Culver, Corky - interviewed by Rose Norman
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Transcript
Transcripts may contain inaccuracies.
- | 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, | 0:07 | |
Florida and we're talking about | 0:10 | |
her lesbian feminist activism | 0:14 | |
in Gainesville in the early 70s. | 0:16 | |
I want her to talk now, about the Renaissance, | 0:23 | |
Women's Renaissance Fair that KFS, | 0:26 | |
her organization, KFS organized in 1974. | 0:30 | |
- | Okay. | 0:37 |
I had been, for some years, in a lesbian CR group and | 0:43 | |
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. | 1:40 | |
They had been in a women's CR group, some of 'em, | 1:46 | |
but they wanted to explore loving women | 1:50 | |
and we all met one day, it was like, | 1:55 | |
on Valentine's Day, or the day after, | 1:58 | |
and we all just ignited each other. | 2:02 | |
It was so exciting! | 2:05 | |
We just really liked each other | 2:07 | |
The Melrose crew had a tradition of singing, | 2:12 | |
singing together, and we did activist songs | 2:18 | |
and just general folk songs kinda, | 2:20 | |
Peter, Paul, and Mary, and then the new wave of 'em, | 2:22 | |
they had very firm roots in art, | 2:26 | |
and so we all started hanging out together and we just, | 2:32 | |
it was like surf rising, we thought. | 2:39 | |
That's where we got the idea of froth and slosh. | 2:42 | |
We'd talk and then we'd burst up with new ideas | 2:45 | |
and wanna enact them right away and we had that, | 2:49 | |
which is the basic format of the CR that we had been doing, | 2:54 | |
which is speak from your own experience, | 2:58 | |
develop some theory and then develop an action, | 3:01 | |
some way to respond to that and share what we're learning. | 3:08 | |
And as we speak from our own experience, | 3:13 | |
we found we had many of the same experiences | 3:16 | |
that we had individualized and thought, | 3:19 | |
awe, I feel different, I don't have anybody | 3:21 | |
to hang out with, I must be anti-social or something, | 3:23 | |
and say, hey, wait a minute, | 3:26 | |
that's not so and I have a right to be this | 3:32 | |
and others feel the same way, | 3:35 | |
and we can wear blue jeans if we want, or whatever, | 3:36 | |
and it's okay | 3:42 | |
to not want to play the woman's role in society | 3:49 | |
and so we immediately, did a women's art show. | 3:52 | |
We said, there's not enough, where are the women artists, | 3:58 | |
and the museums, and the books, and the writers, | 4:02 | |
so we immediately, wanted to act on that, | 4:06 | |
and we had one art show and then we said, | 4:11 | |
let's have a big one in Gainesville. | 4:12 | |
We had a little one in Jacksonville, | 4:14 | |
and amongst us, there were a variety of different arts, | 4:16 | |
and so we planned this for months, | 4:21 | |
I mean, we really planned it, | 4:24 | |
and our idea was that it would showcase women artists | 4:29 | |
and we would have painting, we would have drawing, | 4:36 | |
and it would be feminists. | 4:41 | |
We would have music, we would have dance, | 4:44 | |
we would have quilters and fabric people, | 4:47 | |
and we gathered and gathered and gathered. | 4:51 | |
We had three tents and a large stage, | 4:55 | |
and the tents, we had a workshop on changing oil | 4:59 | |
in the car and small repairs. | 5:05 | |
We saw all these ways that women | 5:09 | |
could be empowered by getting skills | 5:15 | |
that they had been denied. | 5:17 | |
We had sickle cell testing, | 5:19 | |
we had a look-at-yourself with a speculum tent, | 5:21 | |
we had lots of music, we had several women's dance groups | 5:33 | |
that were from local dance teachers. | 5:37 | |
There was only one speaker all day. | 5:41 | |
The idea was to show and to experience women's arts | 5:44 | |
and not just be talking about it | 5:50 | |
and talking about women's issues and not have a argument | 5:53 | |
and accusation be the theme of the day, | 5:58 | |
it wasn't, or victimhood. | 6:01 | |
It was all about celebrating | 6:07 | |
what we actually, have in our end. | 6:08 | |
So it was a really, there were 100s | 6:17 | |
of people in the course of the day. | 6:20 | |
It was at the Thomas Center, it's a beautiful Spanish hotel | 6:22 | |
with beautiful grounds, beautiful meadows, | 6:27 | |
a rose garden and oak trees, and we dressed up. | 6:31 | |
Some of us dressed up in little capes and had face makeup | 6:36 | |
and it was really fun, | 6:41 | |
and all women artists, all day long. | 6:44 | |
And we didn't say the word lesbian but some women | 6:49 | |
were walking around holding hands, and over the years, | 6:54 | |
I've heard many people say that's the first time | 6:59 | |
they ever saw that, out in a beautiful public space, | 7:01 | |
just the dancing, and singing, and drumming, | 7:09 | |
and art, and quilts, and paintings, | 7:14 | |
and there had never been anything like it | 7:17 | |
and there really hasn't been anything like it, since. | 7:20 | |
Because the urgency of the whole movement was under there. | 7:24 | |
It wasn't just an art event, it was | 7:28 | |
let women be all who they can be. | 7:35 | |
Later, we got an award from the African Socialist Party | 7:41 | |
because we, I think because Katura Carey was | 7:46 | |
- | The speaker. | 7:50 |
- | the speaker. | 7:51 |
- | How do you spell her name, Katura? | 7:52 |
- | I think it's K-A-T-U-R-A C-A-R-E-Y. | 7:54 |
You can see that this came | 8:03 | |
from our feminists and from our lesbian CR. | 8:09 | |
Those things played in to what our understanding | 8:14 | |
of how important what we were doing was | 8:19 | |
and we didn't have to argue it out, | 8:22 | |
it was just all over the place, real. | 8:25 | |
And people were lying on blankets and watching, | 8:28 | |
and the entertainment went on all day, | 8:31 | |
and women came from around the state to sing and perform, | 8:37 | |
and we had the Tampa Feminist Guerrilla Theater, | 8:44 | |
did their skits and they are just absolutely phenomenal. | 8:48 | |
Phenomenal! | 8:52 | |
The argument was embedded in the theater, | 8:55 | |
like they had one skit where, it was called Smile, | 8:58 | |
and they would just have these ridiculous smiles but women, | 9:01 | |
always supposed to have the coat hanger in the mouth. | 9:06 | |
And they had one about shaving, | 9:12 | |
and I wish I had the copies of those. | 9:13 | |
They were brilliant and just fantastic! | 9:16 | |
Good theater, and funny, and making the points, | 9:20 | |
the eye-opener points about women's, | 9:26 | |
at that time and | 9:30 | |
- | What was their name again, | 9:31 |
Tampa Women's Guerrilla Theater? | 9:33 | |
- | Feminist Tampa, Feminist, | 9:38 |
let's see Guerrilla Theater, I don't know | 9:42 | |
- | I can check that. | 9:44 |
- | what that name, yeah. | |
But it had feminist. | 9:46 | |
- | 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, | 9:52 | |
Pam, let's see, anyway, Snake, was in it, | 9:57 | |
and they were from, we went down to visit them, | 10:05 | |
they were the Lux Liberation Front and I thought, | 10:08 | |
we got a letter from them when we were organizing | 10:11 | |
the festival, looking for women artists around the state | 10:14 | |
and I thought, my god, in this little town, | 10:17 | |
there's a liberation front. | 10:19 | |
- | What town? | 10:22 |
- | I think it | |
was a longer, | 10:23 | |
- | Not Tampa. | 10:24 |
- | it was like, | |
Lux Liberation Tea and Freedom Front, or something. | 10:25 | |
I think I could get that name. | 10:29 | |
- | You said Tampa before but what? | 10:31 |
- | It's a little tiny town near Tampa. | 10:32 |
- | Okay. | 10:34 |
- | Yeah, and they were fantastic. | 10:35 |
And it took a long time to organize all this, | 10:38 | |
and it was just a splendid amazing day, | 10:42 | |
and it wasn't at all about money, of course, | 10:48 | |
and we were just volunteering. | 10:51 | |
We gathered a few donations, here and there but it was, | 10:53 | |
and we weren't trying to make any money, we were just, | 10:57 | |
it was out of this enormous love of what, | 11:00 | |
the feeling that we had for one another | 11:05 | |
and for women's possibilities | 11:09 | |
and opening up these things | 11:13 | |
which have been suppressed a lot. | 11:18 | |
And we had probably, Republican women and we didn't | 11:22 | |
vet their politics or anything. | 11:30 | |
It was about art, | 11:32 | |
a very beautiful, joyous day. | 11:37 | |
- | It's the performers, you didn't vet | 11:40 |
the politics of the performers. | 11:41 | |
- | What? | 11:43 |
- | Of the performers, you didn't vet | 11:44 |
the politics of the performers. | 11:46 | |
You were more interested in there being women | 11:48 | |
than there being, | 11:51 | |
- | Yeah, yeah, yeah. | |
- | then there being feminists, or? | 11:52 |
- | Like, or the paint that you, | 11:53 |
we just tried to get good women artists and I guess, | 11:57 | |
the ones who would be in such a show where, I don't know. | 12:00 | |
Anyway, it wasn't about each | 12:04 | |
of those artists and their issues. | 12:07 | |
It was about, they are women | 12:08 | |
who are accomplishing in the arts and, | 12:10 | |
well, Arika, there was some guys drumming | 12:17 | |
and I went up to them and I said, this is for women artists | 12:21 | |
and it's a spiritual self-help, | 12:26 | |
or group like EST or something, something like that, | 12:30 | |
and the guy said, well, the women can't play the drums, | 12:34 | |
and I said, oh, come on, and the women said, | 12:41 | |
wait a minute, we'll play, and they played all day | 12:44 | |
and it was just fantastic, and I said, | 12:47 | |
well, this is the women's day here, | 12:52 | |
and it was great, it was great. | 12:56 | |
- | Do you mean those men just showed up | 13:00 |
or there was an organization that was? | 13:02 | |
- | It was an organization, they had their area. | 13:04 |
They were a booth, so to speak, | 13:08 | |
with blankets all out, and the guys and the gals, | 13:10 | |
but we didn't want the guys to be the drummers. | 13:14 | |
- | Okay, were they all drummers or was it just music? | 13:18 |
- | They were drummers. | 13:23 |
- | Okay, so drumming group. | 13:24 |
- | Yeah, yeah. | 13:25 |
- | And it was men and women. | 13:26 |
- | It was a couple of conga drums, and men and women, | 13:27 |
and they were talking about their spiritual mandalas | 13:31 | |
and things, meditation, it was a meditational organization. | 13:35 | |
- | Okay, that's what you meant about EST. | 13:41 |
- | And see, that would've been totally, | 13:44 |
not anything that the women's liberationist | 13:46 | |
could've handled, whatsoever, and they thought, | 13:48 | |
like Judith said to me, Corky, we decide what you are, | 13:52 | |
you're the lowest common denominator. | 13:55 | |
That was one of our final, good conversations | 13:58 | |
because I could get along with everybody | 14:02 | |
and because I thought, make it fabric art, | 14:04 | |
that could be part of what I consider to be feminism. | 14:13 | |
And they just found it really hard and eventually, | 14:23 | |
when I wanted Judith to present at a big retreat | 14:26 | |
we were having out at the Red House, | 14:30 | |
gathering different feminists around, | 14:34 | |
so we plan our next, the movements next year. | 14:38 | |
I wanted her to come talk and give her fine mind | 14:43 | |
to some issues and she just couldn't. | 14:46 | |
At that point, they really knew that the people | 14:49 | |
doing all this art stuff, and it wasn't along the lines | 14:52 | |
of they're more of what their brand of feminism. | 14:58 | |
- | Okay, I wanna stop that. | 15:08 |
Okay, this is Rose Norman, interviewing Corky Culver, | 15:12 | |
again on November 10th, 2012, | 15:15 | |
at her home in Melrose, Florida, | 15:19 | |
and this interview is about LEAP, | 15:22 | |
a lesbian networking organization that she was part of | 15:27 | |
that is a more, is different from the Renaissance Fair, | 15:33 | |
the arts Renaissance Fair that she talked about before. | 15:39 | |
So I'm gonna ask her to talk about how LEAP was created, | 15:43 | |
how she created the name, and how it fit into the kinds | 15:48 | |
of things that she wanted to do. | 15:54 | |
There were two conferences that were LEAP, | 15:55 | |
one in 1984 and one in 1985. | 15:59 | |
Why don't you start with Michigan. | 16:01 | |
Were you at Michigan when they planned? | 16:03 | |
- | Mmm-hmm. | 16:04 |
- | Okay, start with Michigan. | 16:05 |
- | I think Minnie Bruce organized a meeting | 16:11 |
about southern lesbians organizing and we talked about | 16:15 | |
a lot of different things that day | 16:21 | |
and I don't remember all of it. | 16:25 | |
It would've been fascinating to have a tape of it | 16:27 | |
but out of what we were saying, | 16:29 | |
we thought it was so powerful to hear each other | 16:32 | |
and that we needed to get together | 16:36 | |
with lesbians across the south | 16:37 | |
and continue to reach more and more with | 16:43 | |
our combination of lesbian networking, | 16:50 | |
just for feeling good about being with each other | 16:58 | |
and ourselves and also for making changes in the world, | 17:01 | |
and enacting feminist stuff. | 17:06 | |
And there were a lot of us from Gainesville at that meeting | 17:12 | |
and somehow, it evolved that we | 17:17 | |
would have the meetings in Florida. | 17:23 | |
We would have meetings in Florida, | 17:26 | |
maybe we would start there at least. | 17:28 | |
So we began. | 17:38 | |
we were networking simultaneously, | 17:46 | |
on the peace walk, thinking about getting lesbians around, | 17:51 | |
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. | 18:12 | |
We were already working together, | 18:17 | |
so after the peace walk, | 18:22 | |
we started the LEAP planning meetings. | 18:23 | |
And every month, I think, we had a meeting somewhere | 18:27 | |
and each meeting, since we came | 18:33 | |
from a lot of different places, | 18:35 | |
each meeting involved staying over, Saturday night. | 18:38 | |
So we had essentially, a two day meeting, | 18:44 | |
or two night's and two day meetings, | 18:48 | |
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, | 19:04 | |
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. | 19:23 | |
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, | 19:45 | |
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. | 20:26 | |
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, | 20:43 | |
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, | 21:02 | |
which we could have electoral politics, | 21:05 | |
we could have vegetarian eating, | 21:08 | |
we could have building boats | 21:11 | |
to go down the rivers | 21:18 | |
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. | 21:35 | |
We've had thousands of feet of rugs, | 21:43 | |
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 | 22:03 | |
and we had a couple big fire pits | 22:06 | |
with big grates on them and huge pots. | 22:09 | |
- | It sounds like Michigan. | 22:17 |
- | Yeah, yeah. | 22:19 |
- | With the big fire pits. | 22:20 |
- | Oh, and how it began, we were meeting, | 22:21 |
we were having a meeting at the Red House | 22:26 | |
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, | 22:46 | |
wasn't cleaned up, didn't have a well, | 22:49 | |
didn't have electricity. | 22:51 | |
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, | 23:22 | |
well, we'll have to come in a couple times a day | 23:26 | |
or something to slop the hogs, | 23:30 | |
otherwise, it'll be private for you and we thought, | 23:32 | |
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, | 23:45 | |
it was just always amazing to us. | 23:47 | |
We had never experienced being together before. | 23:50 | |
Anyway, I got a phone call, | 23:53 | |
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. | 24:02 | |
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 |
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- Southern Lesbian-Feminist Activist Herstory Project
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- Southern Lesbian-Feminist Activist Herstory Project
- Series:
- Rights:
- No Re-UseIn Copyright
- Rights Note:
- Identifier:
- Permalink:
- https://idn.duke.edu/ark:/87924/r4xw4d95b
- Sponsor:
- Sponsor this Digital Collection