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

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Now, I'm gonna say, I'm gonna do the introduction.

0:01

This is Rose Norman and I'm sitting here

0:04

with Kathleen Corky Culver at her home in Melrose,

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Florida and we're talking about

0:10

her lesbian feminist activism

0:14

in Gainesville in the early 70s.

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I want her to talk now, about the Renaissance,

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Women's Renaissance Fair that KFS,

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her organization, KFS organized in 1974.

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Okay.

0:37

I had been, for some years, in a lesbian CR group and

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had been politicized

0:55

and was a feminist and then our crew,

0:58

that group kind of split off at a certain point.

1:05

Those who were interested in electoral politics

1:12

and those who were interested in the arts and land.

1:16

Then the spring of '74

1:26

two groups who had, one group of feminist

1:31

who had been straight (laughs)

1:38

wanted to explore, they were reading about feminism.

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They had been in a women's CR group, some of 'em,

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but they wanted to explore loving women

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and we all met one day, it was like,

1:55

on Valentine's Day, or the day after,

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and we all just ignited each other.

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It was so exciting!

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We just really liked each other

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The Melrose crew had a tradition of singing,

2:12

singing together, and we did activist songs

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and just general folk songs kinda,

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Peter, Paul, and Mary, and then the new wave of 'em,

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they had very firm roots in art,

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and so we all started hanging out together and we just,

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it was like surf rising, we thought.

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That's where we got the idea of froth and slosh.

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We'd talk and then we'd burst up with new ideas

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and wanna enact them right away and we had that,

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which is the basic format of the CR that we had been doing,

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which is speak from your own experience,

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develop some theory and then develop an action,

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some way to respond to that and share what we're learning.

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And as we speak from our own experience,

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we found we had many of the same experiences

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that we had individualized and thought,

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awe, I feel different, I don't have anybody

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to hang out with, I must be anti-social or something,

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and say, hey, wait a minute,

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that's not so and I have a right to be this

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and others feel the same way,

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and we can wear blue jeans if we want, or whatever,

3:36

and it's okay

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to not want to play the woman's role in society

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and so we immediately, did a women's art show.

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We said, there's not enough, where are the women artists,

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and the museums, and the books, and the writers,

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so we immediately, wanted to act on that,

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and we had one art show and then we said,

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let's have a big one in Gainesville.

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We had a little one in Jacksonville,

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and amongst us, there were a variety of different arts,

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and so we planned this for months,

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I mean, we really planned it,

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and our idea was that it would showcase women artists

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and we would have painting, we would have drawing,

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and it would be feminists.

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We would have music, we would have dance,

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we would have quilters and fabric people,

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and we gathered and gathered and gathered.

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We had three tents and a large stage,

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and the tents, we had a workshop on changing oil

4:59

in the car and small repairs.

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We saw all these ways that women

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could be empowered by getting skills

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that they had been denied.

5:17

We had sickle cell testing,

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we had a look-at-yourself with a speculum tent,

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we had lots of music, we had several women's dance groups

5:33

that were from local dance teachers.

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There was only one speaker all day.

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The idea was to show and to experience women's arts

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and not just be talking about it

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and talking about women's issues and not have a argument

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and accusation be the theme of the day,

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it wasn't, or victimhood.

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It was all about celebrating

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what we actually, have in our end.

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So it was a really, there were 100s

6:17

of people in the course of the day.

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It was at the Thomas Center, it's a beautiful Spanish hotel

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with beautiful grounds, beautiful meadows,

6:27

a rose garden and oak trees, and we dressed up.

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Some of us dressed up in little capes and had face makeup

6:36

and it was really fun,

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and all women artists, all day long.

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And we didn't say the word lesbian but some women

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were walking around holding hands, and over the years,

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I've heard many people say that's the first time

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they ever saw that, out in a beautiful public space,

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just the dancing, and singing, and drumming,

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and art, and quilts, and paintings,

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and there had never been anything like it

7:17

and there really hasn't been anything like it, since.

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Because the urgency of the whole movement was under there.

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It wasn't just an art event, it was

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let women be all who they can be.

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Later, we got an award from the African Socialist Party

7:41

because we, I think because Katura Carey was

7:46

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The speaker.

7:50

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the speaker.

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How do you spell her name, Katura?

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I think it's K-A-T-U-R-A C-A-R-E-Y.

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You can see that this came

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from our feminists and from our lesbian CR.

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Those things played in to what our understanding

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of how important what we were doing was

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and we didn't have to argue it out,

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it was just all over the place, real.

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And people were lying on blankets and watching,

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and the entertainment went on all day,

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and women came from around the state to sing and perform,

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and we had the Tampa Feminist Guerrilla Theater,

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did their skits and they are just absolutely phenomenal.

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Phenomenal!

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The argument was embedded in the theater,

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like they had one skit where, it was called Smile,

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and they would just have these ridiculous smiles but women,

9:01

always supposed to have the coat hanger in the mouth.

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And they had one about shaving,

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and I wish I had the copies of those.

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They were brilliant and just fantastic!

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Good theater, and funny, and making the points,

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the eye-opener points about women's,

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at that time and

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What was their name again,

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Tampa Women's Guerrilla Theater?

9:33

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Feminist Tampa, Feminist,

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let's see Guerrilla Theater, I don't know

9:42

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I can check that.

9:44

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what that name, yeah.

But it had feminist.

9:46

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And some of those

women are still around like,

9:47

Dee Graham and Kathy, well, Kathy Freeperson

9:49

isn't around anymore, but Pam, she wasn't in the theater,

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Pam, let's see, anyway, Snake, was in it,

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and they were from, we went down to visit them,

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they were the Lux Liberation Front and I thought,

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we got a letter from them when we were organizing

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the festival, looking for women artists around the state

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and I thought, my god, in this little town,

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there's a liberation front.

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What town?

10:22

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I think it

was a longer,

10:23

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Not Tampa.

10:24

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it was like,

Lux Liberation Tea and Freedom Front, or something.

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I think I could get that name.

10:29

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You said Tampa before but what?

10:31

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It's a little tiny town near Tampa.

10:32

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Okay.

10:34

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Yeah, and they were fantastic.

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And it took a long time to organize all this,

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and it was just a splendid amazing day,

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and it wasn't at all about money, of course,

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and we were just volunteering.

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We gathered a few donations, here and there but it was,

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and we weren't trying to make any money, we were just,

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it was out of this enormous love of what,

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the feeling that we had for one another

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and for women's possibilities

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and opening up these things

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which have been suppressed a lot.

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And we had probably, Republican women and we didn't

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vet their politics or anything.

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It was about art,

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a very beautiful, joyous day.

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It's the performers, you didn't vet

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the politics of the performers.

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What?

11:43

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Of the performers, you didn't vet

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the politics of the performers.

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You were more interested in there being women

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than there being,

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Yeah, yeah, yeah.

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then there being feminists, or?

11:52

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Like, or the paint that you,

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we just tried to get good women artists and I guess,

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the ones who would be in such a show where, I don't know.

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Anyway, it wasn't about each

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of those artists and their issues.

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It was about, they are women

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who are accomplishing in the arts and,

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well, Arika, there was some guys drumming

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and I went up to them and I said, this is for women artists

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and it's a spiritual self-help,

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or group like EST or something, something like that,

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and the guy said, well, the women can't play the drums,

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and I said, oh, come on, and the women said,

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wait a minute, we'll play, and they played all day

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and it was just fantastic, and I said,

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well, this is the women's day here,

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and it was great, it was great.

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Do you mean those men just showed up

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or there was an organization that was?

13:02

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It was an organization, they had their area.

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They were a booth, so to speak,

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with blankets all out, and the guys and the gals,

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but we didn't want the guys to be the drummers.

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Okay, were they all drummers or was it just music?

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They were drummers.

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Okay, so drumming group.

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Yeah, yeah.

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And it was men and women.

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It was a couple of conga drums, and men and women,

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and they were talking about their spiritual mandalas

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and things, meditation, it was a meditational organization.

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Okay, that's what you meant about EST.

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And see, that would've been totally,

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not anything that the women's liberationist

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could've handled, whatsoever, and they thought,

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like Judith said to me, Corky, we decide what you are,

13:52

you're the lowest common denominator.

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That was one of our final, good conversations

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because I could get along with everybody

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and because I thought, make it fabric art,

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that could be part of what I consider to be feminism.

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And they just found it really hard and eventually,

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when I wanted Judith to present at a big retreat

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we were having out at the Red House,

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gathering different feminists around,

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so we plan our next, the movements next year.

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I wanted her to come talk and give her fine mind

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to some issues and she just couldn't.

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At that point, they really knew that the people

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doing all this art stuff, and it wasn't along the lines

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of they're more of what their brand of feminism.

14:58

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Okay, I wanna stop that.

15:08

Okay, this is Rose Norman, interviewing Corky Culver,

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again on November 10th, 2012,

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at her home in Melrose, Florida,

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and this interview is about LEAP,

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a lesbian networking organization that she was part of

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that is a more, is different from the Renaissance Fair,

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the arts Renaissance Fair that she talked about before.

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So I'm gonna ask her to talk about how LEAP was created,

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how she created the name, and how it fit into the kinds

15:48

of things that she wanted to do.

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There were two conferences that were LEAP,

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one in 1984 and one in 1985.

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Why don't you start with Michigan.

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Were you at Michigan when they planned?

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Mmm-hmm.

16:04

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Okay, start with Michigan.

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I think Minnie Bruce organized a meeting

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about southern lesbians organizing and we talked about

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a lot of different things that day

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and I don't remember all of it.

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It would've been fascinating to have a tape of it

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but out of what we were saying,

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we thought it was so powerful to hear each other

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and that we needed to get together

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with lesbians across the south

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and continue to reach more and more with

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our combination of lesbian networking,

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just for feeling good about being with each other

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and ourselves and also for making changes in the world,

17:01

and enacting feminist stuff.

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And there were a lot of us from Gainesville at that meeting

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and somehow, it evolved that we

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would have the meetings in Florida.

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We would have meetings in Florida,

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maybe we would start there at least.

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So we began.

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we were networking simultaneously,

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on the peace walk, thinking about getting lesbians around,

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and the peace walk was made up of lesbians from all over

17:57

because we had gathered in South Carolina for the blockade

18:01

and so there already lesbians from Arkansas,

18:07

and Georgia, and South Carolina.

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We were already working together,

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so after the peace walk,

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we started the LEAP planning meetings.

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And every month, I think, we had a meeting somewhere

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and each meeting, since we came

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from a lot of different places,

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each meeting involved staying over, Saturday night.

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So we had essentially, a two day meeting,

18:44

or two night's and two day meetings,

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and in the course of which, we had usually one day

18:52

which was a long CR kind of day where we would circle

18:58

and talk about a new issue and then the second day,

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we called the nuts and bolts day where we were planning

19:12

for the conference which was to be called LEAP,

19:17

at that time, I don't know when we knew that

19:20

but I'll tell you how the name got started.

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I was trying to think of something to call it that wasn't,

19:27

didn't have 55 letters like, The Southern Lesbian

19:30

Leadership Conference Organizational, you know.

19:35

So, I had all these acronyms and all these potent words

19:39

and I listed, I'm sitting in bed,

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I had a list that was 100 things long

19:46

and finally worked out that it was Lesbians Empowered

19:51

for Action and Politics and the LEAP could capture

19:56

the exuberance that we were feeling,

20:02

the sense of change and the new world to be created

20:07

out of our deepest joys and needs,

20:12

and then our interests,

20:19

our very clear sense that the things that we were doing,

20:22

personally and that were cutting edge.

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We were making changes and women's

20:29

and lesbians situations in the world

20:33

and that we were breaking new ground all the time

20:38

and there was a tremendous,

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there was an energy and joy in that

20:46

and we were not,

20:50

we included in our planning that we would have issues,

20:57

I mean, we would have workshops at LEAP,

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which we could have electoral politics,

21:05

we could have vegetarian eating,

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we could have building boats

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to go down the rivers

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and spread feminism, that we were very broad-based

21:19

in our sense of what was important

21:25

and we've cared, very much to do,

21:33

as Michigan did to have disability facilities to have.

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We've had thousands of feet of rugs,

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that we had everywhere so wheelchairs

21:47

could get around on the sandy land.

21:48

We had a brochure that included a lot of things

21:51

about supporting the environment and the plants

21:56

to cherish and avoid, and whatnot,

21:59

and our meals were gonna be vegetarian

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and we had a couple big fire pits

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with big grates on them and huge pots.

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It sounds like Michigan.

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Yeah, yeah.

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With the big fire pits.

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Oh, and how it began, we were meeting,

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we were having a meeting at the Red House

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and we thought we were gonna rent

22:29

for a weekend, for the four day event.

22:33

We looked at a lot of camps to rent.

22:36

We looked at a lot of different places

22:39

and I have got letters from all these places we were,

22:41

because we couldn't do it at the North Forty then

22:44

because it had lots of trash that had been dumped on it,

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wasn't cleaned up, didn't have a well,

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didn't have electricity.

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We looked, it didn't seem possible to have it there

22:57

but as time moved on,

23:01

well, we found out the place

23:07

that we'd decided on, Otter Springs,

23:09

it was gonna cost about $3,000 to rent

23:11

this whole big campground for the four days

23:13

and we wanted it separate where people wouldn't,

23:17

where we'd have our own space and then the guy said,

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well, we'll have to come in a couple times a day

23:26

or something to slop the hogs,

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otherwise, it'll be private for you and we thought,

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that doesn't feel private and at the very same time,

23:36

and it just felt magical, as everything did in those days.

23:40

When lesbians got together,

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it was just always amazing to us.

23:47

We had never experienced being together before.

23:50

Anyway, I got a phone call,

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we're at the Red House,

23:57

I was in the kitchen, got a phone call from my landlord

23:58

who said that I would have to move.

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My request to buy the place had actually caused the owner,

24:08

who was a lawyer in New York, to decide to come down

24:12

and refurbish the house because it was in such dire straits.

24:15

And so it was his dream to live in it,

24:20

so I can understand that dream.

24:23

It was a dream house.

24:25

So it was like a moment of magic because I could feel

24:28

disengaged from that physical reality at the Red House,

24:35

all the opportunities it had given us.

24:39

It had 500 acres, there was plenty of land around it.

24:42

It was great for all our meetings and as I got disengaged,

24:45

I thought, well, I'll move to the North Forty, longly,

24:50

and then it just, I don't know, we all just,

24:54

the light bulb went off in all our heads and we thought,

24:59

let's look at the North Forty as a possibility again

25:03

and so we did.

25:06

We went over there with the idea that,

25:08

what if we put that $3,000

25:12

we were gonna give this guy for his space,

25:15

what if we put that into the North Forty?

25:18

What if we clean up the North Forty?

25:21

What if we see if we can use that money to get electricity,

25:23

and a power pole, and a well,

25:27

and make this a feasible place for LEAP.

25:31

So we went over there with a whole new attitude

25:35

and we figured it out, that we could do that

25:38

and that was what we were gonna do, and meanwhile,

25:41

there was all these piles of trash

25:44

because there had been illegal dumping and stuff.

25:46

So what happened was, oh, I don't know how many,

25:49

a lot of women just camped out there.

25:53

We were there for like a month and a half,

25:55

just living there.

25:59

We were camping out and we'd took out

26:01

24 truckloads of trash.

26:05

We went to a clay pit and dug with our shovels

26:09

in a pickup truck, clay to make the road,

26:13

to give it a base so that it could be driven on

26:17

by a lot of cars, the sand road on the way in.

26:20

We got a well and we put plumbing in.

26:24

We had a set of showers, four showers,

26:30

and outdoor, we loved that,

26:35

and Rainbow made Statue of Liberty,

26:42

wooden Statue of Liberty tops on each shower

26:46

and they were wonderful and I think we built a shed

26:49

where we could store stuff, we had a refrigerator.

26:56

We put it all together, and then we had three horse troughs

27:00

we had for different,

27:04

we'd build a fire under 'em for hot tubs,

27:09

three hot tubs and they were all o'natural

27:12

and one was for smoking, one was for drinking,

27:15

no smoking, and one was for everything goes

27:20

or chem-free or something.

27:24

Anyway, we had three categories

27:26

because signing with the peace walk

27:28

and the peace demonstration,

27:31

we were very concerned with chem-free things.

27:33

We always provided a chem-free space after that.

27:38

And one of the first CR groups we had,

27:42

did at our meeting at St. Pete was about addictions

27:45

and I remember feeling very uptight about it

27:49

because my alcohol quitting, my quitting alcohol

27:52

had stimulated our whole interest in chem-free space.

27:57

The first time, when they passed a bottle around

28:02

at the Savannah River Peace Camp,

28:05

and it came by me and I didn't take a drink,

28:08

and they looked and they thought, wow, if she can do it,

28:11

we can do it, and a whole bunch of women,

28:14

my best friends like, Judy, and Linda Lou,

28:18

and Pam, everybody quit drinking then, to support me,

28:21

and it was fantastic.

28:26

So we continued that anyway, at this addiction circle

28:29

for the LEAP planning down at St. Pete,

28:33

turned out to be a fantastic circle.

28:36

It wasn't all about me, or just about alcohol,

28:38

it was about the way that addictions had impacted our lives,

28:42

every single life in that circle was impacted by,

28:46

it could've been a family member,

28:50

it could've been one of their personal addictions

28:51

to something and it just became clear to us that this,

28:54

what we wanted, we consider this a feminist issue,

28:59

and that we were concerned about where we were in all that,

29:02

and that the destructive power of addictions, we wanted to,

29:07

that would be one of the things that we were changing

29:11

in the world and that was a powerful meeting.

29:13

All of those were powerful and I don't remember

29:18

all the different topics but it was a great thing

29:23

to use circles and we all learned how also,

29:26

how to conduct a circle, how to listen to each other,

29:29

how to basically, that we didn't call it talking stick,

29:32

but how to listen, how to moderate,

29:35

and we would point to one, two, three, you'll speak here,

29:40

first person to speak, second,

29:45

and so we had a way of dealing with problems

29:49

and listening to each other that was very respectful

29:53

and it worked beautifully, and everyone in those circles,

29:57

you knew you were gonna get a chance to speak.

30:01

You knew you would be listened to.

30:06

You knew that it would not be dominated by one person.

30:08

You knew that people could hear each other.

30:12

And we observed the circle thing

30:19

of not arguing with anybody's feelings.

30:22

We could have different positions on issues but we didn't,

30:26

people didn't just jump in with their

30:31

version when somebody spoke.

30:33

We listened, respectfully,

30:35

there wasn't crosstalk.

30:40

We could talk about it all later but going around the circle

30:43

was very powerful and we had learned on the peace walk

30:47

that if we didn't do that, if we didn't circle once or twice

30:50

a day, the divisions start, people feel unheard,

30:55

issues arise that are not being addressed,

30:58

feelings, a lot of times if you just say your feelings,

31:01

they dissolve, kind of, I mean if you have bad things

31:05

and somebody else says, awe, I'm sorry.

31:10

Anyway, we use the circle and meditation

31:13

ever since being in jail, when we found the only way

31:19

we could break through our impasses on issues that are about

31:23

when to declare ourselves out of jail, for instance.

31:27

We had to do meditation first,

31:31

in order to get our minds cleared and calm.

31:33

We had to do circles instead of voting and caucuses

31:38

and so that method of communication

31:43

was so workable and so necessary and it kept us

31:49

from falling into all the pits of either, or, arguments

31:55

and we've heard their many points of view

32:01

and we will hear them all,

32:03

and we will hear them all, respectfully, and peaceably,

32:05

and so we continue that with all the LEAP meetings.

32:09

And we cleared up the land and we made it

32:12

kinda utopian and it was beautiful,

32:21

and the enthusiasm of some of the letters

32:29

of people who went to the LEAPs, it's just amazing to hear.

32:31

I mean, it was so much to a matter of the time,

32:36

that it was so new, all the things we were doing

32:41

and that was just the first.

32:45

We were always doing everything for the first time.

32:47

We had such a sense of our history of creating a new thing

32:51

and we were so happy about it all.

32:58

It's just amazing!

33:01

That it even happened, it was all volunteer,

33:06

it was all unfunded, it was all just out of pure spirit.

33:09

-

Where did that $3,000 dollars come from,

33:15

that you were gonna send them?

33:17

-

That's a good question.

33:18

Where did that come from?

33:20

Well, we didn't have to get it up, actually.

33:22

I mean, to get the, let's see.

33:25

-

You would've had to charge to pay that.

33:30

-

We had to get the well.

33:31

I think that probably, I don't remember how we

33:34

worked that out but I mean, LEAP didn't have to,

33:38

I can find that in the notes somewhere, I bet, I mean,

33:42

if you think about like, get out of 50 women,

33:46

getting that amount of money together

33:51

wouldn't have been that hard and probably,

33:56

the North Forty women were the large part since they

33:57

were gonna benefit from the well and the electricity.

34:00

I mean, a number comes to mind that we paid

34:05

the North Forty like, $1,500.

34:07

I'm not sure.

34:11

-

And it was not

from charging people

34:12

to come to LEAP, it was from.

34:14

-

I don't remember whether we had a charge.

34:16

It would've been way low,

34:19

like 20 bucks or something, if we did.

34:20

I don't know.

34:23

-

Okay, this is Rose Norman.

34:28

It's the third interview with Corky Culver

34:29

on November 10th, 2012 at her home in Melrose, Florida,

34:32

and she's mentioned the Red House several times,

34:37

which was a place where she lived and a lot

34:42

of things happened during this period,

34:45

and so I want her to talk about that period,

34:46

which would be the period right before LEAP,

34:50

up to LEAP and I guess, subsequently,

34:54

anyway talk about the Red House.

34:58

-

Okay.

35:01

I probably got the Red House in about 1972.

35:10

I had been living across the lake

35:16

and I had always been living around it

35:17

and loved the sight of this old, it's actually,

35:22

the style of an old Maine farmhouse, maybe,

35:25

and it was built in the 1870s or 90s and the lumber,

35:29

that was before there were even saw mills here

35:36

and the lumber had to be brought down,

35:39

Florida was late settling, and it was high on a hill

35:43

and it had 500 acres around it, of hayfield,

35:47

and pecan grove, and orange groves, and open meadows.

35:52

In the spring, there were flowers, acres of flowers,

35:58

it was just beautiful, and a nice clear lake to swim in

36:04

and there was a kumquat tree in the yard,

36:10

a huge magnolia tree.

36:13

You could see the whole sweep from dawn to sunset,

36:17

of the sun and the moon, gather pecans,

36:21

and in the winter, you could go out and get a cold orange

36:25

from the tree and have your orange juice.

36:29

It was a beautiful place but totally, run down inside

36:32

with cracking plaster and a few leaks,

36:37

but it had four fire places and it was really great,

36:41

and a little back porch.

36:48

-

Is that how it was heated, the fireplaces?

36:50

How was it heated?

36:52

-

Heaters.

36:54

-

Heaters, okay.

36:55

-

Individual heaters.

36:56

-

Space Heaters?

36:57

-

Yeah, and fireplaces, yep,

36:57

there's a few funny stories about that. (laughing)

37:01

-

Well, tell me about how it played

37:04

into lesbian feminist activism.

37:06

-

Well, so there was a lot of room in it

37:08

and I've always liked to meet people and stuff,

37:13

and so different people would live there

37:19

and people from out of town could stay with me.

37:22

And it was a great place for meetings because,

37:26

I mean, say for instance, at the LEAP meetings,

37:31

they could come in on a Thursday night

37:34

and just stay all the time.

37:36

People use the different bedrooms to stay in

37:39

and then there was plenty of room all around for camping,

37:43

and it was just a beautiful place so people enjoyed

37:47

being there, and we could all eat out of the kitchen

37:50

and have fire circles and stuff,

37:54

and so we had a lot of meetings there.

38:01

Starting in the 70s, we had, one big event

38:04

was Communication Quest, which was in,

38:09

I think '78 and it was very huge

38:13

and we had the first spirituality circle there.

38:19

None of us had ever experienced that before and we had

38:24

-

That'd be the first in Gainesville?

38:30

-

Yeah.

38:32

-

Or in this area?

38:33

-

Yeah, in this area too, yeah.

38:34

-

Have you broken it?

38:39

-

I think the very first one we just,

38:46

I don't know, we just did it.

38:48

We didn't know what we were doing.

38:50

And then Flash came

38:53

-

(mumbles)

-

and Flash was one of the leaders

38:55

in women's spirituality and international, and still is.

38:59

She has a huge contact with many radio shows

39:06

to this day, and everything.

39:10

We had, let's see, I mean, many of the LEAP meetings

39:17

were there because there was plenty of room to meet there.

39:21

-

So how long did that last until,

39:33

it was around LEAP, in the move?

39:36

-

It was like, '72 to '83 and that's when

39:37

the landlord decided to come down.

39:43

He closed down his law practice in New York City

39:46

to come fix up the house for his dream home

39:49

and at that point, I was lifted from that beautiful place

39:54

and it felt like a levitation, okay, now the North Forty.

39:58

I'll build my house on the North Forty.

40:04

We'll get the well in, I mean,

40:06

I was gonna need a well and electricity.

40:09

so it all just could beautifully, confluence,

40:11

of all these needs and opportunities.

40:15

-

So it was not no longer, after that, it was out of,

40:19

-

The Red House was, yeah, (mumbles)

40:23

-

Gone.

40:25

-

I had to move out then.

40:26

-

So about 10 years,

40:27

for about 10 years?

40:29

-

I was there 11 years.

-

11 years.

40:30

-

Oh, many, I mean, the parties were legendary

40:36

and full of music and we had,

40:40

many of us were really good musicians.

40:42

I'm not one but I'm a big sing-a-long person,

40:45

but we had some, Abbie is fantastic,

40:48

and Flash is fantastic, and Heather's fantastic.

40:52

We had a lot of music.

40:55

It was just, there was always,

40:56

and it was participatory music,

40:59

even when the stars were singing, everybody would join in,

41:02

and it was amazing, happy times.

41:08

-

Oh, you mentioned Farren that was at the?

41:13

-

Oh, well, Flame and I produced two Ferron concerts.

41:17

Flame had heard of Ferron, I hadn't,

41:26

and we produced, first we produced one at the Bogota

41:28

and then one in Gainesville and Ferron came down,

41:32

stayed at the Red House, and I have pictures of her here.

41:35

Everybody enjoyed it.

41:43

Minnie Bruce spent three or four days with me one time.

41:44

I'm not quite sure how that came about

41:47

but it was quite amazingly, wonderful and we talked

41:49

for three days and floated in the water

41:55

on Echo Lake and became friends, and talked about a lot,

41:57

she said that it had a big effect on her life,

42:03

our conversations and certainly, it did on mine.

42:06

-

What other stars were there?

42:13

-

I don't know but let's see, Joan Larkin, the writer.

42:21

She just got a $50,000 award this year

42:28

and she created the first Amazon quarterly,

42:30

the first anthologized lesbian poetry book,

42:34

and also, she was the anthologist of gay and lesbian poetry.

42:40

And then she visited there and she stayed there for a month

42:46

and she came back many times for our different

42:55

writer's conferences and stuff.

42:58

-

So you had writer's conferences there?

43:00

-

She was just here two years ago, living here for a year,

43:02

and she would stay with me where I

43:06

was living, for awhile and may again.

43:08

And she's a fantastic teacher of writing

43:14

and she wrote the first come out story in Ms. magazine

43:18

and of course at the pagoda,

43:26

which I was over at the pagoda every fourth day, almost.

43:29

They have a lot of stars there.

43:36

Everybody came there, Holly Near, every single person,

43:38

Alix Dobkin, but I can't remember.

43:42

We we're comfortable and you just don't quite think,

43:47

like, Lillian Fadiman was here at this house.

43:53

We know each other.

43:57

(mumbles) the people in this movement,

44:04

and certainly did then.

44:07

-

It just seemed to me what's important about it,

44:10

is because there was that place that people could go

44:12

and stay, it enabled a lot of things to happen.

44:16

-

That's so true.

44:21

The chance of being together in a comfortable place,

44:22

in a private place where you can really be yourself

44:26

and say your issues and stay,

44:29

and it's not part of corporate America.

44:33

We were sharing meals, we were sharing,

44:39

there was always help for anybody

44:45

who couldn't afford transportation or anything,

44:47

and we found out, I mean, in jail,

44:50

like boy, that was really funny.

44:53

You put a bunch of radicals together

44:56

or creative high-minded women together,

44:59

I mean, things happen, they could cook up things.

45:05

They talk and listen to each other

45:08

and they think of new solutions

45:09

and they're having fun and they're really creative,

45:11

and there's just been a whole world

45:15

where that has not been possible,

45:17

women banding together has been discouraged.

45:19

It's so potent when it does happen.

45:27

And so we had that place right, for that to happen and also,

45:30

anybody visiting from out of town, or new, or anything,

45:35

that everybody knew that they could,

45:39

there'd be a room for them at the Red House.

45:43

-

How many rooms did it have, bedrooms?

45:45

-

It had four bedrooms

45:47

and infinite amounts of camping space and stuff

45:51

and it was just, people enjoyed coming there

45:58

and the conversation level and everything was,

46:02

we were doing part-time jobs, a lot of us, at the time,

46:07

part-time teaching, part-time, we had a cleaning group

46:12

called Miss Mag, Magic, we picked up pine cones,

46:16

we planted trees, we picked up jobs

46:19

and lived on very little.

46:24

-

So how many people were living there during that period?

46:26

-

Well, it changed all the time, it changed all the time.

46:28

-

You were paying the rent.

46:32

-

I was paying the rent.

46:33

The rent was very low, like $150 a month or something

46:36

and then, I mean, Barbara Ester, Essrig was there,

46:43

Barbara Ester was there for awhile,

46:48

yeah, she was there for awhile,

46:51

and her wonderful music, her incredible music.

46:56

I mean, Z Budapest visited,

47:04

Vogel, from Key West, was there for awhile,

47:10

she did the, Snake.

47:16

-

Oh, Karen Vogel, the Motherpeace?

47:17

-

No, yeah, I mean,

47:20

she did Flash's tarot deck, she did the thankings for it.

47:26

Flash did a tarot deck.

47:32

-

Who is this, spell her name.

47:35

-

V-O-G-E-L, she was on the front page of some big,

47:38

she died and I can't remember even,

47:48

her whole name, right now.

47:52

-

Karen Vogel also did the Motherpeace with Vicki Noble.

47:56

-

Yeah, Motherpeace is a different tarot deck.

48:06

It drove the, I mean we,

48:14

this'll fit your life, cultural feminism. (laughing)

48:19

-

Yeah.

48:22

So you really can't talk about how,

48:29

you can only talk about, here's my question,

48:33

if you're saying that these CR groups is where you learn

48:35

those principles of communication that had to do with

48:38

non-hierarchy and everyone gets to talk,

48:40

and everyone knows you're gonna get to talk,

48:43

and they're taught how to listen

48:45

and how to moderate the group so that communication

48:46

can actually, take place rather than argument,

48:49

and that you carry this into, you and your friends

48:53

who are organizing and doing your accounts of activism,

48:57

carry that into all sorts of things.

49:01

You say you don't know whether the others that disagree

49:08

with you did that or not but didn't they

49:11

come out of CR groups too?

49:12

-

Yeah, I mean, they had a different,

49:16

they have, for instance, in the women's liberation people,

49:19

they have a very, very strong devotion to the idea

49:22

of leadership and they have written many articles

49:27

about that, acknowledge your leaders,

49:30

recognize and give credit to the leaders, over the year,

49:34

and they wanna make a name for themselves,

49:39

and different things, and they have beautiful arguments

49:41

for the appreciation of leaders,

49:45

and they felt that in these kinda,

49:48

they felt leaders were trashed.

49:54

They were discouraged and there was some truth in that.

49:59

I mean, at our group somebody wrote a paper about,

50:03

let's hear from everybody and not

50:08

just the person who is the most political

50:10

or the most brilliant, or whatever.

50:14

So, I mean, we did go different directions on that,

50:17

but since I stayed in that direction, now,

50:24

at the North Forty, we don't do consensus

50:30

but we're doing consensus (mumbles),

50:33

and a lot of things are still consensus,

50:35

and we still care about that sorta thing,

50:38

other land groups and stuff.

50:44

I was on the board down at Sugarloaf and we don't do that,

50:47

just voting, whoever has the most votes wins.

50:54

-

And Sugarloaf does?

50:57

-

No, (mumbles).

50:59

-

They don't, okay.

51:00

Quakers do it, I mean, Quakers do the consensus decision.

51:07

-

It is often much more efficient and it just makes sense

51:10

that it creates division, it has either, orness.

51:13

It is not as emotionally,

51:20

I mean, as respectful of all the different possibilities

51:27

and when you go around a circle,

51:35

you don't have two points of view, you have many,

51:37

and the things that can arise out of that, we felt.

51:41

I mean, eventually, we would make a decision,

51:44

okay, are we going to walk by the ocean

51:46

or are we gonna walk by the towns today,

51:50

and we would have to make some decisions,

51:54

but it would grow out of everybody saying their say.

51:55

So it takes time and it takes dedication

51:59

but we found it helpful, very helpful, in fact, mandatory,

52:04

and when you quit doing it, like the North Forty,

52:09

presently has a division going and we don't,

52:13

we never put that into the North Forty principles,

52:16

that we should decide differences by a council

52:19

or talking stick and it is in many Native American

52:22

traditions to do things like that.

52:27

-

Even in court, I mean, they have courts

52:31

that are consensus decision making.

52:33

-

Really?

52:35

-

Mm-hmm.

52:36

-

Really, well.

52:37

-

Native American, some tribe, I can't remember which.

52:40

-

They'll do it with family decisions,

52:49

like I just got a new documentary

52:50

about where I was just in Alaska, or the Indian families do,

52:53

they call it, have a talking stick,

52:59

talking circle and the little kids get their chance

53:01

to have a say and they work out things like that,

53:07

and I wish it was in the North Forty's trust agreement.

53:12

So many things in the world are,

53:22

like the pitifulness of the Republicans and Democrats.

53:26

You just get dug in and you say my side versus your side

53:34

and if there are 15 sides, it gets a little, and sometimes,

53:38

just hearing and being heard makes a huge difference.

53:50

And people will dig in, in a hurt feeling or resentment,

53:54

or a position on a subject

54:00

and how do you melt those regilities?

54:03

I found many times that these kind of talking things,

54:08

and hearing and listening, and formalizing listening

54:13

is really a lot of what it is,

54:19

and listening where you're not just arguing

54:23

with whoever says something and waiting for your chance

54:25

to put in like, sometimes, some of the listening exercises,

54:30

you just repeat everything that the other person says.

54:35

-

Repeat it back to them to assure that you heard.

54:41

-

Three days later before you present your point of view

54:42

and by then, neither of you care

54:45

about the whole fight anymore.

54:47

It doesn't resolve, it dissolves.

54:49

-

I was thinking about, where you talked about

54:56

how originally, before the split

54:58

you didn't wanna have the group,

55:01

none of you wanted to have anything to do with NOW

55:02

and I wonder if when they decided to get involved

55:08

with NOW, as a tactic, if that's what,

55:12

-

Like why they dropped the lesbians.

55:19

-

Or why they dropped the CR principles of speaking,

55:20

letting everybody be heard and listened to.

55:25

I remember going to a NOW meeting,

55:27

maybe the only NOW meeting I've ever attended,

55:29

in which one woman spent the entire time,

55:31

talking about her sorry marriage

55:33

and I never went to another meeting.

55:35

Not that I wanted to talk but I sure

55:38

didn't wanna listen to that for an hour.

55:39

I don't know if now, it's that way or not.

55:44

-

See, I don't either because we had our jobs cut out for us

55:45

and we were busy with what we were doing

55:50

and I wasn't focused on any of that.

55:52

-

Are any of the people I'm interviewing,

55:56

were they ever with NOW?

55:58

-

I could give you some names, Donna Burnell helps start,

56:03

and she was with NOW, forever.

56:07

-

Yeah, in Huntsville, NOW was the activist core in the 80s.

56:10

It's no longer active but of course,

56:14

everybody in NOW was either a lesbian

56:17

or became a lesbian, in Huntsville.

56:19

I mean, there might be one NOW person left

56:22

and she's straight which is maybe,

56:24

why there's not any other NOW people.

56:25

-

Well, we just didn't do that,

56:28

like after the peace walk with the LEAP things,

56:31

and we started a group called FAG,

56:34

which was Feminist Action, or fan network,

56:37

and we did a lot of actions in Gainesville,

56:42

like we did a town meeting, we dressed in white face

56:45

and went downtown at the city hall,

56:49

sat in the yard, a huge circle of women,

56:53

talking about violence against women

56:56

and their experiences of violence.

56:58

We also did a march on Fraternity Row.

57:01

We did a fish bowl kinda thing

57:06

where one group listens to another.

57:09

-

This is interesting, it seems like every few years,

57:13

something new, you all are doing something new.

57:16

So you do a Renaissance Fair, it's very successful.

57:19

Then you turn around and you're doing something else,

57:22

and you're doing something else, which maybe why,

57:24

I mean, there's no reason why you need

57:27

to keep doing a Renaissance Fair.

57:29

-

It was a huge organizational effort.

57:34

-

Which could be why it doesn't keep happening.

57:38

-

Yeah, and it was huge, and I don't know,

57:40

we were pushing the envelope all the time.

57:46

We were always doing something fresh and new

57:49

until we didn't, but the things we did had huge effects.

57:52

You don't have to restart the spouse

58:02

abuse shelter over and over again.

58:04

You don't have to get the committee to have rape crisis

58:07

counseling for rape victims over and over again.

58:12

It's there now, it's there.

58:16

We don't have to do that, they have an advocate now,

58:18

and there's the sexual abuse committee that started

58:23

after we did the march on Fraternity Row.

58:27

It's there forever, it's still at the university

58:32

and that committee on sexism and homophobia is there

58:36

and the North Forty is there.

58:42

Well, something we created different, The Pride Center,

58:51

I mean the women's center went down,

58:55

the feminist bookstore's teetering

58:58

right now, but it's gonna try it.

59:00

-

There, I think I've got what I need here.

59:09

Culver, Corky - interviewed by Rose Norman

Transcript

Item Info

David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library