Charles Peterson and Lorie Leaf

00:02 I'm Lori Leaf. I'm 59. It's October 26th. 211 2011 Denver and this is my friend Charles.

00:15 Charles Peterson, I am 64 years of age. Today is October 26th, 2011. We are in Denver, Colorado and Lori is my friend since 1994. Now I want to ask Charles about his life and in particular you were really good about seizing the moment. So tell me how you came to that place. Maybe you should explain it to me. If you have a particular example of my what makes you think of me seizing the moment. He see a situation and respond so quickly to

00:56 In the best possible way, okay.

01:02 Love had a philosophy since I was very young that this is the only day you live today and then it's gone.

01:11 I'm not a believer in Heaven or Hell a life before this her life after.

01:16 And so that this moment is a Paramount importance.

01:22 So it's important to be here now in this moment as much as possible and not be fantasizing about the future or

01:31 Loading the past or something.

01:36 And that makes

01:40 What when when this moment is really important. It makes you think critically in the moment about what's going on so that if you see an opportunity either to prevent harm or to do good if you see beauty you don't miss it.

01:59 If you see something terrible, you can really look at it and remember it. It's just about the fact that

02:07 When is Day is Gone? There's no going back to it. And so you have to live it and you have to be here in the present moment. And that's why I guess I appear to be seizing the moment. Not really seizing. Its you can't seize the moment. I'm just living in it. I'm here.

02:27 Can you think of them?

02:31 I believe in that this is the moment right now is what is important?

02:37 I I think I started realizing it in my early teens.

02:42 I was born with physical birth defects and you know, if you're very physically abnormal to your average person. And so that really set me apart as a child. I knew my sort of separateness and I think that kind of

02:59 Maybe more conscious and aware than a lot of kids my age who were just dreaming about, you know, they wanted to be

03:08 You know baseball star or an astronaut or something. I was more about okay, how am I going to deal with this moment now, I think even since I was a kid, I think I started really becoming conscious of that. I mean I'm a child of the sixties. So in the late sixties in the whole heavy thing and Vietnam and all the rest of that there was a lot of the

03:29 Philosophical Works in discussion and people talking about being present in the moment. I probably became more conscious of it then and philosophically to quite honestly, I just really develop the idea and really learned to understand it more clearly probably since I turn 50, I'm 64 now, so it's different incidents along the way have also taught me by rewarding me that being present in the moment is a very useful tool.

04:01 So

04:03 Who is the most important person in your life?

04:08 Do you mean historically wedding?

04:18 No problem. You know he drank beer is brewed his own and he was a great thinker. He is the only important historical American figure whose a portrait hangs in the White House who was never elected to the White House. He's the only non president with a portrait in the White House have think America is a whole realizes it or I'm a science guy. He was totally a science guy and he was kind of overweight and Pudgy and balding with brown hair. So, you know, I can really identify with him. You're just a lot about him that I had admired about him. He was always taking advantage of this moment. He was never letting an opportunity to go by to be engaged and involved in.

05:06 I just have always kind of admired him as an important character in history. Now you live on Franklin Street. I live on Frank. My middle name is Franklin. So, you know, so what's your earliest memory?

05:21 My earliest memory really

05:25 Something really haunting that I've never been able to really identify.

05:29 I'm lying in the backseat of a car and it's moving. I believe it's my parents are in the front seat.

05:35 And I am aware of something they're talking about.

05:40 I've become conscious of it. I have no idea what they're talkin about.

05:46 But my memory is that.

05:49 I understood it. And that makes me think I was very very very young and I it was as though it's a memory of becoming a conscious human those two humans up there who are my parents are communicating and I just understood what they said and it was important if maybe they were arguing or maybe they were saying something about me or whether we're talking about chocolate milkshakes. I don't know but I just remember the feeling of

06:21 I'm here. Who knows how young that was?

06:30 Do you have any words of wisdom for me?

06:33 Be here now.

06:36 How you doing? A good job in this interview by the way, how are you? So, what are you proudest of in your life?

06:47 Being happy. It's always been a struggle life is not designed to be happy. And so recognizing the fact that it isn't like the makes you happy. It isn't anybody else who makes you happy or sad it's purely and entirely your own personal choice that no matter what the situation is. You can choose to be happy in it.

07:12 Or you can choose not to be and there's nobody to blame or thank for your current emotional state than yourself.

07:23 Yeah.

07:24 What has what has occurred in your life where you feel that being happy is the proudest thing in your life.

07:36 I think that I tend to get

07:40 Reminded by people that for some reason I'm not supposed to be because the physical deformity people are always doing things like, you know, what for example, I have fed myself with a fork and a spoon and drink beverage out of a glass or a mug just like everybody else since I was very young but I do it differently than everyone else. So often people were meeting for me for the first time will see me cutting up an egg and eating it or tipping a cup of coffee off the edge of a table and drinking it and they go at just amazing that you learn to do that while they're holding her a cup of coffee, you know, if I look at them drinking our coffee and I don't you know that it's really amazing that you learn to do that too.

08:25 They don't get it because for them.

08:30 Somehow I do things if they had to do it it would be emotionally excruciating to go into a restaurant be in a public place eat and drink and not do it. Just like everybody else would be difficult or impossible for them because they've always done it just like everybody else but I've never done it just like everybody else. So it's meaningless to me. But for them, it has great need and for them. They go all that. I would be such a miserable human being if I had to look like that and be like that and do things like that and that's why I'm feel proud that I can be happy because most people seem to think that for some reason I'm not supposed to be able to be and I just learned to realize that as a result of all that I'm actually spend more time being happy than most people do cuz I don't have unusual expectations of what life has to offer I guess.

09:29 What is what is it that how are you different or how like, what is the the physical difference that you have from other people? Okay. Well, that's right. We're on the radio. I was born the physical description for the medical profession out. There is arthrogryposis M neoplasia Multiplex congenita and all that really is a description. It me arthrogryposis means primitive flux through the joints and me a pleasure means lack of muscle development Multiplex means many locations in congenita means from birth. And so a lot of people you could confuse me is maybe somebody who had Polio, you know with very little muscle in the arms and my wrist kind of been under my fingers kind of been under I walked stooped forward slightly. I have a drop foot gait meaning

10:29 I really pick my toes up at my ankle. And so but I'm ambulatory. I can hike and climb and and get around everywhere.

10:40 But I just looked both Center and shape slightly different and then because I don't basically have biceps. I never pick anything up above my waist much so that I always been forward, you know, I'm just lift the food slightly off the plate to eat it and a fork or spoon and I drink by tipping a glass off the edge of the table and bend to get it if I don't use the straw so I just do everything differently, but I do everything I've driven a car since I was old enough to drive a car and you are an outrageously good driver.

11:20 Push everybody draw like it's all about being in the moment right now.

11:26 So how would you like to be remembered?

11:32 That's a really complex question. I think it's really important not to need to be remembered.

11:39 That you can't do anything in life with Odell. Remember this striving you are making yourself unhappy if I was going to be like remembered you mean remembered by you or remembered by many people that have known you by the people that have known me.

12:10 It's not so much what I want them to remember. It's what I want them to forget.

12:17 Just like Charles, you know, it's like, you know, I can be very intense emotionally. And verbally, do you have any regrets?

12:27 No, cuz that's pointless to you know, I don't really think you you can't ever make up for anything you did in the past. I'm not somebody who believes in forgiveness. And so you don't find me off any offering an apology or asking for one you live with what you do and and you need always remember that so that you are as few times as possible doing anything that you're going to regret and what she didn't do and certainly throughout my entire life. I've pulled outrageous stunts and done things hell of a stupid drunk or whatever that you know, you cringe about afterwards but

13:10 Crunching doesn't help remembering not to do it again that helps so I think that's why I was thinking about your

13:21 Doing the right thing in the moment.

13:25 I got ties into that.

13:27 You know if I was going to be remembered for something, you know, if it if be non-existent ego Freud invented that he was so full of it. You know it if I was going to live in that world.

13:42 I would want people to remember that.

13:47 I thought it was more important than anything else to always have an open mind and always assume you may be wrong about whatever you think, you know so that you're always prepared to learn something new so many people equate being wrong with some helping simple or something. Like if I'm not right I'm going to go to hell. So what you do instead is deny to yourself that you're ever wrong and live till your dead with your beliefs that you formed by the time you were 25.

14:20 I think that is why people are so grateful that you are a County supervisor.

14:30 The Grateful and angry at the same time, it's always funny about that. Maybe we should explain that. I was an elected official for. Of time. I was a County supervisor in California and Mendocino County. Yeah, I am.

14:44 It was

14:48 My homework that everybody admired it the same time thing that made them so angry is that I did always have an open mind and I was always prepared to listen and I was always prepared to change my mind and I didn't have litmus test about much of anything. I'm an environmentalist with a capital e e that I always came down on the side of long term environmental issues, but

15:14 I never dreamed that.

15:17 I have all the answers just cuz

15:21 But when you had really strong feelings about a subject you are really good at getting what you wanted and it with whatever that took. I mean the most amazing thing to me was when I was a really long meeting Monday and there was a social services issue and everybody was tired and hungry and wanted to go home and you just ask the clerk to please go get your stash of chocolate and pass it out and everybody got a smile and gave him gave you what you wanted, you know that, you know about this track. It was always my dirty trick went and when people with opposite viewpoints or in a really hot type meeting together, and I was supposed to be the County supervisor trying to get them to open up with each other and come to a conclusion.

16:12 I would just have the staff pre-arranged for no particular reason come in with a wrapped package not telling them that I was the one who rap the package and I'd open a nap wondering what was in it and find a pound of chocolate and the next thing you knew people would calm down and they were smiling and picking out their chocolate and then I'd start talking chocolate is don't nobody can tell me chocolate is not a drug. Can you do like drugs?

16:49 Is anything you never told me but you'd like to tell me.

16:55 I think if there is nothing that I have not told you you're pretty good communicator, but I don't think there's anything I've ever really.

17:08 Anything about me that you've always wanted to know but never asked.

17:13 No, I always have.

17:17 Yeah, they wish explained that we actually live together for a short. Of time. We live together for the better part of five years and I do remember that. I mean we were both, you know mature adults in a been around for a while when we got together and you've been in that same town for all those years. And remember we go around to these different things political and cultural and social events are happening and it everywhere. We would go every once in a while. You would point out during the evening one guy and then another guy go I was with him for a while. I was with him for a while and you keep doing that. And finally I said you won't be able to use your Lori if you start pointing out the guys you hadn't been with

18:03 Charles you are so good at embarrassing me.

18:10 We're not editing that. This is probably what's going to appear on the radio.

18:17 Is there anything you want to add about life?

18:25 How's your life now? Or what? Would you like the future look like?

18:32 I would like to live in a more World place again. I'm living in Colorado Springs right now. I'm there because

18:41 No.

18:43 The most important person in my life is not legally adopted daughter and she loves her with her husband and I'm really move there in order to be close to them and I've known her since she was 23. She's 42 now something like that over at 19 years.

19:05 In Colorado Springs would not be my first choice someplace until live in the world. It's wonderful climate. I have good friends are you know what? I've met a lot of good people and in a dry myself there, but is somebody who comes from

19:22 Overwhelmingly politically liberal Place Mendocino County California coast in Colorado Springs kind of having developed in the last 20 years in the begin the epicenter of right-wing Christian militaristic fundamentalism in America.

19:39 I admit that within the liberal Community that's are two very strong one cuz it has to be and so you have some people there who do organize and get stuff done and all that kind of thing. But I think I'd like to be in them.

19:54 Community that was more naturally inclined to Great Cedar and are a lot of things that are often associated with liberal communities. I think I'd like to live in a Marlboro location. I think often is the areas around maybe west of Santa Fe New Mexico that kind of a mountain But Eric kind of place it gets a little bit of snow in the winter.

20:25 There's a quite funny question years ago. You said I think I'll live until I'm 72, and now that you're getting pretty close to that. Have you revised that number? No, I've never revise that number because that number was simply the what I've always said was the Actuarial tables save for a white male born in 1947. I love to be 72. Okay. I've always understood that Dad includes people who died in the first month of their life and people killed in automobile accidents is teenagers or combat and wars and all that. So if you make it past all those vulnerable years, you know, once you hit 60 and you were born in 1947 the Twelve Tables will put you over 80, right?

21:17 So whatever was basically said was okay 72 is the average. So if I live to be 72, hey you what? Why do I expect anything other than that and anything less than that at all bothered to be a little disappointed anything more than that is icing on the cake, but no matter what I don't want to live for very long.

21:45 If I don't have my mind available.

21:49 If I can no longer enjoy a good literature or good film or great conversation with friends, if that's gone. Just leave the back door unlocked in the winter. I'll take care of it.

22:03 You know, I don't want to find myself, you know, slowly fading and drooling in the corner with somebody having to change my diaper. I'm just really not interested for you.

22:16 Well, thanks for this time.

22:19 She is it all over can we talk some more when we get in the car? And we will know how you met each other. Oh, I get to tell that I get to tell that from your side. This is really good. Okay, I was running for County supervisor that I'm okay and I have been politically active for many years and was known throughout the county but especially in the area along the coast and so I think Lori had heard of me but had never met me and maybe had seen me at a public meeting or something like that.

23:03 And

23:04 A friend of hers who was involved in my campaign informed her that I was feeling so many hours in this huge County having to drive around because he's very real County lots and lots of smiles and not that many people that I really needed a place to stay on her side of the Hill as we call it.

23:26 And so I didn't realize she was kind of I think tracked me around two or three meetings and just kind of watched me and go well show it offering a place or not. And then she decided to do so and her friend introduced us and she offered me a room in a house that she had there and so I started staying there are two or three nights a week. I had my own room and it was pretty amazing cuz even if she wasn't there I'd come in at night and there'd be a note dinner waiting for me and I kept in the morning should have breakfast for me and I should really kind of took care of me and

24:07 It happened. Well my side of it is that I asked Mika, you know how I could help with this supervisorial campaign and she said give Charles a place to live and you know, when I asked you about it, my sense was as I was telling my friend are said that he's going to be the perfect roommate. He's going to come in late. He's going to leave early. He's not going to affect my life and it'll just it'll be great Well, you certainly had a big effect on my life.

24:43 I don't remember the exact details, or maybe it's just that I don't want to report them. But what I remember her saying to me at one point and in this friend Meka was sitting there when she realized it Lori was starting to feel a great deal of affection towards me was going no. No, no don't do it is in the middle of a campaign and we just kind of went for over that anyway, but what I remember really remember Lori doing was letting me call in the eye and saying

25:17 If you'll take care of the county, I'll take care of you. Well, that meant, you know getting you dressed waking you up in the morning bringing you papers to the chambers that you forgot at the office at home and it was quite a bit of work. And you said well, I think you've got the more difficult job than I thought it was I would should in this by saying so when I chose not to run for a second term she dumped me.

25:48 It wasn't exactly like that. But we've always been great friends that never stopped. What what makes your relationship so strong to still be friends for 4 since 1994.

26:12 We travel well together we travel we talk together once or twice a week by telephone always have just what's going on for you. I miss thick-headed is you are yeah, that's true. We have continued to share the details of each other's lives and feel open about doing that when something good is happening when something bad's happening. We just talked about it and you know, that's what friendship is is being aware of what's going on for each other and we stayed in touch and stayed in that kind of emotional contacts. So

26:51 And now when did Denver starting out on a trip in the Rockies and to see your new house in Colorado Springs and

27:01 And I have this week together because we will have a great time. The first snow of the year has hit here in Denver. And so it's interesting because we almost have all of downtown to ourselves. It's like everybody go up just one day of snow that you did whatever they want to do it yesterday or they're going to do it tomorrow. Nobody's out today. The entire Denver Art Museum like to ourselves ourselves. And and when we travel this is how it is. The timing is spectacular. What is the name of this program storycorps storycorps? That's it is like what were the chances that we would just walk up and there'd be an opening. There's a snowstorm going on and I've been wanting to do storycorps for quite a long time. And when you were in Ukiah there were no opportunities and here we are just walked right in and it's just because tomorrow

27:58 So thank you very much. You're welcome. I am the luckiest person alive.