Lisa Vecoli and Jhaleh Akhavan

00:03 Hi, my name is Ali. Akhavan. I am 31 years old today is September 13th, 2017. We're here in Minneapolis and I am here with Lisa vecoli who we just met yesterday and thank you so much for giving us an amazing tour of the caverns under the library and under the special collections this morning. You are welcome. My pleasure. I still love taking people down into the cavern. My name is Lisa vecoli. I'm 55 years old. Today is September 13th, 2017 in Minneapolis, Minnesota and our relationship is new acquaintances, but quickly becoming old friends.

00:44 IPhone thinks I I wanted to start by asking you about your work at the tretter collection. If you can describe a little bit about the treasure collection and your roll there, the treasure collection is one of only a few dedicated glbt archives in the United States in the world really. We are a collection of materials about the glbt experience. We collect both a nationally and internationally collect written materials week, like personal papers organizational records, really anything that can help expose the jail BT experience. What was it? Like what did people work on? How did they organize? How did they come together? How did they live their lives what was important to them?

01:31 That has changed so much through the years. We have seen an unprecedented.

01:37 Shift in reality over the past generation or two in the way Society deals with gays lesbians people who are transgender bisexuals issues of gender and sexuality and the document how that happened and why that happened in went into that is what we're about that's the purpose so we collect everything we can get our hands on and we make it accessible and available to anyone who wants to come look at it. So Junior High School students come in and study at the archive. I've got two people there today from Washington DC and somebody doing their dissertation at the University of Oregon in there today. So you never know who's going to come spend time in the archive something and you mentioned it anything you can get your hands on. How does something end up in in this collection? Most of it we have has been given to us we have approximately right now 3500 linear feet of material which translates to millions and millions of pages of content about the glbt community.

02:37 And most of it has been given to us. We could never afford to buy all the things that people have gifted us. I had someone come over this afternoon and give me 13 boxes about his life and his history his notes and cards with his husband his scholarship that he did in the past his professional work a whole variety of materials and he just came today and said here it is. I'm getting older. I'm afraid I might lose my vision. I don't know what would happen to it. I want to know it will live on I want to know that the experiences that I've had the work that I've done contributions. I've made are going to continue to exist. So I'm really pleased that there's an archive that cares about that and is willing to take my material

03:26 That's really when it when a donor comes in. It's often really a win-win as a donor. You want the the things you've invested in your life into live beyond you.

03:39 You want people to care about that you want to have a voice going forward and the archive needs to have that voice or we have nothing to offer researchers. So when it works, it's really a win-win. It's a benefit for me to receive materials, but it's also really I think often a profound honor for people to say really you care about my life you care about the things I've written the things I've worked on you want to save that you want to show that two people want to tell them about that. And so we really ideally it's it's a benefit for everyone.

04:12 Yeah, I was wondering to you just mentioned. I'm thinking for somebody whose hearing this a little bit about understanding the scope of the collection and the caverns that you took us down to today. Just so somebody can Envision what that is. Can you can you describe that? Well part of the magic of archives and special collections at the University of Minnesota libraries and then end when I talk about archives and special collections, there's about a dozen different archives on a wide range of topics and try to raise one if those were the glbt archive we have one of the most amazing facilities in the world. We have the first facility that was designed and built specifically for underground archival storage. They dug down 84 feet underground. They created some huge Caverns the size of a couple football field and we get to fill it with materials in and I got to take you down there and part of what I love about doing that as you open those doors and people's eyes just get huge and round and they just can't imagine these these

05:12 Cavernous spaces filled with books and filled with papers and filled with documents and it's it's irresistible. You want to spend weeks down there and just open boxes and look in books and walk around and look at the material and we run or mostly fortunate to have the facilities we have and we were really amazingly fortunate to have the world-class collections that we have an archives and special collections. Yeah. I was overcome when we walked in to really be in

05:43 To be walking around and just seeing what had been what happened preserve and it's just like all these questions were spiraling off my mind. Like what what hasn't been preserved. You know, how does it feel to be going through these boxes day in and day out and to me, you know to receive that when somebody drops off their 13 boxes. How does it feel to be doing that? And how does that

06:05 You know, I'm sure there's the day today and then you know all of you than just a friend like kind of an imaginative and psychological standpoint. What does that feel like to for you to be?

06:15 Taking care of this collection

06:18 It can be overwhelming. I'm an army of one. I have some student help and I have a special grant-funded project right now, but everything from trying to find people to give us things trying to raise money to help pay for it right in the newsletter posting on social media going to pick up the boxes hearing from a researcher having the intern who wants to come and do an everything. I do it all so I can be overwhelming sometimes but

06:49 Most of all, it's kind of like Christmas every day. So when somebody brings a box and you have no idea what's in there, you can open it up and you may not find anything remarkable. It may be a little dry maybe stuff that you feel like you already have stories that you can tell other ways. But sometimes you open up a box and it's like a holy buckets. It is amazing thing.

07:19 And you just want to put down everything that you working on and you just want to spend the whole rest of the day following where that takes you we had somebody at one of my students last week came in and said the person donated all the stuff. Look at this in one of the things they had donated was a bibliography of print material about HIV and AIDS and the bibliography was published in 1983, which is remarkably early. So in 1983, someone had done a literature search and compiled all the material that had been published in the medical, press the mainstream press and the gay press about HIV AIDS.

07:59 Until I wanted to read the bibliography. I wanted to see what have been published. I wanted to know who put it together and what they were thinking and what that meant. I wanted to call app for five researchers and say hey. Wow, look at this amazing cool thing we have I wanted to take a picture and put it on social media and telling everybody about it. I want to make a note make sure I mentioned in the next newsletter. I mean you just you just want to go up on the rooftop of the cool thing. We got it. So cool that happens over and over and over again and you know, it's not not every box you open is a magic box, but it's almost kind of like unwrapping a present over over and over again during the course of the year and you never know what you're going to find.

08:43 And you had mentioned earlier this morning that you have been playing the sax for a long time. So I mention there's about a dozen different archives in an archives and special collections in one of those is immigration history Research Center, which collects documentation about people who have immigrated to the United States from all over the world and that collection was founded in the mid-60s and starting in 1967. It was the director of that archive was my father Rudolph equally and we moved here when I was 5 years old and he took over as director of The Archives and he directed that for 38 years. And so I grew up literally in the fax. We would go pick him up. He was never ready and so my brother and I would go play hide and go seek in the stacks. You can't do that anymore cuz now they're under lock and key but this was in the old days and they were just in a in a chicken wire.

09:43 Cage so we would go in and play hide and seek and I would just wander around and look at things and you know when you're 6 7 8 9 it was a cool space, but it means so much more to me. Now that I know what those Stacks are. And what's in them in the stories that are in them. Unfortunately my father passed away in 08, so he never knew I started working the archive in 2012. So he never got to know that I had literally ended up.

10:13 Doing what he had done all those years but I feel like you couldn't make that up. I mean the fact that I would end up working in an archive like he did he did that around he was a scholar especially his specialty was Italian American Immigration. So he did that. He rejected the concept of the Melting Pot and said no immigrants don't come here and lose their identity. They hang on to it. This is what my parents did. This is what my life has been like and he rejected that and I have picked up the flag for the glbt community and said we have a story to tell this is what our experiences this is what's important to us.

10:53 Ask a question of did you imagine that you would be doing the same sort of about the same but similar work? No, no, no one imagined this would happen. I'm an accidental archivist. I've had two previous careers working in domestic violence shelters for battered women working in politics and Community organizing but I had a collection of books and the founder of the archive archive jean-nickolaus tretter wanted my collection for the archive. And so he put me on the original Advisory board for the archive when it came to the university in 2004 from 2010 till 2012. I was a community board Advisory Board member and he retired and I had been laid off from another position so they asked me to come in temporarily.

11:44 And now they won't let me go so I came in temporarily. I was going to be here for a couple months and I started trying to organize things a little bit and help out and find what I could I'd to call Jean every time somebody would ask for something I have to say. I don't know. Wait a second. I'll get right back to you and I have to call genius and Jhene do we have do you know any how do we find where can I get because it was only jeans had it was like his personal collection at that point. It was 2500 linear feet at that point of just his stuff that he had.

12:19 Take away some place and he was the only one that knew anything where anything was so I had to call him. So I started trying to figure out what we had and make a list of the boxes and then find out what was in the boxes.

12:35 But I'm not an archivist and I didn't go to library school and I'm not a historian and no one could have predicted that I would just kind of luck into what has been the most magical position in my life. It's been a real gift for me to be able to be at the archive and work with the materials and see the changes that have happened. It's it's really been a magical. In my in my life.

13:01 I can imagine that's how I felt this morning. I was just like what an amazing space and unlike orientation to history as it's unfolding. And I mean I can just like to just translating out of someone who had been holding this kind of like in their own to be able to really open that up and then make that something that people could then be contributing to and accessing and making available and that it would then, you know be responsive and be being shaped. There's probably a dozen people in the country who get paid to play with cool old gay stuff and I get to be one of them and it's a gift that I appreciate every day.

13:39 Yeah, you mentioned that you had a collection that they had approached you for can you talk a little bit about why you have been holding on to those that what those were that you had been compiling and why you held onto that I have a little bit in the way of personal papers and documentation so Community organizing that I did activism and those kind of things but the bulk of my collection is books when I came out in 1981 there was no internet there weren't movie stars and popular culture representations of what it was like to be glbt

14:17 I had it I think easier than people who are 10 or 20 years older. I was able to find a few things a few books. There was Women's Music which was kind of a lifeline.

14:30 But to try and figure out who I was and find stories of myself reflected anywhere. I turn too small press lesbian press books and I read voraciously and I collected because these weren't things that you can get at the library or other places. So I started buying books contemporary lesbian fiction book small press started in Minneapolis. The first time I went to Amazon bookstore used to be on Hennepin Avenue and it a huge facade and big glass windows and my mother had said to me. Oh, you don't want to go there.

15:09 And I was scared about going and I took off anything that had like identifying information on it. I took off my college sweatshirts. I made sure I wasn't wearing it anything that had my college or university on it or anything Park like two blocks away and I snuck up into it and I went in the door and then I like Dash to the back of the store far away from the glass plate Windows. Fortunately the back of the store was where the lesbian fiction was. So it all worked out a place to go in and buy books. And when I was in college, I was in Chicago for a little while with an off-campus studies program and I ended up working at Women & Children First, I would finish my shift and I'd say all right, I worked 5 hours and I got paid 325 an hour. And this is my discount. I can now go spend, you know x amount on books and I would go pick them off the shelf and instead of taking home money. I would take home.

16:02 Novels, so today I've got about 3300 contemporary lesbian novels in my house, which I'm slowly bringing into the archive.

16:14 And in the early 90s, I started collecting lesbian pulse. So cheap paperbacks from the fifties and sixties with often very provocative cover art and very campy stories. Some of which actually had some good content and we're highly prized and kind of passed hand-to-hand in the lesbian Community by the time I started collecting them. They were historical ready. So by the 90s, it was very different than it was in the fifties and sixties when they came out. So they've always been historic for me not contemporary, but the fact that somebody could go into a dime store in 1960 and buy a book with two women holding hands on the cover.

16:59 Continues to blow my mind and I love to collect he's as evidence of what was happening at that moment and of the documentation of what was available to people in so I'm not got about 1,100 lesbian pulp novels and those will all come to the archive. So I talked about it being a win-win with donors. That's what I mean. I have spent years decades now and a lot of money collect make building this collection and for me to know that it's going to live on after and be available for people makes me feel like that was a worthwhile investment of my time in my resources. And when you talk about, you know these being available for a dime, you know, where the dime store at that time were these are written with a lesbian audience in mind for these words are some of these you'd mentioned, you know, that some of these were you know, really like prize and times like hand-to-hand and you mentioned something earlier about you know, yes like some toxic some you down and and you know, what,

17:59 What are the ways in which of these kinds of things get out and proliferating? I was just curious about that Barbara Greer who eventually founded naiad press which was a lesbian press published the Bible of lesbians in literature. She actually published 3 editions the first two editions, I think came up under her pen name Jean Damon. She was also an author who contributed to the ladder which was the first lesbian magazine and she would do book reviews, but then she started putting together a bibliography of what had been published and it was both pulps, but it was also a serious fiction series non-fiction. She rated them stars on how much how good the content was a b and c and whether it was the main story a Side Story or kind of a separate, you know, what a subtopic and so literally people tell stories sometimes about going to a used book store and picking up a pulp and seeing

18:59 It was an a Triple Star and knowing that that was a lesbian owned that and a lesbian had seen that rating from Barbara Greer and that this was one of the good one of the good stories the pups really ranged from things that were written by in for men in really not about the lesbian Community to a treasured few that managed to sneak in some real validation and some positive content. They all take place in Greenwich Village because every lesbian in the world lift in Greenwich Village at the time, they were basically rules somebody had to die or get married to a man or be institutionalized by the end of the book the most of these do not have women walking off into the sunset together.

19:51 Do dolphins really tough content, but

19:56 It was the only visibility that existed at that time and then women cling to it. That's why cling to it today and kind of in honor of the way that they cling to it.

20:11 Thank you.

20:18 And thinking we had jotted down a couple questions and things that we're interested in talking about but

20:31 What did you think when you walked through the collection today? I know the caverns were kind of overwhelming but then there's the space that the treasure collection is in where the where the gay stuff is. Wish I had the time, you know that we can just likes it. You know that I'd like to come back and and spend some time with that and

20:52 You know seeing parking for queers only like you sign the kind of stuff that has been like put up on the walls around seeing, you know, freezing on like different Brandon packages that somebody had, you know, kind of like with a wink like split and looked over in like put on the shelf or something and then and to see the personal papers of so many people local and National Historical until you were showing us the binders from Mike and Jack's collection Personal Collection. So Jack Baker and Michael McConnell. So those are the call the Michael McConnell files is the official name like when they had gone to the Phil Donahue show in all of the mail that they had received and two

21:37 I think that was a moment for me to flip through all to have it was like flipping through, you know things that I've witnessed in my life and to just see it catalog like that and to see these letters ranging from really hateful really bigoted really, you know, threatening things to somebody as you said people seeking support. That was the first time they had seen something like that in that they immediately wrote in and that when you showed us that envelope that just had to the homosexual couple on the Phil Donahue show, there's address to the homosexual couple and somebody was saying, I'm sorry. I only remember one of your name that was your penny dear homosexual, you know myself in high school, you know identifying first as by and then it's queer and then coming to my own understanding of what I think gender is and having some examples to rely on and

22:39 You know and and been growing up in a place that there was some vocabulary around that but again it was like where am I specially in the school library, you know all of these things and how do people seek out information. So just I think that's something that struck me when we were down in the stacks.

22:55 Was being able to flip through the letters in the responses that people had an everything that was contained in that what are their family is? What are there World spinning off of this and to have someplace to go to be able to refer to and I just feel really grateful that this is happening and that is continuing to happen and I really thank you for your working for your generosity welcoming us to get a glimpse of that would that work is like and what are some of the questions that you deal with somebody who's responsible for these sections of history there been left with us and part of the magic I think of archives and special collections. I mean, it's certainly me but it's all my of my colleagues as well. We are also passionate about the work that we do and we all love our stuff so much any one of my colleagues could have taken you down weather is immigration history or Sherlock Holmes our children's literature architecture that could take you down and and pull out a box and say look at this cool. I mean

23:55 It's an amazing group of people that are just making it happen because we care so much and we're so passionately committed to the work that we're doing and what the consequences of that are, which is part of what make what makes it such a medic magical place to work. I was also thinking when we were down there just you know, there was a lot about like sis straight white male weather was literature or whether it was you know, like legal representation or whether it would be different things how that was displayed in available and had been preserved and has been stored in and you were talking a bit about the challenges in curating an archive and how these materials arrive at the collection as well as maybe who's that? I was curious about who comes in and who has access to them. You had mentioned being out in the community with the materials as opposed to that their house here. I want to ask you a bit about that that to see this face is like all this is where they lived so temperature controlled and

24:55 It's a very different environment than you do 84 feet, or is that beneath the underneath the Limestone cap on a Sandstone with the caverns carved out of the Sandstone? Yeah. Yeah. I mean I can feel that we're really underground and so that to that there's these underground archives and what are the other I just had so many questions. I wanted to ask you a bit about that about going out into going outside of the space where the collections are stored. What does that look like when people are encountering some of the materials? I'm out in the community or when people come here, you know, what are the reasons that I try as much as I can to take people downstairs and show them the caverns it's because I think it's really hard to understand.

25:44 What the relationship is between a researcher and the materials and tell you seen where they come from but sometimes somebody say I'm looking for this box and I'm like great you're here. Let's go downstairs and get it together which isn't necessarily the norm and it might even kind of

26:03 Violate some Norms but I think the difference between somebody sitting in the reading room and having me put a box on their desk versus taking them 84 feet underground walking into this room packed with tens of thousands hundreds of thousands of pages of material about the glbt community picking at 1 off the Box putting it on their cart and taking it upstairs is completely different. That's a completely different experience for them to walk in and see you know, the letter from Radcliff Hall hanging on the wall or the sign in a parking for queers only or the artwork or the trays and trays and trays of books and periodicals that we have just to see that volume of material dedicated to the glbt experience isn't something that we get to do very often and to see it taken seriously in an academic setting

26:59 And preserved and taken care of and treated with with that kind of respect.

27:08 Sent a message that I think is different than what we get a lot of the time though. I love to take people downstairs. I can tell I can tell you about it, but it's not the same as when you see it.

27:22 Yeah, how about with another question I had was you know language used in different communities as language involves and that you know that people use to self identify what gets recognized as you're saying like to see that in an academic sense to be taken seriously the terms and self-identity that people use within their own communities. And you know, where is that being documented? That was a question I had how do you deal with that when you're coming up with things that's like what's a file that under?

27:53 We we are a glbt archive and people sometimes ask me usually not very approvingly. Why are you at glbt archive? And I said we're glbt archived because we are old enough to be a glbt archive. So the language of the people use is almost like carbon dating actually of a whole a whole up presentation that I can do on this, but that's 50 minutes. We don't need to take

28:21 The first language that the community came up with was homophile. It didn't want to be called homosexual because that's what the mainstream Community how the main scoop stream kuna described it the homosexual problem how to cure homosexuals with wrong with homosexuals. So the community wanted to be called homophile. That's the word that they chose. So the early material in the community whether it's one magazine or the early Advocates describe themselves as being a homophile publication, then it became gay then it became gay and lesbian then it became lesbian gay, but it became glbt then I became LGBT lgbtq and now it's the whole alphabet in which many people are summarizing, you know with queer or other words,

29:11 But it's almost like carbon dating. You could almost pick up something and towel tell how old it is based on the language that people are using the week rich people to use a note when you research you have to know what the terms are in the era that you're looking for because if you come in and you're looking for genderqueer, you're not going to find anything that's genderqueer. That's more than

29:35 Maybe 5 to 7 years old because that turn didn't exist until you have to look at transsexual and you have to look at transvestite and you have to look at transgender and you have to look at cross-dressing and you have to look at the terms that people may have been using to describe themselves.

29:50 I had a question about that time cuz you mentioned it before the recording the but speaking of terms and unlike the first time. You heard the term lesbian. I was wondering if you wanted to share that story.

30:06 Not much sticks with you as a memory is vividly as abject humiliation until I remember the story not because I knew that I was a lesbian when I was a child, but because I was so humiliated in the circumstances there was I was probably maybe 8 or 9 or 10 years old and there were a group of us playing in the neighborhood and I remember exactly where we were we were sitting on the neighbor's front stoop. And one of the older kids one of the older girls in the neighborhood was sitting next to me and there were some other girls sitting on the lower step and the girl sitting next to me said did you hear that 800 lesbians escaped from the zoo?

30:56 And I didn't know what that meant.

30:59 And so I kind of went no, I didn't hear that and the punchline which of course I didn't understand at the time was that she leaned over and put her arm around me and said yes, and they only caught 99 FM.

31:18 And then like I said what I remember about that too much with the humiliation of not having to ask somebody what a lesbian was and have them explain to me what that meant. But also when I finally did come out and identify as a lesbian to look back on that and remember that the messages were that lesbians Were Somehow in a zoo and that there was something wrong with them and that they caught them and that there was a source of mockery and humor and in sickness and wrongness that went with that but I've always remembered that so clearly and

31:56 My other people may have known my 8 9 10 year old self. Didn't know that I was a lesbian.

32:02 I sent a note a lesbian was I'd like to have a crush on the Girl Next Door.

32:08 But I remember that I remember that moment in time.

32:16 Do you remember the first time that you were hearing that in some?

32:20 Outside of kind of like jokes or like

32:23 I would like in the small talk that takes place when the parents aren't around kind of away or bit. Like I guess what I'm really asking is if you remember the first time that you saw that in writing

32:35 I don't remember. I don't remember that. I remember that it wasn't spoken. It wasn't spoken and it wasn't talked about my best friend in high school was very religious family and was very athletic and I think she and maybe her family were concerned that people would think that she was lesbian and she wasn't I didn't realize until years later that that was a that that was attention.

33:12 So she certainly didn't talk about it. I didn't talk about it with her.

33:19 There's a joke in the lesbian Community about gym teachers and the importance of gym teachers to young lesbians in my gym teacher was a lesbian in I was devoted to her, but it was not spoken. It was not set out loud, so I didn't.

33:38 I didn't come out until College. I remember I had this weird analysis in my mind in high school that somehow if I ever had the chance to explore that I should because I didn't want to be like 35 and married with two kids and go oops until I literally had this like conscious thought. Okay, we'll set ever is a possibility. Maybe I should see because that way I won't be surprised later on like really that's what you were thinking. Okay, that's what I was thinking that I should and the first summer gym teacher High School is a lesbian again closeted not spoken of a lesbian was pointed out to me during my

34:29 Freshman year college, so I knew who she was, but we weren't close and then there's my first girlfriend.

34:40 And that was for a long time the only person I knew and my only sent my only source of information guidance.

34:53 Help counseling how to work this out. What does it mean? What do I do with this mean that was all I had you talked about keeping a list cuz I mention that I did when I first one night when I first came I use I kept a list of the lesbians that I knew it was somehow important to me that I could say. I know X number see we do exist. There these many and I kept it until I got to a hundred and somehow and it literally took me like 2 years to get to a hundred that I thought I could name a hundred lesbians that I had met and somehow at that point then I was like, okay now I don't need to do that anymore. Now, we're real. There's a community where they are. I can I can I don't need to hang on to that in the same way, but I used to count go away. If someone's on the list, I feel like turning and fortunately I've looked at and I crossed that I don't have that list anymore. I'm a bad bad curator. I would love I would love I would

35:53 So love to go back and tell myself save that with taken away in the back of a book save it someday you're going to treasure this list.

36:00 Well, yeah.

36:11 Can I ask what it was like when you did come out?

36:15 It was terrifying it was very hard.

36:18 Like I said, my girlfriend was the only person I could talk to.

36:24 I got there I had no friends at that. I could talk to you. I had no family that I could talk to their what mean there was the the isolation was.

36:36 Profound

36:38 Complete and profound we were seeing each other for a couple weeks and then the summer came and I came back to the Twin Cities where my family was and she went back to Alaska where her family was and I had nothing and no one and

37:01 There was just no one to talk to about this transformative profound mean even the first time that you fall in love with somebody but that's like and telling stories and going to Uber does this mean what should I do? Is this what you know, I couldn't talk with that about that with anyone and I turned the books. I snuck into Amazon bookstore. I went to the library some of the stuff I found was good and helpful and some of it was just toxic in horrific and I had to go all the different branches because different branches had different amounts different kinds of titles and I didn't want to check them out because that was terrifying I would pick up 10 books and then I would slip the one I really wanted in the middle cuz then maybe the librarian we do this cuz I'm sure I'm the only one who did that.

37:57 And there was just it was just lonely. It was very very lonely and frightening. I didn't know what the reaction of my family would be. I didn't know what this meant for my future. I didn't know if this meant that I could ever find a relationship and find someone to love and that I would ever be happy or or I didn't know any of that at that time and there was just no one to ask and no one to reassure me.

38:22 I think it's pretty amazing how you were popular like mentally populating your reality with that list that work has continued and that you know, it was now giving yourself that psychic space as as a first step how the things that the reality the reflections. It's like. This is real this exist. This is here. See we have all these boxes. It happened. We have all these stories we existed we worked on all these things we made a difference. We we made things better. We we change things and like I said, the change that has happened between the 1950s and 2017 is

39:04 Staggering really staggering when you look at the history of civil rights movements in depression and people trying to change social attitudes that's been breathtaking.

39:20 And a lot of people worked really hard to make that happen really hard and a lot of people didn't make it a lot of people didn't make it. You know people were where gay bashed people were killed a lot of men died from HIV AIDS

39:41 People committed suicide people still commit suicide. A lot of people didn't make it but we worked really hard to get where we are and to make this a better place.

39:54 And when I see young people

39:59 Take it for granted. Applebee's thrilled and half of me wants to just take him and shake them by the by the shoulders and say do you have any idea what it took to get where you can use this language and you can take these classes and you can pull up this website and you can just have us at your fingertips. Do you know what we did to create this for you? And then like I said part of me is just

40:23 Real because that's what we wanted. We wanted them to get to the point where they could take it for granted.

40:31 But there's no guarantees going forward. There's no guarantees that things will continue to get better there people that still hate us.

40:40 There people that still another flipping answers people that don't want to make us a a wedding cake.

40:47 But they're people that want

40:49 That want us to be

40:52 They want us to go away. They want us to be cured. They want us to be institutionalized. They want us to be they want it to be illegal again. They wanted to be a mental illness. They want to be a crime.

41:05 They hate us and they want to they want to kill us that still exists and it's real and I don't want the kids. I went and people today to celebrate all the freedom I have but I never want them to turn their back on the fact again. I'll disappear.

41:24 And I hope they never have to fight like we had to fight and I and I think I had it much easier than people 10 20 30 years before me but I hope they never have to go through what I went through and I hope they never have to fight that way. I want them to remember so that they don't have to do it.

41:43 Thank you so much for your work.

41:50 Yeah, that's where I just was telling about them when we like finish work today. I was like, I feel like I'm just going to need to sit for a minute. I was all that happened today like it. Thank you so much for your generosity in like welcoming us to see what that looks like right now. And I really really appreciate you taking the time to sit and talk together and that's something that's been really important to me in my work is at you. Noah storycorps has been able is being able to

42:18 Hear from people in this concentrated way who are going to working through official organizations in organism and institutions and to see that growing and to see people being able to have these conversations to like across Generations. We were in Kalamazoo talking with people at the at the center there with some of the people who'd first started it and then some of the students were now accessing that just like

42:44 To be able to hear people talking fate. There's just something.

42:49 I'm not able to really articulate right now, but there's something about when we can't have this conversation face to face. The hope of an archive. Is it like that conversation can still be happening and four people? It's like it's still visceral when you hold it in your hands and your reading the letters or you're seeing like this faded print and see everything the language that was used then and

43:18 It's a magic Place. Yeah, it really is filled with stories. I mean, that's what it is. It's filled with stories and you do it in the in the recording and we do it in the print in the boxes, but you open up those boxes and things start to speak to you. Yeah, and I just open up doors and they make you wonder where does all this lead? Where does it go? Who wrote this letter? What were they thinking? Where are they now? What's changed? Do we have one moment for one last question. I wanted to ask you if there of any circumstances when you have that you work all that just were really profound for you or maybe like a changing moment when you opened up the box or encountered something.

43:56 In your work that

43:59 You know, there's so many of those moments where somebody pull something out and you're like wow, that's so cool. That's so amazing.

44:08 I think

44:11 I think the one thing I am the one the one I would mention is Minneapolis had the first lesbian feminist bookstore in the country is Amazon bookstore with Amazon before amazon.com came along and it started in a house on Cedar Avenue and then it moved to the lesbian resource center. And then it moved over to Hennepin where it had that facade that was so terrifying to me when I was first coming out and then it moved to another place and another place in it and it closed recently but it played such an important role in my life and others. In fact Alison bechdel stick to watch out Dykes to watch out for that's modeled on Amazon bookstore. Those drawings Allison looked in the Twin Cities in those drawings art are modeled on Amazon bookstore.

44:55 And they used to have a triptych of pictures of photographs up on the wall that showed the original House the facade on Hennepin and then the building in Loring Park and the house.

45:11 On Cedar Avenue was years later.

45:15 That wasn't the actual building and a researcher came in and asked to look at stuff and I said, you know what I cuz I would say the researchers while you're doing your research when you're done get back to the archive put your stuff back in the archives of the next person can have it right that's part of the win-win for researcher came in writing her memoirs and I showed her all the stuff I said if you guys are talking with people they have stuff. Please let us know.

45:41 Runs into a woman

45:44 Her house had burned down but she had a few pictures in the in the barn.

45:52 And one of those pictures in the barn that didn't burn in the house was a picture of Amazon bookstore when it had the hand-painted sign hanging on the second floor Amazon bookstore feminist literature.

46:08 And it was a picture that I thought didn't exist.

46:13 And the the researcher that helped hook me up with this sent me a scan of this and I opened up my email and I was literally at my desk jumping up and down and screaming because I was so excited that this moment that I thought was gone and that we could never have again.

46:33 I had it I had it it was like you this is the Holy Grail. I have it. I've got it. I've got the picture of Amazon and I was just I was literally jumping up and down screaming like I did till talking about it now cuz like I mean it was you know, she had a few pictures that were in the house when it burned that there's no reason that that picture should have survived but it did.

46:56 Anthony archive

47:01 At the Christmas morning

47:04 Well

47:05 Well, thank you so much. I have 40 minutes goes by way too fast. I have to share what I love doing with both of you and have you be so excited about hearing it and seeing it and getting a glimpse into a little bit of it. Will thank you so much. I look forward to asking more questions and I just want to thank you on you know from myself and my high school self and my Elementary School self, and you know, my other all my friends and you know, I'm just thank you so much for your work. It is truly been my pleasure.