Jim Newman and Cathy Eberly

00:00 Hi. My name is Jim Newman. I'm 72 years old. I live in Albemarle county. Today's date is January 18, and my conversation partner's name is Cathy Hi.

00:17 My name is Cathy Eberly. I am 67 years old and I live in Keswick, Virginia. Today's date is January 18, and my partner's name is Jim

00:31 Wonderful.

00:32 The first question we ask everyone who comes into the studio is, how did you hear about one small step and what made you sign up for a conversation? You can go first.

00:42 Yes, go first. I happily attended a program that the Karsh Institute gave in which two politicians were interviewed and exchanged comments. I found that Sally Hudson was there. I found it very interesting both as to the information rendered, and I also enjoyed the give and take. And since both politicians were quite civil, it offered promise to me that there might be a better way of resolving issues other than throwing bricks.

01:26 And for me, I know about this kind of through the back door, through Storycorps. As a longtime national public radio listener, I've heard many, many, many of those storycorps stories. And I, because I see NPR on social media that introduced me to this program. Great. All right.

01:55 So the first question that we have.

01:57 Or the second question I should say.

01:59 We have everyone respond to, is to.

02:02 Write an introduction about themselves. And so you have in your hand a copy of what your partner wrote about themselves. And so I'm going to ask you each to take a minute to read out what your partner wrote to.

02:12 And once you've both done that for.

02:14 The next five or so minutes, if there are any immediate questions that come to mind based off of what they wrote, I encourage you to ask each other. And then as you've kind of finished up, that we'll transition into some of.

02:25 Those formative memory questions, and you can.

02:28 Go ahead and start asking those to each other as well. So, Jim, you can go first with Kathy's and then Cathy with Jim's.

02:35 Cathy is married and a parenthood. She is currently an avid volunteer who recently retired from a career in marketing communications. She's interested in sharing perspective with a conservative citizen, and she considers herself to be more liberal.

02:55 So Jim Newman grew up in Princeton, New Jersey. He now lives in Albemarle county and has been living there since 1987, six currently working in the commodities trades. Significant life events that have shaped who he is include his wife dying 15 years ago, having a heart attack, finding finance as a vocation, and finding organized religion to be a disappointment. The things most important to him are his friends and his intellectual pursuits. He officiates three day hunting. He also fox hunts and enjoys Andrew Wyeth Turner and John Singer Sargent. He sails and plays squash. All right, you take it away.

04:00 Are you active with the Keswick Hunt club open in Keswick?

04:04 Not at all, no. No. We actually live over the southwestern mountains from Keswick in Stoney Point, if you know where that is. But it's. Keswick is our post office, therefore that's the address I use. Very familiar with seeing the hunt club.

04:26 They hunt your area?

04:27 They sure do.

04:29 The hunt area goes from Charlottesville up north of Orange.

04:34 Yes, yes. We've lived out there since 1987. We live on Turkey Sag Road, which is route 640. Goes up over the mountain. We're on the route 20 side. So beautiful countryside. But we. And we're in a small property we do not have.

04:59 It's lovely, though.

04:59 Horses or anything, you know, nothing like that. So. Yeah. So what part of the county do you live in?

05:07 I move. I have a farm over in ivy.

05:10 You're over this way.

05:11 So I'm with Farmington. I used to hunt with Keswick, but Farmington is more to my liking.

05:23 I really don't know much about how they would differ. Is one older than the other one club or.

05:31 You will find that both consist of a group of people, half of which are plus 55 up to 95.

05:42 Wow.

05:43 And the balance, primarily 20 to 14. The vast majority, as with three day eventing, is simple. Similar to dressage and Stiebich's. 95% to 97% of the participants are female.

06:06 One of my neighbors has a dressage business. She trained right down the road from me. Yes. Yes.

06:17 So there's been a great change in the practice. It used to be guys, huffy guys with great egos and women who were quite patient. And the women have essentially, thank God, taken over. Ten years ago, there was never a female master of foxhoff. Who's the boss? Right now they're all female.

06:44 Really?

06:46 90%. The vast majority are female.

06:49 So I do have to ask, what's the difference in why do you like the Farmington one more than the Keswick one? Just curious.

07:00 I'm probably telling tales. You have the Reeves family in Keswick. They have monopolized that hunt. And you had a series of masters over 40 years who enjoyed sleeping with other people's wives and drinking far too much, and it affected the hunting. So many of us gravitated over to Farmington, where, frankly, the women don't put up with that stuff. And it was much more civil. Now, what I'm supposed to tell you is that the hounds at Keswick are cross bred and hunt faster than the hounds at Farmington, which are american or pen Marydel It really. Things are much more relaxed at Farmington and very tenuous at Keswick, as you know. You just lost three masters.

08:19 I actually don't know, but, yeah.

08:22 And they were replaced by three of their Reeves family members. So it's.

08:27 So it's locked up.

08:29 It's. Here we go again.

08:30 Here we go again. I had no clue. I know zip about this.

08:34 So, yeah, both Keswick and Farmington hunt at a leisurely pace. So if you're into fox hunting, you will hunt with one of them. But when you really want a run and gun, you hunt with Piedmont in Middleburg up there.

08:52 Okay.

08:52 Where the horses, like I ride a thoroughbred or a warm blood, and the warmblood is more dependable and doesn't run as fast or for as long. When you hunt with Piedmont, every horse there is a thoroughbred. Most of them are steeple chase racing horses that are there for exercise. So you can go. You can gallop for an hour. Wow. And you're jumping fences that are as high as 4ft, where you'll never jump one at Keswick or Farmington, it's more than three two. So you really gotta know your business and keep em.

09:36 Well, you know, full disclosure, I have not been on a horse since I was nine years old. So there you go.

09:43 I'm sure it made a lovely picture. There you go.

09:47 Just not my thing at all. Yeah. Okay. So what brought you to Charlottesville? When I read your bio, I thought, okay, so was it.

10:03 What happened? The university or a very dominating wife. We both worked on Wall street. We both enjoyed fox hunting. We were married for two years, living in Princeton, and she decided that she wanted to fox hunt full time. So we came down here every other week to decide whether we were going to live in Middleburg and hunt with those hunts. There are four hunts, or we were going to live in Keswick and hunt with either Keswick or Farmington or deep run, which is down in Manakin Sabot I graduated undergrad from William and Mary. I've always lived in a university town, so I wanted to be here because I could shoot down. I could be in Uva, shoot down to Williamsburg and get up to DC to fly out of town to do different things. So we moved down. We were hunting, actually, with Keswick. We originally were members of Keswick, and she liked it so much, without telling me, she quit her job. That's fine. So I became.

11:34 You don't have her now, so, I mean, it's all fine. Yeah, it's all fine. Yeah.

11:38 Yeah. So I was doing a lot of traveling to support the circus, and she hunted every day, which was great. And we did that for four or five years. And then we discovered she had cancer and she died. So I was kind of adrift. And then I got back into the hunting. We also sailed. So that's what got us here. And once we got here, I mean, I just loved Uva because, essentially, especially for some guys by himself, you could go to a cocktail party or a lecture every day of the week.

12:19 It's true.

12:20 And I know, for example, there's a book written by a lady entitled Sargent's Women, and it was about John Singer Sargent's models national bestseller, fabulous book. It was written by a lady who was with the Virginia humanities. Got it. I went to the Medici exhibit at the Met. Fabulous exhibit catalog. Happily discovered. It was written by a lady who teaches at UVA. So I had the chance to have lunch with her three or four times so she could explain a lot of the things that I didn't understand. So, Charles Fool's fine.

13:04 Good.

13:06 Unfortunately, I work in a business where as long as I have a computer.

13:09 And telecommunication, set it up anywhere. Sure. Gotcha.

13:15 So that's why.

13:18 And I'm here because I met my husband in Richmond. I was living in Connecticut at the time. I'm a native of Pennsylvania. I was living in Connecticut at the time, working for one of the big insurance companies right out of college. And I.

13:42 So you were in Hartford?

13:43 Of course, right outside Hartford. Cause nobody really wants to live right in Hartford, or they didn't then. Anyway, so my husband. Well, I had a friend from undergraduate school in Pennsylvania who was going to graduate school at VCU. And she invite. She said, richmond is great. She was pennsylvanian, too. Gotta come down here. She lived in a house with a bunch of women, you know, as you do in grad school. At least she did. She said, come on down, we're having a new year's Eve party. And I said, okay. And my husband was at the party. So I wound up in Virginia. Well, eventually took a while. Eventually wound up here because he's a Charlottesville Monticello native. So. So we've been here since. I've been in Virginia since the early eighties, but lived in Richmond initially, before I came over to Charlottesville and worked at UVA for 17 years.

14:52 Did you live in the band?

14:53 I sure did. Lived in Floyd Avenue. It was just the right thing. To do in your twenties? I mean, it was. It was great. Yeah, loved it.

15:01 I took some classes at the art school and I lived employed avenue as well.

15:06 Do you remember the block? 1700, I was 2100. Not too far away. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.

15:18 And I'm happy to tell you that Hartford has the most successful women's squash program in the country. Who knew at Trinity College?

15:27 Well, I know about Trinity. I know that that's there, but that's about all I know about that, too. So I had been working for this insurance company for Aetna, and I ended up saying, I just. I cannot stand to be surrounded by people who work for insurance companies. I got to get out of Dodge. I mean, really. It got pretty.

15:46 It was cold up there, too.

15:47 It was really cold up there. Yeah.

15:50 I was a Trinity college last weekend.

15:52 Really? Well, you get around.

15:53 There was a tournament. I'm unsupervised, so I just.

15:57 You can do whatever you want. That's right. That's right. Yeah. So I'm going to jump in here.

16:03 And ask if you want to kind of start asking some of those formative memories questions.

16:07 And there's a couple in there. Feel free to ask each other.

16:13 In my case, if I could pick one person, it would be my wife. Wait, would you.

16:21 Would you read the question out loud? Or, Cathy why don't you ask Jim the question? So, Jim, who's been the most influential person in your life, and what did they teach you?

16:31 Actually, it would be my wife. As in the case with most men of my generation, I was very immature when I got married. I had very unfair assumptions about what my role was in the marriage. My wife, with charity and dignity, pointed out the error of my ways and brought me back to center, which helped me grow as a person. And I think all my growth as a person happened during her administration and actually was much more successful in business. I was happier.

17:21 How long were you married?

17:23 Seven years.

17:24 Oh, not very long. Oh, I'm so sorry.

17:29 There was a lot of work to do.

17:32 She did it quick. That's good. That's good.

17:38 But she taught me things like payrol, patience and being honest and sharing and being open with someone to achieve and reach a common goal. So it was fun and she took really good care of it.

17:57 And you haven't remarried?

18:00 No, I don't one. It took me ten years to recover from the death of my wife. Unfortunately, most of the women that are age appropriate for me have their own responsibilities, so we both have too much baggage. Someone did a study, John Hopkins did a study where they interviewed 10,000 women as to what is an appropriate age to date. And most women wanted to date men that were two years older or two years younger, and the age group was 18 to 70. They interviewed a like number of mendenne and all men, no matter what the age, want to date someone from 22 to 26.

19:04 Right.

19:06 First of all, I need a woman with a large battery of skills, which, through no fault of their own, most 26 year olds don't have. And two, I don't know how to talk to a 26 year old woman today. Values are so different. Our definition of things are so different. It just ain't going to work.

19:37 So, most influential person in my life. I think it's a tie between my mother and my father. They balanced each other out. My father. I was just thinking about this on driving into town today. He was one of three children. He was the only boy, and my grandparents doted on him, doted on him. So he was used to just having his own way all of the time. And he ran the show in the house. You know, you would. If. If he was in a bad mood, you would tiptoe around till he was in a better mood. My mother had to put up with that. She put up with that all the years of their marriage. But she was more moderate. She liked to say when they voted, they canceled each other out. Right?

20:39 We all do.

20:40 Yeah. So, um. So I would say what I learned from the both of them together is a balance. My father, without a doubt, was always. I would describe him as conservative Republican, as was his father. My mother never talked much about politics, but she had announced that their votes canceled each other out. So I suspect she was not a conservative Republican, which leads me to the next question, and it just fits right in here. So my earliest memory of politics was really my grandfather, my paternal grandfather. My family is Pennsylvania Dutch on both sides, so I remember my paternal grandfather sitting in the living room, very excited over this little rattan table that someone had given him for a holiday because it was an elephant. And that was my first memory of politics. So there you go.

22:02 Also, the mascot of the University of Alabama football team.

22:08 Really?

22:11 I didn't know that. I was born in Alabama, and that's all they talk about, is Alabama football.

22:19 Well, that I know.

22:25 Didn't your mother, to a large extent, influence your father surreptitiously in his decisions or his actions?

22:33 No. No. I think he was so bullheaded that he didn't look around him. He just bulldozed through. My mother died. Oh, well, they're both gone now. Thank you. My mother died at the age of 65, so I've already outlived my mom. She had emphysema, lifelong smoker. My father lived to 84, and I had always kind of, as I said, tiptoed around my father. Well, in the later years, we reached kind of an understanding. He mellowed some. He never remarried. He mellowed some. And at the end, I have a sister, one sister. But I was the one who was plugged into keeping an eye on him, you know? So I feel like we got to a point where I wasn't afraid of him anymore. Afraid might not be the word, but the fact that you're.

23:51 You had other support systems.

23:53 Yeah, that's true.

23:54 And were you married then?

23:56 Yes, yes, I did. I did. And I met Bill, kind of figured out my dad.

24:03 I suspect you understood more what was going on.

24:05 Yeah. I mean, I was older, and my dad did mellow. I mean, as he got older, once he retired, less stress, and he was very charming and outgoing and. Anyway, so. Yeah. So I don't know that my mother influenced him that much.

24:28 My parents were the same. My mother's business was in the house. My father's was outside of the house.

24:35 Yeah.

24:35 And in front of us, there was never an exchange information. Yep.

24:41 Yep. That is true.

24:42 Yeah.

24:44 So what's your earliest. Your earliest memory of politics since that's in this? Nah, you're not going to shake me up. I worked at Uva for 17 years with big donors.

24:57 Believe me, for the first six years, every summer, we went down to Alabama. And this was rural northwestern Alabama. And all of my family on both sides lived in the same small Alabama town. So I'm sitting in front of a black and white television, and needless to say, everyone was to the right of Adolf Hitler. They were very, very conservative. So we're watching. They're broadcasting the march on Selma. Wow. Okay. And the Selma police released the dogs, and people were trying to defend themselves and were hitting at the dogs. And my grandmother said, look what those bad people are doing to those poor dogs.

25:49 Oh, wow.

25:51 And that was my first exposure to politics, the understanding that.

25:57 How did you see it? What was going on?

26:01 I really didn't understand.

26:02 And you were young, you were little.

26:03 Yeah, I didn't. I didn't. Yeah, I didn't get it. The dichotomy in the south was you did not associate with persons of color. However, you were always respectful. Yes, sir. Yes, ma'am. And they always helped you. They were always pleasant around you. So we didn't see what was going on beneath the surface, much less understand the politics. But that was. That was my first introduction to conservative politics, and then it was LBJ, who's Democrat, and then it was Richard Nixon, a Republican. I actually was active in republican politics in the last four years. I'm an independent. I just don't get what's going on on both teams.

27:01 It's a mess. It's really a mess. Yeah.

27:05 So that's me.

27:10 It kind of leads neatly into the next question in that ideology section. If you want to go ahead and ask that one, give it a swing.

27:19 Would you like to describe your own personal beliefs?

27:25 Well, I do believe that the left and the right are too far in their corners, but I believe that we have a responsibility as Americans to care for people, to help care for people who can't, don't have the wherewithal to make it without assistance. That is, there should be support for people who are poor. And I think some of that comes from. It's interesting because my entire career, I worked for educational institutions, right. And I was always involved in some way with the fundraisers. So I was supporting the fundraisers and helping to raise money for UVA for a boys boarding school nearby. And then I had a freelance career over a period of four years where I wrote for colleges and universities around Virginia, did a lot of work for them. So I believe as a result of that, that. But then the last four years, this was where I was going. The last four years before I retired, I decided, I'm going to do something that really speaks to my soul. And I went back to an organization I had volunteered for when I worked at the law school at UVA, and it's called Piedmont Casa, court appointed special advocates. Okay. I've been involved with that organization for close to 20 years, and I understand better than I used to how families can possibly get so screwed up and why this goes from generation to generation. And these people, I have two cases, two different cases now as a CASa volunteer, and these kids are in foster care because of horrible things their family has done to them. So for me, that just breaks my heart. And it's not the family's fault. They. They have been. The families have been impacted by trauma. This is the way they think things have to be. This is all the better they've learned because they've had crappy parents. It's heartbreaking. So I tend to be more toward the left because I believe that. It appears to me that a lot of people on the right think let them pull themselves up by their bootstraps. I worked hard all of my life, and I'm not taking care of a bunch of people who don't have enough sense to get out of bed in the morning and try to get jobs. It's not that simple.

31:11 It's not that simple.

31:13 So that's kind of where I am. And this, you know, this. I worked for Casa for four years as a supervisor, and I supervised volunteers, each of whom had at least one case. So, believe me, I've seen it all, I've heard it all. Stuff that curl your hair. And I just think, these poor people, they need support. They can't make it on their own. And that's part of the problem in this country. You know, the haves say, screw you, people. I'm, you know, I've made my way in this world, and that's as far as my responsibility goes, and I just don't see it that way.

32:01 So most of the people that you deal with are youth, are young people.

32:07 I advocate for the children who have been removed from their parents because their parents have either abused or neglected them. However, I'm there for the kids. I'm in front of the judge supporting the kids. I'm talking to the judge, I'm writing reports to the judge. But the parents, meanwhile, are supposed to be doing what they have to do to get their kids back, to be able to parent them safely, right? So I have contact with the parents, too. I have to. I have to talk to everybody in the kids lives.

32:43 With regards to the kids, at what point do you. At what point can be reached in which the kids are not cooperating and not trying?

32:58 The kids are not the issue. It's what the parents do. The children. The parents have to prove that they're able to parent the children safely, and then the children go back home to them. If the parents never do what they need to do to prove they can parent the children safely, the children could end up in permanent foster care or end up being adopted. So the kids, the reason they have Casa is because they. The kids are kind of caught in the middle in these situations where the court's trying to work with the parents, and meanwhile, the kids are languishing in foster care somewhere.

33:39 Roughly how many of the kids successfully return, what percentage, ballpark, return to their parents?

33:47 It's less than half, for sure. That is an indication of the significance of the.

34:04 Parents inability to perform, correct?

34:09 Yes. And some of it is just plain inability to perform because they don't know how and they're so, anyway. Anyway, so, yeah, that's the way it is. So. And it's heartbreaking because they love, regardless of how screwed up they are, they love their kids.

34:31 And again, it's a ballpark of the percentage of the kids who do not come out of foster care. How many are eventually adopted?

34:41 It kind of depends the way the case gets handled. In order for a child to be adopted, they have to terminate the parental rights of the parents, of course, but they don't really, the court really doesn't like to do that. I mean, you know, that's final. So sometimes they'll work out another arrangement of some sort where the child will end up being placed with a relative, and then the child comes out of foster care. Our goal, as Casa volunteers, is to ensure that the children have permanency, whatever form that.

35:22 How many of those parents represent one parent families?

35:28 There's never a one parent family because there's always a father and a mother.

35:33 Somewhere at which the child would be living in.

35:36 Yeah, most of them. No, no, can't say that. I don't know the answer to that. I don't know the answer to that. Because. Because sometimes the family is together, and sometimes one parent has never been part of the picture other than the moment of conception and possibly hanging around til the baby's born. You know, that sort of thing. Sure. Yeah.

36:03 So I kind of am in the middle of this. I do believe that in this country, someone can pull themselves up by their bootstrap.

36:16 They can.

36:18 I do also believe that we live in a community. If someone needs help, we should give them help. The problem I have is, at what point are you helping versus enabling? And that's the difficulty I have. I was an Episcopalian for a number of years, and in the last seven or eight years, the church has decided that they will help anyone to any extent, and they don't care if they're enabling versus helping. And that did it for me. One, you're not helping them, you're making them worse. And two, you're not helping the community. And the assets could be put to better use to those programs, such as Casa, that are making a contribution to the community. That's particularly telling in Charlottesville, because there's so many nonprofits and everyone seems to be. My big complaint now is every time I go shopping, when I hit the register, it's, would you like to donate your change to. To ABCD and E? Well, if you hit eight stores, by the end of the day, you've given away $50, and then you have to pay $0.05 for your plastic bags. So it gets to be a bit crazy.

37:42 Yeah. I mean, you have to. I think the way I see that you're right, that everybody wants you to support, to help their organization and these people they're trying to help, and that can become overwhelming. So I have decided that I will put my energy to what really matters to me and let the rest of it go just because I have to, because I can't.

38:14 You can't do everything.

38:15 I can't give money to all the panhandlers out on the road, you know? Yeah.

38:21 So.

38:21 Gotcha. Yeah, totally. How are we doing here? We're doing good. We're doing good. We got another maybe like 15 to 20 minutes left. I'm just looking at questions here. I did want to follow up on a point, Jen, that you made earlier. You said that you, in the past four years, you were doing some work with the republican party, but then you.

38:37 Kind of self identify as an independent.

38:42 Are those two things related or would you mind elaborating? That's a good question. That's why she's the moderator and we're not. Yeah.

38:56 And I could speak to the Democratic Party at the same, but I find that both parties have redefined issues and things in ways that I don't agree with. I find that it's become us versus them.

39:17 Yes.

39:18 Versus. Hey, we're a community. Let's sit down. Let's work this out. I find that no one speaks truths. No one wants to get things done other than those things that will get them votes so that they can enact legislation that will put money in their pockets. And that's. That's probably an unfortunate way to look at it. So, for example, and again, I can speak to both sides, Craig deeds just launched a bill. He's trying to get it passed again that will stop gun violence by taking assault weapons off the streets. Well, one, an AR 15 is not an assault weapon. It's the most popular deer rifle in the United States to.

40:12 That is not true.

40:16 It is.

40:16 Isn't an AR 15 one that shoots more than once, like fast? Right.

40:22 An AR 15 sends one shot for trigger pull. An M 16 is a fully automatic weapon. In fact, you can fire it single shot. You can switch it to three shots for trigger pull, or you can pull it to fully automatic. It's now properly known as an M four.

40:42 My dad didn't use either of those guns when he shot deer. So there you go.

40:46 He probably used a bolt action, but your dad was a much better shot than the average hunter today. So they probably true. Semi automatic. If you look at the police, when you and I were kids, they were all using six shot revolvers. They're all using 17 shot clocks, semiautomatics.

41:08 But I got you off track. I'm sorry.

41:10 No, that's okay. So, this morning, he's looking at a television camera saying all these things that aren't true, but it will get him votes this November. Well, that, to me, is not helpful. I actually was one of the delegates who got Bob good nominated to his position in the fifth district.

41:36 Whoa. I'm sorry. That's the end there.

41:41 She has to leave. He served wonderful barbecue at the picnic, so let's not fault him there.

41:49 I'm having a hard time with this.

41:51 But I actually agree with you. All right. Bob Good.

41:55 He's a whackadoo. I'm sorry.

41:59 All right. But it's incumbent for the Republican Party to come up for a replacement for Bob Good, because Bob Good's not a nice guy.

42:12 No, no, you're right. You're right.

42:14 But. And that's why I'm an independent, because I have to vote. And I mean that I have to vote because it's silly not to. So, inevitably, I have to research both sides and decide, sadly, which is the lesser evil.

42:35 Well, let me ask you about a candidate who is not. Let's see if you familiar with her. Well, I love Abigail Spanberger. I think she's great. I wish she was my representative. I would love to just push Bob good back down to liberty and sink him under that fake mountain they have down there. Seriously.

42:55 No, I would agree with you.

42:57 Yeah, she's great.

42:58 She's marvelous.

42:59 Yeah. So we did. Well, if you're. Well, I know you're an independent now, but please come up with somebody else for Bob good. And I'm not sure the. We're considered. You know, we're up at the top end of that district. The district goes the whole way down to North Carolina. You just see all the Trump flags and stuff when you drive down there and you just think, oh, God, there's no hope. There's no hope.

43:27 The sad thing is that the people in those areas have concerns which a middle of the road Republican speaks to. And I've so often been told that to get elected now, you have to talk the talk of the far right or the far left, and that's not going to appeal to guys like me. And essentially, I could be wrong, but I think a third of the electorate is now independent because we just don't have.

44:03 I totally get that. I absolutely get that.

44:07 So, unfortunately, it was my hope that after Trump, we would all realize that and we'd start thinking as a community rather than us versus them. And it's gotten worse. And it would be funny if it wasn't so silly. But here we have two presidents who couldn't be more dissimilar, and they're both the subject of a special prosecute.

44:39 Absolutely.

44:40 For silly stuff.

44:41 It's ridiculous. Yes, I totally agree. Totally agree.

44:46 So I don't. I have faith in history and faith in Americans, be they what they are. That will sort it out, that ultimately it will get so bad that someone will say, time out. We're all going to go into a room and make this better.

45:10 I hope that, too. I really do. Because the pendulum just can't.

45:17 But look what you have in Charlottesville. You have a member of the school board from Alan, Martha, running for Sally Hudson spot in the assembly.

45:28 Were you talking about Katrina Paulson? Yeah.

45:31 Okay.

45:31 Yeah.

45:33 During her tenure, and she's now the head of the board, test scores have collapsed. And in fact, Virginia has the lowest test scores of any state in the country. She and her fellows got the police out of the school system. You don't have any more resources.

45:57 Yeah, I know. I know.

45:59 So what's happened? The teachers spend more time breaking up fights.

46:05 Yeah. Albemarle High school is supposed to be just a mess.

46:08 A mess. As is Monticello. Yeah. All right, three. They don't want to. They want to change. They want to play around with pronouns. And they don't want parents. They want to keep secrets from parents about their child's gender confusion. That, to me, doesn't make sense. Where's their focus? They've renamed nine schools. So what in God's name recommends her to run anything yet? She wants to be our assembly person.

46:58 I don't have quite the negative impression of her. I had worked with her a little bit on as a department of social services attorney. I've had contact with her of my CasA cases, and I've always felt as if her heart was in the right place. She's in there for the kids.

47:22 She has done more damage to the kids in Albemarle county than anyone I can think of. And she had help, the other board members. So, I mean, please. I'm open to comments, but I just don't see it.

47:40 Yeah.

47:42 Yeah.

47:43 I mean, it's hard. I do agree that. Choose my words carefully here, that sometimes the folks on the left are focusing perhaps on the wrong things. The gender pronoun thing, for example, is that something that really needs to be focused on to the extent that it is? I don't know the answer to that. But I will say, if you look back to our generations, think of all of the many people who have come up and have never been able, have been felt trapped in a body that is not who they believe themselves to be. Okay. You could say it's b's if you want, but I believe that there are people who really live their lives as a lie because of what society told them they could or couldn't do. And that's very sad. Has the pendulum maybe swung too far the other way? Probably. Probably. But I believe there is some truth in there. You know?

49:25 You had children, didn't you?

49:26 Yeah, I have one. One son. He's now 31.

49:29 How would you feel if teachers kept a personal issue of his secret for you?

49:42 I would like to think that I know my son well enough to know that I would have a pretty good handle on what might be going on in his head. And if I sensed that things were really awry, I would try to get him help where he could work it out with somebody.

50:22 But don't you feel that the teachers have an obligation to alert you to any serious problem your child might be having?

50:29 And I believe, and in my experience with Andrew, that is exactly the support we receive from the school. Yeah, I'm gonna jump in here just because we're coming close to the end of conversation time, and I don't want to dwell too much on hypotheticals in.

50:45 This context, because it can kind of.

50:47 Stray into more the debate category, which is less our platform. That being said, I think, you know.

50:53 First of all, that's not a hypothetical. No, no. I mean three court cases directly involved in that, and the state attorneys getting ready to sue the county of Albemarle for that very issue. Right.

51:07 Oh, I understand what you mean. I just mean hypothetical between participants, not as issues stand, but just given that we are 51 minutes, I just wanted to pivot slightly towards some of our concluding questions. So you have time to wrap up any loose threads before jumping down to that last section. So we're supposed to look at the bottom questions then? Yeah. Okay. So is there anything about my beliefs that you don't agree with but still respect.

51:41 Actually, no. I very much respect everything that you said. Now, understand, I've never had children, so I'm speaking outside the pulpit and really have no basis of knowledge to make the comment. I trust that you're a great mom. And I trust that you know exactly what's going on.

52:07 We'll have to ask him. They'll lie. He hasn't gone into therapy yet. That I'm aware of. Who knows? Yeah.

52:16 Insurance covers it anyway.

52:18 He works. He's a federal employee, so. Yeah, it does. Yeah.

52:23 But, yeah, I'm very supportive of what you said. I can understand the shadings in our beliefs as far as being conservative and liberal. I think it's a function of how we were raised and what we're currently going through, but, yeah.

52:45 Yeah, I'm not sure. I think I've become a lot of people. I think as they get older, get more conservative. I believe I've gotten more liberal over time, and I do think it's almost a reaction to all those years I've spent working in higher education, fundraising. So now it's. You know, it's. I feel like I'm more with my people now.

53:17 And you enjoyed the fundraising?

53:20 Oh, I just saw it as something that had to be done. Yeah. I enjoyed supporting the fundraisers. I enjoyed coming up with creative ways to express the need, make the case. Make the case for the ask, you.

53:35 Know, make them happy about it.

53:37 Yeah. Yeah. Well, you know, listen to them. Find out what did they really. What's really important to them, what do they want to support, you know? Was fine with that. But, you know, my years working at a boarding school just, you know, where the wealth was so kind of overwhelming, and they just took it for granted.

54:10 The kids or the parents?

54:12 Both. Oh, it's just, you know, the generations went there, you know, it's just send your son. Grandson, you know, and then they come, and the campus was fucking, pardon my french, immaculate. You know, just everything was perfect. The world is not like that, you know? All right, how are we here?

54:34 We're doing well.

54:37 You can pick. You want. You want to pick one of those last ones to end on? I don't know. There's two.

54:41 There's one about surprises, and I can't remember what the last one is, but I'll let you choose.

54:57 Okay. Well, is there anything you learned about me today that surprised you, Jim?

55:02 No. Now, given our age, given our life experience, I think we both were not crazy. There's no reason to seek professional help. We both have a sense of what we're about. I think you spoke to this earlier, but we both realize that we're on the back nine, not the front nine.

55:28 Oh, God, that's hard, isn't it? Yeah.

55:31 So our expectations.

55:32 I mean, to be young like her, you know? Right.

55:34 I don't think I could do it.

55:36 Yeah. It's a different world now, that's for sure. Yes.

55:41 So we're less demanding about what we expect, but we also are more understanding. I don't have as much patience anymore there.

55:58 Well, then you aren't more understanding.

56:02 I am understanding in the sense that I don't blow up. And I try to work with people and I try to make things better, but there's a definite point.

56:12 Yeah.

56:13 Where? That's it. I don't want to hear it. Don't ask me anymore. An example of this is always answer the phone. If I don't recognize the number now, I don't answer the phone.

56:27 Oh. I stopped answering it forever ago. Yeah.

56:32 So that's why I think I agree with most of what you said. Probably everything that you said. It's just. It's the way things are. This isn't the sixties. It's not the seventies. We survived the seventies and eighties. I don't even remember what it is. The 220s. So it'll get better or we're dead and there's not a lot we can do about it.

57:03 Well, I'm hoping things start turning around so we can see it, you know, that we can see it and say.

57:09 Yes, we're well, the ozone layer is repairing itself. There's hope, right?

57:15 That's right. That's right.

57:17 But the nice thing is we live in this community with the best hospital in the world, as far as I'm concerned. And whenever I break something, they wheel me in, they fix it and push me out.

57:29 So life is good, even if death have a bunch of residents looking at you when it happens.

57:35 Most of them are women, so I enjoy that.

57:37 There you go.

57:38 I like the attention.

57:39 Yeah. Yeah. I only go to UVA if I absolutely have to. I'm a Martha Jefferson person myself, so. Yeah.

57:46 Don't you find most women are.

57:48 Are what?

57:49 Martha Jefferson people. When we first moved here, it was, if you're having a baby, you go to Martha Jefferson. If you've got a gunshot wound, you go to UVA.

57:59 It's true.

58:00 Yes.

58:01 That could be a whole other branch of difference. That's right. That's exactly right.