Hart, Nett - interviewed by Rose Norman / Southern Lesbian-Feminist Activist Herstory Project / Duke Digital Repository

Rose

This is Rose Norman,

0:02

and I'm interviewing Nett Hart.

0:03

N-E-T-T H-A-R-T,

0:06

by phone,

0:09

on January 28th, 2015.

0:11

We are now recording.

0:17

Nett

Okay, okay.

0:19

Rose

And I've already put the introduction

0:21

about who we are

0:24

on there.

0:26

Nett

Okay.

Are you speaking, then?

0:27

-

Yeah, I'm speaking on the beginning of the tape,

0:30

saying my name and your name.

0:33

Nett

Okay, okay.

Rose

I have some questions

0:35

I probably should have mailed to you.

0:36

But I don't think there's anything here

0:39

that you wouldn't have already thought of,

0:41

but I was just thinking of things to guide us.

0:43

I think we want to talk about,

0:46

well, first, I want to get some biographical information.

0:48

We need to put a short bio at the beginning

0:51

to contextualize who you are.

0:53

Nett

Mm-hmm.

Rose

So go ahead and say things like

0:55

where you grew up.

0:57

Where you went to school.

0:58

What you did for a career.

1:00

Nett

Okay.

1:02

Well, I'm doing it.

1:03

I grew up in south St. Paul, Minnesota,

1:04

the south area of St. Paul,

1:07

and went to college in Iowa.

1:10

And then, finished up in Augsburg in Minneapolis,

1:13

because the student strikes were happening,

1:16

and I just couldn't be in Iowa

1:19

when all that stuff was happening in Minneapolis.

1:20

And then I taught

1:23

junior high arts for four years,

1:26

four and a half years,

1:28

which I absolutely loved,

1:30

but I decided to go to graduate school,

1:32

because I wanted to study theology.

1:33

Part of that is related to the whole feminist thing

1:36

that I just felt that we had to

1:39

get out of some institutions.

1:41

And the only way to do that

1:43

was to work in original languages and stuff,

1:44

so I did that for three years.

1:46

And then, let's see.

1:48

I got booted out.

1:51

And I had been doing graphic design

1:53

as well as my personal art for some period of time,

1:56

just as a way of supporting myself in school.

1:58

So, I did that

2:00

pretty much full-time

2:03

for a number of years,

2:05

and part of that was that

2:06

there was so many lesbian businesses

2:08

at that time getting started,

2:10

from women's carpentry groups

2:11

to the outdoor groups,

2:14

to conference services and stuff,

2:16

and so, I worked almost exclusively for

2:18

lesbian organizations.

2:22

I did theater flyers, and posters

2:23

and illustrations of all different

2:26

kinds of things.

2:28

And I did that for about 19 years,

2:29

but that was concurrent with a lot of the land stuff.

2:31

And then, I've been up on the land here for 34 years.

2:34

And I during that time

2:37

have done

2:40

a lot of different things,

2:41

but for the last 20 years I have been doing organic farming

2:42

and I have 18 years

2:45

as a CSA farmer

2:47

right now, at this point

2:51

and so I've been active in a lot of the

2:52

food security issues and food justice issues

2:55

for a long period of time.

2:58

So my activism has just been running

3:00

through the whole thing.

3:03

Anything from

3:04

anti-racism work from

3:06

even in high-school

3:08

to very active in the feminist movement,

3:10

and in the lesbian feminist movement,

3:13

and then

3:15

just trying to do social justice work

3:16

in as many areas as possible.

3:19

So that's kind of where I am, lion's shares.

3:21

Do you need more from that?

3:26

Rose

No, no, that's plenty.

3:28

What school in Iowa?

3:29

Nett

I went to Wartburg,

3:30

it's called a four-year scholarship.

3:32

Yeah, (laughs) yeah.

3:35

Being at Wartburg is

3:37

oh, it changes (mumbles), how's that.

3:39

Yeah, I think I actually know somebody

3:42

who went there.

3:44

Nett

Yeah.

3:46

Rose

She was

older than me, though.

3:47

I mean she's-

3:48

Nett

Yeah, it's

an academically excellent school.

3:49

You know, at the time it was,

3:50

it was a good place for me to be.

3:52

It just got too small.

3:53

Rose

Yeah.

3:55

Okay, that's probably plenty

3:58

to give a sense of who this is

4:01

that's talking.

4:03

(Nett laughs)

4:04

Okay so now I want to talk about,

4:06

and if you think of other things,

4:08

I mean I'm going to edit this,

4:09

I'll move things around

4:10

so that,

4:11

if we feel like we trail off somewhere,

4:12

don't worry about it.

4:14

Nett

Okay.

4:15

Rose

Just let it flow.

4:16

Nett

And I should say

4:17

I can just barely hear you.

4:18

Rose

Oh.

4:20

Nett

You kind of go in and out.

4:21

But it's okay.

4:22

Rose

Okay, you know what, that's because

4:23

I'll remember to turn around

4:27

when I'm going to say something.

4:29

Nett

Okay.

4:31

Rose

Mostly I won't be talking, though.

4:31

But right now I want to

4:33

say that,

4:37

I would like at some point

4:38

to come up with sort of the timeline

4:40

of when things, if you can,

4:42

Nett

Mm-hmm.

Rose

If you have years.

4:44

Because I was looking, and it looks like

4:45

Word Weavers publishing came before LNR.

4:47

Nett

Oh, by a long time, yeah.

4:51

Yeah.

4:53

Rose

And so it's-

4:54

Nett

Just a quick

timeline for you is that,

4:56

we got the farm here in '79, '80.

4:58

Early '80.

5:01

And had been part of a lesbian land group,

5:02

search group for a period of time before that.

5:05

And then the year after that began

5:08

the first almanac, Ripening.

5:10

And actually it wasn't the first almanac,

5:13

we thought it was the only almanac.

5:15

But we did that,

5:17

in late '80,

5:19

and then we started

5:20

receiving all kinds of material in the mail

5:23

from other lesbians,

5:25

and so we did the second one,

5:26

and then Joyce Cheney had been collecting

5:28

the land stories for a number of years before that,

5:32

and approached us to publish Lesbian Land.

5:34

So we got involved with that,

5:37

and certainly after that Bev Brown began

5:39

Maize, the magazine,

5:43

and did one issue and then wanted to pass it on.

5:44

And so Lee took that on,

5:47

and we published, she edited

5:50

and we published Maize,

5:51

it's barely been out at the time,

5:55

let's just put it that way.

5:56

And then, LRN didn't start until '90.

5:57

We began to do stuff for '90 and that.

6:03

So that's a good ten years later

6:05

after the almanacs.

6:07

Does that help you a little bit on time?

6:10

Rose

Yeah.

6:12

Yeah, that is helpful.

6:13

Okay, so we should then begin I suppose

6:16

with the almanacs.

6:19

You want to start talking about

6:21

what got you doing that?

6:22

Sounds like everything sort of wove together?

6:23

Over time.

6:25

Nett

It did, yeah.

And I think one of the things that happened

6:26

is that when we'd been in the lesbian land search group,

6:29

we talked politics all the time,

6:33

we were trying to decide

6:35

what kinds of things would be

6:38

possible for as large a group as we were looking at.

6:41

We were looking for a resident community,

6:43

maybe 30-40 lesbians.

6:45

And so we had to negotiate a whole lot of stuff

6:47

in talking about that,

6:50

that some of the groups

6:52

that were around us at that time

6:53

were more weekend groups.

6:55

And they just had some policies for visitors.

6:57

And we were looking for a lot of stuff.

6:59

And so, our whole thing coming to the land,

7:01

and we had actually already bought this farm,

7:04

but were looking to join a group,

7:06

was all around politics.

7:08

And then we got here,

7:10

and what we were totally thrown with,

7:11

is that it was all about the natural world

7:15

and our interaction with it.

7:17

From the city, you don't know where the moon rises

7:20

at different times, and how that changes.

7:22

And just all the phenomena of

7:24

the plants and animals, and the cycles.

7:27

And we had gardened, each of us,

7:29

for years.

7:31

But being a part of a cycling world here

7:32

was so different that

7:36

we decided that we had to

7:38

research it and write little note cards on it

7:40

and put all these little pieces together.

7:42

And as we were doing this,

7:44

we had talked about publishing

7:47

in a very vague way

7:48

before that.

7:49

But this seemed like it was a book.

7:50

And so we took all these little cards,

7:52

and we took a braided rug,

7:55

a very large braided rug,

7:57

and we said okay,

7:58

this is winter, on this side of the rug.

8:00

This is summer over here, this is.

8:02

And we just started putting the cards in,

8:04

in their right part of the circle.

8:07

And then just said

8:09

what are some extra things

8:11

we'd like to have put in there?

8:12

And we had a book.

8:14

And that was it.

8:16

You know, and just had lots of fragments

8:17

that we thought fit together

8:19

in a seasonal kind of a way.

8:20

So we did that book because it was about us

8:23

coming to a relationship with the land,

8:26

I think at that point.

8:29

As soon as that book was out,

8:32

we seriously got mail after mail after mail

8:34

of pieces that other lesbians were writing.

8:37

And not necessarily Landykes, but some.

8:41

And so that's how we decided,

8:43

okay I guess we have a second book.

8:45

And we did that.

8:47

And that was really a different sort of

8:49

relationship to land than what our

8:53

original political inclinations had been.

8:55

So that was the shift.

8:58

And I think that's why we started doing the books, yeah.

9:01

And then the lesbian land book

9:05

was a totally different experience for us

9:08

because here was a manuscript, a taped manuscript.

9:10

Actually it wasn't even a manuscript,

9:15

it was all on tape

9:16

and it had to be transcribed

9:17

in the days of pause, rewind, pause, rewind,

9:19

kind of days.

9:22

And so that took a fair amount of time.

9:23

And then once we had that, we could begin to edit

9:26

and Joyce at that time was

9:29

largely through with the book.

9:31

She had done all the interviews and traveled,

9:33

and done that,

9:35

and she just wanted it out there in the world.

9:36

So she did edit with us a bit,

9:37

but we mostly did the editing on that.

9:40

And then got that out.

9:42

To our surprise it wasn't as popular book

9:47

as the almanacs.

9:49

And so we still had many copies left

9:51

of that one.

9:54

So we did that,

9:56

and then when Maize came along,

9:57

we really were so taken by what Bev was doing with

9:59

the magazine.

10:04

It was just such a necessary magazine to be out there

10:04

that when she didn't want to do it anymore,

10:07

we said, I'll take that on.

10:11

She hadn't done anything other than

10:13

editing of Lesbian Land before that as editor.

10:15

But she just had to keep going.

10:18

And so that's what happened.

10:20

She, I'm just going to make a guess, but

10:21

she edited I think at least through the 70s.

10:25

Like though issue 70-something, or whatever like that

10:30

before it moved on to somebody else.

10:32

So that's a lot of issues.

10:33

And then that put us into a lot of contact

10:37

with a lot of lesbian land groups.

10:41

And lesbians that were not part of groups.

10:43

And, you know,

10:46

we did some bit of traveling

10:49

related to that too.

10:51

Rose

Let's stop a minute.

10:54

I realize,

10:55

I've only got a vague notion

10:57

of who Lee is, and who we are.

10:59

Nett

We, yeah.

11:03

(Rose and Nett laugh)

11:04

Nett

Lee and I were partners for a long time.

11:06

Rose

And this is Lee Lanning, right?

11:09

Is this-

11:11

Nett

Say it again?

Rose

Lee Lanning?

11:12

Nett

Yes, mm-hmm.

11:13

Rose

L-E-E

11:14

Nett

Yeah, L-A-N-N-I-N-G.

11:16

Yeah.

11:18

Rose

And go ahead and say how long you were partners?

11:21

Nett

Well, I mean we're still

11:24

people who are in touch every week of the year,

11:26

I mean like that.

11:29

But we were always in a kind of relationship

11:30

that allowed us to move and

11:34

you know, be in different places

11:35

and with different people and stuff.

11:37

So I don't think either one of us knows

11:39

when that, you know,

11:41

it was just always in change and flux like that,

11:43

but we did a lot of things together,

11:46

including originally buying this farm,

11:47

and starting Word Weavers together.

11:50

Yeah.

11:53

Some of those connections

11:59

that are just

12:02

very full blown.

12:03

There are so many different parts of your life that

12:04

are in conjunction.

12:07

Rose

Mm-hmm.

Okay, so we as, and that land group also,

12:11

that a lot of people started land groups

12:14

in the early '70s.

12:17

Nett

Mm-hmm.

12:19

Rose

Do you remember roughly

12:19

when your land group started?

12:21

And how it started?

12:22

What got it started?

12:23

Nett

Well,

12:24

see there were already a lot of them around here,

12:25

even, long before that.

12:28

And there was a fairly formal one

12:31

that was the DOE farm

12:32

which was in Wisconsin.

12:35

And that's a lot of lesbian supporters

12:37

both from the Twin City area,

12:40

from Milwaukee and Madison.

12:43

It was kind of equidistant to those three cities.

12:45

So that was the one that was most prominent

12:47

just because it had so much activity going on there.

12:50

But there were a lot of smaller ones.

12:53

There were a lot of ones that were

12:54

started by a couple of couples,

12:56

and whatever else.

12:58

There were a number of lands

13:01

that were on rental property,

13:02

and so they were rented for a couple of years and

13:04

lesbians came and

13:09

created the space that we did and then

13:10

it didn't continue.

13:13

And I think part of that was that

13:14

none of us at that time were

13:17

thinking of land as livelihood.

13:19

I think we all thought that we would

13:22

have to make our livelihood some other way.

13:24

And so, and it was probably wise at the time.

13:26

So that seemed more temporal.

13:32

In terms of lands that are still around in here,

13:34

not very many.

13:37

But there were some that were formally organized

13:38

as non-profits, and

13:40

there have been quite a few.

13:43

Right in our immediate area here.

13:45

Rose

That would be,

13:48

you're in the vicinity of Minneapolis-Saint Paul?

13:49

Or out from that area-

13:53

Nett

Yeah.

northern Minnesota.

13:54

The other thing that is fairly prominent in our area

13:56

is a lot of

13:59

outdoor women's activities.

14:01

There would always be large groups camping

14:03

and hiking, and that kind of thing.

14:07

Which is not exactly lesbian land.

14:09

But it also drew the same lesbians.

14:11

To do that kind of thing in groups.

14:15

Something that has changed quite a bit

14:19

I think in the last 30 years.

14:21

But we didn't start looking for land

14:25

until the early '80s.

14:29

Like '80, '81.

14:31

And the group that we were meeting with

14:32

met from '81 to '83, sometime in there.

14:35

It ended up being a really good chance to be with very

14:40

like minded and not so like minded lesbians over time.

14:46

But it was clear that that was not a group

14:49

that was going to actually

14:52

come together and buy land together, so no.

14:54

Rose

You already had the farm

14:57

so you weren't looking for-

14:58

Nett

We would have changed that.

15:01

I mean we would have sold the farm

15:03

and moved on to a community

15:05

if there was something that could have pulled together.

15:07

Most of what was happening at the same time is

15:11

we were meeting to buy land,

15:14

and other lesbians were buying houses in the city.

15:15

Which seemed like you know, okay.

15:18

How serious are we about doing this?

15:22

But I think that we all felt we wanted to do this,

15:23

and we felt we wanted to live in community.

15:26

And the economic realities were just too harsh

15:29

to figure out how we were going to do that kind of thing.

15:32

Rose

And that farm you bought in 1979, '80.

15:37

Nett

Uh-huh.

15:40

Rose

This is where you are now?

15:41

Nett

Yes, yes.

15:43

Rose

And did you live there then? Or did you,

15:44

was it a place you went to

15:47

while you lived somewhere else?

15:48

Nett

Well, basically lived here part time.

15:50

I was here about three days a week

15:53

and then I ran a graphics studio in Minneapolis.

15:55

So I was there

15:58

part of the week.

16:00

And some of that time I lived

16:01

in a collective household in Minneapolis.

16:03

And other times I lived with partners

16:05

in an apartment or whatever.

16:09

From the very beginning

16:12

once we had the land here

16:14

I was here at least half of the week.

16:15

Every, and then I've been here full time

16:19

probably since about '92.

16:24

Rose

I'm going to put that

16:27

in the biographical introduction

16:28

because that'll be good context.

16:30

Nett

Okay.

16:31

Rose

Okay.

16:33

Okay, well, we had gotten to Maize coming along

16:36

and Lee editing it through the '70s.

16:41

Nett

That means issue number 70.

16:45

That is a guess on my part.

16:48

I could look that up for you or whatever else,

16:52

I'm just guessing that's about how long she had it.

16:55

Rose

Oh, issue number 70.

16:59

Because I was saying it started publication 1983.

17:00

Nett

Yeah right.

17:03

No, she took it over in issue number two.

17:04

And so I think she

17:07

did probably 70 issues or so

17:09

before passed it on.

17:12

Rose

70, 70-X.

17:16

Okay.

17:19

So that would be,

17:20

Nett

Yeah.

Rose

let's see,

17:23

just trying to think.

17:25

31 was in the '90s,

17:27

so 70s would be in the 2000s, right?

17:28

Nett

Oh yeah.

17:32

Yeah.

17:33

Somewhere in there, yeah.

17:34

Rose

Okay, I can ask.

17:38

I might want to try to get that from Jae.

17:39

And try to get, was she the first one?

17:42

I mean was she the one after Lee?

17:44

Nett

No, the thing is

17:46

it bounced around a little too much there for a while.

17:47

It first went to Spinsterhaven

17:50

in Arkansas?

17:55

Rose

Yeah it is. No, it's-

17:59

Nett

Yeah,

and she edited it for a while, and then

18:01

I think that the next editor after that,

18:06

see I wasn't as involved at this point,

18:08

because we were no longer publishing it.

18:10

It moved, the publishing moved with the editor

18:14

at that point.

18:17

But then

18:18

Carol Jean Coventry edited for a while

18:21

and then Rebecca Hinton,

18:25

and then trying to think who else.

18:28

There was at least one other person in there.

18:32

And then Jae took it over.

18:35

Rose

Where was Carol Jean Coventry?

18:39

Nett

She's in Wisconsin.

18:41

Rose

And Rebecca Hinton was still in

18:45

was it New Mexico or Arizona?

18:46

Where is that?

18:49

Nett

Oh, Jae? Jae's in New Mexico.

18:51

Rose

But where was Rebecca?

18:53

Nett

I think she's east coast.

18:56

Rose

Well she was with Pelican, right?

18:59

Nett

No, this was an-

19:02

Rose

Another Rebecca?

19:03

Nett

That's Henderson,

19:04

Nett

Rebecca Henderson.

19:05

Rose

Oh, okay.

I'm getting my Rebeccas mixed up.

19:06

Nett

This is Hinton.

19:07

She wrote two small books about

19:07

do it yourself projects and

19:12

handy girl kind of stuff, basically.

19:16

Rose

Oh, okay.

19:18

Nett

Yeah, I don't know how long she had,

19:19

but there was one other editor in there

19:22

that I cannot remember exactly how that moved,

19:24

and then it moved back to Outland

19:27

and Jae took it over.

19:31

Rose

And who was the person at Spinsterhaven?

19:34

The name of the-

19:38

Nett

It was one of the resident people there,

19:39

there aren't that many

19:41

that were actually living there at that time.

19:44

Rose

That's okay.

19:48

Nett

They're not people I had, I mean

19:49

I didn't have any contact at all

19:51

with that process.

19:52

Rose

Well okay, so talk about the years

19:56

that Lee was editing Maize.

19:59

Were you involved with the editing of it?

20:01

Nett

No, when she was editing it

20:03

there were times that she was here

20:06

when she started doing it.

20:08

But then she was living in other places

20:09

and she always did the editing of Maize

20:11

but what role I had was I continued the publishing

20:13

so that I did all the book fulfillment for the

20:17

almanacs and Lesbian Land, and

20:20

some of the financial

20:24

bookkeeping kind of stuff

20:27

for Maize as it came through

20:29

Word Weavers at that point.

20:33

And so, it wasn't really until

20:36

Lee wasn't editing it anymore

20:40

that Word Weavers and

20:42

Maize were totally separate things.

20:44

Everybody that's an editor now has basically run it

20:49

as a small business of their own, so.

20:52

Rose

Okay so. Was it Word Weavers

21:05

that was the publisher of Maize

21:08

when Lee was doing it?

21:09

Nett

Well yeah.

21:11

Because Word Weavers was the publisher

21:12

of the almanacs.

21:14

So we just did that all together, the orders.

21:16

Rose

Okay, well let's get a list of

21:21

Word Weavers publications.

21:23

Nett

Okay, so we did the first two almanacs.

21:26

"Ripening, an Almanac of Lesbian Lore and Vision".

21:29

Then we did "Dreaming,

21:31

an Almanac of Lesbian Lore and Vision".

21:33

And then we did "Lesbian Land".

21:36

And then we did "Awakening,

21:38

an Almanac of Lesbian Lore and Vision".

21:41

So those are the four books.

21:42

And then let's see.

21:44

In the early '90s we published my book,

21:47

"Spirited Lesbians:

21:51

lesbian desire as social action".

21:53

And then we had been doing Maize before that time.

22:00

But Maize is actually,

22:05

we have our own archives of our issues,

22:09

everybody else I think has pretty much

22:12

archived their own issues.

22:14

Rose

Yeah, we sent a complete collection of Maize

22:18

from Shewolf to,

22:22

I think we sent it to Sinister Wisdom.

22:25

But she had already sent it to the,

22:28

the Lesbian Herstory Archive

22:29

I guess that's in Brooklyn.

22:31

Nett

Uh-huh, right.

22:33

Rose

I'm not sure what

22:35

Julie Enszer is doing Sinister Wisdom,

22:38

not sure what she's going to do with

22:42

those issues of Maize.

22:43

Sure are a lot of them.

22:46

Nett

Yeah, yeah.

22:48

I don't know what the publishing run is right now.

22:49

But you know because we had the books

22:52

in the women's bookstores,

22:56

we sold Maize through the women's bookstores too.

22:57

And we sold a lot through the bookstores.

23:00

It wasn't all subscription.

23:02

So that I think that,

23:04

we picked up a lot of new subscriptions that way,

23:06

but we also always had people that just bought it

23:07

at bookstores.

23:10

Which are fewer, at this point.

23:12

Rose

Many fewer, 13 is what I read last.

23:15

Nett

Yeah.

23:17

Rose

You have any sense of what

23:26

the distribution was of Maize in those years?

23:29

How many did you print?

23:33

Nett

You know this is stuff that

23:36

I haven't dealt with for 20 years.

23:38

I have no clear idea right now

23:39

of how much we printed of any of those things.

23:43

Rose

Okay, that's all right.

23:45

Nett

Yeah, I mean it's kind of one of those,

23:47

we print this many because

23:51

this is how many subscribers and stuff we have.

23:52

We didn't have a lot of back stock.

23:55

There were times that

23:57

we just had to go to the copy machine

23:58

and make a few more copies or something.

24:00

And then we used lesbian printers

24:03

in Grand Rapids, Michigan too for that whole time.

24:05

So we were lucky about that.

24:09

Rose

That's good. Okay we can come back

24:16

if you think of something else to add there.

24:19

But maybe we should go ahead and get into

24:20

how LNR, the things I was thinking about

24:22

have a lot of questions.

24:24

Origins, whose idea, how it came to be,

24:27

whose name should be given as founding mothers,

24:29

where you got all those volunteers from,

24:34

you said that you have thousands of hours

24:36

done by volunteers.

24:39

How did they come along?

24:40

And how was it publicized besides Maize?

24:43

Nett

Okay, well I think the background

24:45

to even having LNR was that

24:49

in the early years,

24:52

let's say

24:53

not necessarily the late '70s,

24:55

but particularly in the '80s,

24:56

there were a lot of lesbian lands that

24:57

maybe some of the original people were there,

25:01

or not there,

25:02

but there were all these crises that were happening

25:04

so that we would get

25:06

notices to Maize and you know personally,

25:09

saying there's nobody able to pay the mortgage

25:12

on you know Cabbage Lane this month,

25:16

or something like that.

25:19

I mean there would be these calls

25:20

that would go out widely, is that we need money

25:22

just to keep the mortgage going and whatever else.

25:23

And then you know those might be repetitive

25:26

and different ones, a lot of different lands

25:29

were doing that.

25:32

But there were also lands that had

25:33

some pretty messy kinds of title things going on,

25:36

where the original people that came on the land

25:39

put their names on the title

25:45

not thinking of ownership of land,

25:46

so much like a, were no longer on the land.

25:48

And just some things that have,

25:51

more people wanted money back

25:54

or whatever else.

25:55

Or the lands had started out as mixed communities

25:56

and then it was all women and stuff.

26:00

So there was a lot of, we felt like

26:03

crisis stuff that was happening all the time

26:07

that there were so many lesbian lands

26:09

that were on the brink of being lost.

26:10

And many that were lost

26:13

just in that period of time.

26:15

I think some of us that were in that land group

26:18

and just lesbians around that were talking about this,

26:21

is like, there has to be something that helps

26:25

some of these lands,

26:28

And that it isn't always the same few people

26:29

that they're asking for help.

26:31

And that the lesbian lands belong to all of us

26:32

in a way, that we all need to be somehow

26:35

responsible for them.

26:38

Talking about it and

26:40

well, I think it just kind of came about

26:45

like we should just see

26:48

if we can get a small fund together

26:49

and I think I have to say that almost everything

26:51

that here seems like it's an institutional thing

26:55

was a flying by the seat of our pants

26:59

let's do it for one time kind of effort

27:01

to begin with.

27:03

It wasn't like let's publish a series of books.

27:04

Or it wasn't any of those kinds of things.

27:07

And that's how it was with LNR.

27:09

It was like let's see if we can get a fund together

27:11

and help some of these lands that are struggling,

27:13

month to month, making costs for mortgages.

27:16

They need to have more stability and that.

27:18

Let's see if we can do that.

27:21

The first call went out and

27:24

pretty much through Maize, let's say.

27:28

It wasn't too many other networks

27:31

that we had about that.

27:33

There was at that time Lesbian Connection

27:33

had a land directory.

27:36

And so I think we used that.

27:39

That's been a long time since they had that.

27:42

That was basically the extent of the call

27:45

both for funds and for

27:47

let's see if we can, you know, funnel some money

27:50

from maybe more of the urban women

27:53

to some of these lesbian lands.

27:56

And it still got pretty small.

27:59

But there was some indication pretty early on

28:01

that money wasn't the only thing

28:05

that was going to help any of these lands.

28:07

It's that they needed to be

28:09

a lot more structural stuff

28:10

that helped.

28:13

And basically there were things that were just

28:14

to help clear up titles, or a lot of lesbians on land

28:17

I think we started these as anti-patriarchal pieces

28:23

but they still ended up being within a state,

28:27

in a county,

28:30

and all those kinds of things.

28:30

There were too many ways in which that

28:33

non-interaction was disadvantaging those lands.

28:36

Pretty quickly after that we started doing some work

28:41

and at this point a friend, Sally Koplan

28:44

who had a law background,

28:49

she wasn't a lawyer

28:50

but had a law background.

28:51

And I started just doing a lot of research

28:53

of you know, how else could lands be

28:56

structured and owned.

28:59

Those kinds of questions.

29:00

And it became clear that we need to do the same thing

29:03

for leveraging natural resources, is that

29:05

even though the whole idea of creating a non-profit

29:09

seemed like a big commitment, let's say.

29:14

Then it seems like then it's something.

29:18

We realized we had to do that.

29:21

And just prior to that I had been doing some

29:22

conference work.

29:26

Again another kind of flying by the seat of our pants

29:28

group, but we called it Creating a Lesbian Future.

29:30

And we were bringing together a lot of lesbians

29:33

from a lot of different backgrounds

29:36

to have conversations about what it was

29:37

that we wanted to create together,

29:39

and we did a series of three really large conferences

29:41

but in the process of doing that

29:45

we interacted a lot with funders.

29:47

And that was my first experience as

29:49

writing grant proposals and that kind of a thing.

29:53

So when we were doing Lesbian Natural Resources,

29:55

I knew that any process that we were doing with

29:59

grants and giving out grants

30:04

had to be questions that were really related

30:06

to what we needed to know in order to make decisions.

30:10

I didn't want to have anybody have to

30:13

go through the kind of hoops that we had to go through

30:16

for some of the funders that,

30:18

and they were women's funds and stuff like that too.

30:19

To get the funding that we needed

30:22

for those conferences.

30:24

We tried to make it a real direct setup.

30:25

And again we're kind of standing one foot in,

30:28

there are women who would make larger donations

30:32

if they got a tax exemption.

30:36

We don't have a lot of lands that could use funds

30:37

for which someone gets a tax exemption.

30:40

And so then we were, I was doing a lot of research

30:43

in the libraries,

30:47

law libraries,

30:50

and the foundation libraries,

30:51

trying to find how it could be done.

30:54

And then at that time there was the

30:57

consortium of women's funds.

31:00

There were a lot of women's funds at that time.

31:01

And so I did a lot of research in their books

31:04

about just how, well the public papers

31:07

of these different funds

31:10

to how that could be set up so that

31:11

we could take donations

31:14

from individuals that wanted a tax exemption

31:17

for that donation.

31:19

But at the same time,

31:21

bring that money to

31:23

lesbian lands that were not formally organized

31:25

as non-profits,

31:27

and 501(c)(3)s, at that point.

31:29

Trying to figure out that, and then I

31:34

read an article by this lesbian lawyer

31:36

who was just talking about

31:39

the different ways that you could do that

31:41

and I set up an appointment with her

31:44

and we just had a great meeting of the minds

31:46

almost immediately.

31:49

It was very funny, because we were in this

31:52

very crowded restaurant,

31:54

and I told her exactly what I wanted to do,

31:55

and she said a little too loudly,

31:57

yeah, let's bifurcate (laughs).

32:00

Everybody turned, and the whole restaurant

32:03

looked at us like we'd said something like that.

32:05

And I said, I think can we do that?

32:07

I mean, that's exactly what I want to do,

32:09

is have two parallel organizations,

32:10

because clearly one can do one thing

32:13

and then the other can do the other.

32:15

And so that's what we did,

32:17

is we created the model

32:19

for having the 501(c)(4),

32:20

which is the Lesbian Natural Resources.

32:23

Which is a community based organization.

32:25

It takes donations for which the donors get no

32:28

tax exemption.

32:32

It gives money to any lesbian that we choose

32:33

to give that money to under our own guidelines.

32:38

And then created a subsidiary to that,

32:41

that was the 501(c)(3),

32:44

and that is the one that can take donations from

32:46

any lesbian or person that wants to give money

32:51

but have a tax exemption for that money.

32:55

But then under the terms you agree to

32:57

with the federal government,

33:01

a 501(c)(3) has to do something that if

33:02

you are not doing it, the government would be doing it.

33:07

So it had to meet some educational purpose,

33:09

or some charitable purpose in some way.

33:13

Or be given directly to a charitable organization.

33:16

So that's how we ended up making all of our

33:19

grant designations,

33:22

is that we had the different kinds of grants.

33:24

But within those they were all layered,

33:27

because if a 501(c)(3) organization,

33:29

and there were lands at that point that were

33:33

doing that kind of work,

33:35

applied for a grant for almost anything,

33:37

it would come out of the fund, the 501(c)(3) fund for us.

33:40

Because it could.

33:44

Anything that we did to fund apprenticeships,

33:45

or support educational groups

33:49

could come out of the 501(c)(3) and,

33:51

you know we did a lot of things that way.

33:54

Any group that was in a pending 501(c)(3) status,

33:57

a new group forming, because we were trying to

34:01

encourage a more diverse population

34:04

in the lesbian land community.

34:07

So if they had made the application form

34:08

even though they had not received their

34:11

501(c)(3) status at that point,

34:13

they could still be funded through that

34:14

as a provisional.

34:16

That's how we did that whole kind of thing.

34:18

There were a lot of lands that were simply

34:21

in the names of a number of individual lesbians,

34:23

and then those were always funded through the

34:27

501(c)(3), C 4.

34:30

So the Lesbian Natural Resources.

34:32

But it was so complicated

34:34

that we just did everything publicly

34:37

as Lesbian Natural Resources

34:39

because it wasn't so clear

34:40

that the non-profit lands got this money,

34:42

and the privately owned lands got this money.

34:45

It was much more criss-crossed in there

34:49

because we were creatively trying to see

34:52

what could be funded out of 501(c)(3).

34:55

So that's how we did the structural stuff

34:58

which is boring to everyone but me.

35:02

But it made a lot of things happen,

35:04

because we could use some of that money

35:07

that came that way,

35:09

more effectively.

35:11

And then as far as volunteers,

35:13

there were a lot of land lesbians

35:17

just in the immediate area.

35:20

We started out with a board that was

35:22

the original grant committee

35:24

became the first board

35:27

in the process of us incorporating.

35:31

So that was kind of a bridge group like that.

35:35

They weren't formally,

35:37

they were formally a board

35:38

but they had no legal obligation let's say.

35:39

So the first board was Chris of Coventry

35:42

up in Maine and

35:46

Jean Mountain Grove, from Oregon, and

35:49

Susan

35:54

Wiseheart, from Missouri.

35:57

And me.

35:59

And so we met,

36:00

and made, they made the first grant decisions.

36:03

Because that was one of the other decisions

36:04

I made for myself,

36:07

is that I would raise money

36:09

but I would never make a funding decision.

36:11

Is that I felt that I would keep those roles clear.

36:13

And so I was on the board

36:17

but I was never on a grant committee

36:19

during any of this time.

36:21

So I was much more directly involved in fundraising

36:22

through this whole time.

36:26

That was the first board.

36:30

And then we met as we were incorporating

36:31

and creating bylaws.

36:35

And each of the times that we had to meet

36:37

it was a significant expense

36:41

to bring everybody together.

36:43

To fly people from different parts of the country.

36:46

As there were some changes in the board

36:49

we went to much more local boards

36:52

so that we could basically drive

36:53

to meetings.

36:55

Which meant that we could meet much more often.

36:56

Where we felt like the kind of expense

36:59

that was involved with a

37:01

board that was more geographically diverse,

37:05

the advantage of that was outweighed by

37:09

the cost and the infrequency that we could meet

37:12

because of it.

37:15

So we went to quarterly meetings,

37:15

in a much more local group.

37:19

Local meaning Iowa, Wisconsin, Minnesota, basically.

37:20

And I think most of the volunteers,

37:26

other than things that could be done more remotely

37:29

like Sine Anahita was originally

37:31

I'm going to say in the Carolinas.

37:35

Then she moved to Iowa to do school, like that.

37:37

So then she became more local.

37:40

But she started doing the apprenticeships

37:41

before she moved here.

37:43

So it was just basically a series of people

37:47

volunteering to do things,

37:50

or people that were known in the area

37:51

as being on land or part of that network.

37:55

So that's that.

37:59

The grant committees on the other hand

38:01

have always been

38:03

pretty diverse geographically.

38:05

So that's where we made the decision

38:08

is that if we were going to

38:09

put money into flying lesbians around

38:12

to make decisions,

38:14

we would prioritize the diversity

38:15

on the grant committee.

38:18

And so each of the years, lesbians that were

38:20

invited, we tried to make a balance,

38:24

to give as much diversity as possible

38:27

not just geographically but age

38:30

and the kind of experience on land,

38:33

whether it was community land or private land.

38:34

Length of time.

38:37

Different racial and ethnic backgrounds, that kind of thing.

38:42

And I think we made some pretty good committees out of that.

38:47

Because there were some pretty hard decisions to make

38:49

in the space of a weekend,

38:52

many times not having met one another before.

38:54

We always had committees that worked.

38:59

That always worked.

39:01

Rose

You're talking about grant committees.

39:03

When you say we always had committees that worked?

39:05

Nett

Ah? Say that again?

39:07

Rose

The grant committees.

39:08

The committees you're talking about.

39:09

There aren't other kinds

39:11

of committees.

39:12

Nett

Yeah, yeah.

Basically they would be together like three days,

39:15

and the other thing that we did

39:20

from the beginning

39:21

with LNR is that we said

39:22

this is what we have in the bank,

39:25

and here are the applicants.

39:28

You decide which ones you're funding,

39:31

and how much you're funding them.

39:34

And we'll just spend it all.

39:35

I mean we did that each time.

39:37

But one of the things that happened

39:39

particularly in the ones that were

39:42

for land purchase,

39:45

especially creating more diversity

39:47

in the land communities,

39:50

is that they were provisional,

39:51

because they had to actually have

39:52

a contract for a purchase

39:55

for us to send the money.

39:57

Some of those that were provisional

40:00

didn't get paid out within the year

40:02

just because the purchase didn't happen.

40:04

Some of them were renewed multiple times

40:06

because of that.

40:09

But other than that,

40:11

the grant committee

40:12

just basically spent everything

40:13

each year.

40:15

Rose

Wow.

40:18

Nett

I know (laughs).

40:19

Why not?

40:22

I mean it was for lesbians, right?

40:23

Rose

Yeah.

40:24

Now that reminds me, somebody was telling me

40:26

and I want you to talk about this on tape,

40:30

because I think this is worth recording,

40:31

that LNR had a policy of not investing

40:34

that money in stock.

40:37

That the whole idea was

40:38

that that was destruction of the environment,

40:40

oppressive to women,

40:43

therefore they wanted to instead

40:46

just give the money to women.

40:48

Nett

Well yeah.

40:51

I guess we never had a philosophy

40:51

of keeping money at all.

40:54

As it would come in,

40:58

we would begin to know

41:01

how much we had to work with

41:02

for the next grant cycle,

41:03

but we didn't know

41:05

until the grant committee met.

41:06

The week before we were kind of

41:09

doing all the numbers,

41:10

and whatever else about that.

41:12

So, or I was.

41:13

I was pretty much doing all that stuff.

41:15

It wasn't so much that we were

41:18

anti-stock, we were just not interested

41:21

in investing things.

41:23

There were a couple of times where

41:24

we had some stock that was given to us

41:27

that we didn't sell until

41:29

we were close to a grant period.

41:31

Mostly because of what we would have to do

41:37

to do it, to get a-

41:38

Rose

(laughs)

Nett

But no.

41:40

We were never interested in keeping money

41:43

in any kind of institution.

41:48

It was always gathered for lesbians

41:49

and to go out again.

41:51

Because it seemed that that was the spirit

41:52

in which it had been given to us.

41:54

To distribute it.

41:56

Rose

So how did you, what was your fund,

42:02

you said in the article that came from

42:05

lots and lots of different sources.

42:10

Some large donors, many smaller donors.

42:12

Nett

Mm-hmm.

42:16

Rose

I never, I had heard about LNR,

42:19

but I never heard about donating to LNR.

42:22

Nett

Hmm, we sent stuff out pretty regularly

42:26

about that, and every time that we did a grant cycle

42:29

in Maize and pretty much every issue that we could,

42:32

we encouraged donations, and one of the things

42:36

that I always felt so good about is that

42:40

we'd send out the donations,

42:43

or the grants.

42:45

And many of those grant recipients would turn around

42:47

and send us a small donation immediately.

42:50

I mean that was the kind of thing that was

42:53

really, you know,

42:56

it kind of broke the stratification

42:58

that can happen in those kinds of organizations

43:02

where there's the grantees and the granters.

43:05

And that wasn't true so much at LNR.

43:09

We got a lot of donations,

43:14

and there were a lot of lesbians who gave

43:17

on a regular basis,

43:19

sending what they could

43:23

several times a year or whatever else.

43:26

So that's basically what we did.

43:27

Rose

And were those local?

43:30

Part of your three-state network?

43:32

Those, that were sending in regularly

43:35

whenever they could?

43:37

Nett

It was pretty much all over.

43:38

We had a lot of donors

43:41

at that point.

43:45

And I think

43:46

that right now it's a little bit hard

43:48

to imagine that, because

43:49

none of the lands are quite as active

43:52

as they were then.

43:54

But at the time

43:55

that we were starting to do LNR,

43:56

it wasn't just the number of lesbians

43:59

that were living on land,

44:01

it was all the lesbians

44:02

that were moving through land.

44:03

That weren't necessarily settled there,

44:05

but they would go and visit different lesbian lands,

44:08

and so there was a lot of flex with

44:11

lesbians who were committed to land.

44:15

And you know, were supportive of land.

44:16

And that was one of the ways they could be supportive.

44:19

Yeah, and in terms of the three state area

44:27

for board members and stuff,

44:30

that wasn't anything that was other than practical

44:32

but we had some good working boards there

44:35

and the boards didn't do the glamor work.

44:37

Just basically

44:41

worked on the pieces

44:43

that needed to come together or

44:45

whatever else like that.

44:46

Mailings, and that kind of thing.

44:48

The glamor work was all the grant committees

44:50

that got to make those fabulous decisions.

44:54

Rose

Right. But that was usually over

44:58

a $100,000.

45:01

Every year from like '92 to '99.

45:02

Nett

Now some of that,

45:05

I don't know if you're looking at the grant recipients,

45:07

there will be a number of repeated

45:10

grants for down-payments.

45:13

Yeah, so it isn't like those numbers were

45:16

spent every year

45:19

and then were spent again the next year.

45:21

So there were a few of those that

45:23

the same $15,000 was awarded over and over again.

45:24

Basically, we couldn't spend it while it was contingent,

45:28

and then we would have another grant cycle

45:32

and the same applicant would,

45:36

applicants would apply

45:39

and you know, I guess they would be taking their chances,

45:41

but nobody every not funded them, again.

45:46

So it was basically money that we had to keep,

45:51

set aside, because we had awarded it,

45:54

but we had a contingency that hadn't been met

45:56

to actually pay out on.

45:59

But yeah, there were significant amounts of money.

46:01

But I think the other thing

46:05

we have to keep in mind

46:06

is that that kind of money

46:07

was happening before LNR,

46:09

it's just that it was happening

46:11

in a crisis situation all the time.

46:14

That this land is in danger of

46:17

being lost, because they can't

46:19

pay their insurance or mortgage,

46:22

or you know there's some legal suit against them,

46:24

or whatever else like that.

46:27

So it wasn't new that lesbians were supportive

46:28

of lesbian land.

46:32

It was just new that

46:33

the donors were more broad spead, I think.

46:35

Rose

I'm still thinking about

46:49

how it got so widespread.

46:52

I mean I know that,

46:54

this is the '90s and it sort of pre,

46:58

well, it's definitely pre-social networking,

47:01

for most people it was pre-email.

47:04

So we're talking.

47:07

Nett

Oh yeah.

Rose

We're talking

47:08

print media, for finding out about,

47:10

for fundraising.

47:13

Nett

You're forgetting the very important

47:16

lesbians who never settled on one particular land

47:20

but moved from one to another to another to another,

47:23

or basically just traveled.

47:26

Lesbians that had particular skills and

47:29

threw their tools in the back of the car

47:31

and just went to any land that might need that skill,

47:33

or whatever else.

47:37

I think that we had kind of our own lesbian minstrel

47:38

or we call, troubadours, going around.

47:42

Passing the word and the gossip,

47:46

you know even as much as the print media.

47:48

We had so much traveling going on that

47:52

news moved pretty quickly.

47:56

Rose

Of course there were festivals

48:03

that a lot of people-

48:05

Nett

Oh for sure.

For sure.

48:06

And the other thing

48:08

besides the festivals

48:11

and women moving like that

48:12

is that well, I just lost

48:14

what I was going to say about that part.

48:16

Okay, I'll come back there.

48:20

But I think there was just a whole lot more,

48:22

or the women's bookstores were such central

48:25

places for information that

48:29

lesbians passing through an area

48:31

were very easily connected

48:34

to information, too.

48:36

And that kind of institution

48:38

is not around anymore,

48:42

but it was so much more than bookstores

48:44

when they were active

48:45

and all these, I think we had 170 of them

48:47

at one point.

48:49

Bookstores, women's bookstores.

48:50

And so without that kind of hub for information

48:52

to be passed out too,

48:56

that makes a huge difference right now.

48:57

And I don't know what your experience is

49:03

but you know there were

49:05

gatherings all the time.

49:07

Several times a week there was

49:09

something going on somewhere.

49:10

We were just so much more

49:12

connected than I feel we are now.

49:14

And then that connection wasn't

49:18

specific to Landykes.

49:20

Landykes were just part of the lesbian community

49:25

at that point.

49:28

Were now I feel like Landykes are

49:29

more isolated from the rest of the community.

49:33

In many ways.

49:37

The word funding is a good word

49:45

if you want to have something catch on fast, right?

49:46

Funds are available.

49:51

That's pretty-

49:53

Rose

Gets their attention

in a hurry.

49:54

Nett

Yeah, mm-hmm.

49:55

Rose

I remember our land group person who know about it

49:57

I don't know where she heard about it.

50:00

She subscribed to Maize,

50:02

that's probably where she heard about it.

50:03

Nett

And what land group were you part of?

50:05

I'm still part of Ravens Den Sanctuary

50:07

near Sewanee, Tennessee.

50:09

Although Kat, that's the one,

50:12

Kathleen O'Donoghue.

50:14

Nett

Uh-huh.

50:16

Rose

She lives there.

50:17

It wound up none of us living there.

50:19

We all live within a few blocks of each other

50:22

in Huntsville, Alabama.

50:25

Nett

Okay.

50:27

Rose

But at one time thought we were all

50:28

going to move out there

50:31

and we incorporated

50:33

so that we could apply for LNR funds.

50:35

But we never, I don't know,

50:42

it always took us so long to do anything.

50:45

Forever to make a decision.

50:48

But we did incorporate, and we're still incorporated.

50:53

But we donated the land,

50:56

there's a land trust

50:57

that actually borders our land

50:59

South Cumberland Regional Land Trust

51:02

that Kat's a board member of.

51:04

I think she's been on it for a long time.

51:06

Anyway, we concluded that

51:09

in order to put our land

51:12

in a trust,

51:14

it was going to be better to just

51:15

donate it to them,

51:16

with our, we have an easement on it.

51:17

Conservation easement.

51:20

So we don't even own it anymore.

51:23

But we have lifetime privileges.

51:25

So it's not technically lesbian land.

51:28

Except that a lesbian is living on it

51:32

and lesbians bought it,

51:34

and lesbians protected it, so.

51:35

Nett

Oh yeah, yeah.

51:37

Well I think you know lesbian land

51:39

when you get down to it,

51:41

there's so many different ways

51:42

that happens.

51:44

Because there are large public land trusts

51:45

that lease land to lesbians,

51:48

and the land trust itself has

51:50

nothing to do with lesbians.

51:53

They just are leasing a piece of land for 99 years

51:54

to a lesbian group.

51:58

Rose

Or Hawk Hill.

52:01

I think Hawk Hill is that way.

52:03

Hawk Hill, Susan Wiseheart?

52:04

Nett

That's a good example, yeah.

52:06

There's just so many different ways that came together

52:09

and I think part of that

52:13

was that when a lot of lands were coming together

52:15

it was possible for a lot of craftswomen,

52:19

that went to the different festivals,

52:22

and that was primarily their livelihood,

52:25

to live on land.

52:28

And create a livelihood for themselves.

52:29

There weren't so many other options

52:32

and I don't know that there were a whole lot

52:34

of lesbians that were farming

52:37

for a livelihood on land.

52:40

Many of the lands were

52:42

not particularly agreeable to that.

52:44

Because they were bought because they were cheap.

52:47

Right, you know?

52:49

On a steep hill or something like that.

52:51

I think that the young lesbians I see now

52:55

that are on land,

52:58

are much more focused on

53:00

that's their livelihood.

53:04

They're going to land so that they can farm

53:05

or so that they can ranch.

53:08

Or something where the livelihood

53:10

is based on the land itself.

53:12

There's a shift that has happened that way.

53:15

Rose

Talk some about,

53:19

we talked about this before

53:20

when I was writing the article

53:21

for the Sinister Wisdom,

53:22

about when LNR stopped awarding those grants every year

53:25

and started shifting its focus.

53:31

Talk about that a little bit.

53:32

Nett

Well part, there were things that were happening,

53:34

part of it was that we had not seen

53:37

a new applicant for a few years.

53:41

In other words,

53:43

even within the same communities we were

53:44

getting the same people applying for

53:47

a different kind of grant or something every year.

53:51

And we began to think that we really had

53:54

first of all, we didn't have a lot of lands in crisis,

53:59

which is a good thing.

54:02

We weren't losing lands because of the financial stuff

54:04

in the same way.

54:07

But we also were getting applicants that

54:08

basically were on fairly stable lesbian lands,

54:13

which is good,

54:17

but we didn't feel we were reaching

54:18

all of the

54:20

potential, the land communities.

54:22

We at that time, we weren't so dormant

54:25

as we were doing a whole lot more advocacy work.

54:28

And I think that was one of the things

54:31

that probably I feel best about

54:34

is that a lot of lesbians

54:38

that were living on land were

54:39

so not integrated into the patriarchal system

54:44

that they were disadvantaged in a lot of ways,

54:48

economically as well as legally.

54:50

And the kinds of ways that we were able to

54:52

offer these services without

54:56

you know, without putting them into patriarchal situations

55:00

that they had avoided,

55:04

but just like this is all you have to do.

55:05

You get this piece of paper, you send it in here.

55:08

You know that kind of thing.

55:10

Breaking it down, and walking lesbians through that.

55:11

I think stabilized a lot of lands.

55:15

And so we did a lot of that kind of thing.

55:17

We also helped lands that wanted to have apprentices

55:19

but the apprentices were a financial burden to the lands.

55:24

So we continued with the apprenticeship stuff

55:30

longer than we did the large grants.

55:31

Because that, we basically set aside money

55:33

for apprenticeships that,

55:37

you know just as the applicants came in

55:40

we funded them for a few years after that.

55:43

But I think that there was a shift

55:45

that has happened in the lesbian community as a whole.

55:49

We weren't getting as many donations either,

55:51

at that time, you know, that was falling down.

55:53

But we also felt that some of the things

55:55

that we had felt we have to help this situation

55:59

get some things out,

56:04

weren't the crises or the most immediate thing

56:07

and then we started to look at a broader way

56:09

and that's how we got to the research

56:11

and the publication of "On Our Own Terms",

56:14

the book that just really tried to answer

56:17

a lot of the questions

56:19

so that either lands could in the first place

56:21

get their titles, in the way that

56:24

they would work for them,

56:26

or could change them like that.

56:28

But they would have the resource to do that.

56:30

So we spent some time doing that.

56:32

But it wasn't so much that we said okay

56:34

let's do something else because we're bored,

56:38

it's just that the, everything around us

56:39

had shifted in a way.

56:43

And I think that the Landyke community right now is

56:45

a little bit more defined

56:48

than it was then.

56:51

That there are Landykes who are living on land,

56:52

and there's not so many lesbians who are

56:54

sampling.

56:59

You know, moving around to different communities.

57:00

That's my experience.

57:02

I don't know if it's different where you are too.

57:03

But I don't feel the same kind of

57:05

band of roving lesbians checking out land

57:09

that there had been before.

57:11

So there's a little dynamism that has been lost with.

57:13

And you know we have an age gap too.

57:18

We have a lot of lesbians on land

57:20

that are say 45 and older.

57:23

Then we don't have so many

57:27

until we start to get some now

57:28

that are in their 20s and you know, early 30.

57:30

There was a period of time,

57:34

and it wasn't unique to lesbians,

57:36

because I'm real active in the organic movement,

57:38

and there's a whole gap where

57:42

there aren't many farmers

57:45

that are between 30 and 45.

57:46

Organic farmers.

57:49

So everybody's on one side or the other

57:50

of that divide.

57:52

And so I think that that's kind of a wider thing

57:53

in our society.

57:58

Does that make any sense to you?

58:01

Rose

Yeah.

58:03

Yeah.

58:05

Of course there's fewer of them.

58:06

There were so many of us.

58:08

Baby boomers.

58:09

Nett

Say that again.

58:11

Rose

There's fewer of them.

58:12

There's so many of us.

58:14

The baby boom was such a-

58:14

Nett

There are not that many fewer.

58:16

Ten million fewer, or something?

58:19

It's not just that.

58:22

It's that you know so the numbers,

58:24

there was something different happening.

58:27

There were more career opportunities for lesbians

58:31

and women in general.

58:34

A lot of other kinds of things

58:37

created a more urban lesbian community I think

58:40

at a certain period there.

58:43

And I see that shifting right now.

58:46

Which is good.

58:48

So that I'm aware of a lot more

58:49

lesbians that are looking at land again

58:53

now that are in their 20s.

58:54

But it isn't just the lesbian community

59:00

that became much more urban focused.

59:02

It's, I think

59:06

at least in the region here

59:08

in the organic groups that I'm a part of

59:09

there just aren't many farmers

59:14

in that middle age group there.

59:16

-

Yeah.

59:21

Rose

Yeah.

59:23

Nett

Yeah, and it's just here in terms of

59:27

there's so many lesbian activities that took place

59:30

in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area

59:35

or you know hiking in the

59:37

national forests and parks and stuff like that.

59:41

And that's not much a part of

59:44

the lesbian culture here now either.

59:45

Is that even the activities of urban dykes

59:50

have shifted to be even more urban than they had been.

59:52

Rose

Yeah, well that's what's happened to us, you know.

59:58

There were seven of us.

1:00:01

And here we are living in a city.

1:00:02

It's not a big city,

1:00:04

but you know it's definitely urban.

1:00:06

I guess you get older and you like your creature com-

1:00:12

we have no electricity or running water on our land.

1:00:15

Nett

Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

1:00:18

(Rose laughs)

1:00:20

Rose

And we can't ever agree on getting it,

1:00:21

you know.

1:00:22

Nett

Yeah, I know, I know.

1:00:23

Well there's that, you know, and then

1:00:26

for some reason we weren't bringing

1:00:28

a lot of young lesbians

1:00:31

that were just a little bit younger than us

1:00:33

into the land communities either.

1:00:35

There's just, there's an ebb and flow

1:00:40

to that kind of thing.

1:00:42

Rose

Well, it's been an hour.

1:00:47

So.

1:00:49

Nett

Okay.

Rose

I think we should stop now,

1:00:52

and I will go through these notes

1:00:55

and I know I will have questions

1:00:58

as I go through and listen to the interview

1:00:59

and what I'll do is

1:01:01

get it all best I can,

1:01:05

embed notes and mail it to you.

1:01:06

Nett

Oh, okay.

1:01:10

Rose

Along with the form you need to sign.

1:01:11

Nett

Mm-hmm.

1:01:14

Rose

And I don't know how soon you can turn it around.

1:01:16

I'm hoping to have all this ready to send Duke

1:01:18

at the end of February.

1:01:21

Nett

Okay, that's a possibility.

1:01:23

You should know that with my farming

1:01:26

I start ramping up with planting and stuff like that,

1:01:29

I'll start in a couple of weeks planting,

1:01:33

and it just gets busier and busier

1:01:35

until mid April.

1:01:37

And then by the end of April I have zero time

1:01:39

to do anything.

1:01:42

I mean if my friends want to see me

1:01:43

they come up here.

1:01:45

So that's kind of my life (laughs) until October again.

1:01:46

So that sounds like a great timeline for me,

1:01:51

if you want to work with February into early March

1:01:54

at the most.

1:01:58

Rose

Okay.

1:01:59

This will be my priority right now.

1:02:02

(both women laugh)

1:02:04

Nett

I hope you have a transcription program you do.

1:02:06

Rose

No, but I type very fast

1:02:11

and I would say I got about two thirds

1:02:12

of what you said typed while you were talking.

1:02:15

Nett

Okay, that's great.

1:02:17

Rose

So it's not too hard, knock on wood.

1:02:18

To go back and get it.

1:02:23

Plus I'm not transcribing, per se.

1:02:25

I'm, I call them interview notes.

1:02:28

Because I'm changing it around,

1:02:30

moving things around,

1:02:33

it says right on it, this is not a transcript.

1:02:34

Because that has to be edited anyway,

1:02:37

a transcript does.

1:02:39

So I'm just sort of skipping that step.

1:02:40

Nett

Yeah, yeah yeah.

1:02:43

Rose

Editing as I go.

Nett

Well this is a good,

1:02:47

and the collection that you're putting together

1:02:49

is pretty much focused on Landykes then?

1:02:52

Or is it broader than that?

1:02:56

Rose

Well, it started, it's called

1:02:58

"The Southern Lesbian Feminist Activist Herstory Project".

1:02:59

And it started, we thought we were going to collect memoirs

1:03:03

because the South, probably like the Midwest

1:03:05

gets left out a lot of these feminist histories

1:03:09

that are being written.

1:03:12

So we sent out a call for contributors

1:03:14

and we got one.

1:03:17

This was in LC and OLOC and some other place

1:03:20

so we realized we were going to have to

1:03:24

write the stuff.

1:03:27

Do interviews, is what we actually

1:03:28

we weren't even sure how we were going to

1:03:34

publish any of it.

1:03:35

Nett

Oh okay, mm-hmm.

1:03:36

Rose

Sort of depends-

how you all started with,

1:03:38

that's sort of how this transpired.

1:03:39

WomonWrites is the Southeastern lesbian writers conference,

1:03:41

twice a year.

1:03:45

That's what we've been talking about since 2009.

1:03:46

And I started doing interviews in 2013 I think.

1:03:49

But we also got the idea of making a connection

1:03:55

with Sinister Wisdom,

1:03:59

and once we had a publisher,

1:04:01

things just took off.

1:04:02

So we have three special issues.

1:04:06

We've already published one.

1:04:08

Nett

Mm-hmm, I've read that.

1:04:11

Rose

Of the three.

1:04:12

And this one is just on women's land.

1:04:13

And then there's one more

1:04:16

that will be on festivals, music, bookstores,

1:04:17

that whole cultural wing.

1:04:22

Nett

Good.

1:04:25

Rose

Of lesbian feminist activism.

1:04:27

Although this Landyke one has been just so absorbing

1:04:28

I would really like to, we've got 21,

1:04:32

stories of 21 land groups,

1:04:35

plus we have a traveling dyke, we have a young dyke.

1:04:37

We have stories about Shewolf and about LNR.

1:04:40

I would like to go back and try to interview

1:04:45

some more of those.

1:04:46

We have over 50 in the timeline.

1:04:47

50 land groups.

1:04:49

And I would love to interview some of those

1:04:50

that we don't have.

1:04:52

Nett

Oh yeah, yeah.

1:04:54

I think that's one of the things that

1:04:55

I think part of it is that

1:05:00

nobody has asked the history of the lands

1:05:02

so much like that,

1:05:05

and nobody on land has said

1:05:06

well this is an important thing for me

1:05:08

to write up or anything.

1:05:10

I mean we have discussed that with LNR too,

1:05:12

is that when we put out the lesbian land book

1:05:14

Joyce's interviews ended in '83.

1:05:19

You know, I mean that was, and we put the book out

1:05:23

and got it out by '85.

1:05:26

It was current then,

1:05:28

but a lot has happened since then.

1:05:29

And a lot of the lands that are in

1:05:31

Lesbian Land are not around at all,

1:05:34

or have changed drastically.

1:05:36

I think it's a history that

1:05:42

we need to put something together on.

1:05:43

Rose

I think there's only fi-

1:05:47

Well this might be,

1:05:48

I can't remember if it's only Shewolf's Directory.

1:05:49

We have a story about Shewolf's Directory,

1:05:51

it's either Lesbian Land or Shewolf's Directory

1:05:53

that there are only five land groups

1:05:56

that are still existing

1:05:58

that were in that publication.

1:05:59

Nett

The original?

1:06:02

Rose

Five, and three of them are in the south.

1:06:04

Nett

Yeah.

1:06:06

Rose

But they're all, there's a whole lot of

1:06:08

similar things.

1:06:12

They're all worrying about who's going to,

1:06:13

what are we going to do with this land.

1:06:16

Because we haven't gotten,

1:06:19

we don't know who's going to carry it on.

1:06:20

Nett

Well I think that's

1:06:22

part of that larger question that I see.

1:06:25

With the organic farming stuff too is that

1:06:28

a lot of the kind of whatever it took to get a land going

1:06:31

whether it was to farm it or to

1:06:38

create a haven for lesbians like that,

1:06:40

is something that you did out of nothing.

1:06:43

I mean you just made something out of nothing

1:06:47

kind of thing like that.

1:06:49

And you want something to happen with that.

1:06:50

You want somebody to carry it on

1:06:53

or be able to appreciate and use that and stuff like that.

1:06:57

But like you said, no running water,

1:07:01

no electricity, it's kind of like huh,

1:07:03

I don't think I want to live there.

1:07:06

(Rose laughs)

1:07:07

Rose

No, let Kat Dodds live there,

1:07:08

she's got solar lights and

1:07:10

Nett

Yeah, a lot of people live

1:07:12

without that stuff.

1:07:15

But it's kind of like

1:07:16

you know, it makes a hard sell.

1:07:17

Let's put it that way.

1:07:19

Rose

Oh yeah.

1:07:20

If I were to build out there

1:07:21

I would definitely figure out how to get water

1:07:22

and electricity.

1:07:25

We're not that far from a road.

1:07:26

I mean we are on a road that has electricity

1:07:28

and other houses on our road have

1:07:32

all modern conveniences.

1:07:36

Nett

Yeah, well see then I mean that makes it

1:07:37

a lot more accessible.

1:07:40

When you were talking about how did the word spread

1:07:41

with LNR, without social media and stuff,

1:07:43

we had so many lesbians that had no phone

1:07:47

at that time.

1:07:50

Because it would have been prohibitive

1:07:52

to get a phone in.

1:07:54

So if we had contact stuff that we needed to do by phone

1:07:57

it was more elaborate than just putting something

1:08:01

in the mail.

1:08:03

Like, call this neighbor who will come down the road

1:08:05

and get into whatever houses.

1:08:07

I'm sure a letter can get to you faster.

1:08:09

Yeah, yeah.

1:08:13

Well that has changed a lot.

1:08:15

Well I've enjoyed talking with you.

1:08:19

Rose

I did too.

1:08:21

Nett

In the other instances as well, so thank you.

1:08:22

Rose

Than you.

1:08:26

And I'll be emailing you and writing you.

1:08:27

Nett

Okay.

1:08:30

Rose

Okay.

1:08:31

Nett

Sounds good.

1:08:32

You're going to put on email the transcription, or?

1:08:33

Hart, Nett - interviewed by Rose Norman

Transcript

Item Info

Sallie Bingham Center for Women's History & Culture

More Info & Options