesbians, and with-- - That was wonderful. - The Berkeley Women's Music Collective performing-- - And Flash was also there. - And Flash was Silver Moon from Melrose, also. - Is this Berkeley, B-E-R-K-L-E-E, like-- - L-E-Y, right? Berkeley Women's Music Collective. - So it's California, not-- - California. - Okay, so you had come by then. - So we came on the second wave with Ellen. We came, my partner and I came through in October, just before the opening. They were in rehearsal for their opening, and stayed the weekend, and the Sunday morning when we were there, the first strip of cottages, which was four cottages and a duplex house, had been sold to two married couples. And they had an expectation that they were going to acquire the entire property, which included not just the four strips that had cottages on them, but eight land lots all together, the other four being oceanfront. And so, this married couple had bought strip number one plus the oceanfront lot, and they expected they were gonna be able to buy everything else from the woman who owned the Pagoda initially. Her name was Jane Schilling, S-C-H-I-L-L-I-N-G. This is Barbara Lieu speaking. - She was not a lesbian. - No, she was married and had children. - Yes, but Cathy did have an affair with her in the very beginning, which was-- - Always important to know what lesbians are doing behind the scenes. (laughing) Cathy had an affair with her, but anyway-- - But not a lesbian. (laughing) I'm not a lesbian, but my girlfriend is. - And her husband knew my dad, was one of his best friends when he was a commentator for sports when my dad played professional baseball. - Football? Baseball? - Baseball in Gainesville. - Her husband was a commentator. - So he took care of us, he was like the daddy, you know? - They were known as Pappy and Mammy Schilling, and so when the two married couples realized they were not going to be able to buy the whole property because Jane had sold those four cottages out from under them, them not realizing that was happening-- - While she patted us on the behind-- - There you go. - When we went in the door. (laughing) - The Sunday morning we were visiting, the two wives of the couples came to the what became The Center Building, the building that they were renting, Morgana and Rena and Suzy and Cathy, and said, "We're ready to sell. "Do you know anybody who would like to buy?" - (laughs) Really? - So we raised our hand, and we said, "Who else can you get?" - Right, but I asked first a question. I wanted you and Val for sure, but what was the question I asked you? - "Are you Marxists?" (laughing) - That's right, "If you're not a Marxist, you're invited." - Valentine said, "No, I'm a Democrat." (laughing) And for clarification, this would be Connie Lavender Valentine. She started out as Connie Ackerman. We took the last name of Lieu, L-I-E-U. She became Lavender Lieu, she became Valentine Lieu, and before she died, she was Valentine Ackerman again. So, Morgana said she would get a group together. We went back to Charleston and came back later that fall, after your opening-- - Didn't you see the opening? After the opening? - I never saw the opening. - You didn't? - I saw you rehearse. - 'Cause after the opening, Berkeley Women-- - Said, "We'll take a cottage." - "We'll take a cottage." - Three of the four Berkeley Women's Music Collective said they would buy a cottage and-- - And then, I brought in, I bought one and brought in-- - Several women that-- - Yeah, so that-- - All right, so the original buyers were-- - So you bought one, okay. - Yeah, the original buyers were, did you buy the first one or you bought it from Beth? - No, I bought the first. - You sure you didn't buy from Beth? I feel like it was-- - I think you did because-- - From Beth. - Maybe so. - I feel like it was, starting at the ocean end, Barbara and Valentine, then came Vickie, then came the Berkeley Women's Music Collective, then came Vickie's partner Pat. The downstairs of the duplex was Beth, and the top was you? - Yeah, I rented for-- - Yeah I know, but this is years later, we're talking 1978. - They owned it. - They own it when you came-- - Yeah. - But I'm, no it was not you. It was Beth and Sherry, Sherry bought the downstairs of the duplex, Beth bought the upstairs of the duplex, and you bought from Beth. - Okay. - She was fired, well she wasn't officially fired, but she knew she was gonna get fired from UNF, and she went to Massachusetts, and you bought from her. Ellen bought from her, so the original group, we met, now there's quite a few stories here about actually acquiring a property, and I want you to shut me down if it's too much details, because it's a very interesting story, but it's a lot of details. The only way to buy this property was to buy the four cottages, the duplex, and the oceanfront lot. And these two married couples had a mortgage on this property, and we were going to assume the mortgage. It was a locally-owned bank. We were gonna assume the mortgage. So we had this meeting, and there's all these women sitting around in a circle in what became The Center Building, and standing back against the wall is Martha Strozier with her arms like this, because she's not gonna be part of any collective, and she is not gonna get involved with these women. She knows them from Jacksonville. She's not gonna be a part of this, but at some point, she decided she would like to own the oceanfront lot, and so this made a deal. - In the front of the Pagoda, there were several-- - This is now two building lots that we're purchasing, one has four cottages and the duplex house, and the other is a beautiful oceanfront lot with the sundeck on it. We had a sundeck at that time. - That's right. - So and the screen house. There was a screen house there. This had originally been a motel built in 1936. It originally had 10 lots, a hydroponic garden, a swing set, a sunroom, a meeting room with screens so that people who came to the cottages could use it. - And a swimming pool. - And a swimming pool. Well, she put the swimming pool in. This photograph does not show the swimming pool. This is a postcard from before the swimming pool went in. Jane put the swimming pool in. - Okay. - The Reeses had all this other stuff, so we managed to get this large group together that's gonna assume this mortgage. And of this large group, only two were gainfully employed. Beth was working at UNF, and Pat was working in some office somewhere, and the rest of us didn't have jobs. And we didn't have any declarable income to get this mortgage, so we had to assume this mortgage. And so as we proceed along, we get a call from the, " Oh, Martha will buy this lot if it can be released "from the mortgage, she will pay outright "for the oceanfront lot if it can be released "from the mortgage because she does not wanna be involved "with this group of women who are having trouble coming "up with money to pay this mortgage." (laughing) So we get a call, me and Val, oh okay, Valentine and I moved to the Pagoda in February of '78 and rent Morgana's cottage because we don't yet own the second strip of cottages. Morgana's living in The Center Building and renting out these four cottages, as are these other units being rented out by the two married couples that own them, as are Jane's units being rented out, the four that she retained. So, we are living there, we're making arrangements to assume the mortgage, we get a call from the bank, and the banker says, "The board will not release the lot "to Martha, you cannot have the property." - What was that all about? - What was that all about? We didn't have declarable income. We didn't look good enough, yeah, so this is a banking decision. - She had the money. - She had the money to purchase the lot, but they didn't wanna lose the riverfront lot, which was the only thing that was valuable to these crappy cottages here that were built in 1936 to be the only security for this loan. So a couple of weeks later, we get a call. He says, "You can come down. "The mortgage has been approved." We go, we sign, we pay, the mortgage for all those six units was something like 200-and-some dollars a month. Our monthly mortgage on our cottage was $36. (laughing) Years later, I found out that Martha went down to the banker and said to the banker, "How much money "do I have to put in a CD so that you will release "this property so those girls can buy those cottages?" - Martha had money, her father was-- - Obviously, and she was-- - Little angel behind the scene who wasn't gonna get involved with these women. - And she ended up buying a cottage. - Yeah, she did end up buying a cottage, and then she-- - Lived there quite a long time. - She and her partner, her partner bought a second cottage, but that is a whole 'nother story. That gets you up to the purchase. - Are we done? - Well, we're almost done. - No, she-- - The purchase of the second set of cottages happened in April. They were rented out to disparate people off the street, monthlies mostly, we didn't do nightly, and they didn't do nightly and weekly. We close on the cottages, that second strip, and Morgana, who at that time was a part-time employee for the Money for Women Fund, has to go to New York City for a Money for Women Fund board meeting, and she takes the money that they send her for a airplane flight and gives it to Martha to put gas in a new motor home that she just purchased. And Suzy and Valentine and Morgana and me and Martha drive a motor home to New York City-- - I forgot that! - First to Washington D.C., and then to New York City and leave a family from California in charge of the rental cottages. (laughing) - Well, we had faith, you know, at that point. - We did have faith. - And I would like to add that we did have the curse conflicts that happened-- - Oh, we had conflicts before I even got there. - Yes, but I'm talking-- - But a major one. - I'm talking about once we were a community. - Oh, well now you're moving on to the next phase, which was-- - A couple of women said, "We don't wanna pay. "You need to have to have men until these are paid." - All right, here's what happened. We started renting out the cottages by the night and week for the summer. We came back from New York, the summer is coming on, and as Morgana says in her interview, which I'm giving you a copy of from Lesbian Land-- - I have Lesbian Land, but I'll take the copy. - Take that copy because the first paragraph is extremely inaccurate. - Oh-- - So, we sent out this flyer that I mentioned earlier before you put the tape on that said "Lesbian Feminist Resort," and we started renting the four cottages by the night and week and the duplex by the night and week to lesbians. And we did that for a summer, and at the end of the summer, we said to the original group that had purchased the cottages, "This feels so good. "We would like to keep it this way." And that wasn't acceptable to them because they needed money from the rental of the units, and so we had a parting of the ways. Beth had gone up north, and Ellen had bought that unit, and this is when Emily comes into the picture, so Emily will tell you her story. - Who did you buy from? - I'm not quite sure I followed that. - So we've got a set of six living units that are owned by a gazillion women. - A collective, right. - It's not a collective. - It's not a collective, but it-- - We're just women. - Just women coming together. - We're just women coming together. There is no collective, there is no-- - And some of them weren't living in 'em. That's why they needed to rent 'em to have the money to pay the mortgage. - Yeah, they weren't separatists. They weren't wanting women's space. - Well, they needed the money. - Eventually, they might, but we said, "We gotta hold on." - The investment. - Well, they just wanted their mortgage paid for by renting the units off the street, and we had never said we're buying these units to make a lesbian space. We just said we're lesbians buying a rental space, and so after the summer, it felt so good that we said, "We wanna keep it this way, "and we're gonna keep it this way. "And we're here, and we're the ones "who are renting the spaces. "So you're not here, you're in Jacksonville. "We wanna do this." And that was a conflict, that's true. But what they said was, "If you're gonna do that, "we need to sell, you need to find somebody "to buy these units from us." - What was the year about when all this happened? - We did it in the-- - '78 going into '79. - Yes, we ran that summer of 1978 as lesbian space, and we didn't wanna go back, so it was the fall of '78. - And what was happening in my life was that I was living in Orlando at the time with a partner, and we were always looking for beachside places to go. And we happened to see in this little lesbian newsletter this place saying, "Pagoda by the Sea," and "Lesbian feminists," I don't even know what was all in it, I know I thought, "Oh my god." - It probably said "Women's Space." - Yeah. - Well, it said more than that because I was scared to death about it because I had not been involved in the feminist movement before going there, and so Wiggy and I called and got our little reservation and went up there and we were greeted by Lavender, and we'll never forget the moment she just, with all that southern charm-- (laughing) She said, "Well come right in, lemme show you your place." And she had this wonderful southern accent. - "And here's your cottage." - We were in the upstairs of the duplex. We were in Ellen may have had at that time or-- - Yes, by then, she probably did. I don't think Beth held it very long. - Right, and so we rented, and we were up in The Center, and I don't know how many, four or five of you were gathered in the kitchen around the table. And you and I or Wiggy and I are just in the library looking around at the books, and we hear them saying, "If we could "just find some women with $3,000." - Lesbians. - Yeah, "Lesbians with $3,000," and we looked at each other, and we said, "What?" 'Cause we were already in love with the place. We knew something special was going on here, and so we walked bravely into the kitchen, and said, "Could you tell us what this is all about?" And they said, "We have two cottages "that if we don't find lesbians to buy, "are gonna be sold to men." And we said, "How much?" 'Cause we thought maybe $3,000 a month or something. I don't know what we thought, and they said, "Well, you'll need about $3,000 down "and maybe about $40 or $50 a month." And we're like, "Oh my god, this is like, "too good to be true." - They were both nurses. - And so we looked at them, and we said, "We want one "of those cottages, and we are going back to Orlando. "We'll be back in two days." You know, and we did, and we didn't have a clue. We were both nurses, we were working, but neither of us had saved any money. We borrowed money from her mother, and then I took out whatever I could get from my savings, and we came back up and bought the cottage. And that was in the fall, I think it was like October or November of '78, yeah. And we couldn't move there quite yet because we were living with Wiggy's mom. Wiggy was sort of the primary caregiver. Her mom was pretty much dependent, so we just bought it. And then we began that wonderful journey of fixing it up to be livable and so forth, but yeah that's, I came in, and then who was the next one? - I'm trying to think who bought-- - It was Karen Jones bought Vickie's cottage. - Who is Vickie? - She was one of the original of, we called them, strip one and strip two, and she was one of the women from Jacksonville who purchased with the second wave and then didn't want to stay because she needed her money out of it. And so she-- - And one thing that we did in the very beginning, thanks to Barbara and Val, was we did make it clear that it wasn't gonna be an investment, that if you sold your cottage, you had to sell it for what it cost you plus the amount of cost of index. - It's the consumer price index inflationary rate, and so what you would have when you came out of there was the exact same buying power with your money that you had when you went in. And we did that for many, many, many years, that if a cottage would turn over, I used to get a monthly mailing from the government of what the current consumer price index inflationary rate was, and each time a cottage would sell, we would take the down payment money that the woman had paid and what the current value of it was, given that the mortgage been paid off to a certain extent, and then increase it by the consumer price inflationary rate. - Which is one reason why we survived so long. - Yes, nobody could, yeah. - Otherwise, it had just kept going up and up, and only rich people-- - 'Cause it was a gorgeous access to the beach. (laughs) - Yeah. - And I think that we all came in, or I think most of us came in, at that point, with the feeling that we wanted to make this affordable for women, for lesbians. We didn't want to jack up the prices of the cottages. We paid everybody the same salary, $5 an hour, whether you were the cleaning coordinator for the cottages, or you were the lawyer doing the paperwork. We all got paid $5 an hour in the beginning. I know we had to change that after a while, but we really wanted to try to be as fair and equitable with each other as we could and to be different from the world out there that didn't wanna do it this way. - Okay, we have half an hour until our brief break time. - One thing that I think should be said is we first, as we were finding who wanted to live here and who was willing to take a loss that month if it was a lesbian but not enough to pay that bill, we gradually became what we called a residential community with The Center, which we bought in 1979 with the women who were committed, who had moved there, and pooled our money and bought the Temple. - Okay, let me do a little bit, here. I would like you to hear from Ellen and Morgana about The Matriarchy Conference, which happened at the Pagoda and brought some new women, but before we do that, I'd like to clarify just because we're running out of time, the time frame on The Center Building, the purchase of The Center Building. And I'm gonna give you this, which is the legal documents list of when things happened. So in Florida, four women, whose names are on here, three women whose names are on here, incorporated something called The Mother Church in March of 1978. So before we even had bought the second set of cottages, they had incorporated The Mother Church. - From NOW. - They were from NOW, yes. And they designed a credo, which was the doctrines of The Mother Church, in '78, and-- - Had incorporated in the state only. - They did incorporate in '78, and by 1979, March of 1979, they realized they weren't gonna be able to make this thing go, and so they knew that we were doing circles at the Pagoda, and they offered us this incorporated Mother Church. And we took it over in, it says here, "Mother Church moves "to Pagoda as per Florida Secretary of State, 3/14, 1979." - Who had started it? - Three NOW women, whose names are on this list. You can copy 'em if you want 'em. And so we then received our recognition as tax-exempt status under the IRS, as a church, they were incorporated as a church, in November of 1979. - We were one of the first, besides Seas to be recognized as a goddess-worshiping church-- - And we changed the name-- - In the nation. - We changed the name to The Pagoda Temple of Love from The Mother Church in February of 1980. - We also changed the credo, Valentine and I worked really hard on it, we kept a lot of the NOW concepts, which at the time, seemed pretty reformist. But we wanted to honor the women that did it, and also then added in all our Pagan kinds of rituals in there and took out that men could join and then sent that in. And the reason did it as a church was because we wanted to have women-only events in that building. And if we had become educational 501c3, we would've had to have men, and we were in a bind. And I remember I was on vacation and visiting my family, and I said, "Okay Dad, what can I do "to have lesbian-only space? "Please tell me that there's something that we can do." He says, "Yeah, freedom of religion. "You say your religion only allows women, and that's "the last thing that's gonna go, so you'll be safe." So we did it that way, and it felt right 'cause we already were, but I don't think that I would've really wanted to start a church. And yet, it allowed us to become women-only space legally. - Well, it allows you to be women-only space that was tax-exempt. - Yes. - As well. - To be a nonprofit tax-exempt. - 'Cause you can have women-only space-- - Oh yes, but not to get the nonprofit status, and I remember something in the wording was something about, "Men would form "their own gathering," anyway, I helped work on some of that-- - Yeah, we didn't take it out. We just said they can do their own thing, of course knowing they wouldn't. - So also, this building now that The Pagoda Temple of Love is existing in and meeting in and having circles in is not owned by us. It is still owned by Jane, the original Pagoda woman. So we decide we need to buy the building, and she was willing to sell it, and 13 of us put in $600 a piece to make the down payment to her and buy the building, and that then became the building that belonged to The Pagoda Temple of Love. - The big room, we had a great big vagina on the wall and a nice altar, and that's where we had meetings and circles. - And it became the community building for the community. - And it became, for quite a while, a little store that you ran. - Right, that's on this list, when the IRS approves us to have a store-- - Right, and we had rental room upstairs and downstairs. - And in the basement. - We published two books. Barbara Deming, who started the Money for Women Fund, for which Morgana was the part-time administrator, wanted to release a book, and she has already published a number of books, but she asked us if we could do it under the auspices of The Pagoda Temple of Love. She paid the whole thing, and it never made any money, but she published this book and also a book that I don't have a copy of, I'm sorry to say, of her lover Jane's book. - I might have Jane's. - Yeah, and there was one other thing I wanted to say, I thought, that fit in with this. Oh, I wanted to clarify that one of the reasons this article is a little bit inaccurate in Cheney's book, Joyce Cheney's book, is that these two entities, or actually these three entities, the strips of cottages and The Pagoda Temple of Love were never one legal entity because these were, as far as the cottages were concerned, they were simply land deeds that women had an agreement to share things with, we had shared infrastructure, shared gas line, shared water lines, shared septic tanks, shared mortgages, and the temple building was something separate, so that there were women who lived in the cottages who never, ever participated, never came to a concert, never came to a meeting, never came to group, which we had every Thursday night, which was to resolve conflicts. They lived happily in the environment of a lesbian community but did not participate, so there was no obligation that you had to participate, and there was no legal connection between the community building and the cottages. There was just affinity connection. - Right, and they were very close together, so it made it a little difficult, 'cause the lines got blurred when women came to stay with us, in terms of-- - All right, so you wanted to talk about that we were transitioning. We did buy the community building, but we were transitioning from renting by the night and week, which was exhausting. There were none of us that wanted to clean any more toilets. None of us wanted to wash any more sheets. And so, we decided, as a community, that we would transition to residential, and at that time, and I think you mentioned it in your Cheney article, that women said, "But what are we "gonna do about Nancy Breeze who likes "to come here and stay here?" And other women who liked to come, and that's when we would make the community building into a supporter building where women could come and stay if they support, you could either pay to stay, or you could send monthly support. - Plug that in, I'm out of battery. - Okay. - Not the recorder. - You wanna pause that? - Yeah. - And it had to happen pretty early because Wiggy and I broke up, and-- - How do you spell Wiggy? - W-I-G-G-Y. - Wiggy. - Later became New, in truth, but anyway, because I was on the list-- - Yes. - In '80-- - Right, in '80, so fairly early on. When we decided, who knows? It may have happened when we decided to buy that building and make it The Pagoda Temple of Love and put it under the auspices of the 501c3 church that we decided we needed supporters. But the important thing about the supporters was we said, "One of the benefits of being a supporter is "that you will be on the list in the order of your becoming "a supporter to buy a cottage at the Pagoda." So even though we were separate legal entities, we were trying to work together, and we effectively were one small group running everything, even though it was separate legal entities. And so that was an incentive for women to become supporters is that it got their name on a list. And what Emily is talking about is that when she and New broke up, or Wiggy, broke up, there was a concern about who was gonna get kicked out of a cottage. And we said, "We will move Emily to the top of the list "because she's already here, and the next cottage "that comes available, Emily will get." And that's how we resolved that problem. - It was a complicated situation. - It took time. - I don't think I've heard from you. - I don't think I told how I'm living in-- - Yeah, how did you get to the Pagoda? - Oh that's funny. (laughs) I was in Maryland, and I'd never heard of the Pagoda. I was part of a group of women. We were lesbians, I guess. I'm trying to think, not all of us were. I came out as a lesbian with one of the interns. We were in the community of, not Columbia, Maryland, or maybe it was, it's a new age community near Baltimore. Two women who were lesbians, so I guess some of us-- - Doesn't matter, go ahead. - Doesn't matter. They were teaching us how to go out into the community and teach-- - Assertiveness skills. - Different kinds of things, workshops, teaching the community-- - Empowerment. - All kind of things, right, right. So we went away weekends and learned how, and it was wonderful, so about a year after we were there, I guess, the two women had been to the Pagoda, I didn't know this, and they came back, and they knew everything was not going well for me in my second year, and they said, "You should go down and look at this place. "We spent the weekend there." They used to teach, what was it they taught? The went to the Pagoda and did a workshop there, you know, where you determine if you're this or you're that-- - Myers Briggs. - Myers Briggs. - Oh yeah. - They were Myers Briggs teachers, yeah, and they said, "We went down there, "and that's a really nice lesbian community." By that time, I had come out, my partner wanted to go to-- - Speak up 'cause it's audio. - Oh I'm sorry, so I listened to this for a while. I heard what they had to say, and then when everything was going kaput in my life, I went to them, and I said, "Tell me more about this place." I think maybe I always wanted to go. I always saw myself in a warm place. My father had a store, and I always saw myself some place like Florida, but I'd never been there. I like warm places. Okay, so I said, "Tell me about this Pagoda place." So they did, and I don't know how I got in touch with somebody, they knew, they knew how to get me in touch, and that was when I got on the plane. And I flew down, I stayed at a motel. Valentine had given me directions. I rented a car, Jesus, I had never been to Florida. I got to the Pagoda, I stayed overnight in one of the cottages that we were renting, the Women's Collective maybe in the second-- - Berkeley Women's Music Collective, maybe. - Yeah, yeah, and I was there for the weekend. I get up early, organist greeter, big sign says "Greeter," right? (laughs) By 9:00, I'm knocking on the door. - We hated that greeter sign, we passed it around-- - I invited 'em in, Morgana, "Yes?" - I was kind of an early riser. - (laughs) Valentine was there. You had to know Valentine, she was charismatic. Okay, she had a bathing suit on with a woman in a-- - She had a black bathing suit with an Isis on it, with a winged Isis like this that went from one armpit to the other, beautiful color. - She said, "I'll take you for a walk "on the beach, I like to walk." I, "Okay, okay," and so we walked on the beach, and she's tellin' me about she likes to play tennis and all the different things she likes. Oh my god-- - 'Cause you like to play tennis. - Yeah! I mean, everything. - Speak up. - I'm tryin' to think of what happened next. Then we had an afternoon shower, and it rained and rained and rained, and then it cooled everything off, and then I thought I'd gone to heaven. And then, all these women were around, and I don't think you had a potluck or anything, but they were coming, Wes and Dory were there, and they were walking the dog. New was there, and she had her coffee with a cinnamon stick. (laughs) I mean really, I came out, I couldn't believe it. I thought I was in, and then, then I went to The Center. - Dream, uh huh. - I went to The Center, and I went up there, and you had a library, okay? And the library was out on the porch, for some reason. You must've been-- - We were moving it from one room to the other. - So I sat on the porch, right, in a nice swing, and I'm going through the books, you know, and there is a Seth book. Now, I had studied some Seth stuff, so I knew a little bit about it. I opened the book, and there's Seth, and he says, "You create your own reality." That's (laughs) the honest-to-God truth, (laughs) so I went back, and I got off the plane, and my partner said, when the-- - Wait, wait, before you did that, did she tell you you could have a job? - Yeah, that was the same time, wasn't it? - Emily. - I went swimming. - Was the Director of Nursing. - I went swimming, right, and Emily was in the pool, that's right, exactly. I forgot one. (laughs) And she goes, "Oh, you're a nurse. "Well, I'm a director of a nursing home in town, "and I think we could use you." She said, "If you find out about, I'll send you stuff "about the licensing, and yeah, right, right, right." There's the other thing, oh my god. (laughs) I get off the plane, and my friend Ethela, she was from, oh what's the country, another country. - Chile? - Chile. I got off the plane, and she said, "You're going back there!" She was aghast, "I can tell!" - Speak up. - I said, "I haven't made up my mind. "I just had a nice time." But she's kind of psychic, and she was really mad. And I said, "Well, you told me you wanted "to go off with men, anyway. "What do you care if I do?" "Oh," she said, "I didn't want you to move away. "I wanted you to stay here." (laughing) Oh my god, so then, I was in my own little condo with my son, and I remember the letter came at the door, and my hand was actually warm, and I am not psychic. My hand was warm, and I opened it up, and there a job, well Emily was telling me how I could definitely get a job and what to do this for the licensing. Valentine wrote and said, "There's a place you could rent, "right now, until a cottage comes open, blah, blah, blah." I mean, it's just like everything fell into place. - You were meant to be there. - I was outta there, and my condo sold, you know this'll never sell in this market, boom, sold. My son got out of high school, graduating. I said, "Do you wanna come to Florida with me?" He said, "Oh no," he said, "I like this." He called it the Plastic City, found a woman he wanted to marry. Okay, I'm stayin', I found him an apartment to go into, and then where I was workin' was a hospital, a correctional institute, and the woman that was the director, she did everything for us. She led us to sick hall and all that stuff. She was leaving, and I thought, "Oh god, "I gotta get outta this job." 'Cause this lady kept 1,800 prisoners, and she was leaving, so it's like everything fell into place. Isn't that amazing? - I wasn't amazed. - Got four minutes until I have to change out. - And it's 10 minutes before we have to stop. Is there any chance we could get a couple of minutes on The Matriarchy Conference, which is another way that women found out about the Pagoda, 'cause Rose, I think, came because Jane Gapen was coming. I don't know that story, I wasn't there. Do y'all remember any of it? - Could be, that rings a bell. - Okay, do you wanna just set up what it was? - I don't know what it was, it was a conference that Barbara Love and somebody else from New York came down to do at The Center Building. Ellen facilitated a workshop, I'm sure you facilitated a workshop. - Right, it was a weekend affair, I mean, it was, you know-- - Do you remember anything else besides Barbara Love? Was it Barbara Love? - Yes, and they produced a newspaper after the conference, which is buried somewhere in my stuff, that tells exactly what happened and-- - I'm sure there's a copy in The Lesbian Herstory Archives in New York if you need it-- - Right, the matriarchy, and also, I think what was important was, for me, was I was coming at it culturally and spiritually. Some of the women that were coming were more looking about complete separatism-- - Can we stop? - Okay, gotta stop. - Oh. - Gotta change out. - So this was not at the Pagoda? - Yes, it was. It was in The Center Building, that's why it's important. I know, I know, I'm just asking questions for them to cover, it's not, they'll go over it. Did Barbara Deming come or just Jane? - Just Jane is what I remember. - See I don't think Barbara ever came to the Pagoda. - Oh she did come to the Pagoda. - She did once? - She did, I met her. - She came when Trudy was putting on a play. Money for Women came to my house for the board meeting. - Oh okay, all right-- - And Barbara and Jane were there-- - Okay, but not at The Matriarchy Conference. - Uh uh. - And that was like '79, The Matriarchy Conference? - Yeah, it was very early on, women were sleepin' all around on the floors, and-- - Okay, all right hang on, 'cause Emily wants to hear some of this. - Yeah, wait just one second, I'm almost there. - Okay, see I wasn't involved, and I know it was important, and don't you think that was when Rose came? I'm just talking not about the Pagoda-- - I do. - Yes, that's when you met Rose. - I had been thinking in the last couple days, when was it that Rose first appeared on the scene, but-- - All right, are you goin', Em? - Okay, we're on. - Okay, Rose was another woman who eventually bought a cottage at the Pagoda, and she and Ellen were partners for a while. And she used to go to the Keys, where her brother and sister-in-law had a house. And her brother said to her one time, "You need to meet "those women on the other side of the fence. "I think you'd like to know them." And it was Barbara Deming and Jane Gapen, and once she met them and Jane said she was coming to The Matriarchy Conference at the Pagoda, I think she got Rose to come and meet her at the Pagoda, and that's how Rose got involved and how you met Rose. - I think you're right. - And part of the reason that they came to Pagoda, from my memory, is that we had started a women-only, lesbian-only residence, women could also come-- - To The Center Building, Pagoda Temple of Love was never lesbian-only, The Center Building was never lesbian-only, it was women-only. - Yeah, so we could recruit. (laughs) - That's not true! (laughing) - Do you remember Rena coming out and playing Anita Bryant? - Oh she came to the garage door. We were gathered for a concert. (laughing) Oh, this was the funniest thing. We were gathered for a concert. We're all sitting in our chairs in the theater, and the doors are closed, and all of the sudden, there's a knock on the door, and we said, "What's that?" And we thought, "Oh my gosh, maybe someone "from the outside is come and discovered us." So someone went to the door and opened it up, and she pushed the door open, and in she walked, "I can't believe you girls are doin' this kind of stuff!" You know, and-- - She looked just like her. - She was dressed like Anita Bryant. - A wig on. - This was Rena, who was one of the original four who bought the first four cottages and who is an actress, and that's why she could pull this off. - Oh yeah. - I mean, we thought, at first she was for real. (laughing) And Rena was never one to sit through 12-hour meetings. (laughing) She pretty much, you know, had a lot to do with the cultural, especially the plays, you know. A couple years where we did some really good women's plays. We got a resident playwright. - Right, and we even performed two of the plays in St. Augustine, and I was acting in it with her. I've never acted in my life, and so she really brought a lot that way, but she was not political. - Not up to your standards of political. She has to determine herself whether she's political or not. - Well-- - She might disagree with you. - It would've helped me if she'd been a little more involved in helping with the hardest parts, but that's okay. I mean, if it wasn't for Rena, we wouldn't, and it turns out, Rena-- - Rena is the one who still owns a cottage at the Pagoda of the original four and of the second wave. - Her mother, from Monticello, Florida, where she's from, was my dad's girlfriend when he was from Monticello, Florida at the watermelon farm, so she always called me "cousin." (laughing) - Well, anything else about The Matriarchy Conference? Anybody else who came the first time to visit the Pagoda or anything that went on? - I remember it was a huge turnout, much to our amazement. - And you were trying to say when the tape was off that there were people, women, sleeping everywhere. - Oh yeah, even up on the, I remember the deck, we had workshop places, and upstairs, we also had-- - And we used the screen room back and we used every space. - And it was brand new actual concept, matriarch, just really the thought of, "We're recreating matriarchy "and understanding matriarchy existed for so long." - There's another woman who was involved, whose name I wish I could remember, 'cause I believe she still writes, and I can't think of who it was. - I'll have to find that out, I'll find the newspaper, and you probably will find it. And it didn't last. After they met, there wasn't another publication. But it brought separatism into the, validated, and how important it was and how they could feel, women that came, could feel the power, that they were in a space where there were no men, and how different that was, and how we needed to reclaim the land. - It is actually shocking that women could feel this feeling in the smallest amount of space with neighbors on either side. It's very surprising, I'm telling you it was 110 feet across and 260 feet long, and the ocean was on the other side of those lots. - And road on the other side. - And there was a road on the west side, but women would come, one of the things that used to happen is that Valentine would be doing yoga in the main room of The Center. Now, we will admit that she did it naked, and she and, oh let's say, Hazel, who was living there at the time and working as one of the jobs that we had. We had the reservationist, the greeter, the cleaner, the laundry woman, and the bookkeeper. And they would be up there doing yoga, and some new visitor lesbian would come, and they'd watch them walk down to the beach, and they'd watch them take all their clothes off to go in the Atlantic Ocean, and they'd go, "Oh shit." And they'd have to get up and go down there because we were not Women's Land. Some women would come, and they would say, "This isn't "Women's Land, it's not a farm." Well, Women's Land doesn't have to be a farm, and we were a very small amount of space, but women, lesbians, would come, and they would say, "This is lesbian heaven." It just had an energy that they felt-- - And it was too bad because-- - Even though we had to be careful because we lived there all the time, and you'll hear Morgana say that in this article that she is in, in Lynn Cheney's book. - I remember when New Rue came. - Or not Lynn Cheney, Joyce Cheney. - When New Rue came and went down there and stripped. (laughing) It was so hard to say, "You're not allowed to do that," to New Rue, I mean, you know, I just said, "Please hurry "because if they come, we're gonna get in trouble." She went, "Oh, well I didn't think about it." - You have to know is that cars were allowed to drive on the beach, from Daytona Beach to Jacksonville. All that beach was drivable, and so there were trucks and rednecks, and no offense to the folks from inland, but you never knew who was gonna be out there on the beach, and so you had to be careful. - Right, but it was amazing, we never had a problem with the outside community. - Very few, very few. - But once the pool became available-- - Then, they got naked in the pool. - Then, nudity was fine-- - At the pool. - 'Cause they did a privacy fence around the pool. - Until they built houses-- - Originally, that's the last bit of cottages were men. In the last three cottages-- - There was a fourth strip of cottages, as I said, there was strip one, strip two, the pool strip, and then the fourth strip of cottages. And Jane held onto that property until 1988, and she rented those out, either she lived there or she rented out the cottages. And so, there were always men around, and there were men on either side of us and across the street from us and on the beach. - And a three-story condo that got built-- - Lemme tell you a funny story, tower, and I went over there one day 'cause women that were renting, it was something for sale-- - Talk to the machine. - And I said, "Okay, I'll go "with you," 'cause I knew a realtor, and you know-- - Okay, let me clarify, this is a three-story building, four stories actually, because it was a high as it could be, 35 feet, and it was build smack up against our property because it was one of the original 10 lots that Mr. Reese owned when it was 10 building lots. And so it was smack up against the second strip of cottages. Jean went over there with some women who were looking to buy or rent. - With the real estate woman, and they looked, and women were walking by, "Oh, there's the Pagoda," they said. The woman didn't know they came from the Pagoda, the real estate woman, and these women were walking through, they weren't holding hands, but they were walking through. And the real estate woman said, she's been there forever, "Well, whatever they do, they do inside." (laughing) I couldn't keep from laughing. - She said this to people who were looking to buy? - They happened to be lesbians who were staying at the Pagoda, but she didn't know that. - Renting a cottage. - We even had to appear one time before the County Commission when she tried to build a building between us and the pool before she let the pool go. - This is on the other side, but this is years later. - But it was just the same idea that she says, "Well, I don't know "what they do in there." (laughing) - It's 5:00, I just wanna be clear about what our time frame is. - Could we possibly do another 15 minutes, 'til 5:15? - Were there questions you have on your list that have not been covered, or-- - I want to know-- - Do you at least want to hear when Fayann got to Pagoda? - Yes, I do wanna hear when you got to Pagoda. - Well, I've got it off right now, so let's kind of portion out. We want to hear Fayann's involvement, and then you were saying there's one section you wanna-- - The historical moment when it happened. I wondered what you thought about that, and then why you think it lasted as long as it did. You've said several things about that along the way, but we might as well get them all at once. - Let me ask you something, it seems like that's gonna take longer than 15 minutes-- - Yes, it does. - Are we okay to go to 5:30? - Sure. - It's just that I won't have food to give anybody. - Well, we'll have to eat a little later. - Well, are there other women who are coming to this potluck who will be expecting to be here at a certain time? - We're gonna have to-- - There's just two other, Rand and deJoly. - We could notify them to come at 7:00 and not 6:30. - Well, I thought we were already coming at 7:00. - Okay, 7:30? - Yeah, but I haven't told Rand and deJoly, I forgot about them. - I suspect they'll be enough food. - No, I need to cook. - Emily needs to cook. I need to cook. - Okay, okay. - So you know, but I need a little over an hour to cook, so I'm fine with going 'til 5:30 if we don't mind 7:00, 7:15 for-- - Sure. - Yeah, that's fine. - Do you want me to leave and go call them and tell them now? - No, I think we should-- - No, we can tell them. - Schmidt, and the story of how I got involved at the Pagoda, I don't remember the year, but my partner and I were living in Jacksonville, Florida, and she and several other women bought a house that was on the ocean next to the Pagoda. And they were doing timeshares, and so she and I, on her week, would go down, and we didn't really interact much with the Pagoda, but I always thought it was neat that it felt peaceful and it felt good. And I've always needed water in my life, needed to live near water, it just was really, really neat. So a couple of years of going back and forth, and the pool came up for sale, and the way the pool was paid for was different women would put $100 in or make payments over a year period of time, and that paid for the pool. And I did that. - Lifetime ownership. - Yeah, and we couldn't bring the pool here, so it-- - I will say, parenthetically, I have spoken to women in Florida who say, "Where's my "lifetime membership to the pool?" (laughing) This year, they said that to me. - Yeah, me too. - Anyhow, and I'd heard about this woman that danced, and I thought that was neat, and I was involved with a group of women that were putting on a one-day festival, women's lesbian festival in Jacksonville. And I was part of the entertainment committee, and I thought, "Well, it'd be neat "to have someone come up and dance." And so I called Morgana, and I asked her if she'd like to dance, and yes, and I had no idea really what she did. I'd never seen her, and she came up and danced, and-- - Are you talking about at the show where the lights were on? 'Cause that was-- - That was in Jacksonville, the first time I saw you in Jacksonville at the festival. - The outdoor festival that-- - Yeah, you did not ask me to come to that, Flash told me to go, 'cause at that point, I was not going anywhere. I was trying to get over Leslie, and I was really mourning, and Flash called me 'cause she said, "I want you to dance "with me, and you're gonna meet somebody." And I saw in a dream the face of Fayann, who I did not know. And when I went there, you saw me dancing, and I went the the AA meeting that you were, and there was one seat left next to you. - That's right, and my heart beat real fast. (laughing) - And you were taller than me, than I was in my dream. I was at Rose's table where she was selling her stones up on a hill, and you came and walked up to me-- - Is this in the dream, or is this real? - This is for real. - Well, she dreamt this, but then it also happened. - Because-- - I was up on a hill, and you were down where Rose was, there was-- - She looked really tall because I was having to look up at her, but when she came, I don't remember, but it was like I recognize a face, but I thought, "Oh, this is the face," but, you know, so that's how we got-- - Boy, she was just getting out of a relationship, and she told me she didn't want a relationship, and I thought, "Oh my god. "I need to get outta here." (laughing) - After that, though, you did sponsor me to perform. - I did, that's right. - At a wonderful lesbian event and then you asked me for my first date. - Yeah, and-- - And then, you moved in. - Yeah. - Immediately, even brought her bag, first night, it's okay. I think that's all lesbians do it. - All right, well let's let Fayann-- - And I was just, I watched her dance, and it was the most graceful, beautiful thing I'd ever seen in my life. And she had this sparkle in her eyes and this smile on her face and this veil moving around her. It was just so mysterious and magical at the same time. It was just, I was just taken, and that's, when I think of Morgana, that's how I see her, and that's what I think about is that dancing, that most graceful-- - And you helped produce me for years after that. - I did, I did. - And we traveled, performed festivals and all over. - And so, I did live at the Pagoda with Morgana, and I didn't see it as being an activist or anything. I just loved this woman, and I just wanted to live with her, and that's what I did. And it wasn't a-- - And worked hard. - And I worked hard, and it was not a statement of anything. This is just what I wanted to do, and I didn't think of it as being revolutionary or anything else. We were living together like anybody else would live together, and there was such a safety in it and such a warmth, and I enjoyed so much coming home from work and being there, and one of the most fun things was when the sun would start to go down, I'd go out there and take my clothes off and get in the pool. (laughing) And I can remember it being so warm sometimes in the summer. It was just like bath water, and it was just the best thing. And I'd swim for exercise, but it was so nurturing to me. And it was the first time I'd ever been exposed to lesbians living together, the culture, the musicians and the poets and the storytellers and the dance and the spirituality of women, and it just opened up a whole new world for me that I'd never been exposed to. But it wasn't something that I said, "Oh, I'm a lesbian, "and I'm gonna go find this community." I kind of fell into it, and I guess that's the magic of it is that we're just doing what we're supposed to be doing, and it's easy, and that was about 25 years ago. - Right, and you lived at Pagoda from '89 until '93 and worked, and I worked, and then-- - Little louder. - We both were together for three, maybe four, years at Pagoda, when we started talking about we need to start thinking about where we need to go in our older age because we saw the beach was disappearing, and the dunes were disappearing. And we had always done psychic work together with other psychics, Jean's lover was a excellent psychic. - That's a whole 'nother story. - Let's not go there. - But anyway, we knew we had to leave, and you, when my grandma left me the money, and I bought that house when I first met you. That's where we went, and we hadn't even been inside. So that's how we got up here. My aunts told us to come. - She told me that she was buying a house in Alabama. Would I like to go there and see it? And I thought, "Who in the hell "would ever buy a house in Alabama?" I couldn't get that in my mind, but really I fell in love with the area, too. - And you worked hard, then, the three of us, on getting this land, which was not easy. - But I'd like us to, instead of focusing on Alapine-- - Yeah, that's what I wanna say, Kay was an important story part of the Pagoda. We don't have to go into it right now, but Kay was a psychic, and Ellen ended up doing her business that she ended up doing in South Carolina because of the classes we took from Kay. Jean ended up in a relationship with Kay, so there's a whole 'nother Pagoda story. We're not going into it now, but of course, there's a million things that we can cover, but she was very much a part of-- - Yeah, and when we did circles, we did serious circles. I mean, we kept hurricanes away, we did. We've got a tornado to come get our sign down 'cause people thought we were a motel still, and it was huge, and a little tornado came in and knocked it down for us, and then went straight through and knocked over the-- - Dumpster. - Dumpster where our greeter's sign had been shoved by somebody who hated us so much they didn't want it in front of their house. - Both Ellen and Jean have something they wanna say. - We really did a lot of magic, we did. - Yeah, goddess magic, good, positive magic. - Kay said this area here was sacred when she came up here. - Kay is the psychic who said this area was-- - Before she died, she had a lot. - I wanna speak to your question about why it lasted so long and did so well, and I'm speaking, I wasn't a full-time resident, even though I sure lived there a lot. But again, my observations will be a little different. And I think it's for a combination of things, like it was a safe place for lesbians, and there was so few places in the world that that was so, and where the whole spirit of women was really honored, spiritually, physically, emotionally. And because everyone who was involved that stayed involved very long, I feel was very committed to making it work. Sure there were difficulties, we're all different and had different ideas, but that commitment to trying to make it work was key. But there's another thing that I think was important, and that was the programs that came, the workshops, the things that focused on lesbianism and women, whether they were entertainment, so to speak, or deeper things, that the place that that happened, it felt like a center for that happening. And I know, as somebody who didn't live there full-time, that was one of the key reasons that kept me really involved, 'cause that fed my soul. - Yeah, I wanna also add to that, what Ellen's saying, and why I think it lasted as long as it did is because I think we were committed, we got together on a weekly basis to deal with our conflicts, to deal with our issues, and we met maybe for too long a period of time for a lot of people. But I'll tell you, I think it transformed my life. It made me really dig deep inside as to what way I really wanted to live, and we formed a bond that, to this day, with many of us in this room, we still have, and it will always be there because we struggled through issues. We struggled through conflicts. We've tried so hard, such as with the battered women, battered lesbian issue, to come up with what was the fairest, kindest way to deal. And to me, this is a big part of feminism and what made the Pagoda continue to exist up until recently. And you had a question on there about what is the difference between now and then. Now, they don't have that. Now, they don't meet and try and resolve-- - And they rent the cottages to men. - Well, they've sold two of them to men. - Totally, totally. - That happened when we needed the money to buy the land. - Let's just hear why we lasted as long as we did. - Yeah, and I'm sure some of you also feel that, too. There were times when women in the core group needed things, and we stepped right in there, so there was obviously a real caring going on among the ones who were living within the community, and that's why I think we lasted as long as we did. - For something like that, this is Fayann, for something like that to stand and evolve and be there, it takes somebody that's committed that will do that work, and sometimes, it's a volunteer position, you know. So, it takes somebody with a commitment to the idea and willing to do whatever it takes for that to happen. And if there's not somebody there, then it's not gonna happen, and I think that there was a big commitment for the women in the beginning. And I was not part of that, but before I was ever there, there was a big commitment by women who wanted to live together and do whatever they had to do to make that happen. - Yeah, I would say the same thing, and I think, on a spiritual level, the women that were drawn in the beginning, were drawn to a place that was a world of it's own, that had a light force there already. It didn't matter to me that the tower came, even though we knew it was coming, we read cards. It really didn't bother me on the other side because we had created, through our circles and through our connection with heart for at least 10 years before the last strip came when things changed a little bit, and that's the reason I think it kind of changed. But it was as if it was a world of it's own. And the women that came there that were supposed to be there felt it, and those that didn't got critical and brought in their isms, and we'd struggle through 'em all and try to resolve the best we could. And we did, in a lot of ways, but some women fell out because they it didn't gel right. I don't know how to explain it, but we were a family, and you have to feel that with somebody, even before your struggle. When they showed up, the first two, I wasn't even surprised. I was a little surprised, but, "Yeah, this is the Pagoda. "You wanna buy a cottage? "If you're not a Marxist, you can buy that one." - This is Barbara. Morgana had put out the call psychically for somebody to come to take it to the next step because there was internal conflict, even within the four who were there originally. - Big time. - And somehow, we heard psychically, the call. - Right, well and also to get the cottages across the way sold when she said that they had bought it. And I knew right then, we were gonna own them, and it was real fast that it happened. - It was very fast. - So yeah, I think in some ways, I am a visionary, and I think all of us are, to some degree, but I was lucky enough not to have to work. I could practice my visionary stuff, you know? And I could do things because I had a job as a lesbian feminist for 10 years with Money for Women. $5 an hour is all I got part-time, but my mom always game me a car. I made a little bit here, and every now and then, I had a little job, but I had such privilege, in a way. - I'd like to talk about that privilege. This is Barbara. One of the things that I took upon myself to do in the late '70s and early '80s was when I was away from St. Augustine, to come out as frequently as possible because I was one of the very few lesbians who wasn't gonna lose her child and wasn't gonna lose the roof over her head and wasn't gonna lose her job because I had the same privilege that Morgana did, that I was able to work for $5 an hour. Maybe it was cleaning toilets. Maybe it was doing the books, but it was there where we were earning money within the community, and we were safe, and so I took that as an obligation to come out when I was away from there as much as possible for those women, those lesbians who couldn't. - Right, and being at the Pagoda gave you that energy. - It did. - Yeah, it spiraled out. The women that visited that would go from around the world, we'd get letters, I've got boxes of letters. Just, we gotta get 'em in scrapbooks. How much it changed their lives, and-- - When I answered that question, which I did, and I look back, and I think it's because, maybe for some reason, that makes sense that we were-- - Called, you mean? - Yeah, maybe. I mean, I didn't put that in there, but-- - The tribe comes back together? - But when we'd get together and we would make decisions by consensus, and we would have meetings to, when I think about what we did with running that center, we would have long, long meetings about how to do that. And we were volunteers, a lot of us, and we didn't think anything about doing some volunteer job. And I don't know, we were just very compatible, and we all got along, as far as I knew, and we all liked each other, you know. What changed was when the last group of cottages was sold, and different women came in-- - When we expanded the community. - Yeah, the last group, and-- - Wanted to ritzy it up, and-- - Let's not play the blame game. - But it changed. The dynamics changed when the Pagoda got bigger and did expansion, and there were some women that came in and weren't compatible to our values, I guess you'd say, and I-- - And some of us were kind of burned out, so-- - Well, "You just raise your hand," I remember Marilyn saying, "You don't do this talking and consensus. "You just raise your hand and say yes or no." I thought, "Uh oh, uh oh." - That's a whole 'nother story. - Yeah, but you wondered, I think, about, didn't you ask a question about what helped to make it go, and what was ending? Okay, so I saw it as a combination of some factors like that, different women coming in with different values, and they also called us, "Just a bunch of middle-class women," they said. - Doin' therapy on each other. - We had a process that worked for us for 10 years. It was called group, we met every Thursday night. There was no obligation to come, but women did come. And Morgana talks about it in the Joyce Cheney article. We did have, as a bottom line, if you had a conflict that you could not resolve with another woman at the community, we asked you to come and bring it to group, and we did group for 10 years. And then, when we expanded, the way we handled group was not acceptable to some of our newer residents, and they asked us to change things, and we tried to accommodate them, as we had always tried to solve a problem, like Emily was talking about, or to work it out or to find something innovative to do. And I don't have an explanation, except to say we were unable to do it at that time. And that's when we started falling apart. There were some other specific reasons about bookkeeping and different ways that things were done business-wise, but I think the hardest part for those of us, this is Barbara speaking, the hardest part was that something that had worked for us for so long wasn't meeting their needs. - And was challenged, it was challenged, as well. - For us to change. - We tried, and that's what may have been our undoing. - Yeah, the final thing was when the bridge came, though, and that was, you had left by then, hadn't you? - Well, Morgana alluded to this earlier, this is Barbara, that she had started thinking about more space. I wanna be as brief as possible on this, 'cause this is a whole 'nother subject, but starting in 1982, we started meeting about the Crone's Nest Project, and we wanted to design a residential living situation for long-living women, and we worked on it a very long time, very hard, and one of the things was there wasn't enough space at the Pagoda. And so, Morgana did start looking around for more space, and so that was also a contributing factor to us wanting to move on, although we would've been happy to see the space continue, but there were also internal problems. - Right, and also there was the fact that the city and the state built a huge bridge that could've been a little bit behind us-- - A little bit north of us. - A little, and it would've gone down to the sea if somebody had missed-- - It came to our front door. - It came right to our front gate, and we had 35 accidents. - No, we had three cars through the front gate in the first year. - No, no, no, no. Yes, but overall, it was 35, I remember because the lawyer, I can't think of her name right now. - Garnet. - Garnet and Edith went and tried to get some results. I went and tried, and then Rena, Rena keeps coming back, and I wrote a letter to the senator, a representative, and the local, and all they did was just make it be at night, when the drunks were the ones that were coming through, it was red, and then only when you got up to it, it switched to green. - She's talking about the traffic light. There was a high-rise bridge that crossed the St. John's River that came right to our front gate. - And I don't think it was a mistake. - The Intercoastal Waterway, not the St. John's. - I'm sorry, I'm sorry, thank you Ellen, across the Intercoastal Waterway to Vilano Beach, which is where we were, and we worked with the Department of Transportation. There was a committee, we would meet at the Pagoda, and then we would go and meet with them. And there were some other possible places for the bridge, but they ended up choosing this spot, and-- - And it was very dangerous because the theater was right there if a truck had come in. - However, Pagoda still exists. Those buildings still stand, no one has-- - That's because they changed, finally. - The traffic light, okay. - Yeah, you didn't come-- - There was something specific about the traffic light. - If you didn't know, and you'd never been there, you got a green light, you just keep going, and there we were, boom, right into us. So to me, that was my sign. (laughs) - We were concerned about hurricanes. - I sold in 2000. - These are cottages that were built in 1936, you know, this is-- - Rising sea levels. - Rising sea levels. It got very, very hot, there was no more afternoon showers like Jean was talkin' about to cool us off. Emily had left us and gone into town. - Yeah. - Yeah. (laughing) Yeah, that bridge thing was a real conflict because one of the ways they wanted to come was the-- - Sure, through your neighborhood. - Right, and the reason why, sadly, I think it probably was the better route that they chose is that they didn't have to widen the road to go over the overpass. - She had a house in town, she doesn't know. - Right, but going down the street that I lived on when I moved into town, they would've had to widen that. They would've had to buy all of the houses up and down that street in order to create a bridge over a little bit north of where they did. - But there was another location farther north that they could've chosen. - Yeah, now if they'd gone there, that would've been much-- - Those are signs, though. - Yeah, they are signs. - They were all signs, and it was right about that time that I had gotten the money from my grandmother and gotten my aunts calling me up here. So it wasn't clear, and I remember Rose kept sayin, "We "gotta get outta here, we gotta go up there. "And make it happen because I'm gonna be too old." And I'd say, "I know, but I gotta feel "where it is I'm supposed to go. "I don't feel it yet." And then, as soon as I got the message from my great aunts, I said, "Okay." And I told Rose, and she got involved. But it has been hard on her because she was older, and now, with how long it's taken, I feel really bad. I think we should've left earlier, actually. (laughing) But then, this might not have happened, so who knows? - Anything else? - Well, I think what I'm gonna do is get this, I'm gonna edit this, mess around with it, get it in a shape for you to review, and then you can add anything you want to. I know you've written things you probably haven't been able to read, and you can pull those back out and add it in here. There's no reason why you can't add it because we didn't do it, talk about it today. - I think it's amazing what we got done. - I do too. - Yes, yes. And this is something that I have been dreaming about since the Pagoda is that we would be able to have a gathering like this where we could talk about this incredible thing that happened for a good 12 years. You know, it was very strong for 12, maybe even 15 years. Even after the things started to fall apart, it still was going until the more recent years. - Until 2000, really, 'cause when I sold my house, that was when Jenny had sold the first cottage to a man and had put a fence around it. - But there are still lesbians who live there. Myriam still lives there, and have you seen A Parallel Revolution? This is a DVD, if there's any chance you get to see it before you go, the second half is largely about the Pagoda. It's a film that Myriam Fougere has done about separatist communities in the 70s, and it's in French and English, and she interviews women from different separatist communities from that time. And the second half of it, there are tons of photographs from the Pagoda, which you got from Emily. - And Emily talks 'cause-- - And Emily talks. Ellen talks, and she still has a cottage-- - And also, she interviewed Julia Penelope. She interviewed Carolyn Gage, a whole bunch of women. - And she still has a cottage there, so I don't wanna diminish how it feels to the lesbians who are living there now. I don't say, "It doesn't exist." It exists in its current form, and they do what they choose to do the way it is now, but it's just not The Pagoda Temple of Love, and it's different. There's no Center Building available, in that way. - And there's no women's space. - Well, they consider it women's space. - There's men living in it. - Well, they do the best they can. - It's a different way of looking at it, but it's different than just out there-- - It's not women's space for you. I just don't wanna diminish the fact that Myriam has her heart and soul in her cottage, which is beautiful, and she's still connected there, and-- - I sometimes wish I hadn't sold mine. I'd love to go to Florida in the winter, and I wouldn't care if there were men around 'cause I have this the rest of the year, so I shouldn't say, I hear you, I do hear you. - Yeah, 'cause I sold mine too, and it's like-- - You told me when I said I might go to the, "Don't go, Morgana." Do you remember? - Oh, to go see it, yeah. I went two years ago, and it was-- - It's very hard, I never go back, and women invite me out. The woman that bought my cottage invites me, and I've never been to see it, and I'm not going. - It's sad. - It's very different. It's not what it was. - But neither am I. Look at me, I am not what I was either. (laughing) I gotta go. - Yeah, I guess we do have to go.