Chris Krieger and Susan Bolinger

[00:00] CHRIS KRIEGER: Oh, let me see if I can get you something tiny on my screen here. All right, well, okay. So have you done any other one step conversations?

[00:11] SUSAN BOLINGER: I, I have. This will be my fourth one actually.

[00:14] CHRIS KRIEGER: Wonderful.

[00:16] SUSAN BOLINGER: I had done one when I heard about it because I, I used to go to a lot of moth. Hour type story slams in Tulsa about an hour from me, and, and then all of a sudden my email just lit up with a bunch of requests. So I said, oh, okay, great. Neat.

[00:31] CHRIS KRIEGER: Oh, that's wonderful. Good.

[00:34] SUSAN BOLINGER: How about you?

[00:35] CHRIS KRIEGER: I have done a few and then I've done. Gone back with a couple of them and done several other conversations.

[00:42] SUSAN BOLINGER: Oh, neat. Great.

[00:43] CHRIS KRIEGER: Yeah. Especially one young man who is a. Oh, gosh. Has not. Not acidic. I've just forgotten here. He's a. He's a very conservative Jew in Brooklyn, New York.

[00:58] SUSAN BOLINGER: Oh, wow.

[00:59] CHRIS KRIEGER: Libertarian. And he's a phenomenal person. It's just been lovely getting to know him. Yeah.

[01:05] SUSAN BOLINGER: What does he think about what's going on right now?

[01:09] CHRIS KRIEGER: Oh, he's. It. It's complicated. Of course. That's a whole, that's a whole other. He's saddened by everything that's going on. Yeah. But I gotta talk about you. Okay. So. So you did.

[01:24] SUSAN BOLINGER: Do.

[01:24] CHRIS KRIEGER: I recall when we first started trying to set this up that you thought your profile was wrong and that you're not as conservative as your profile shows you to be.

[01:35] SUSAN BOLINGER: Yes, that's very true.

[01:38] CHRIS KRIEGER: Where would you, where do you find yourself on that, on that continuum and how did you get there?

[01:46] SUSAN BOLINGER: Well, first off, can you, can you lower your camera a little bit? I can, I can see your eyes in your forehead.

[01:53] CHRIS KRIEGER: Let's see. I don't.

[01:55] SUSAN BOLINGER: There you are. Now I can see you.

[01:57] CHRIS KRIEGER: Okay. I didn't know you could only see my eyes. Okay. Okay. Can you see me now?

[02:04] SUSAN BOLINGER: Yes, I sure can.

[02:06] CHRIS KRIEGER: Okay.

[02:08] SUSAN BOLINGER: Am I. Or. Go ahead.

[02:11] CHRIS KRIEGER: I can see you. Go ahead. Yeah. How'd you get to where you are on that continuum, especially in Oklahoma?

[02:17] SUSAN BOLINGER: Well, I grew up in Ohio and we moved out here from my last year of school and then I did college, dropped out, did the military, came back, was going to be a professor, but a summer job introduced me to the Rocky Mountains and I stayed there for years, came back on a visit and met somebody and stayed to, to be a father and then, you know, to be a single father. And so. And now I'm staying to be a son. So that's so over time. I don't consider myself a liberal or a conservative. I, I consider myself a radical independent, you know, so I Just, you know, you'll never get my guns and I don't care if you're gay. I guess that's, I kind of decide everything by, is it going to support equal opportunity, equal, equal responsibility and is it sustainable? And you know, if it's a Republican, a Democrat, a conservative, a liberal, if it's a purple one eyed flying purple people eater from Mars and a lime green tutu, I'm, if they got the best ideas for how to fix that stuff or maintain those three things, I'm, I'm good. So I love that. So. But I would say most people in Oklahoma consider me quite liberal because I, you know, I do believe in correct history. I, I, I don't, I do think black lives matter. I do think a lot of history, a lot of things are systemic. I think we need to have training in our schools and then our comp. Corporations and our government offices about. Oh, there's a teacher from Iowa. She did the, the blue eyes, brown eyes. Have you ever heard of her?

[04:17] CHRIS KRIEGER: Yep.

[04:18] SUSAN BOLINGER: That's very powerful to watch her reduce college kids to, to tears and tantrums. And I just, it's so effective and I think we should train people because we've really gotten off the track. And you know, for example, I've known about the Tulsa race massacre for 30 years, since college. I didn't learn it in high school here though. And I have been called a liar when I've told Oklahomans that that happened. Not in the past two or three years, since the movie, since there's been a lot of press about it, but, but before then, you know, 10 years ago or. Yeah, I've been called a liar and it's like, no, I'm, I'm not lying at all. Pardon?

[05:04] CHRIS KRIEGER: How did you learn about it?

[05:07] SUSAN BOLINGER: I was taking a history on the American west and so it came up there and the book we had cover a lot of things that go against stereotypes about the West. So, you know, like Wyoming was the first state to have a woman governor, but a lot of the west was taken over by, you know, greedy people who wanted to monopolize the water or the timber or the acreage for whatever reason. And so, you know, this idea that homesteaders just came out here and, and did it, you know, about half of them did not make it. And, and a lot of people that did come here were, were abused by the powers that be, whether it was cattlemen or, or timber companies or mining companies. And so a lot of people, but a lot of people in America don't really realize that and so I'm. I think there are problems. I think we should study them empirically and define what a good solution would be and then go about that. And if we shake up a lot of things, let's. Let's do just that. So how about you? Now it says you're pretty liberal.

[06:27] CHRIS KRIEGER: I wasn't. I was raised in Minneapolis and then we moved to Indianapolis when I was going into seventh grade. And I was in a school where there was no one who wasn't white and middle to upper class. We were probably one of the poorest families in the city, in the suburb, I mean, just to say. And my parents, I feel like making it, but barely making it at the time.

[06:54] SUSAN BOLINGER: Sure.

[06:55] CHRIS KRIEGER: And you know, a kid in my graduating class drove a DeLorean. Okay, so this, this is not.

[07:01] SUSAN BOLINGER: Wow.

[07:01] CHRIS KRIEGER: Yeah, this is. But not my family. I mean, my dad, he drove the worst car out of all of us. And we only had cars so that we could work and no one would ride in my car. So, you know, I realized in going back, now that I'm back in Indiana. Wait, where were you raised in Ohio?

[07:20] SUSAN BOLINGER: Cincinnati. Very close to you.

[07:22] CHRIS KRIEGER: We were close. Where I was raised outside of Indy and where we. It was a great school. A huge percentage of people went to. Onto college and back, I think. Who decided our curriculum? Who was in charge of the history? What were their agenda? It is incredible to me to think that I went to such a great public school.

[07:51] SUSAN BOLINGER: Right.

[07:52] CHRIS KRIEGER: And there were gaping, intentional holes. And I was taught to be. I was taught to be in business, Create, look up, never look down. Not by my parents. When we moved in, there was someone who tried to. Who was black, who was going to move into our neighborhood. And my mom, who is 3/4 my height, answered the front door. Someone wanted her to sign a petition saying, you can't move into our neighborhood. My mom took it, ripped it up and closed the door in their face. And I remember thinking, you're amazing. But I really. So I was raised by liberal parents, but everywhere I looked in society, it told me to be a good captain of industry.

[08:42] SUSAN BOLINGER: Okay.

[08:43] CHRIS KRIEGER: And reach achieve. Although my parents were not that way. Not at all. But for me, seminal to me. I worked over, studied and worked overseas for a while. And of course I met a lot of people who weren't like the people that I thought had equal opportunity. I'm going to defend myself. I love that you said that you think that everybody should have equal opportunity. I thought everybody did. I'm going to be. It isn't that I didn't Care. It isn't that my family didn't care when we were in Minneapolis. Do you know who Alan Page was? A Minnesota Viking when my. When I was growing up there. And he left the Vikings, left pro football, and he went to law school, worked his way up to a state supreme court judge. And my mom worked with his wife in some capacity in nursing or teaching nursing or something like that. And I thought, you know, in Minnesota there were 10, 10 Native Americans in Minneapolis, six black people and everybody else was, you know, Swedish. I honestly thought, Chris, that everybody had equal opportunity. I really did.

[10:06] SUSAN BOLINGER: Sure.

[10:07] CHRIS KRIEGER: Yeah. And it wasn't until I started getting out, even into the wider world. I lived in D.C. i went up to the Hill. I spent a lot of time working on the Hill when I was young, and it was there that I left the Republican Party.

[10:24] SUSAN BOLINGER: What were you doing? Were you a lobbyist or.

[10:27] CHRIS KRIEGER: I worked for a higher education lobbying organization and I was in their communications department covering all the hearings, covering everything.

[10:35] SUSAN BOLINGER: Sure.

[10:37] CHRIS KRIEGER: But that was probably the first chink in the arm are when I started to think, wait a minute, America isn't everything that I thought it was. Wait a minute, wait a minute. But I still, you know, fish don't know they swim in water. I didn't know the water I swam in.

[10:52] SUSAN BOLINGER: Sure.

[10:53] CHRIS KRIEGER: But. So I am very fiscally conservative in that I want everybody to have a phenomenal public education. I think we should have great infrastructure. I think we should do all things that lift all boats in the tide. And I think that we should. You know, I love your opportunity, responsibility and sustainable. I love that. And my husband's a gun guy.

[11:24] SUSAN BOLINGER: Okay.

[11:25] CHRIS KRIEGER: Yeah. You know, and I've lived in the West. I lived in Denver. Yep. I've lived in California. I get why people especially. One of my first questions I was going to ask you is, were you a homesteader? You know, did your family come? You've answered that question.

[11:44] SUSAN BOLINGER: Sure. Yeah.

[11:47] CHRIS KRIEGER: But, you know, the more that I get out there and the more I've learned. You mentioned systems. When did you become aware of systems?

[11:57] SUSAN BOLINGER: I've always liked to study how, how people work, how socioeconomic and socio. Political things work and how do we get to how we are, whether we're in India or here. And, you know, even as a kid, I. I did a paper on the everyday life of Civil War soldiers and how it impacted how the war was fought. So I think I was 13. I still, I probably still have it in a file cabinet somewhere, but that's the kind of stuff that's always fascinated me and so it's weird. In academics, I. I timed out on getting a master's in geography here at Oklahoma State, but I did everything but finish writing and defending my thesis. I did the research, all the classes, but I. I believe it's important to study things empirically. But I believe a lot of those numbers are unrelatable to people. So trying to find a story that best illustrates what the numbers are saying is a way to help people realize, A, that there's a problem and B, there are solutions. And even if they're uncomfortable or unwieldy, maybe we should do them out of moral, ethical, or practical, you know, considerations. And, you know, if we help everybody with good public education, then we have better taxes all the way around. And, and why in the hell are you and I paying, you know, 26, 29, and Jeff Bezos is paying 11, you know, 14. Right. And Exxon is paying 0, you know, on 14 billion. So I feel really. And I feel things are coming to a head because every critical resource is. It's degraded or diminished or both. You know, whether it's water, air, topsoil, benevolent microbes, and there's more and more people. You know, wolves and coyotes have better population controls than Homo sapiens does. And we have an economic model that doesn't let us make the right decisions. And, you know, for example, as a remodeler, I cannot take the time to pull the nails out of lumber. Most of the time, it's just not worth it. I need to throw it away and move on down the road. And so that's just a small example. But, you know, you can't have unlimited growth because everything on Earth is tied to solar energy, which is finite. So, you know, we get so much a year and. And that's it. And it's been like that way, as I understand it, for billions of years. I'm not an astrophysicist, but that's what they tell me. And so it's just scary. I see us going to a really bad place pretty quickly within three or four generations. I think most of us don't realize how. Because we've been so entitled, and we don't realize how vulnerable our supply systems are. And, and we're a market for a lot of people that are sending us stuff. So if we're not buying it, there's nothing to buy, then they're going to suffer as well. And even though we're causing more global climate change than the global south, they get more of the consequences and the implications for the whole monsoon. Water Cycle and a big chunk of the world are scary, scary, scary. So, you know, I think it's important for America to rectify its internal problems very quickly. It's been a pretty terrible empire in some ways, and it needs to do things differently because, you know, all the astronauts, when they come home, they don't want to talk about geopolitics anymore. They realize how fragile it is, and they get really impatient with some of the things. And, yeah, we're all children of the earth, you know, we're all Earth citizens. So.

[16:18] CHRIS KRIEGER: Okay. Remember from your bio, I think that you don't watch a lot of tv.

[16:25] SUSAN BOLINGER: Mm.

[16:25] CHRIS KRIEGER: But do you have any access to any PBS stations? You could watch this online. Actually, I've got a show for you that I just started watching.

[16:36] SUSAN BOLINGER: Okay.

[16:37] CHRIS KRIEGER: Called the History of the Future.

[16:40] SUSAN BOLINGER: Oh, that sounds interesting.

[16:43] CHRIS KRIEGER: It's fascinating. It's a. It's written and directed by a futurist. Not in terms of what it's going to be, but. But what it could be. And he's going around the world looking at people who are doing good things that might lead us to something better. And one I found it to be. It is not a puff piece. It's quite serious, but it's also uplifting.

[17:08] SUSAN BOLINGER: Oh, that's good. I could use some uplifting.

[17:13] CHRIS KRIEGER: Yeah. You are talking my language. Wait, let's go back for a second here. Were you in the military, Chris, or your dad?

[17:22] SUSAN BOLINGER: No, my grandfather was. My dad was not. And I'm the oldest of two. I have a sister younger. And I did. I was. I went to Germany as a. As a mechanic in the army for a couple years during the height of the Cold War, right before the Wall came down.

[17:37] CHRIS KRIEGER: So wait a minute. Where were you? Can you say?

[17:41] SUSAN BOLINGER: Yeah, I was in. I was outside of Wurtzburg, down south.

[17:45] CHRIS KRIEGER: I was in Wurzburg. Right. In those years, in that time you're talking about, I was in a tiny town working for a German hydraulics company.

[17:55] SUSAN BOLINGER: Really? What was it called?

[17:58] CHRIS KRIEGER: A tiny town called Lore L O # # Mine on the Mine River.

[18:03] SUSAN BOLINGER: Okay. I was. I was at the Gibelstadt Flug Plots, the army helicopter base.

[18:10] CHRIS KRIEGER: Oh, my God. Gosh. I was there. You know, I. I crossed Checkpoint Charlie in Berlin.

[18:19] SUSAN BOLINGER: Oh, okay. Before.

[18:21] CHRIS KRIEGER: Before the Wall came down, I almost got arrested by this young East German officer who felt like making an example out of me because I jaywalked.

[18:31] SUSAN BOLINGER: Oh, wow. Wow.

[18:33] CHRIS KRIEGER: So when I were there at the same time, that's.

[18:36] SUSAN BOLINGER: I got out in November of 88 and I came home all excited. I didn't know what I wanted to study until I looked at my transcripts and I was. I suddenly realized no matter how much I was partying or what was going on in my personal life, in my first five semesters, I always aced my history classes. So I said, I'm going to be a history professor. And I was all set to do that until this really cool summer job in Idaho working for the forest service just turned me on to the Rocky Mountains. And so I ended up living about 40 miles from a grocery store for the next several years, for several months of the year. And then I've traveled. You know, I went to India, Nepal, and New Zealand. I went to the Antarctic and worked one winter, and I traveled. Traveled to England and spent a couple days. Like when I was going to India, Nepal, I would detour. But I haven't been back to Germany. I'd love to go back.

[19:38] CHRIS KRIEGER: Well, let's see. So when you were working with the fire service, were you on the mechanical side for the via. For the aircraft, or were you firefighting or something else?

[19:47] SUSAN BOLINGER: Oh, no, it was the forest service and.

[19:50] CHRIS KRIEGER: Forest service. Yeah.

[19:53] SUSAN BOLINGER: Sometimes. But most of the time, I was a trail crew boss or a trail crew member than a trail crew boss. And sometimes we would fight fires as needed. We were trained in that. I trained people to use chainsaws, and I also started the pack, which is when you carry supplies fitted to horses and mules where there's no roads in the mountains. And so then I started packing for an outfitter in the biggest contiguous wilderness area in the lower 48 states, down by Orofino, Idaho. So, okay, you go in for about three, three and a half months, and your only electricity are your flashlight batteries. And, you know, your. Your water is heated by wood that you cut and split and hauled back to camp. And it's. It's fairly rustic and. But. But I love my mules. And so I got paid. No, not very much, but I got paid and fed to. To ride horses and hike in the mountains, so.

[20:54] CHRIS KRIEGER: And time to think deeply about the interconnection of everything, I'm guessing.

[21:00] SUSAN BOLINGER: Well, you know, I didn't find this out for a while, but my nickname was Professor Jukebox.

[21:07] CHRIS KRIEGER: So not only are you professorial, but you're a music guy. Do you know every.

[21:13] SUSAN BOLINGER: Not every, but I would. I would just sing songs because I would. And I didn't realize it for a long time, but when I came to camp, I was usually by myself for a long time. And then at the end of the season, we Pulled our high camps and they moved. We moved everybody to the place where I had been staying. And there was a big bowl that you rode around on this ridge trail and you came down this finger to where that camp was out of the wind and you know you dropped about maybe 3 or 400ft elevation. Not too much, but it made a nice difference for comfortability. But, but that, that bowl shaped. Funneled right down into camp so they could hear me for 30 minutes. And I didn't know it for a couple of years but. But one day somebody said hey jukebox, hand me whatever it was. And I said what?

[22:13] CHRIS KRIEGER: Professional jukebox. I love it. Let's see. Oh yeah. How far are you from Wichita?

[22:23] SUSAN BOLINGER: About two hours, two and a half hours.

[22:25] CHRIS KRIEGER: Yeah, we almost moved there. Okay, so let's see how. By the way, how is your dad doing?

[22:36] SUSAN BOLINGER: He's. He's doing okay. He's doing a lot better, thanks for asking. He now he's already jumped into having tooth surgery so he's going to have to have a couple partial. Partial plates I think they call him. And he's a little bit grumpy. You know, he's. He's a really good guy. He's not always a nice one. He's a little bit. He's not the most user friendly guy in the world. If you're sensitive he's gonna irritate you. You know, he's at that point now where he tells the same stories and I just let him, I let him go. You know, they're just. He wants to make a contribution. He. And sometimes new stuff pops out in the middle of the stuff. I've already heard several times and so it's a real privilege to get to be a, a son for him. So you know, my sister. Sister's not going to be there for him and he and I didn't always get along so it's nice to pay it back. Yeah.

[23:46] CHRIS KRIEGER: Are you near each other for the first time in a while?

[23:50] SUSAN BOLINGER: Well, no, I moved back. I would come back here every winter to see family and do Christmas a lot of times. And we'd either go here in the Stillwater, Oklahoma or go to Cincinnati.

[23:59] CHRIS KRIEGER: Okay.

[24:00] SUSAN BOLINGER: And after grandma died we stopped going there quite as often and. But I would always come back at least once a year and if I was gonna go somewhere I. Not always, but I'd often park my vehicle at my folks house and then jump on a plane to go wherever and. But so we've been together now in the same area, same county for probably about 20 years almost. I never really wanted to stay down here. I don't really like it here. But, you know, this, this gorgeous woman told me that I was more man than she ever thought she could have. And I, I just fell for all of that hook, line and sinker and dumb, dumb, dumb. And right when I started to realize that, you know, we were not compatible, you know, then we found out we were going to have a child, so I stayed for that. And we had a terrible trailer trash divorce and custody fights, and then I stayed to, to be a dad. And that worked out okay for a while, but we were so. Her mom and I are so very different. And her mom is a very politically conservative, fundamental evangelical Christian who disavows science when it conflicts with biblical teachings. So I feel strongly about stuff and not the same. So. So we. Yeah, it's not. It's taken a couple years for my daughter and I to get a relation back. She, she's moved back to this area and she lived with my dad for a while and then now she has a boyfriend. And I, I've learned if I don't give advice and I just listen, that's, that's much more effective because they do what they see, they don't do what they hear, so.

[26:11] CHRIS KRIEGER: Well, that is definitely true. But you know what? I've always believed, because I was one who would never take anybody's advice, right? Which is funny because now I, I'm learning the lesson. You're talking about lips club, ears open. But those who did give me advice, the good stuff stayed and stuck. When I was older, I would employ it, and I'm still employing it.

[26:36] SUSAN BOLINGER: Oh, that's good. Yeah. Right.

[26:37] CHRIS KRIEGER: Yeah. Though. Hey, a question. Since you brought up your wife's more evangelical, super conservative Bible over science, you listed on your profile religious slash spiritual. Where do you put yourself on that?

[26:57] SUSAN BOLINGER: I really, I really, really believe in a higher power. And I have since I was about 12 years old. And studying photosynthesis and firms for some reason convinced me there had to be something else. I didn't really get too far past that for the next 20, 25 years. I fell into a bottle for a while and became a pretty unpleasant person. And so now I've been in recovery for almost 24, 23 years. So I, I think a lot of religion is, I call it the form over function problem. And I think we all pick up forms to, to, to, to achieve the function, to get a better, closer conscious contact, to get better direction, to get solace for our, our pain, our comfort. For our fears. You know, the same stuff we've been writing on the walls of caves and ever since. And for some reason, human nature is such that it's so much easier, I think, for almost all of us to focus on the form and forget about the function. And so I think so many things are. I think so many religions are really rooted. And I don't like what they do to women. I. I don't like the idea that the earth is created for us. It doesn't matter to me if we're created in God's likeness. I think that's irrelevant and probably not true. I'm very, very comfortable not having all the specifics. Very comfortable. I don't think we're supposed to. I think we'll get it when we're ready. So. So I really believe in something and I use. I use the. The 12 steps of AA to work on that closer conscious contact. And I do draw from, from, you know, the Bible. I've looked at the Quran. I've had to give a couple. Oh, when you're at a funeral, the eulogy. Twice now I've given eulogies because the minister didn't. Because they were for people who took their own lives and they had fallen out of recovery. And I was just. I thought it was absolutely all kinds of negative things. I'm not going to voice that the minister wouldn't be there for the family, you know, so. But I consulted. You know, I have a King James and I went through it and it's indexed. And I wanted to stress not to judge and to be there for the family and, and let God take care of the rest of the stuff. So that's. That's a long way of saying I. I believe in something, but not a lot of specifics, I guess. How about you?

[30:10] CHRIS KRIEGER: I left the Catholic Church. Church. I was the only person in my family not to go to parochial school. I left when I was 12, proclaiming that in the Catholic Church. And I was going out to look for him. Horror of horrors. To all my family who've now all left the Catholic Church.

[30:28] SUSAN BOLINGER: Sure.

[30:30] CHRIS KRIEGER: My maternal grandfather was a mystic.

[30:34] SUSAN BOLINGER: Oh, okay.

[30:36] CHRIS KRIEGER: I had an orientation to. Everything is interconnected. God is huge. He is inclusive of all. He is loving whatever he is. I don't even know, you know, I'm using language. That is the best I have. Right. He. I don't even know. It doesn't matter to me. I couldn't agree more with all the things you just said. I, I have. I. We do go to church. We go to Two churches, big churches, one a ucc, because there are a lot of folks there who are lgbtq.

[31:14] SUSAN BOLINGER: What's ucc?

[31:16] CHRIS KRIEGER: The United Church of Christ. It's a bunch of churches who have band together but have a very big God.

[31:22] SUSAN BOLINGER: Okay.

[31:23] CHRIS KRIEGER: Yeah, I married a Presbyterian, but my father in law went to the same. Same seminary that Mr. Rogers went to.

[31:33] SUSAN BOLINGER: Oh, really?

[31:35] CHRIS KRIEGER: And my father in law learned all kinds of things in seminary. But then he said, then I got out into the real world and I think that's just like what you're talking about, that there's this form that he was taught that I was taught that to me, I could see the flaws when I was 12. Didn't matter which religion it. It's. I. I use an analogy because I think in pictures of somebody feel some community, feels really close to God, however they define it. They build this church and then they hammer all the windows and the doors close and they say, this is exactly how we're going to understand God. And no fresh air gets in.

[32:17] SUSAN BOLINGER: Right.

[32:18] CHRIS KRIEGER: And I love native traditions.

[32:22] SUSAN BOLINGER: So do I.

[32:24] CHRIS KRIEGER: Have you read anything by Robin Wall kimmerer? Braiding sweetgrass?

[32:29] SUSAN BOLINGER: No, it's Robin Wall.

[32:32] CHRIS KRIEGER: Three words. Robin Wall Kimmerer, she's a member of the Pottawatomi tribe in New York.

[32:38] SUSAN BOLINGER: Oh, and they also have a branch part of the tribes out here in Oklahoma, too.

[32:44] CHRIS KRIEGER: Yep, they do. Oh, do you know who Krista Tippett is?

[32:47] SUSAN BOLINGER: I've heard the name, but I can't place why.

[32:50] CHRIS KRIEGER: Oh. On being.org.

[32:54] SUSAN BOLINGER: Oh, yeah. Yes. Yes. Yeah, I think.

[32:57] CHRIS KRIEGER: Raised in Pawnee, wasn't she?

[32:59] SUSAN BOLINGER: I think so. And that's only about 35 miles from here. So I put.

[33:05] CHRIS KRIEGER: When we first started talking, I put you on my weather. On my phone so that I could see.

[33:09] SUSAN BOLINGER: Okay, think about.

[33:10] CHRIS KRIEGER: Send you goodbyes. But Robin Wall Kimmerer, she's equally educated in Western science. I love science. I'm not a scientist or a physicist, but I call myself physicsy and sciencey because I don't come at it. I come at things more like an economist. But I. I understand the web of it. Well, I don't understand it. I'm. I'm in the web trying to understand the web. I'm in.

[33:41] SUSAN BOLINGER: Sure.

[33:42] CHRIS KRIEGER: And she is a member of the suny? No, no, she teaches at Syracuse University in New York. But she writes these beautiful books that I just have a sense, especially the one called Braiding Sweetgrass. Everything you've said, we think you would. You would love her. Since you like to read, right? Aren't you. Read, read. Read.

[34:04] SUSAN BOLINGER: Yeah, yeah. If you come in the house in the lit, in the hallway from the living room, it's just one wall is just shelves, you know, and.

[34:12] CHRIS KRIEGER: Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.

[34:14] SUSAN BOLINGER: And other rooms have tons. And I think the bathrooms and the laundry room are the only room that don't have at least hundreds of books.

[34:24] CHRIS KRIEGER: But how do you. How do you function in. In Oklahoma? Because when we first moved to Georgia. So my husband and I just moved here about a year and a half ago from Savannah.

[34:37] SUSAN BOLINGER: Okay.

[34:38] CHRIS KRIEGER: We've lived in North Carolina. I've lived all over. He's lived. We've lived all over together. And now we're here in Indiana. This, we think is our final move by choice, which is a mind bending. I can't believe I'm not slamming my head against the wall when I say that. But I felt called to be here with my oldest sister in deep relationship, deep loving relationship. I heard nothing more than that. I defined nothing more than that. And blessedly out of. I'm stunned. My husband said yes. Let's go. So we're here now.

[35:13] SUSAN BOLINGER: I forget. Where are you close to?

[35:15] CHRIS KRIEGER: Oh, we're ## #### #####. So. So yeah. You know where that is?

[35:21] SUSAN BOLINGER: No. Okay. All right. Okay. I was thinking it was closer to Gary.

[35:29] CHRIS KRIEGER: Oh, no, we're in the northeast section.

[35:31] SUSAN BOLINGER: Okay. All right. Sure.

[35:34] CHRIS KRIEGER: Yeah, we're. We're not. I mean, we're super close to the Ohio border right here.

[35:39] SUSAN BOLINGER: Right, right. Okay, that makes sense.

[35:41] CHRIS KRIEGER: Yeah. And we were about a half hour from the path of totality. So we just drove a half hour and there it was.

[35:47] SUSAN BOLINGER: Oh, neat. Neat. You know, my great grandma lived in Sunman, which is a little town close to brookville off of 74.

[35:57] CHRIS KRIEGER: I know where Brookville is. Yeah.

[35:59] SUSAN BOLINGER: And so I've been to Metamora and used to go see her all the time. And Indianapolis actually has a really good woodworking school I was going to go to at one time on the south side of the city. But.

[36:11] CHRIS KRIEGER: Okay. Yeah, woodworker too. He's hoping to, in retirement be able to do all that.

[36:17] SUSAN BOLINGER: Oh, sure. Well, you know, and I went to parochial schools every year by kindergarten in my senior year.

[36:24] CHRIS KRIEGER: Did you really?

[36:25] SUSAN BOLINGER: I. I took a test in the sixth grade when I finally told my. Because I knew I didn't want to be Catholic by about third grade.

[36:31] CHRIS KRIEGER: Okay.

[36:32] SUSAN BOLINGER: But in sixth grade, I took a test and I got to skip right into freshman year at this geeky, all boys really intensive college preparatory. And it was actually harder than my first two years of college.

[36:46] CHRIS KRIEGER: Wait, you went from third grade?

[36:48] SUSAN BOLINGER: No, no, from sixth. Sixth grade to ninth grade.

[36:52] CHRIS KRIEGER: Oh, wow. That's a huge leap. How did you handle that emotionally, your emotional development?

[36:58] SUSAN BOLINGER: Terribly.

[36:59] CHRIS KRIEGER: Okay, let me ask questions. Thank you for telling me that. That you were in recovery. I actually wondered when you said you were waiting to hear some friends stories or a friend story. You were. After your breaks went out. You said you were. You were looking forward to some things.

[37:17] SUSAN BOLINGER: Here in a. Yeah, right.

[37:19] CHRIS KRIEGER: Which made me wonder.

[37:21] SUSAN BOLINGER: Okay. Yeah, it's. You know, I like to support people when they're going out to. To tell their story a lot. I'm surprised how many people are. Get nervous doing it, but a lot of people do. So apparently more people are afraid of public speaking than the dentist, so I'm.

[37:40] CHRIS KRIEGER: Not afraid of either.

[37:43] SUSAN BOLINGER: I'm not. I'm not. I've noticed I'm not super good. I try to compete in the story slams over in Tulsa because they're. And they're modeled very closely to the moth hour, but I always run over a little bit too much. And they're the kind of thing where they want you at five minutes and it's okay if you go to six, but once you go over six, it really. And I'm about six and a half and I practice and practice and practice and. And then so, so yeah, I get. I'm just too long winded. I'm gonna have to work on that.

[38:19] CHRIS KRIEGER: Is that the professorial side?

[38:23] SUSAN BOLINGER: Yeah, that's just.

[38:25] CHRIS KRIEGER: There's a lot of good story to come. I did have a really interesting one. One step call with a gal who'd done a moth. A moth story slam in.

[38:35] SUSAN BOLINGER: Okay.

[38:36] CHRIS KRIEGER: And in fact, we're waiting to get back together again. She sent me a link, but I couldn't open the link to find her story. But not everybody knows about moth. I think it's amazing.

[38:46] SUSAN BOLINGER: Oh, it is, it is. It's. Now, I guess. Do you listen to a lot of NPR or do you watch the Pellet? Okay, yeah, I.

[38:56] CHRIS KRIEGER: What was the second part? I do watch NPR or listen to NPR all the time. Yeah.

[39:01] SUSAN BOLINGER: Do you watch. Are there a lot of shows on public TV that you like too? Okay, sure. That's the. I always used to like to watch the. The British comedies and stuff. You know, I got turned on to call the Midwife years and years ago and. But I don't. I don't even have an antenna on mine, so I've often thought I probably need to do that so I can catch up on some. And the Oklahoma Public Television has some good shows too, that not. Not just The British ones. But, you know, I like Inside. Inside Edition. They do great expose on America that.

[39:42] CHRIS KRIEGER: Wait a minute. Inside Edition? You mean? When I think of that, I think of. That can't be Inside Edition.

[39:52] SUSAN BOLINGER: There's. It's one of the big public television investigative journalism shows.

[39:59] CHRIS KRIEGER: Okay. I only know that by. It's kind of like the equivalent of the Inquirer.

[40:06] SUSAN BOLINGER: No, no. Okay. Yeah. It's not that. I'm trying to think what it's called now. I'm having a.

[40:12] CHRIS KRIEGER: Like. Or American Frontline. American experience.

[40:15] SUSAN BOLINGER: Frontline. Front Line. Yes. That's.

[40:19] CHRIS KRIEGER: Yeah.

[40:20] SUSAN BOLINGER: You know, they did one. I've looked at their index, and it's all about how in the 70s, a bunch of senators got together with some corporation moguls, and they basically planned how to disenfranchise unions and all the rest of us. And they just. They quietly went about it, and they've done a really good job. But I think if we. I wanted to see it again and research it more to let people know, hey, we need to shut this down.

[40:49] CHRIS KRIEGER: I'm with you on that. You know, when I was in D.C. and I went adoring Republicans, one of the things, believe it or not, that absolutely tripped me up, was the idea of being able to write off two. If you had a mortgage, being able to write off the interest on your mortgage for two households, the history of how that came to be. And I remember thinking, wait, what? Wait, I'm walking over people who are in who. Who are homeless, who are hungry, who are uneducated, or are part of. Have been failed by the system. I'm walking over them between the subway and my office, and you guys are taking second mortgages out. Just. And we're writing the interest on that. We're carrying you.

[41:40] SUSAN BOLINGER: Right, Right.

[41:42] CHRIS KRIEGER: That was the first thing that really started making me think, okay, wait a minute. So then I got into tax code, and, you know, you got to go in whatever door you're interested in. And that was. Then you start opening doors, and the more doors you open. And now, you know, I've been thinking. Well, anyway, yeah, let's. Hey, let me ask you this. Let me ask you this. So on your profile, you talked about COVID Someone you or someone in your family had been impacted by. Covid.

[42:15] SUSAN BOLINGER: I have. I had some friends who did lose. Well, one per. One friend of mine lost. Lost his spouse and some other people lost their parents and my mom. In 2020, in December, on Christmas Day, she went to the hospital, and she was on the third floor of the local hospital. There are four wings, and three of the wings were for Covid. And so every. Not every day, but. But two of the four days or three of the four days, you know, I, I did see, you know, bodies covered on gurneys waiting to be transported to the basement morgue. And, and, and my mom did die on December 28th, so. Yeah, on the 28th. And so just being around all the nurses at that time, you know, that two days later, I came down with a whole bunch of baked goods just in a card, because I realized, you know, it was hard for my whole family, of course, with our mom. She really was a fabulous person. You know, I have friends that have only met her once, 20 years ago, and they would always ask me about her. You know, she's. She was a really wonderful soul. And I thought, those nurses, they may not know everyone as well as, you know, we knew mom, but they're around all these people all the time. There are people dying every day, and then they're getting yelled at because, you know, they're wearing masks and they go out in the public, and so that was just crazy. And just this. When did it become okay to just blow off science? I just don't, I don't get it. How about you? Were you really impacted by it?

[44:08] CHRIS KRIEGER: Yes. Personally? Yes, I. In February of 2020, when we thought it was just in New York and Washington state, I came to Indiana for something, and I must have had it. And it wasn't until July of that year, when I was still on my back, and they were starting to talk about these stories about people who had, you know, what we now know as long Covid. And I said, that's me. And nothing's the same. My brain doesn't work the same. I can't speak. I can't make my brain and my mouth connect the same way. I can't taste anything. I can smell hardly anything. It just intermittent things break through. And. Yeah, I just don't. I'm not physically not the same person.

[44:58] SUSAN BOLINGER: Wow. I'm so sorry. That's. It must be really frustrating.

[45:02] CHRIS KRIEGER: You know, it is, but. But I tell you what, though, it does give me another look into other people who have chronic illnesses and bring compassion. People who have these chronic things that either they haven't figured, haven't figured out what it or what it is or how to deal with things.

[45:23] SUSAN BOLINGER: Sure.

[45:23] CHRIS KRIEGER: But, you know. Yes. So anyway, yeah, you had that. We just. Did you get a message that we have four and a half minutes left?

[45:32] SUSAN BOLINGER: I, I, I heard a buzz, but I didn't See the message now I see it.

[45:39] CHRIS KRIEGER: Yeah.

[45:41] SUSAN BOLINGER: I think we can go a little bit later though. I don't think they'll cut it off, will they? Or will they?

[45:46] CHRIS KRIEGER: At some point they will cut us up.

[45:47] SUSAN BOLINGER: Okay, let's see how.

[45:48] CHRIS KRIEGER: Let's go.

[45:50] SUSAN BOLINGER: Okay. I noticed now you said you went to two churches earlier and one was the ucc. What was the second one?

[45:59] CHRIS KRIEGER: We go to a fabulous Presbyterian church here.

[46:02] SUSAN BOLINGER: Oh, okay. All right, sure.

[46:03] CHRIS KRIEGER: The other thing I didn't say about that is that my father in law was a one mountain, many paths person. So you know, he and I, because I wondered what in the world would he think about my need to, to explore even other religions. And he said one mountain, many paths. ##### and I like that. And we go to this church based on everything you've said, there's a female minister. Oh, she is so good. We've got four ministers. They're all great. Rich, deep justice, responsibility, sustainability. I think those are some of your buzzwords. But also action.

[46:40] SUSAN BOLINGER: Action. Well, you know, I think that's, I think it's so important to, to, to bring women back in all of you ladies because you have a perspective that men don't. And I don't think men and women are the same. But I think we should all have the equal opportunity because I mean there have been women that have been fantastic warriors, far more military than I would as natives, as Vikings, as nationalities. And a lot of things that I like to use were introduced by women scholars who fought tooth and nail for, for even a part of a seat in academia. And, but they introduce concepts that within a generation men pick up and give them no credit for whether it's in science or social sciences. And, and the thing is it's mostly women that introduce a lot of these things that we need to study in economics to, to be able to quantify the human experience. So, so, so we can analyze problems with more efficacy. And that's the.

[47:55] CHRIS KRIEGER: I appreciate that. You know, it's funny, there are a bunch of people. Hey, write this down. I'm going to give you my email address and if you want it again, we can do it. Just email me. Okay, so It's ##### ## #### #####. One word.

[48:08] SUSAN BOLINGER: ###################.### #### isn't abbreviated.

[48:13] CHRIS KRIEGER: It's for Fox F O R T. Thank you, Wayne.

[48:17] SUSAN BOLINGER: ##### ## #### #####. #####.

[48:20] CHRIS KRIEGER: #####. ##### ## #### #####.

[48:23] SUSAN BOLINGER: Okay.

[48:25] CHRIS KRIEGER: #####.###.

[48:27] SUSAN BOLINGER: Gotcha. And so it's funny.

[48:29] CHRIS KRIEGER: Oh, go ahead.

[48:30] SUSAN BOLINGER: And I am. It's all one word. ##### ####### 23:23.

[48:39] CHRIS KRIEGER: How do you spell Krieger?

[48:41] SUSAN BOLINGER: It's # #, #, #, #, #, #, #, #, #. I'm sorry, hold on.

[48:48] CHRIS KRIEGER: #, #, #, #, #, #. Okay.

[48:51] SUSAN BOLINGER: # #, #. Yep. ####.

[48:56] CHRIS KRIEGER: Okay. @ #####.

[48:59] SUSAN BOLINGER: Yeah.

[49:00] CHRIS KRIEGER: Okay. ##### #######. # #, # # # # # #, #, # #, #. ####. @ #####.

[49:06] SUSAN BOLINGER: Right. And I also do WhatsApp. I don't know if you've tried it, but it's a video chat thing and a lot of my international friends use it, so I have a. It's weird. I'm not the one who graduated, but I have all these friends that did graduate, and they have doctorates from Rutgers or wherever, but I get to edit their paper. So it kind of keeps my. My feet dipped in the academia a little bit, so. And a friend of mine and his wife, they're in Armenia teaching at a. It's called United World College. It's some sort of privileged high school to get. They're in a lot of developing countries and they, they're for expats and wealthy local people, citizens, to get their kids ready for Western colleges, be they in Western Europe or, or America or Canada. So at any rate, they're there. And. But we talk for free on WhatsApp. And it's, it's all encrypted, too, which I think some people like in certain countries. Because, like, if you're in China, you know, you want to talk about Taiwan, you don't. You don't want them to be able to read that.

[50:21] CHRIS KRIEGER: I still wonder, though, is it encrypted enough for China?

[50:25] SUSAN BOLINGER: That's a good point. Well, I mean, I don't. I don't think I would, you know, talk, you know, plan sedition or anything like that anyway. But.

[50:34] CHRIS KRIEGER: Yeah, I'm with you. I'm with you. Well, I have. I don't have that app yet, but there might be other options either. Google Meets. Do you ever use that?

[50:45] SUSAN BOLINGER: I haven't used that. I have used Zoom. I don't know.

[50:48] CHRIS KRIEGER: Okay, well, if you do #####. So if you go into your ##### account and sign in on somewhere, there are. There are a series of little dots. It's either like 3 dots by 3 dots or 4 dots by 4 dots if you click on that. Google Meets is one of the other Google options you have.

[51:05] SUSAN BOLINGER: Okay.

[51:09] CHRIS KRIEGER: My. My friend in New York that I mentioned got the, the super conservative Jew got me hooked on that. Okay, if you've got a ##### account.

[51:19] SUSAN BOLINGER: Right. Okay.

[51:20] CHRIS KRIEGER: Yeah.

[51:21] SUSAN BOLINGER: Have you had pretty good Luck with it then.

[51:24] CHRIS KRIEGER: Oh, yeah.

[51:25] SUSAN BOLINGER: Okay. So now you said now. Are you in economics now? Is that what you do right now?

[51:34] CHRIS KRIEGER: Right now I'm not doing anything right now. I'm trying to get healthier from the.

[51:37] SUSAN BOLINGER: COVID Sure, that makes sense. But you mentioned you had some assignments that you had been working on for a big project.

[51:44] CHRIS KRIEGER: Oh, assignments. Let's see. Did I use the word assignments?

[51:50] SUSAN BOLINGER: No, you said project, actually.

[51:52] CHRIS KRIEGER: Oh, yeah. Well, it could have been. Could have been a number of things, but were going on. It could have been, you know, financial. Could have been something with my parents. We moved my parents last June from Arizona. My dad knew what was going on, but my mom didn't. My mom has more than beginning stages Alzheimer's. We kind of brick her into coming here. But it's clear that both my parents are definitely elderly and they are both very forgetful and in their own world. And it is. I wrote down your sentence and I'm going to meditate on this. A real privilege to be a son for him. That's a beautiful kind. I haven't lived near family for Randy and I haven't lived near family for so long. This was with COVID We decided family's really important to live by. So we considered the three cities our families live in. Minneapolis here, or Rochester, New York, and we picked here. Family systems have slammed me since I've been here. And with my parents living here for a couple of months and you just never know what. What it's been. Oh, I know. I think what I was trying to do is figure out something for my folks with my mom's getting my mom and dad's house moved. Moved. All their household goods moved here.

[53:19] SUSAN BOLINGER: Right.

[53:19] CHRIS KRIEGER: They still get in their house sold and all that kind of business.

[53:22] SUSAN BOLINGER: Yeah, that's just hair pulling stuff too. I think it is.

[53:28] CHRIS KRIEGER: And thankfully I have sisters who are involved. One of my sisters and her husband went down and actually did all that. But I have. I'm the one that has the daily weekly contact. And I love them. I wish my mom had done her work when she were younger.

[53:45] SUSAN BOLINGER: Yeah, she hasn't.

[53:46] CHRIS KRIEGER: You know what I mean? Do your work, people. Figure it out. I am still gonna love you. But right now it's just so much family system stuff, Family stuff, personal stuff.

[53:56] SUSAN BOLINGER: You know, Mike, we don't celebrate holidays. My sister and her kids, they do stuff with dad differently. And my daughter and her boyfriend and I and another friend of the family do stuff with dad. And we're a lot more consistent. And I just. It's not My place to judge my sister and. Yeah, but. But I'm just infuriated by some things in the past and it's. It's hard to let go. So, you know, I. I just have to pray about that. And, you know, remember, I'm not the judge of anyone, but my dad doesn't do well with a whole bunch of conversations anyway, so I. That whole family mechanic thing, I relate to that because the whole passive aggressive. Well, I won't return the call. And then I have to wait and wait. So I just started saying, hey, we're doing it at this time. Come if you want, don't if you want. There'll be plenty of food. Bring something if you want, don't if you don't. And it just kind of evolved into, okay, four of us will do it and we'll have fun and, and. But it's. It's weird. It doesn't feel right. But I want him to have. He's very dismissive about having to have holidays, but he loves doing it once he's there, so.

[55:22] CHRIS KRIEGER: Isn't that funny? In my. My mom is her own worst enemy. And the thing is, is I'm trying to. You know, when we realize they cannot live in this house, there's no way we're not going to make it if they do. So we found them this great place to live. They're in a. Oh, it's. It's a retirement home, but it's really nice apartments and they can go down meals and there are activities. But the problem is my dad is really social and my mom is paranoid now.

[55:50] SUSAN BOLINGER: Oh.

[55:52] CHRIS KRIEGER: So. And, and what I didn't know because we live so far apart for so long, nor did my sisters, is that she's probably been experiencing Alzheimer's. Past dementia. Alzheimer's for a while. And their house was so chaotic down there.

[56:07] SUSAN BOLINGER: Oh.

[56:08] CHRIS KRIEGER: I think only thing she's been able to do to just give her any kind of solace has been to shop. And we've, you know, we intentionally didn't have them bring their car. We've intentionally cut down on all means of shopping. And it is frustrating for her. And she can't figure out how to answer her cell phone, but she's certain that she knows how to drive still. And how dare I? And so it's just trying to. Trying to help her be. And, and my dad trying to help them be as happy and fulfilled as they can be. And I don't want to be her parent, but I have to be her parent, but I also want to be her Daughter. And I don't want it always to be about fighting. But my mom would spend down every dime they have.

[57:02] SUSAN BOLINGER: Yeah. That's.

[57:07] CHRIS KRIEGER: Don't. I don't want these to be last days where I might. And this is how we go out. So.

[57:15] SUSAN BOLINGER: That'S fr. That that would be. It has to be really frustrating. I relate. My. My mom started to. To do some of that purchasing and the house got so crowded. Dad wanted to stop having people over. That was. And.

[57:33] CHRIS KRIEGER: Yeah. I'm sorry that the bird clock that tells my dog it's time to eat or go to the park just went off. So she's certain that it's not time. Tiny. It's not.

[57:47] SUSAN BOLINGER: What kind of.

[57:47] CHRIS KRIEGER: Okay.

[57:48] SUSAN BOLINGER: What kind of dog.

[57:50] CHRIS KRIEGER: Whiny. Can you. Yeah, he's at Britney Daniel lab mix.

[57:58] SUSAN BOLINGER: Okay.

[58:00] CHRIS KRIEGER: You said animal lover. Are you dog? Cat.

[58:04] SUSAN BOLINGER: I love cats, but I'm allergic. And I've had border collies. I love border collies. And black labs. I've had labs. Yeah. And horses and mules. Especially mules. I love my. I knew my mules were. They were like. They weren't like they were friends. You know, I knew their personalities. You know you have to have all those animals in line in the dark in the winter carrying stuff and you know, I could listen to the sound of the tack and then just. I could tell if somebody was pulling back if it was a problem or somebody was just being ornery or you know, they'd always try and grab anything green because they're. During the winter they don't get to eat much of that and they're eating hay cubes and so you could. You could yell out their. Their name know. Because I would know from how far back the sound was and I could. You know, they're just. They're doing their job because they know you're going to take care of them. And I, I never once in all the years I worked meals hit a hit a meal ever. And the only time I was ever scared was one year I ran a meal string over in Glacier National Park. Park. And wow. And the head packer there was the fastest guy I'd ever seen on the ground. But he. I don't think he liked packing and he was really. He used a section of like 3 or 4ft of logging chain to hit the new mules to train them or he did with a colt with a. A grain scoop shovel. And I just. Every time we had I. I was over there and I was helping. I would help feed at night. They had all these feed bunks along the corral and you had to go in there and dump the feed. And I was petrified because they're all shod and they're all prancing around and they're extra nervous because they're being handled really roughly by this jerk all the time. And you know, with my mules, I trust them, they trust me. I can, you know, I can be off the trail on downhill side where they could easily just kick me and, and that would be the end of me. Nobody would know. And I would just fall down the mountain and probably die. But I never once felt threatened, you know, so, yeah, I love, I love.

[01:00:35] CHRIS KRIEGER: I wish I could be around you. So I, I just think all creatures have some personality, some.

[01:00:43] SUSAN BOLINGER: Yeah, right.

[01:00:45] CHRIS KRIEGER: There's a, there's a sense, there's a something about them. I love horses. I love horses, but I'm so alert. But I, I do ride. Or I haven't ridden in years, but I love riding. I've never been around a mule, but somehow I, I think I would fall in love with them just like that.

[01:01:03] SUSAN BOLINGER: Sure. What about burros? Are you allergic to burros? I. Donkeys, cats, dogs.

[01:01:11] CHRIS KRIEGER: I'm allergic to dogs. We've had time. Yeah. Bunnies, everything. But I love them all.

[01:01:17] SUSAN BOLINGER: Sure. What about chickens? Chickens?

[01:01:21] CHRIS KRIEGER: I've never. But, but I think that's one of the only last meats that I'll eat. Are you, do you hunt?

[01:01:28] SUSAN BOLINGER: I stopped, but I'm probably going to start back up because meats become so expensive.

[01:01:34] CHRIS KRIEGER: Yeah. Yeah. You know, I, I honestly have no problem with people hunting to eat. I don't. I'm, I'll be honest. I'm not a person who enjoys people who hunt to either have trophies in their house. Are you a trophy guy? Step on your toes?

[01:01:52] SUSAN BOLINGER: No, no. I, as a matter of fact, that was my one reservation about working for an outfitter was because I'm not a trophy hunter. I never have been. And for several years up in Idaho, I lived. 80% of my meat diet was, was deer and elk and a little bit of bear because I packed it out for other people. And if I didn't have to harvest an animal myself two years in a row. I got my deer coming out of the cellway one or two days past hunting season. I can say that now. Statute of limitations is out. But I got it within 15 miles of my house because I, I, I couldn't stop in time. And it was late at night and the deer were in the middle of the road and I, I would just take them and you Know, I would. I would slit their neck so I could drain their blood and time on the tailgate and go home. And. But that was my food and I would harvest it and I gave it a clean death and painless. And. But so I only. The only fun part of hunting are the two things. If you're out with your friends at the campfire at night, and two, when you're out there looking for the animal. And it's a test of your woodcraft, a test of your knowledge of the area of the animal, how to read sign, how to anticipate the weather and its effect on the behavior. That's the. When you have to start. Once you squeeze the trigger, then it's no longer fun. It's just work. So.

[01:03:25] CHRIS KRIEGER: Yeah, yeah, but.

[01:03:28] SUSAN BOLINGER: But I eat a lot of lentils, a lot of beans. I make hummus. I cook Indian style a lot. So lots of garam masala. I just. But down here, I got out of it. I don't eat quite as much meat. But it's so complicated to hunt here because there's mostly private land and. And so I just. I don't enjoy it. And I think the. The public land is so overcrowded, it's dangerous, and because there's too many idiots out there.

[01:04:03] CHRIS KRIEGER: Honestly, I've never even. Because I really don't hang out with anybody who hunts anymore. I just don't. You know, my husband loves going to the range. He goes to the range and he. He grew up in Maryland and he used to bring a rifle to school because he. He was part of the competitive footing. Right. It was, you know, who would do that now? But. Yeah, I haven't thought about how. How do you hunt and where do you hunt these days? Yeah, I've been, you know, we're. We're in. We're in the outskirts of #### #####, but we're still in the county that #### ##### is in, and no one can hunt around here. You've given me a lot to think about today. Not just that, just all kinds of things. Our conversation.

[01:04:53] SUSAN BOLINGER: Do you know who #### #####'# named after?

[01:04:56] CHRIS KRIEGER: I don't. Do you?

[01:04:58] SUSAN BOLINGER: General Mad Anthony Wayne. Yeah, he. He was an American revolutionary general, but he came out and he was instrumental in defeating the Shawnee Confederation, which had been led by Tecumseh and. But he was one of the ones who. Who made it pretty difficult for the tribes that the British were sponsoring. So. Yeah.

[01:05:21] CHRIS KRIEGER: Oh, yes. It all comes back to that, doesn't it? Right.

[01:05:25] SUSAN BOLINGER: Yeah.

[01:05:26] CHRIS KRIEGER: Well, now I understand why there are so many places around town with some sort of Matt Anthony reference.

[01:05:32] SUSAN BOLINGER: Well, and, you know, I don't. I'm not sure about Indiana, but there was a guy who made Daniel Boone look like a wimp. His name was Simon Kenton. And as a young boy he thought he killed a guy over a girl. He didn't. And actually everybody thought that guy killed Simon because Simon ran away and he became a mountain man and a trapper in what's now Ohio and Indiana and Kentucky. But for years he lived by the name of Simon Butler. And then he ran into his family that were emigrating from Virginia and realized, hey. And he felt so bad because he had ruined that one guy's life that everyone thought he had been killed by this guy. And so he gave him land and he gave his family land. But this guy could. He would run around and load his rifle as he ran and, you know, lead the, the soldiers or the settlers against the, the tribes. And he had been captured by the tribes and had escaped from them. And he had that respect because he was such a lethal opponent. And so now I'm pretty sure in ever in Ohio, in Kentucky and Indiana, there's, there's Butler County, Kenton County, Butler. I think there's a Butler, Indiana, but.

[01:07:02] CHRIS KRIEGER: There'S a Butler University.

[01:07:04] SUSAN BOLINGER: Okay, yeah, that's. That could vary, I don't know. But it could be named after. Because. Because.

[01:07:11] CHRIS KRIEGER: Oh, I'm sorry, isn't there a Canton, Ohio?

[01:07:13] SUSAN BOLINGER: Yeah, well, there's a Canton, but there's also a Kenton.

[01:07:16] CHRIS KRIEGER: Oh, he's Kenton.

[01:07:18] SUSAN BOLINGER: Kenton K E N T But, but he's just. There's a great historian who wrote the Frontiersman. Heavily researched, extremely well written, called the Frontiers 1 by Alan C. Eckert E C K # # T if you like history. But now what do you read besides spiritual things?

[01:07:50] CHRIS KRIEGER: Well, quite honestly, I can tell you that I used to. Along with the way that I was raised, not by my parents, but by the society I was in, I thought history is over. I'm looking forward. I have no interest in history and it's only been lately biased, of course, the importance of history. History is, is everything in the past is prologue. And so now I'm going back. But I can tell you that since I've had Covid, I can't read as much. I used to be a voracious reader and I. I just can't make my brain attend to the words and the meaning.

[01:08:32] SUSAN BOLINGER: That's too bad.

[01:08:33] CHRIS KRIEGER: So though reader. And so I've been reading. Well, actually I've been reading. I read a book Called Cobalt Red. I'm looking at it. And that's about copper mining in Africa. Oh, is that brutal.

[01:08:45] SUSAN BOLINGER: Oh, boy.

[01:08:47] CHRIS KRIEGER: I'm reading a book about. About the Body Remembers trauma by a really great doctor. I just started a book for a book club that is by a Sikh, you know, S I K H Sikh. And he's part of the Aspen Institute. I don't know if you know Aspen Institute at all, but it's called the Light We Give. And I. I suspect you might be interested in that by what you've talked about, because he's the beginning. In the prologue, he's talking about that. He was. He's an American. He was raised in Texas. And he. The. The first time he felt a racist comment to his bones was he was playing soccer and the ref came over and yelled at him for being a, you know, Sikhs wear the turban.

[01:09:44] SUSAN BOLINGER: Oh, yeah.

[01:09:45] CHRIS KRIEGER: And over and yelled at him, you know, hey, terrorist, are you keeping gun bombs up there? You know, because on and on. But it's a beautiful book. And he's talking about how do we go forth in this world where there are so many problems and yet we're called to. We're called to find solutions and be part of the solutions. And he uses an analogy of some old Indian or Pakistani story where there's one person with a light. I won't tell you the whole story, but he's likening now, how do we come together? We know we can't do everything ourselves. It can be overwhelming. But if we can shine our one little light and then more people can shine their little light. So it's called the Light We Give. And I've just started it, but it's. It's a. It's already. I can tell. A beautiful book.

[01:10:38] SUSAN BOLINGER: Oh, right, cool.

[01:10:41] CHRIS KRIEGER: And things. It goes on and on. So those are the things. I'm in process. Oh, and. And because I'm an econ nerd, I've been reading Poverty by America. His name escapes me. Desmond. Matthew Desmond.

[01:10:58] SUSAN BOLINGER: I think I have that on. On my shelf, but I haven't read it yet, so it just looked good.

[01:11:05] CHRIS KRIEGER: Oh, yeah, that. And I forget the other one he wrote before it. So worthwhile.

[01:11:12] SUSAN BOLINGER: You know, when I was in, I dabbled a little bit in the whole Socialism, Marx and, you know, Karl Marx and stuff. And I don't think communism can work for more than about three or four hundred people at a time. But there are some ideas about how things are commodified and assigned value that have a lot of relevance and always have. I Think so. I still need to study a lot more, but I have another one it's more practical about. It follows the T shirt and how the T shirt's made and travels all across the world to get sold in America. And it's two guys just go and have this and. And I had these titles at home. And I'm also really into Naomi Klein. She's a Canadian, a journalist who writes these incredibly well researched books on future shock is all about how federal government. Have you heard of that one? Okay, well, she also wrote this Changes Everything, which is. Oh yeah, yeah, so those are good. And I have another one called Capital, which isn't by Marx. It's by a modern English economist, a highly regarded one. And it's all about how capital is used and abused. But it's, it's pretty heavy stuff. It's not light reading. So I'm kind of bouncing between a fiction book about a girl in World War II who, who adopts a Jewish baby because her baby with a German soldier was taken from her and she's working in a circus trying to survive. And I'm reading Cadillac Desert, which is about the water shortage in the American West. And I, I've started this Changes Everything by my. By Naomi Klein twice. And I haven't stuck with it for whatever reason, which is unlike me. And it's, it's very well written. You know, she, she should be up some sort of policy wog in D.C. or something. I believe she's pretty sharp. So.

[01:13:29] CHRIS KRIEGER: Dog, can you hear all that? I'm not sure what you can hear, but she's behind me now. She's circling.

[01:13:35] SUSAN BOLINGER: She's saying you have to go.

[01:13:37] CHRIS KRIEGER: Well, you know, in a minute here.

[01:13:38] SUSAN BOLINGER: Sure.

[01:13:39] CHRIS KRIEGER: Well, that, you know, I don't think we've come upon our financial model that can actually work. But, but you know, if I were to. I, I don't, I don't take that Jesus is the only person for everybody in the world, and I'm not a person who believes in hell. I think that is nonsensical and created. You know, we're living in hell. If this is hell, it's the hell we create ourselves.

[01:14:04] SUSAN BOLINGER: Right, Right.

[01:14:06] CHRIS KRIEGER: But when I think about how I understand how Jesus told us to live, there's a kind of math in that, that works to me, for me, that I, I haven't quite untangled all of it, but I know it doesn't look, look anything like the capitalism that we've been living. But I'm also a capitalist. I mean, you know, the, the ocean rises by a lot of capitalist ideas in terms of creating more wealth to move around. But it's the hoarding and the hogging and the buying of private islands just in case society falls apart along with rates and all those kinds of things.

[01:14:46] SUSAN BOLINGER: But yeah, that's a really good point because that's how I look at it is the way we do capitalism doesn't work, but it has freed up the. It's provided the mechanisms to take up large amounts of capital that no one group or person could do to do big things, build dams, highways, interstate systems, railroads. And so I, and plus people are so wedded to the idea, you know, America, as much as people don't like what we do, we're still the number in Iran. We're the number one destination for immigrants. They want to come here even though they're forced to say death to America, you know, once or twice a week, probably in school. So I think the only way to fix America or fix capitalism is going to be to modify it. And that's, I believe that's what people would accept. But we're going to have to put in some pretty hard checks and balances and we're going to have to have a way to monitor the checks and balances to stop because it's that restriction of access that is, you know, what the International Monetary Fund and the World bank do to, you know, and the European colonial power have totally screwed Africa and Africa knows it and they're, they're not going to take it lying down. And just like right now, Israel, I mean that's a huge thing to the rest of the world. They are really upset because that highlights everything they don't like about the west, about the European Western civilization. And it's beyond religion. You know, it's such a big. I lived in the dorm right next to a guy who was part of the Palestinian plo. He was a college student here going to school for engineering.

[01:16:43] CHRIS KRIEGER: Wow.

[01:16:44] SUSAN BOLINGER: But he and his friends used to talk all night on Friday night about. So I've heard for a long time. I've been aware of problems there and that, you know, we're, we're not backing people doing nice things. So.

[01:17:04] CHRIS KRIEGER: And yet Israel has the right, as does Palestine to be separate, to be, to have their own state. I mean we really need to, we really in my opinion, two state solution. I don't know how we get there. It's so complicated.

[01:17:22] SUSAN BOLINGER: But, but why do they most Israeli Zionists people, their DNA goes back to Europe. It doesn't go back to Palestine. Most of The Muslims that live in Gaza and live in the West Bank, a lot of them do go right back to the area because the Arab stock is what's native there. And a lot of the, a lot of the people who are Muslim now, four or five, you know, eight or nine generations ago, were Jewish people who converted. But if you look at all the different times, who's controlled the area, it's done better under Muslim rule than Jewish or Christian rule. You know, the Christians were not nice to anybody else when they had it. The nice. Yeah, but you look at, you know, like in Ethiopia there are Christians, some of the oldest Christians in the world, you know that it's not like Eastern Orthodox, it predates that, it predates the Holy Roman Catholic Church. And in Iran there have been Christians that live, that have lived there since, since Jesus was walking around. And so, so, so I don't know, you know, really, you know, I, I think what it was, was after World War II we were so, we're still so biased, prejudice, you know, in England and Canada, in America and France and Spain against Jewish people. And we felt guilty though because we saw what the concentration camps did, but we just didn't want to deal with it. We just didn't want the daily reminder of the guilt. And so, you know, some, some Jews did come to know Northeast America and a few other pockets, but most of them, they were refused access anywhere else. And it was, it was Muslims, Palestinians who said, hey, excuse me, come here, you can stay. And then within two or three years they were, they had the big nakba, you know, when they killed tens of thousands of people and pushed 750000 people out of, you know, what was Palestine. So I'm not really, I think I, I don't think a two party state is going to work because it's just too small, there's too many people, there's not enough water, there's not enough space for any kind of infrastructure that's going to work with all that stuff. So I think it's either going to have to be a benevolent Muslim ruled area or it's going to have to be an area that is dedicated to some sort of religious unity that recognizes and respects all religions equally. And that's going to be hard to do, you know, because they head of, the head of Hamas right now watched Israelis kill his father in 1956. Yeah, so now the Israelis have killed 31,000 people and more than 21, 22,000 of them are women and children. At least 14,000 of them are children. That's just counting the ones we know, not counting the ones that are still buried under the rubble. Yeah, they've destroyed almost every hospital they've run over. They've run over immobile, wounded people with tanks and bulldozers just run them over. They, they've already found more than 400 bodies from the last hospital that was just overrun by the Israeli. I don't, I can't call them defense forces. It's, it's their occupation forces.

[01:21:12] CHRIS KRIEGER: I don't disagree with what you're saying. I don't disagree be, I don't. Do not disagree. Maybe this is another conversation. Oh, sure, yeah, that's, well, I, I do not disagree. And the thing is, is, you know, I, I, we, I feel like we cannot disregard, nor do I think you are disregarding what happened to Jews and how long they've been persecuted. But, and so they need some area that could be their own. But I don't, I, I, I think that the pendulum has swung and they're persecuting, they're doing all the things you mentioned. They're, they're becoming the people that they were running from there.

[01:21:59] SUSAN BOLINGER: It's, it's terrible.

[01:22:03] CHRIS KRIEGER: It's terrible. My best friend was a Jew and, you know, I, it's terrible. It's terrible.

[01:22:12] SUSAN BOLINGER: You know, in Nepal there's three prices. There's the price that locals pay, and locally the culture is you bargain a little bit, maybe you get 5% knocked off, you call it good, you have some tea with the storekeeper and go on your way. There's another price right above that is for cholos. They're the people who come, Westerners who come from northern India where everything is aggressive and they are aggressive and they just wear the Nepalis out. The Nepalis are pretty easy going, so they pay a little, little. The cholos pay more than local Nepalis, but they pay the lowest of all the tourist groups that come to Nepal. And then there's a group of, a lot of people from Singapore and Japan and a few other countries that believe you lose face if you bargain. They don't do it. So it's just an easy way for them to make a couple extra rupees to make up for the cholos coming from northern India. And then there's the Israelis and Israelis pay more and they, they pay more when you're trekking on the trekking circles. They pay more if you go to the stores. And it's the only time I had a problem with, and I'm not trying to be racist, I'm not anti Jewish. I have Jewish friends. I have Muslim friends. I go to sweats, you know, with my Indian friends. A couple of them we get. We have sober sweats on New Year's Eve. But. But the Zionism is not. That's not religion. That's politics and, and bigotry. And so. But. But the only problem I had was when I was crossing the border, there was a British drug dealer who had gotten out of prison and he was drunk and aggressive and luckily we didn't come to blows because he was a scary guy. And. And then it was with. Because a friend of mine and I were traveling with these two Danish ladies and they were very attractive and these Israeli guys wouldn't leave them alone. And they literally followed us for two days. We had to. And they were just. They couldn't take no. And you know, we weren't romantic with those girls. We. We had just taken the same bus and struck up. They liked that I was singing in the bus to myself. But. But you know, they had boyfriends. They were. So we were just traveling sort of like their brothers. And, and they were so obnoxious. And they wouldn't leave these girls alone. The girls really felt threatened. Before that was a thing where people would say, I feel threatened. They. And I really did think it was gonna. I thought we were gonna have problems and we didn't. So. And that's a very small test sample to base anything definitive. But what I got out of it, it seemed to me that the Israelis, they're so used to everybody not liking them as their culture. Sort of like New Yorkers, you know, workers are. They can sling the insults pretty, pretty good that you're not going to do in North Carolina. You know, you're not going to hear that in Georgia. Go to Charleston. People don't talk like that to each other down there very much so. You know, David, it's a cultural thing that this aggression. But I don't know.

[01:25:42] CHRIS KRIEGER: Well, and, and it may be. And I don't know your sample. You know, we learn from the stories. We draw conclusions from the things that we see with our own eyes and the stories that here. And you know, I. I don't know about those two people. And my darling ex used to say it takes two data points to draw a line. But I could say that it takes more than two data points to draw a picture. Right. So there's a line. But how. How can we extrapolate from those experiences? Sometimes we can clearly, I don't know. Well, you know, any, any and all of us. And I'm not defending. Right. I'm just saying, boy, I've realized that I have been an ugly American at times in my life when I knew nothing and was stupid.

[01:26:40] SUSAN BOLINGER: Sir.

[01:26:40] CHRIS KRIEGER: I've been American. You know, I've even been thinking about. Remember that Chris Rock song? He had it. Remember Chris Rock, the comedian? It wasn't a song. It. I've got some ice cream. You've got. You don't have any ice cream because your dad's on welfare. I never. Okay, you remember from probably the 80s.

[01:27:01] SUSAN BOLINGER: Yeah.

[01:27:02] CHRIS KRIEGER: It was part of some. I've been thinking about that lately, thinking I almost want to go back and watch that and think, what was he saying? What did my, you know, teenage or whatever, however old I was self. What did I take of those kinds of messages that were out there? I'm trying to reconstruct the picture and what I was learning. I never believed that. I thought, I thought that was terrible. But I know people who thought that was hilarious.

[01:27:30] SUSAN BOLINGER: Sure. Yeah.

[01:27:31] CHRIS KRIEGER: And that's not hilarious to me, nor was it ever. But. And it's not salient to your point. I don't actually even know why I just brought that up, but I'll say Covid brain. But yeah, well, I hope that my. When I've been an ugly American and hopefully it wasn't really ugly, it's just uglier than I want to be. Have wanted to be.

[01:27:54] SUSAN BOLINGER: Sure.

[01:27:54] CHRIS KRIEGER: I. I hope that. Yeah. I don't know. I don't know.

[01:28:00] SUSAN BOLINGER: I was gonna leave it, you know, for two years. I think I clue in on what you're saying. For two years I was the only guy on otherwise all girl trail crew before I became a trail crew boss myself. And no, we were so unpolitically correct with each other. And of course that was 20 odd years ago. You would get fired if you talk like that today. But yeah, but I was very comfortable with those ladies and I trusted them to tell me when I might take a joke too far. And that's when actually the year they promoted me, I had already said, okay, I'm not going to work anymore. Because there was one girl they had hired who I didn't trust not to do that. And so I thought, well, I don't want to make her uncomfortable, but I don't want to be fired for something that could have been handled with a very quick three minute conversation either. So. Right, but.

[01:28:59] CHRIS KRIEGER: Right, but I don't think I'm saying anything in particular. I'm gonna have to think about why did my covet Brain just pop that forward. It might be that I got some random thing and I need to clear my cache. Yeah. I honestly don't know how my brain is tying that together. I, I do believe. I do believe in the worth and the value value of every person.

[01:29:21] SUSAN BOLINGER: Yeah.

[01:29:22] CHRIS KRIEGER: I, I do believe that people can take things way too far, whether it's greed or revenge or, you know, whatever it would be. And I don't like what is real, what, What Netanyahu and. And some are doing like that at all. I, I have seen, you know, having lived in Germany, I've seen and heard enough stories, horror stories, and from my Jewish friends of, you know, people who've been died and persecuted and then, you know, only awakening to the history of how long Jews have been persecuted.

[01:30:00] SUSAN BOLINGER: Yeah. Yeah, that's.

[01:30:02] CHRIS KRIEGER: I much prefer the. I much prefer the storyline now where, you know, some of the Jews I know have decided that they have to live their lives where, where they're now looking to see who else can they help lift out of poverty or persecution or whatever it is, because we know what it's like. That's the storyline I like.

[01:30:25] SUSAN BOLINGER: Yeah.

[01:30:25] CHRIS KRIEGER: But I have. I have to take into consideration more, I think, how far overboard we all take power when we get it sometimes.

[01:30:36] SUSAN BOLINGER: Well, and that's why it's been heartwarming to me to see that there are so many Israelis who are not Zionists, that they have a lot of soldiers that have come out against, no, I'm not gonna do this anymore. And there are several younger Israelis that have gone to prison because they refuse to serve in the idea. So I'm, I'm encouraged by that. I'm sorry that it's necessary or that they feel it's necessary and. But, But I respect their commitment and. No, because I like that line that you said earlier about the one mountain, many paths, because that's, that's one thing I, you know, from traveling on four continents, it seems to me that people are people. You know, I used to tutor a bunch of Koreans in their written English. And by sitting at the table, I could tell you, okay, he's the player, he's got the girl, he's the comedian, he's the boss, he's the leader. He's the one who wants to be the leader. He's the friend of the leader. He's the academic. You know, you could. If you watched long enough, you can tell, you know, people are people. And that's why I'm not super religious, because I have met people of all walks and creeds that I obviously have a wonderful closer conscious contact with God and the fact they got there by a different way and they call that God by a different name doesn't really matter to me. And so, so I agree. I really like that line one, because people in Oklahoma constantly try to convert me and it's taken me a long time to not feel insulted and react accordingly to that.

[01:32:35] CHRIS KRIEGER: I hear you my sister here that when I move to be in a deep loving relationship with is one who desperately feels that people are I, my husband, my parents are going to hell and tries to convert us. She doesn't try to convert me anymore. She tried with Randy a summer or two ago and isn't now. But it must be, you know, if you believe that way, it must be terribly painful. But I also feel like she's been hijacked and. Yeah, and your point, when your point about all these women and the contributions that they've made for which they've had no credit. There's someone who's running for Congress around here and his tagline is end wokeness, increase freedom. And I want to put up a number of signs. I haven't wordsmith this at all, but I want to put up signs to all the women who are living in this area. Everywhere you see these signs. And again, non wordsmith myth. The idea that women, if you own land, if you vote, if you're educated, if you have bank accounts, thank all the woke people who came before you.

[01:33:53] SUSAN BOLINGER: All things possible because yeah, you know, that's one thing I think is going to have to happen with whether we do capitalism or end some of this political division. The, the liberals, the Democrats are going to have to go to the business people, the marketers, the advertising people, and they're going to have to figure out a concrete plan to use social media and to use all these things that social psychologists have explored. And part of me resents and rejects that because it feels manipulative. But I think the cost of not doing it is greater. I can live with a little bit of guilt because the other side's doing it all the time. You know, I don't, I still, I, I think Chump could, could eat a live animal on TV and, and Foxaganda would put a spin on it. You know, there's just 35% of the country denies all empirical evidence to that clearly indicates he is a certain kind of person.

[01:35:06] CHRIS KRIEGER: And you know, I always, these days I say I understand people who are not educated don't have the, the luxury to read and to, you know, travel and do Kinds of things. I understand people who are scraping by day to day believing some of the stuff he says. I do. And they're desperate for somebody to try to understand and, and represent him in Washington and with laws.

[01:35:35] SUSAN BOLINGER: Sure.

[01:35:36] CHRIS KRIEGER: But I do not, Chris. I cannot understand how people who are educated, meaning, should have been taught how to listen to an argument and reason it through. Is it BS or is it truth? Is it manipulative?

[01:35:52] SUSAN BOLINGER: Yeah, yeah.

[01:35:53] CHRIS KRIEGER: And I, I just do. I do not understand how somebody could, without being a willing participant, believe the stuff that's being put out.

[01:36:06] SUSAN BOLINGER: It's, It. It's scary that people do. I mean, you know, that's what I say. You know, Foxaganda, it's a rich, wealthy guy and his entitled sons convincing poor people to hate other poor people for smaller things so all the rich people can get richer.

[01:36:25] CHRIS KRIEGER: Well, and honestly, you know, when I, I think you're dead on with that. And you know, one of the things, when I wasn't, I wasn't ugly about this externally, but I was ugly internally about this. When I went to work in Germany, I thought none of that Hitler stuff could ever have happened in America because, Because we're so awesome and we've got it all. I was, may I remind you, 22.

[01:36:49] SUSAN BOLINGER: Right.

[01:36:51] CHRIS KRIEGER: You know, or 21, whatever I was. And now I look back and I sift through all those experiences and I, you know, now I go back and I, I read and I listen to stories about what was going on in Congress and who was, who was trying to spread whatever German or Russian propaganda or whatever it was. And I do not know why I had such a high. Because I had an uneducated high horse about America. Sure that we were above all that. And we are definitely not.

[01:37:24] SUSAN BOLINGER: Well, you know, on the eve of World War II, we were 25, 29% pro Hitler, pro Nazis. But, you know, nowadays, the Scandinavian countries in Germany, they, they actually teach their high school kids and college kids how to deal with Americans in conversations because they see us as being too brainwashed. And so they're, they're taught a certain way to de. Escalate situations to still. Which I think is kind of sad, but I noticed that when I was there in Germany, you probably did too, but the younger people knew more about our political systems and American civics than the soldiers did.

[01:38:09] CHRIS KRIEGER: Oh, yeah, absolutely. Well, I have a really good friend who actually I met in Savannah. She was doing a Fulbright study, but she has, she has gotten her PhD. She teaches in a couple of places in, In Germany, but her, her Ph.D. was in and wait for it, because this was all pre Trump was in a conspiracy theory.

[01:38:37] SUSAN BOLINGER: Oh, wow. Wow. Okay.

[01:38:39] CHRIS KRIEGER: At the time, most people said, say what? And I thought, okay, coming from Germany, I can understand why. And then with everything that happened with 2016 and on, no one's shocked at that concept of her doing conspiracy theory. And I was really hoping that she would. She's very learned. And I was hoping she would take her experiences and her education and maybe work at the UN or work, you know, in Brussels or something with one of the. Some of the international communities so that she could take her German experience and help open everybody else's eyes.

[01:39:19] SUSAN BOLINGER: Yeah, yeah, that would be neat.

[01:39:21] CHRIS KRIEGER: But no, she's not going that route. But she does do a lot of writing and teaching about it. But it's, you know, it's just amazing how in a few years, everybody went from, wait, conspiracy theory, what's that? Why would that be important to everything?

[01:39:38] SUSAN BOLINGER: Yeah, yeah. Well, you know, there's a great guy, Paul Harrison, he kind of. He's similar to the lady you just described. Your friend, he wrote this great book called the Greening of Africa. And he's written two other books about. About. I think one's called the Third Revolution. It's about green, you know, sustainable success stories, sort of like that one documentary you mentioned. And he's written another one called Entropy, which is more about how capitalism, just physically, the laws of physics and thermodynamics, doesn't work in the long run for us. But I. I read the Greeting of Africa a long time ago, and I got another copy of it, because what he did was the UN hired him to go and evaluate, I think, 17 or 19 different UN aid projects in Africa. Some were small, some were large. And he was supposed to go look at all of them and see which ones were working and which ones weren't and try and figure out why. And so the last chapter he has, I think it's all about what worked. And the same things that worked on these projects are the things that citizens need, regardless of culture, nationality, time frame. You know, things like they need to have a stake in it, they need to be invested, they need to have some sort of payoff right away, even if it's not a big one, just so they know that what they're doing is gonna work. Just like financial planners say, pay off your smaller debts first, because you need that site. You know, we need that psychological attaboy, you know, pat on the back type thing. And. But, you know, they also pointed out the project needs to be able to be performed by the people. So, you know, bringing in some fancy well that no one knows how to work on and can't get the parts for doesn't work. But, you know, like, there's a group down in South America, they actually design technology, technically appropriate wells for people throughout the Amazonia. And, and, and so one of the best projects, he said, was, you know, in Kenya, they have a huge problem with deforestation. They got women to go around who are typically underemployed, and they would make these grass mud rings, poke a couple holes in them. It would build a cooking fire and put the ring over the coals. And the pots they cooked in traditionally have a round bottom. They would sit right in that bowl. And that reduced their firewood consumption by two thirds. Wow. And so I don't know about you, but, you know, if I'm carrying wood from, you know, five miles away every couple of days, having to do that a third of the time, that just frees up so many hours a week right there. And, and so, and also, this is. Women can teach other people how to do it. They're getting paid. That money is going to stay right in that village. That's the other thing. You know, when you give money to guys, you give money to guys. Great. When you give money to women, it goes to the community. And that happens regardless of continent culture. There's a great couple from. Oh, they were the New York Times desk in China during the 80s as China was starting to revolutionize and modernize their economy. And I. They wrote this great book called China Wakes. And I read it a couple years after China had already been awake. Almost everything they wrote about, they nailed it. It's a white guy and an Asian woman, you know, Western. So the names aren't the same. And I, I hear them all the time and they're quoted. And they put out. They put out two great books, and each book has been made into a documentary that's been shown on public television. And one's called Half the Sky and it Comes. Have you. That's a really good one.

[01:43:55] CHRIS KRIEGER: I haven't heard of it.

[01:43:56] SUSAN BOLINGER: Yeah, well, a library. Most libraries will probably carry it if you don't want to buy it, or maybe Netflix has it. And I've read the book and seen it, and it's very powerful and it gives a lot of concrete ideas that you and I could do in a small way to help be a part of the solution. But it really looks at the problem. And then there's another book they wrote later called A Path Appears. And I can't remember their names for the life of me, even though I have copies of both in my house. But A Path appears is in the documentary. They go to, I think Angelina Jolie. They go to Jennifer Garner. They have these, you know, Hollywood celebrities come and look at some of these aid programs and they highlight ones that are working and why. And so, and that was one thing that Paul Harrison didn't really develop was this idea of when you, when you go through the women, it's so much more powerful. So that's what I, I, I need to go read my last chapter of that Paul Harrison book again to get some ideas about how to apply all those ideas, those concrete, specific suggestions.

[01:45:20] CHRIS KRIEGER: So, and in particular, you were talking about the Greening of America.

[01:45:24] SUSAN BOLINGER: Well, it's called, it's called the Greening of Africa.

[01:45:30] CHRIS KRIEGER: Well, I'm sorry I used wrote down Africa, but I, for some reason my still on America. And I have a super whiny dog who keeps moving around trying to, you know, it's funny. So I think in pictures and a lot of Venn diagrams.

[01:45:49] SUSAN BOLINGER: Right, okay.

[01:45:50] CHRIS KRIEGER: And thinking so much about a balance sheet and accounting and, But I've been thinking about it like I do for everything in an atypical way. I've been thinking about if it were a balance sheet on what say other people who are manipulating the rest of us are putting out, if it had to balance are the rest of us, what are we bringing to the fight? Because it's a fight. In holding that imagery, I've been thinking a lot about the idea of collective and scalable. And it's funny because the UCC has this thing they call just peace. And it's a UCC wide.

[01:46:42] SUSAN BOLINGER: Okay.

[01:46:43] CHRIS KRIEGER: And when I first came into the ucc, I said, okay, that's really nice. I agree with all that. But I think this was the genesis of the, of the balance sheet. And I started thinking, well, okay, I believe in every. You can go on the ucc.org website and you'll see just peace. You can read about it. But I started thinking and I started talking about, okay, how about just peace plus hockey plus chess? And they were like, what? Okay, the thing is, it's the other side of the balance sheet that I feel like we're missing. The thing about hockey is there are boundaries. I always work want. The only time I've ever wanted to be a man in my life is to play hockey. So I could elbow somebody and there's boundaries. You know, I don't want to check somebody Hard. But boundaries are things that I feel like, you know, Christians, lots of people. When I say Christians, I mean kind, well intentioned the way following Christians. I'm not talking about other people who are manipulated. But you know, I think about what does checking somebody do? Well, it says not here, not now, not today. Right. That's the piece of hockey, the piece of chess is that I feel like. And I always say to Randy, my husband, I say we Democrats, we, we eat our young. I mean we miss it sometimes. We're so, we're not strategic. We don't think like chess players where you set up, you know, a pick or defense or, you know, that's a basket, you know, basketball term. But you know, we don't think like a chessboard. We don't act like it. And in this balance sheet that my brain is trying to work on, I'm, I'm. You've touched on so many things today that I'm going to have to like, like go back through my notes and think about. Okay. Because you're filling in a lot on my. The other side of the balance sheet. But I just wanted to mention as you're talking about women and all these scalable things or women and all these particular projects that had worked in that the light you give book that I mentioned by. He talks about, he used a term that I've been thinking about so much lately about our e. Each individual light, that it's important for it to be collective and scalable, which is exactly kind of what I've been talking about. So I haven't, I'm only in the first. Just got into the first chapter of it. But that plus that PBS history of the future which is all about how do we, how do we create something sustainable good and, and, and you know, good for all, not just the 1% or half percent. There's something to this, but I'm just going to leave you with this and hope we can have another conversation. If you think about, if you were to think about the other side of the equation of what are we missing as people who want have good intentions for the country and the world, what are we missing missing and what are we doing that you've seen that might be, you know, bring some weight to the other side of that balance sheet as I'm describing it.

[01:50:10] SUSAN BOLINGER: Well, and to get more of the hockey and the, the chess. Yeah. And that's really important because, you know, the Republicans, you know, they have taken over the federal court system, the Supreme Court system and they've gerrymanded of Course, both parts parties of gerrymandered districts.

[01:50:26] CHRIS KRIEGER: But yes, they have.

[01:50:27] SUSAN BOLINGER: But the Republicans are really good at it and that's the problem. They're really good at getting into office and then they don't know or won't do anything good. But the Democrats, they do great when they get in office, but they have a hard time getting. It's like.

[01:50:47] CHRIS KRIEGER: Well, it's, you know, when I think about. So do you know about Project 2025?

[01:50:51] SUSAN BOLINGER: No, I haven't heard about it.

[01:50:54] CHRIS KRIEGER: Project 25 has run out of the Heritage Foundation. Do you know the Heritage Foundation?

[01:50:58] SUSAN BOLINGER: I do, yeah.

[01:50:59] CHRIS KRIEGER: Okay. And so I forget some of the people who are working on that, on Project 25. Project 25 is planning just like they planned for the, the Republican super right wing Republicans have been planning for, for judges, scrutinizing judges and having this whole list of vetted people ready to go. Oh, Project 5 is like a day one. Here's what we're gonna do. And Chris, from everything you've told me, it's terrifying.

[01:51:30] SUSAN BOLINGER: It's.

[01:51:30] CHRIS KRIEGER: And so I think about that balance sheet. I think, you know, are we just busy eating our young or are we actually organizing in the way? And I have nothing against conservatives, I've been, been a conservative, but I would like America to continue. I would like us to get better.

[01:51:46] SUSAN BOLINGER: Yeah, that's. Well, you know, that's what's so scary because I don't like what I see is. What I see as likely in the future is alarming. Because the thing is I, I follow this, the survivalist thing. I look at the practical stuff, you know, how to can, how to build a humidity free herb shelter, whatever, for food storage, root cellar. But the thing is, a lot of these groups in America are very co aligned with, with conservative fundamental evangelical Christianity. And that's the thing we don't have. You know, everyone is looking at these beans and bullets and band aids, but no one's looking at a resilient community that can accommodate difference. And that is more important than all the beans and bullets and band aids because you know, when you're out there hoeing the corn and I'm out there cutting firewood, someone needs to have our backs. You know, if, and that's we all have to have each other's backs, knowing that we're not all going to agree on every, you know, you might not agree with me about, about Israel or pets or whatever. And I might not agree about who I can't even think of because we have a lot of overlap. I think a lot More than we don't. But there are going to be disagreements from time to time. And how do we get to the point where all these ideas are so they're more important than people. That's the scary thing to me. And that's. And I think part of it is just in our society, you know, there's a. A movie called Lucy about a girl who. It's a fiction, science fiction. This girl is forced to transport drugs to Europe from America. She's Scarlett Johansson, party girl type character. And they, they cut her body open and stick it in to hide it so she can get through the airline safely. And she resists someone's move on her or she's sent to. And the guy kicks her and the bag of the drugs breaks. And this drug is recreation of something women allegedly create in the womb for their baby. And it's sort of like nuclear power for the fetus to develop for a couple weeks. And so she gets to the point where she's using 100% of her brain in just a matter of week or two instead of 10%. I think dolphins are the only animals we know for sure that use more. And Morgan Freeman is. Becomes this guy that Scarlett Johansson tracks down. And the movie shows him in this large auditorium talking to students, and he's talking about maybe we could use our brain differently. And this is the line, this is the whole point. Somewhere down the line we separated. We went down a different path from the dolphins. We started focusing on having instead of being.

[01:54:58] CHRIS KRIEGER: Oh, wow.

[01:55:00] SUSAN BOLINGER: And I think that's a big part of Western civilization, most of it. You know, there's a few, you know, some of the Catholics had some orders, you know, maybe the Jesuits or a few, you know, that, that weren't super into it. But, but some, some of them really were, you know, Dominicans, you know, but a lot of the pro, you know, the Protestant work ethic, that's not about being, that's. That's about having. So. And I think, I know you probably have so many friends yourself. I have friends that cannot be still. Yeah, I have to look at the screen. They have to do this or that. They. I can't just sit and be. And I think if we could all learn to be, maybe it would be easier to remember that, you know, people are real live humans in front of us or mean at least as much as all these ideas. We want to duke it out over.

[01:56:00] CHRIS KRIEGER: The beautiful way to end. Chris, I love. Thank you. Thank you for our persistence.

[01:56:07] SUSAN BOLINGER: Yeah, I really enjoyed it.

[01:56:09] CHRIS KRIEGER: I enjoyed it too, very much. And I hope we can talk again.

[01:56:13] SUSAN BOLINGER: Yeah. Yeah. Are evenings best for you or afternoons, or.

[01:56:17] CHRIS KRIEGER: Just depends on the day.

[01:56:18] SUSAN BOLINGER: Okay. All right.

[01:56:21] CHRIS KRIEGER: Put something out there and I'll. And I'll let you know if it works.

[01:56:24] SUSAN BOLINGER: Sounds great. Okay.

[01:56:26] CHRIS KRIEGER: I look forward to it, Chris. Thanks.

[01:56:28] SUSAN BOLINGER: Me, too.

[01:56:28] CHRIS KRIEGER: Talking to you. I'm glad your dad's doing. Doing better.

[01:56:31] SUSAN BOLINGER: Well, thank you so much. And I hope you have a great spring, and everything just keeps getting better.

[01:56:35] CHRIS KRIEGER: Thank you. All right, I'm gonna look for your email. Send you one, too.

[01:56:39] SUSAN BOLINGER: I will. Okay, cool. Thank you. Bye.