Emily Bahne and Victoria Young

[00:02] EMILY BAHNE: Good morning. I'm Emily Bahne My age is. I'm 47. I'm recording on February 25, 2022 in Fresno, California and I'm here with Victoria Young who I am just meeting today.

[00:22] VICTORIA YOUNG: Thank you. I'm Victoria young. I am 60, going to be 65 this year. It is February 2, 2022. I am in Madera, California. I'm here with Emily, my one step partner, nco. Hopefully I said that right.

[00:45] EMILY BAHNE: Great. So Emily, you can go ahead and read Victoria's bio. Okay. I'm reading Victoria's bio. She says I'm a living historian. I believe that knowing history, the good and bad equally is important for our future. I'm more of a conservative because I believe in logic and reason over emotional outbursts. I lost my first voice for a second.

[01:09] VICTORIA YOUNG: Hold on.

[01:30] EMILY BAHNE: I'm reading Victoria's bio. She says I'm a living historian. I believe in knowing history, the good and bad equally. It is important for our future. I'm more of a conservative because I believe in logic and reason over emotional outbursts. I lost my first husband, Richard and I stopped doing much of what we have done to what we had done together. What I still do is dressing vintage. I believe that diversity is not an indicator of skills or ability. It plays a part, but the person is ultimately responsible for developing themselves.

[02:07] VICTORIA YOUNG: Thank you. I'm going to read Emily's bio. I grew up in the Central Valley with a loving family. My mother is from Fresno. My dad is from Germany. My rural high school with its diverse student body shaped my early life experiences as well as lifelong friendships and faith gained. Through my church. I learned about urban poverty and health disparities through my training in nursing and public health in Baltimore, Maryland. I'm an early childhood nurse, a Christian, a former foster mom, excuse me, a cancer survivor and a world traveler.

[02:48] EMILY BAHNE: Thank you. Each other. To share a little bit more about each other's lives. Are we doing like the five minutes of telling or are we just asking just general questions? You can go ahead and elaborate more. Okay. Victoria, can you tell me a little bit more about the things that you like to do and about your love of vintage?

[03:26] VICTORIA YOUNG: Well, I'm as I said I would. My mom was a reader, so was my dad. And from them I got involved with reading anything I could read, including cereal boxes, you name it. And I went from there to reading history books which my mom kind of pushed into my hand. From there to sci fi and all that. So I learned a lot about reading and from reading different things about world then I went into doing living history, which is where you actually physically get involved in recreating a different time period. It can be hard sometimes because you may not agree with the politics. Civil War was an interesting period because you had to deal with the whole Southern generation of being. I am. We are Southerners. We are better as like, huh, Playing an immigrant woman and didn't have a. I had no problem telling them why go away. But vintage is something I've always been involved in. I got involved about 10 years ago just learning to dress, and because I found, to be honest, the clothes fit me better and I felt better wearing them. I'm not comfortable with, you know, loose, sloppy head jack pajama pants or things like that. And I'm a bit of snob, maybe in that respect, but I think people should look nice and not sloppy. That's kind of the weird thing. And that's, I think, part of the vintage look I keep in my mind is wear what you want, but look good in it. If you think you look good in it, good. And it doesn't matter what my opinion is of you.

[05:13] EMILY BAHNE: Like, what era is your. Is your favorite to dress in?

[05:17] VICTORIA YOUNG: I do 40s, 50s mostly. Now I still do Victorian a lot, but there's not a lot of activity out here in Victoria for Victorian, especially since the pandemic closed down. Most of the events I would have got been going to. It's hard to dance wearing a mask, you see. But I really. I really like the 40s and 50s period.

[05:46] EMILY BAHNE: Yeah, those are. Those are really good clothes. They're very flattering, I think, for ladies in general.

[05:53] VICTORIA YOUNG: Yes, they are.

[05:55] EMILY BAHNE: So what kind of events are you guys? I don't think I ever knew that in Fresno and Madera there were these kind of events going on. So what kind of events were you guys doing before the pandemic there?

[06:09] VICTORIA YOUNG: Nothing down here, to be brutally honest. We are a bit of a backwater down here in this respect. But we would do the last one I was up as was up in Merced, Modesto area, and we did a tea at one of the Victorian houses, which is one thing. And then when I lived up in the Bay Area, there were dances about once a month, teas, picnics, parties, things like that. There's also the great Dickens Christmas there. Same people who put on the Renaissance there. But I've been down here for over 10 years now, so I haven't been going to those very much. The occasional tea is the best I can make.

[06:55] EMILY BAHNE: Can. Can you tell me a little bit about the things that you and your husband would do together?

[07:02] VICTORIA YOUNG: Well, we're both. We do. We spend a lot of time together because he's unfortunately disabled because of back injuries through work. So we spend a lot of time doing craft things together. He's working on a. What they call a featherweight sewing machine, refurbishing it for me. And I have to basically, I know how to sew, he knows how to repair. We get together and work on things like that. It's also into knife designing and makes pretty neat knives. Patterns, so I work with them and, you know, putting them into the computer and things. So we. It's like we both try to play off of each other's strengths and we both cook, do a lot of the cooking together. He likes to cook. I like to bake. So when the pandemic started, we always had plenty of bread and plenty of food. And he's kind of helping me plant a little bit of the garden around here for, yeah, Victory Garden type thing. So we can go ahead and. Can't do some canning this year. I get to do the work. He gets to supervise on that.

[08:12] EMILY BAHNE: Sounds like you would have made a better pioneer woman than me.

[08:19] VICTORIA YOUNG: Oh, I like the idea. But I have done events for five days, and it's like, give me back my shower and give me back my refrigerator, please. But it is nice to know that I have skills that, you know, I could possibly survive. But I also really appreciate our modern life where people are more valued for what they are than what society in those days cast them as, so to speak. I also do like my modern conveniences, like my computer, my refrigerator, my hot water tank. But I saw you were a. Your dad's from Germany. What part.

[09:07] EMILY BAHNE: He is from Cologne, so that is a couple hours from Frankfurt. He is like, his family is still there. He's the only guy that came to the US and he did it for alternative service. So over there, you have to either go into the military or you have to do some kind of social service when you're about 19. So he came to the US and worked in Head Start in, like, Baltimore. And it was with Brethren Alternative Service, kind of a little bit like Peace Corps. And he met my mom during that time and has been here since he was he. Since he was 19. And, you know, I. They ended up in Fresno because my dad got a job with my grandfather who owned a bunch of restaurants locally. And my dad basically did the booths and the. You know, he's. My dad is probably. I mean, he's one of the smartest guys that I know. And he is sounds like you like just a voracious reader of anything. Like you could leave a textbook around or you could leave anything in his space. And I'm like, why do you have my calculus book in the other room? I don't understand. But he just like, he just picks up whatever you have and just starts reading it. And I think he just had this love affair with the west and with, you know, just that whole kind of idea of the frontier. There's something in Germany that there's still. There's a writer called Karl Mei who really loves like the West. And so a lot of kids of my dad's era grew up just seeing these movies that were kind of spaghetti westerns, but they were set in Yugoslavia. So he just had this whole idea in his mind about what the west was and still has kind of this love affair with the Southwest especially. So I think when he met a California girl, he's like, okay, here's my, here's my ticket. I can live the. I can live the life.

[11:20] VICTORIA YOUNG: Not to throw any stereotypes, but there is still a very, from what I've heard, there is still a very big interest in the American West. And from some of the best native American style art, reincarnation dresses and dance clothes I've seen outside of the powwow shows comes, is coming out of Germany because they do the research. But it's not a stereotype. It's. I think it's in your blood.

[11:49] EMILY BAHNE: I, I wish I was a more meticulous person. Like, as I'm hearing you describe some of the. Because my dad is truly, I mean, he's a craftsman, he's a woodworker. I have, I'm sitting in my house and I have Craftsman style house down in the tower. And he has made me just the most beautiful, you know, wood, woodworking and furniture. And it's just, you know, because he's, you know, that's a stereotype that's kind of true about Germans is that they're very kind of detail oriented and meticulous. And that is the deal about being, you know, the second generation kid is that maybe you don't, you know, I often think if I had been raised in Germany, I would have been a totally different kid because I am also like my mother's daughter. And we just, if I open it up to show you the rest of this room, you would see that I did not get all of the skills that my cousins have as far as being detail oriented and more meticulous. But I do hope that from him I got this idea of just being curious about the world and loving to learn and just having a sense of wonder. I think if there's anything about my dad that I really appreciate, it's that he's. And I think Germans in general, and this may be a stereotype too is just their willingness to like have a confrontation and, or a discussion and then afterwards you can just be cool. Like, you know, I don't. I, as I see kind of how politics in our valley has gotten so divisive. Like I think that's, I mean that is not what I've experienced when I've been over with family. Like you can have a super heated discussion, talk about all the things and it doesn't take it to such a personal level that it gets mean spirited. I mean that's not true of again, we're all humans all over the world. But I think culturally it's okay to have a different view and still find that kind of common ground together. And I feel like, so I feel like that's kind of. Those are kind of his two gifts and just, just that like you know, excitement for life. But you're right, there is really like just my two cousins did Voltage Air, which is like horse riding. And there is still like a very vibrant for better or for worse because I think some of it is very much like cultural appropriation. But they have kind of like essentially like a Disneyland of the west in Germany around Carl Meyers kind of stuff. And they were, you know, my cousin that was kind of her thought was to go and kind of perform in a Wild west show over there. But I think I'm here because of that, you know, a lot of those ideas about the west in Germany. Like that's how I think my dad decided he was going to come here. And without that he wouldn't have met my mom and I wouldn't be here. So I have a lot of gratefulness around that.

[15:18] VICTORIA YOUNG: Well, my dad was from Oklahoma, Texas area and grew up in the Depression. So I got to hear some of the stories of the late west, like in Oklahoma, near Shawnee and you know, doing the little bit of the Depression because he was very young at the time, he was like 6 or 7 during that period. So he just, he didn't have a lot of memories. But it was like that was kind of like the, in some respects the last big hurrah of the American west was the whole migratory, almost the reliving of the pioneer trail to California during that period.

[16:00] EMILY BAHNE: How did your family end up in California.

[16:04] VICTORIA YOUNG: My great. My grandmother left home. We don't know under what circumstances. With my dad, moved to Florida for a time, opened up a truck farm, worked it, had people working it. She worked it. My dad worked it. The Dust bowl started in and she lost it because of the damage. So she joined a circus and came out to California with my dad and working in a circus. My dad lived out in SoCal for many years and then joined the military just before the war. And he met my mom in Colorado. Back to the west again at a nursing school. She was in a Catholic nursing school and she got married and got kicked out of Catholic nursing school. So that. And then they. He brought her back to California, lived with his mom while he was overseas.

[17:08] EMILY BAHNE: He was there. Was that in Fresno or was that Madeira?

[17:14] VICTORIA YOUNG: Redlands, California, down San Bernardino county wasn't actually too far away from a couple of the internment camps. One actual POW camp and one internment camp. We used to drive the back roads to go up to Redlands to avoid having to go through la and you could see where the ruins were just like rows and rows of blocks where the buildings had been. It was kind of an interesting period. My dad was not happy that it happened because he ran into some prejudice, being mixed blood. And it was just like, well, that was not a good thing. And it happened. This is what happened. And now you know the bad side.

[18:07] EMILY BAHNE: So I think I missed that. So is your background Native American?

[18:12] VICTORIA YOUNG: My dad was, according to the family story. And I'll leave it that because we've. My dad was researching it when he was. When he passed away many years a few years ago. There was supposed to be Shawnee blood in us because his great grandmother moved to Oklahoma before and into Indian territory is a story before the white people got there and it was a Shawnee area. But she was not allowed to register because her husband, my great grandfather, was supposedly hiding from the British military. He liked to blow things up in Ireland. This is back in the beginning of what they call the Finians, which were the predecessor to the Iraq.

[19:07] EMILY BAHNE: Okay, wow.

[19:09] VICTORIA YOUNG: I got a violent background.

[19:13] EMILY BAHNE: I don't know. I think sometimes that's. That's the character of. I mean, I think that's our lore, but I think that's the character of the West a little bit. Is this idea that it's a whole bunch of rebel rousers that, you know, like decided everyone who moves out towards California, it's. It's for some kind of. Some kind of reason? I don't know.

[19:35] VICTORIA YOUNG: Yeah, a lot of it was. Well, there was the obvious one, I want my own house, I want my own land. And there was a. I don't want to end up in jail or I just want to get away from where I'm at. It's. Those are the major reasons a lot of it was, well, the gold rush was a big inside incentive for some people. And then you get into people who just from like Baltimore, for example, and other cities on the east coast just wanted to be able to have their own land instead of living in a city where everybody's crowded and well, I'm living on four and a half acres. It took me a while to get used to that because I grew up in a small town with my Neighbor's house about 20ft away from me. So now and then I lived in San Francisco or Oakland, actually, to be sized for about 20 years and in an apartment. So, you know, it's like having nobody living over you or beside you. It's just kind of strange occasionally still, like, it's too quiet out here. What's going on?

[20:46] EMILY BAHNE: I wonder if you want to share a little bit about your earliest memory of politics. I have, I'm putting a couple of questions here in the chat box, but if you can't see them, I will.

[20:58] VICTORIA YOUNG: Just bring them up here if you'd bring them up. I can't. My chat box doesn't want to show on my tablet for some reason.

[21:06] EMILY BAHNE: Yeah, I can. I can do it this way. So, Emily, tell us about your earliest memory of politics. I think a lot of what I think about is just being, you know, I don't know. My grandpa's fairly conservative. He still is. I can remember like getting into discussions with him somehow thinking that I, you know, could enlighten him about stuff. He's. He's also from. Well, he's from Missouri. And still, like, I think that's the. My evolution is like getting to a place where I'm like, all right, I'm not changing the mind of a 94 year old man, but I think our valley is fairly. I mean, you can weigh in on this, Victoria, but I think our valley is in a landscape of a state that's fairly progressive and liberal. We're kind of, I mean, I would almost say we're the Bible belt in Fresno and Madera. And I grew up in a Presbyterian church. My mom and my dad, my dad is agnostic. My mom is like a woman of faith. And so we grew up in the church. But, you know, with a dad who was like, you can stay home anytime you want and I think the thing, especially now that you see is just the mesh of politics and religion. And so I think where my parents were coming from, they were Democratic. And I was going to a Presbyterian church as a young kid, and I had one other friend in my group of friends that was, you know, like, identified in our mind, like, as Democratic. And so I think. And more kind of like liberal leaning. And so we always felt like we were kind of like the outsiders as much as you can, like, in a group of kids that are really a lot like you are. But I think, you know, like, our parents drank wine, which, you know, like, in our church, that was, like, kind of scandalous, at least when you're in junior high. And so I think I kind of. That was like, part of my identity with my other good friend, that we were like, you know, we're the two rebels in this situation. But I think it's very interesting, you know, when you go outside of California, you realize that the Central Valley as conservative maybe as it is, it is not that conservative of a place. And I think even within my church, when I think about. And there's just been a lot, I still would identify myself as a Christian. I mean, I think there just is in our Valley, especially, like, such an inner mesh with politics and religion. And during COVID even more so. And I still kind of feel like I'm a little bit of a fringe element in politics and in, you know, like, my church community as far as what I believe in the place where. Where I am. But I still think, you know, anything in California is still fairly, fairly progressive. So I don't know if that fully answers the question, but I think that just thinking about. I don't know, and my dad is just such a contrarian. I think that's some of German politics. He's like, always. You never really know what his real opinion is because he always will take the devil's advocate position on pretty much anything. So I'm like, yeah. So, like, you know, if I say it's one thing, then he's gonna say it's the opposite. And I don't always know that that's his. His true thought. It's just more that he just wants me to. You know, I think his goal was that he came from. Both my parents came from fairly authoritarian, like, loving families, but fairly, like, authoritarian families. So I think that was kind of, you know, I think especially coming a little bit out of the counterculture, they're like, you will be independent thinkers and you will, you know, you will challenge things and whatever you think, at least you're gonna be able to understand how you got to that opinion. So I think that was his real. Like, his real goal for us was not necessarily that we agreed with him, but just that we had thought through whatever our choices were from, you know, going to church. I mean, he did a lot of just asking me why I was at church, why I believed what I believed. And I think that's such a hard thing when you're a younger kid, because you're like, I don't entirely know that, but I also am grateful for it because I think it makes you. As you move through life, you're like, I really need to decide why I think these things in a way that it's, you know, deciding what is tradition and what is truly, like, what I. What I think, because I think I always have my dad's voice in my head. I also have my mom's, who, you know, she's just, you know, incredibly compassionate and able to just perspective shift in a way that I think is really helpful. But then I think the German is like, is it logical? You know, like, does it make sense? Can you defend it? Is that truly what you think? You know? And what does the other side think? And can you at least shift to think about what they're thinking on the other side? I don't know. That's the long and meandering road. But I think it makes me super gray, you know, like. And it also makes me a little bit of a contrarian to, like, you know, when someone makes an absolute statement, I'm like, really? Is that really the only way to be able to see that? Or is there, like, another way that you could look at that? So, I don't know. I think it's interesting because you've lived in Oakland and you've lived in the. You've lived in the Central Valley, so you've. And you've lived in Southern California. So you kind of have been in a lot of different spaces. So what are your first memories of politics and how it impacted you?

[27:34] VICTORIA YOUNG: Well, mine. Go back a little farther. Is my first really dealing with politics was actually in the first grade, we did the mock election with Goldwater. I can't remember who he ran against. And we were Goldwater versus Johnson, I think. And it was like, that was my first exposure to politics. But we were conservative, and my dad was working for Rockwell International at the time. And the XB70, the Valkyrie, came out when I was in the third grade. And we went to see it because it was Doing its mate open view, first view for the press and everything. And we were driving there and there were protesters along the road.

[28:23] EMILY BAHNE: Just a minute. I think this my dad. Hold on. Oh, man, I'm so sorry. That's. There you go. That's some of the German character right now. He did not tell me he's coming. He's just coming and doing his thing.

[29:16] VICTORIA YOUNG: Yeah, well. But we basically got to first time I had ever seen protesters ever. And it was like, why this? It's a beautiful plane. They're built giving people jobs. And this was during the beginnings. This is like 65, I think so about 8. And this is begin during the Vietnam, the earlier days of the Vietnam War before. And that was the whole thing that they were against was because they saw it as being used for the Vietnam war. Well, the B70 was not planned for Vietnam, it was planned for the Cold War. But they didn't care. It was just, this is our idea. This is anti war. You're going to use it to bomb civilians in Vietnam. It's like you don't even look to see what the machines plan for. That was my first exposure is people with an idea not list, not wanting to see anything beyond a limited idea. And then we took my older brother when I was 10 to LAX because he was being shipped off to Vietnam. So those were my first exposures to protesters and people who wouldn't listen, who had a set, basically had made up their mind, wouldn't listen to anybody else and got very violent if you tried to argue with them. So I got exposure to that. Living in LA, going in SoCal, in Oakland. It was like, you pretty much try. I pretty much tried to avoid the politics because it's like, okay, you're screaming, this is happening. Show your work. Show me the proof. Occupy Oakland question there was there, you know, the rich aren't paying taxes. Show your work. Where are they not paying taxes? They're. And it's like nobody wanted to listen to logic, they just wanted to listen to emotion. And that's why I say I'm a conservative because I believe in logic and rationality is because you emotions are wonderful, they're great, but they have their place, just like logic and rationality does. And if you can merge them together into a nice package, that's great. You've got a nice person who thinks before they open their mouth and evaluates the situation before they start having hysterics either way. And if that makes me conservative, I'm probably in trouble because my liberal friends accept me as what I am because there's some things that are, quote, classically liberal, I'm poor. And there are some things classically conservative, I'm poor. It's like, go away. You're the joke. But it's like, go away, we don't understand you. And again, it kind of frustrated me. Frustrates them that I wouldn't agree with them fully. Frustrates me. They couldn't understand why I wouldn't agree with them. But I'm having, I'm next time I'm up in the Bay Area, we're getting together and going out for coffee so we can still talk about it, but we just, we may not always agree and that's the way we look at it.

[32:50] EMILY BAHNE: What do you, what do you feel like are the characteristics of a person that you can, you know, agree to disagree with?

[33:01] VICTORIA YOUNG: Pretty much somebody who is open minded enough to listen and think about what I say and not yell. I've got, I know I've had a few friends online, people I went to high school with about maintain contact who dropped me because I don't automatically jump into, and I'm going to mention the T word, Trump's camp by, you know, he's right, he's perfectly right and everything and blah, blah, blah. And this is back when Obama was president. Obama's totally wrong. It's like, no, he's got some good points, he's got some bad points, Trump's got good points, Trump's got bad points. Can't you see, look at it logically and see what they're saying and not listen to the hype. Because the one thing that always frustrated me during the Vietnam War and other periods is trying to find the real story was always difficult because all you found for the most part was the hype. Took a lot of work and especially in the early days, going trips to the library, trying to find out the real, find out the background of why somebody's for this or against it. And Internet made that so much easier and so much harder at the same time. But it's like you've got to look at what they're saying and how they're doing things. If they're saying one thing, listen and see what they're actually doing because you'll understand more of whether or not they're just saying it to get along with or to get votes or power or money or whatever or if they're actually saying it and then doing it because they really believe in it. And that's the tricky part. A lot of politicians don't seem to believe what they would say. In my opinion, that is.

[35:02] EMILY BAHNE: What do you. What do you feel like are the ways that you're liberal and the ways that you're conservative? Like, can you think of recent discussions that you've had with your friends, like, that are in the Bay or here in Madera that you can.

[35:20] VICTORIA YOUNG: Yeah, I'm pro mask and I'm vaccinated fully. All three. I've got all three. I have some friends in high school who think masks are an infringement on our rights and don't get vaccinated. It's like, I can't. To me, they call me. They say that's a liberal attitude. It's like, no, we're old enough to have seen our high school teacher walk through the halls in braces on both legs because he had polio. They came out with vaccines against polio. We all took them. And you tell me you don't want to get vaccinated. That does not. That I quote a friend of mine. That makes no sense. Also, I, unlike a lot, a lot of some people I grew up with, I am not pro abortion. I'm not anti abortion. My only comment on it is it's not a form of birth control. But there. And there are limits, you know, medical reasons why there are limits on it when it can be done and such. And that's, you know, the conservatives shudder. And my liberal friends shutter because I don't say, oh, abortion anytime anywhere. My friend. Conservatives say, you say abortion. Ooh. Ah. Ugh. Both sides go running out of the room. Not really, but we can still talk about it. They know my beliefs, I know theirs. And we've come to the understanding we just won't bring it up because it's something that's personal to us and therefore we're never going to agree on it. But we can still be friends.

[37:14] EMILY BAHNE: How about you, Emily? Do you want to share with Victoria a little bit about your values and what maybe some. Your questions are actually excellent. So do you want to maybe talk on those yourself? Okay.

[37:32] VICTORIA YOUNG: Well, go ahead. I was going to ask about the, you know, something about something you feel makes you liberal, but somebody might not consider it that way. Or somebody might be offended by something you consider liberal. They consider it.

[37:48] EMILY BAHNE: Victoria, we lost your audio feed. I'm going to stop the recording real quick.

[37:53] VICTORIA YOUNG: Okay, sorry.

[37:56] EMILY BAHNE: The state for per capita poverty. And I think about, too, like, how to do my job as a nurse. Like, I worked at downtown at the community hospital as a nurse practitioner with kids. And I always, you know, I Think it's a lot easier. I mean, I really. A lot of my lens goes through just how that. How the choices that politicians are making impact children, because I. And I come a lot at a, you know, with a prevention angle. And I think, you know, in some respects, being a nurse, I am a bit of a bleeding heart. And so I would say that, you know, a lot of it, I. I think just. I think compassion and empathy and a recognition that not everybody started out with. I think, especially being in Baltimore, like, I'll look back on my training at the public health school and the, you know, the community hospital there and think so much of what I saw was trauma. And so much of what I saw and how people were behaving was about generational trauma and poverty and oppression. And so I think that, you know, I've also seen. I worked at the National Institutes of Health when I was back east and at, you know, big medical institutions, and I saw lots of the waste, and I saw, you know, lots of just the bureaucracy and how it slows stuff down. And so I know that, you know, our systems aren't perfect. And I also. I think that, you know, and maybe this is the German pessimistic part, I also do not trust people to.

[39:49] VICTORIA YOUNG: Work.

[39:50] EMILY BAHNE: Outside of their own selfish interests very much. Like, I have a lot of compassion. I think that, you know, there's a lot of positive in this world. And at the same time, like, I think we are so bogged down kind of by our own lens and by our own view, and it's. It's the amazing person that is able to truly, you know, kind of take off your blinders and perspective shift because we just come with so much of our own story to all the situations that we, you know, all the spaces that we're in. And so I think this year, I just. The one thing working in. I work in early childhood, so I really am. I think I just really have a lot of, like, you know, thinking around those first three years of life and about even, like, how racial bias is built, how, you know, our political views are built, our culture. And I'm in an office that's, you know, where I really love a lot of the people that I work with. And also I've just seen politics and decisions about wearing masks or not wearing masks. I've just seen a lot of the hurt that it causes. And I also have seen, just from administration change to administration change, just as a medical provider, how hard it is to access mental health care for undocumented or, you know, some of it just makes my life harder. And that's why I'm like, you know, if you, if you don't provide healthcare for, you know, undocumented kids, then it's really hard for me to do my job. So some of it is just pure selfishness in how I approach stuff. But also it's just a, I think an idea about just the cost of not doing things in a preventative way. I think looking at Covid, even George Bush was talking about pandemics. Ten more minutes. Okay. I mean, there was so much talk on both sides about the pandemic. And I just think we could have been so much better prepared. And at the same time, like, I think we don't have a crystal ball. So I just saw so many people try to simplify super complex stuff like how vaccines work, which I've taken a lot of science and I still don't understand fully all of immunology, but everybody's an expert, especially with all the new.

[42:41] VICTORIA YOUNG: Changes and how the things are created.

[42:43] EMILY BAHNE: I'm just amazed at how much people can distill stuff down to like just really simple stuff that is so complex. And having been in healthcare. Okay, sorry. Yeah. I don't know who's been the most influential person in your life and why did they teach you?

[43:07] VICTORIA YOUNG: Well, this may sound a little strange, but actually in some respects, my husband, I was always trying to be logical and things and look back at things logically and rationally. But it was like he taught me the phrase, show your work. It's great to be say you are, but you know, if you're going to go out and talk about things, you need to know what you're talking about. So if you make a statement and somebody says, well, why do you say that? You have done the work to be able to show why you think that. So show your work is one of my mantras now. And that is something my husband taught me. My mom, I probably knew it, but I just never put it into, into words because my mom, well, why did you do that? School, why did you do that? It's like, why did you say that? It's just like they were telling me, show your work. And I never could put put that into, into words. Now I understand it and I argue with people and, oh, I don't argue. I try not to argue. I used to be very good with cold flaming online and then I start thinking, I'm not, I'm attacking them. I'm not asking them. So now I ask them to tell me, explain it. And I've learned a few things from people about things I thought I knew better and I feel better for doing that. It sounds funny, but I do feel better for learning that I was wrong and this is why I was wrong. It's not always an easy lesson, but it's a good one to learn. Emily, who do you think was your most influential person in your life and why?

[45:01] EMILY BAHNE: I think I could probably name like four people. But you know, I think especially during the pandemic I had from three months before the pandemic, you know, and I still have contact now, a foster daughter who was a two day old newborn when I got her. And we've continued to have relationship with her since she's been reunited with her family. And I think, you know, I think especially in early childhood, you know, mothering is transformative, especially I think when under all of those kind of circumstances and I think probably the most beautiful part of it has been able to watch my mom, like kind of see how you're parented. I think that's the privilege of, I think, you know, kind of if there's a benefit of quarantine and all of that. I think being able to watch both my mom and my dad kind of, you know, parent my foster daughter and they really still are so in love with her. We have her most weekends and I think it's. They've had to also just deal with stuff that I have dealt with a lot in my work, which is, you know, addiction and just Poverty and Section 8 and all the bureaucracy of, you know, rehabilitation and, you know, just where the system is not serving kids and not serving families very well. Like, you know, I've been able to have those conversations with my dad in the context of like just a little person that he just, you know, is totally in love with. And you know, I've watched my mom really support my foster daughter's mom. And I think I just am so grateful for kind of secure attachment and just the self esteem that they've given me and just the playfulness and the joy and just I feel like it's super lucky to. I think you have a lot of grace for people when you come out into the world with, you know, with that much love and care. And I think that's, if anything that's been the hardest thing to see is just a lack of compassion that people have had and an inability to perspective shift. But I think just watching my mom like she's, she's this rock star as a, as a mother and she's a rock star with Just compassion and ability to, like, bridge differences. So it's been so fun to just watch how playful and fun she is with my foster daughter and just how much love and compassion she has for people. And I think figuring out how to do that with good boundaries I think really teaches you how to be able to listen and hear, you know, how people got to where they are. So I don't know that's a lot to say, but I think, you know, just. Just basic human love. You know, I know that sounds like super woo woo, but I think that that is, I think that's where you start, is just love and respect for the other person can get you a. Get. Get you a long way towards understanding and finding common ground.

[48:42] VICTORIA YOUNG: Makes sense.

[48:47] EMILY BAHNE: All right, so we're pretty much done. Is there anything you want to share with each other before we finish?

[48:55] VICTORIA YOUNG: No, I think we're good.

[48:57] EMILY BAHNE: Thank you. I mean, thank you for sitting down. I just think that, you know, conversation is where it's at and I feel like, you know, it's not Facebook and quick quips back and forth to each other where we're going to solve problems. So thank you for being willing to sit down and talk and tell me your story. And I'm going to look up some vintage events online. Once they're back online, I'm like, this is like a whole. I love culture and this is like a whole nother culture. You know, I know about ren fairs, but I don't think I know anything about any of these events, so I'm going to go check them out.

[49:36] VICTORIA YOUNG: Well, vintage is a different thing because we look at it. You can do, be involved in it as little as you want or as much as you want. Some people, I, I wear vintage clothes because I like them. Some people will go to the point of having their whole house done vintage and living the vintage lifestyle, and that's their choice. But the big thing is, as you said, is communication in. If we can't talk to somebody there, we will. We're going to do ourselves as a human race. So we have to talk. And by talking, we have to listen. We may not like it, but we have to listen because that's the only way we'll learn to figure out what's going on.

[50:25] EMILY BAHNE: Thank you. Thank you. And dealing with all the technology issues and if.