Mike Gaglio and RubyAnn Gaglio

[00:01] MIKE GAGLIO: Hi, my name is Mike Gaglio I'm 47 years old. Today is January 27, 2023. We're in El Paso, Texas, and I am interviewing Ruby Anglia, and she is my wife.

[00:17] RUBYANN GAGLIO: Hi, I'm Ruby Gaglio I'm 51 years old. It's January 27, 2023. We are in El Paso, Texas. I am being interviewed by Mike Gaglio who is my husband.

[00:32] MIKE GAGLIO: I think this is going to be fun.

[00:34] RUBYANN GAGLIO: I hope so.

[00:37] MIKE GAGLIO: So I made a list of questions here that you and I haven't gone over yet.

[00:45] RUBYANN GAGLIO: No, we haven't. I have no idea what today is going to be about.

[00:50] MIKE GAGLIO: Well, I want to talk about. I want to talk about your work in conservation. A little bit of.

[00:55] RUBYANN GAGLIO: Okay.

[00:56] MIKE GAGLIO: But my first question is that you used to tell your grandfather. You used to tell your grandfather that you wanted to be a philanthropist when you grew up.

[01:09] RUBYANN GAGLIO: Yes.

[01:10] MIKE GAGLIO: Did you even know what that meant at that time?

[01:12] RUBYANN GAGLIO: Yes, I did. It was on our vocabulary list in the fourth grade, and I learned that word. Mike went home and said, I know what I want to be when I grow up. I want to be a philanthropist.

[01:24] MIKE GAGLIO: Yeah. What did he say?

[01:25] RUBYANN GAGLIO: He said, no, miha, we're poor. Poor people can't be philanthropists. You have to be rich. And then I said, well, then I'm going to grow up to be a famous actress, and I will donate all my money to land to buy land.

[01:40] MIKE GAGLIO: Why did you want to be a philanthropist?

[01:44] RUBYANN GAGLIO: Because. So I went to catholic school, and I. They would always say, oh, God made everything. The mountains, the rivers, everything you see around you is made by God for everybody. It's for all of us. And we would drive to Marfa because grandpa was from Marfa, and we would drive to Marfa, and I would see these for sale signs on open spaces, and I would be like, but, grandpa, how can things be for sale when it's open land? It's land. It's supposed to be for all of us. God made it for all of us. And he was like, no, Texas is owned by people. And I could not understand that. Like, it made no sense to me as a little girl. And then as an adult, I was like, oh, grandpa was right. Everything in Texas is owned by people. And I wanted to be a part of changing that. I mean, people can own their stuff, but I want people to protect the land as it is. And I knew that as a little girl because of a movie.

[02:47] MIKE GAGLIO: Oh, really? A movie?

[02:48] RUBYANN GAGLIO: Yes, the Fox and the Hound, which I saw on my 10th birthday at the Pershing Inn. And, yeah, there was, you know, the lady. The little lady takes the fox to a nature preserve, and I was like, that's what I want to do, have nature preserves.

[03:08] MIKE GAGLIO: So you kind of got introduced to the idea of a nature preserve through a Disney movie.

[03:13] RUBYANN GAGLIO: Yes.

[03:14] MIKE GAGLIO: Which is kind of fun.

[03:15] RUBYANN GAGLIO: Yes.

[03:16] MIKE GAGLIO: And similarly, you learned what philanthropy was all about, and you kind of decided that's where you wanted to go.

[03:24] RUBYANN GAGLIO: Yes.

[03:25] MIKE GAGLIO: And so now you're. What did your card say? 51.

[03:29] RUBYANN GAGLIO: 51.

[03:31] MIKE GAGLIO: And you wear a lot of hats now. And how has the whole thing in philanthropy worked out for you? Yeah. Talk about that.

[03:42] RUBYANN GAGLIO: Okay. So, yes, I do wear a lot of hats. Like today, I'm an event coordinator for Keystone Heritage park, but I also do the volunteer. I started as a volunteer ten ish years ago. I work for high desert native plants, which is our company together. And I'm a massage therapist, which really has nothing to do with philanthropy per se, except that I hope I am giving to people and making them feel good. But, yeah, the keystone and high desert are both very philanthropic.

[04:22] MIKE GAGLIO: You've been along those lines. You have been a certified Texas master naturalist now for about five years. How's that?

[04:32] RUBYANN GAGLIO: I think four years. Is it five? I don't know. A while.

[04:38] MIKE GAGLIO: How's that going?

[04:39] RUBYANN GAGLIO: I love it. I love it. I feel like the definition of a naturalist is me since I was a little girl, someone who observes their environment and thinks about it and tries to promote it, that is me since I was a child, and I get to talk to people about nature. Yeah. Being a master naturalist has fulfilled lots of boxes for me, I guess, because, again, being a little girl and people say, what do you want to be when you grow up? Philanthropist was the number one thing I wanted to be, but then it was like, oh, I want to be a teacher. I want to be a hairstylist. So I've done all of that stuff, but now, as an adult, the master naturalist portion of it allows me to really get into nature and biology and teaching and giving, so I love it.

[05:38] MIKE GAGLIO: That's cool. Well, I get to see you do your work all the time, and I think that you're really good at it, and I do think that you're touching a lot of people in the community, and I think that's really exciting.

[05:50] RUBYANN GAGLIO: Thank you.

[05:53] MIKE GAGLIO: I'm really proud of you for all that, too, because, well, it's just. It's really fun for me to watch you engage with people in a way, because I guess where I'm going with this is that, like, you didn't go to school to be a scientist or anything. Like that, right? I mean, and if I remember, well, of course I remember. I mean, you did. You wanted to be an actress. Yes. So maybe things changed a little bit for you along the way.

[06:25] RUBYANN GAGLIO: Well, they did, but they didn't, because, remember, I wanted to be an actress just for the money so that I could turn around and donate it. Like, that was my ultimate goal. That's what I wanted to do. And I think that in my youth, like, people didn't always take me seriously because I was studying theater, and I'm very gregarious and I'm silly, and I love fashion and hair and nails, but everything that I would do was with conservation in mind, even as a kid. I started using Aveda products when I was about 14 years old, as far as with my own money. And to me, that was important because they did no animal testing. It was all natural products. The product started in 1971, I think. And I remember my mother having a beta conditioner and shampoo in the bathroom, but then she would be like, don't use that. That's expensive. That's mine. But I loved how it smelled, and I remember seeing ads for it. And so as a young kid, I would skip lunch. So by the time I got to high school, I would skip lunch to save my money so I could buy my own product and have my own aveda, because I knew that it was good for the environment. I've been vegetarian since I was six years old, or I started the process of being a vegetarian at six years old. Cause I just, I loved animals too much. I could not eat them. How do you eat something that loves you and that you love? So, yeah, I mean, I have been on this track since I was a very young child. But people, I don't know, I'm too silly. And so they wouldn't, like, take me seriously, I think. And then it's like, oh, that silly girl has a brain. She actually knows about birds, and she knows about the river and engineering. Oh, she's not that dumb. She's actually smart. Yeah, duh. Actors and actors have to be smart. We have to memorize pages and pages and pages of things. Like, we're smart, we know lots of things.

[08:32] MIKE GAGLIO: Have to immerse yourself in these things.

[08:34] RUBYANN GAGLIO: Totally.

[08:35] MIKE GAGLIO: So the master naturalist thing sounds like just kind of a natural fit because you already have this idea of what you wanted to do, and now you get to kind of be on stage with the public and teach and do all of these things that fulfill.

[08:51] RUBYANN GAGLIO: Right. And because of different age groups, I can be silly when I am talking about the birds or whatever.

[08:58] MIKE GAGLIO: You're silly all the time.

[09:00] RUBYANN GAGLIO: I am silly, but the kids love it. And then people remember when I do things like, okay, everybody wave your hands and pretend you're a moth or a butterfly. And what do our antenna look like? You know, people remember those things and they're like, oh, yeah, we know how vultures flap their wings and we know how moths enchant look because we had to wave our fingers. You know, people remember that way. And I like that.

[09:28] MIKE GAGLIO: That's pretty fun.

[09:29] RUBYANN GAGLIO: Yes. Yeah. Because it's important, because if you know about something and you love it, want to protect it, and that's my ultimate goal, protecting things.

[09:38] MIKE GAGLIO: Yes, that's cool.

[09:40] RUBYANN GAGLIO: Protecting the earth.

[09:41] MIKE GAGLIO: So speaking of something that gets protected, you spend a lot of time at Keystone Heritage park.

[09:48] RUBYANN GAGLIO: Yes, I do.

[09:49] MIKE GAGLIO: Do you want to tell me about that?

[09:51] RUBYANN GAGLIO: Yes. Yeah. So again, okay, I've, as an actress, I tried to move away from El Paso. Often I would go to laden and every time I would come back, I would fall a little more in love with El Paso. And I think growing up, we weren't taught to appreciate the desert here. The flowers, the plants. It was like, oh, El Paso is ugly. There is nothing to do. Leave El Paso. You were encouraged to leave because it was ugly here. And every time I would come back, I would be like, oh, my God, these mountains are gorgeous. I love it. I'm so happy to be home. And working at Keystone has allowed me to share the beauty of nature because I do tours in the garden and I get to talk to people about the flowers and how cactus are evergreen. When people are like, oh, there is nothing green in the desert. The desert is dry and ugly. And I'm like, oh, no, no, no, let me show you. Cactus are evergreen. Yucca are evergreen, so toll are evergreen. Oh, I'm not going to tell you my whole tour, but that's what I do is I talk about the beauty of us. Or when people call the Rio Grande the Rio sand, I like to make sure that they know that's human engineering. The Rio Grande was grand. Or in Mexico we say Rio Bravo because it was a violent river, it was a brave river, it was a big river. We just as well. When the colonizers came, they didn't understand the way it worked, that it's a floodplain river. But again, listening to history, the conquistadors were dying. They were starving, they were thirsty, dehydrated, they came upon the Rio Grande. That's in all the history books. They came upon the Rio Grande, and voila. Life. There was something to eat, there was water to drink. And if you look at it now, it's like, oh, yo, how did that happen? We've destroyed it as humans in engineering. And I get it. I get it. There's agriculture. We want to direct the water. But this landscape looks nothing like the beauty that it was a few hundred years ago.

[12:06] MIKE GAGLIO: And Keystone has a little sliver of that, I bet.

[12:08] RUBYANN GAGLIO: Yes. So, yes, back to Keystone. I forgot where I was going. So at Keystone, we have a natural spring that is at least, or is thought to be 4500 years old. That spring would have fed the river, fed people. It's home to birds, wildlife, and, yeah, it gives you an idea. Like when you close your eyes and you imagine what this area could have looked like, it's right there at Keystone. You can see what this whole area looked like a couple hundred years ago. And that's amazing.

[12:44] MIKE GAGLIO: I can tell by your enthusiasm. Well, of course, I know, but you get really enthusiastic when you're talking about it, and it just is real. It's obvious that this is very rewarding to you.

[12:54] RUBYANN GAGLIO: It is. It is. Oh, and this actually goes back to my grandpa being at Keystone and talking about the river. I remember as a little girl, grandpa would tell me I caught a fish this big. And I would be like, oh, grandpa, you're telling fish stories. Or he would say, there's eel in the Rio Grande. I caught an eel. And I would be like, there's no way there's eels. Grandpa, why are you lying to me? And he would tell stories about standing on the edge of the river with a rope tied around himself and then the other end of the rope, either on my mother or my grandmother, and that was to protect them because there would be whirlpools and people would get sucked under and people would die all the time in the Rio. So to swim in the Rio, someone had to be on land as an anchor. No one would believe that today because there isn't very much water. And I didn't believe him. When I was a kid, I was like, whatever. And then we went to a symposium, you and I remember we went to a symposium in Las Cruces, and they had a diorama of the Rio Grande, and there were sturgeon and eel. And I was like, oh, my God, Grandpa was telling the truth. He did catch a fish this big, and there were eel. And I learned at that lecture that if we had not killed our river, El Paso would have been as wealthy as Houston. But instead of oil from fish, because those sturgeon were used for. Well, for food, but the eggs, their eggs were used for caviar, and those eel are used for sushi. They're a delicacy. And we didn't know as a society, we didn't know what we had, and we killed it. That's so sad.

[14:46] MIKE GAGLIO: It's kind of a bummer.

[14:47] RUBYANN GAGLIO: It is. It's a bummer.

[14:48] MIKE GAGLIO: It's funny, I remember stories from my grandparents, kind of the same thing about people drowning in the river. My stories come from a little bit of a different context, but, yeah, the stories about people being swept away in the whirlpools of the Rio Grande are definitely there. And then the tales of the river raft race from the seventies.

[15:11] RUBYANN GAGLIO: Oh, right, yeah, the river raft race.

[15:13] MIKE GAGLIO: And they had to, like, cut that out because people were getting hurt and whatever. And I think that, I mean, it's kind of my general opinion that people tend to screw things up themselves. It's not the river that screwed it up. It's the people that screwed up the way they were using the river.

[15:29] RUBYANN GAGLIO: Exactly. Yeah. Because we didn't know. We didn't. We didn't stop. Well, the people who built our city were not naturalists, obviously, because they didn't stop to observe and figure things out. They just acted.

[15:44] MIKE GAGLIO: You just touched on a really interesting point. The people that built our city weren't naturalists.

[15:50] RUBYANN GAGLIO: Yeah.

[15:51] MIKE GAGLIO: I think that we've got to make a mental note here. We're going to go back and explore that.

[15:56] RUBYANN GAGLIO: I think that's a great idea.

[16:00] MIKE GAGLIO: It is fascinating.

[16:00] RUBYANN GAGLIO: We have to keep digging.

[16:02] MIKE GAGLIO: We have to keep digging. And I bet somewhere along the way that there were people that knew the value of all of this stuff and that probably 100 years ago, there were folks like you in this town fighting for things like don't damn the river.

[16:18] RUBYANN GAGLIO: I hope so. I'm sure there were. But, you know, they weren't loud enough. It's not that they weren't loud. They didn't have enough support behind them would be the thing.

[16:28] MIKE GAGLIO: Maybe so.

[16:28] RUBYANN GAGLIO: Yeah. And that's why it's important on a daily basis to be involved in your.

[16:34] MIKE GAGLIO: Local government and your community.

[16:37] RUBYANN GAGLIO: And your community. Yeah. Yeah. I definitely believe that. Go to city council meetings, read the newspaper. Yeah, all that stuff.

[16:46] MIKE GAGLIO: Did your grandpa teach you that?

[16:48] RUBYANN GAGLIO: Well, yes and no. He read the newspaper every day and he watched the news like he was diligent about it. But he also felt that I as a child was innocent and didn't need to worry about grown up problems. So he he wanted me. He didn't want me to know things like. Yeah, he just didn't want me to know things that were sad or painful. He wanted to protect me from all of that. But he read the paper every day. I grew up watching him read the paper. And then as a little girl, you know, they send you to bed. Right. And I would, like. I was a night owl since I was a child, and I would wake up, and I would sneak out of my room and crawl behind the sofa and watch the news with them because they were watching the news, and I would watch the news, too. So, yeah, I think my interest in all things civic has started since I was very, very young. Young.

[17:50] MIKE GAGLIO: That's pretty fascinating.

[17:51] RUBYANN GAGLIO: Yeah.

[17:55] MIKE GAGLIO: My list of questions is a little bit out of order here, but that's okay.

[17:59] RUBYANN GAGLIO: It's just a conversation.

[18:01] MIKE GAGLIO: So. I have always admired you for the fact that you have such a strong moral compass. I think that I attribute a lot of the success of our relationship to that. You know, how is it that it comes so easily to you? I mean, we've been talking about these other things, and I think you've kind of touched on the answers of that a little bit. But how easy. How is it that that comes so easily to you?

[18:30] RUBYANN GAGLIO: Oh, man, this is gonna be. This is gonna be a little bit hard to talk about, I think, like, my decision making process, because, of course. Of course there's catholic school, and they scare you. God's watching everything you do. God's watching. So as a little kid, it's like, oh, my God, there's someone's watching. So that was hard. Or that was a fear that was put into me. But my grandparents also. I don't know, I guess they gave a good example, and I followed. And then there were people in my life who were the opposite of good. They were very bad, and I knew I did not want to be like them. So whatever they were, I needed to be the opposite of. So, like, you know, if they were drug addicts or alcoholics or cheaters or abusers, I just knew that's not what I wanted to be. I want it to be the opposite.

[19:42] MIKE GAGLIO: I guess maybe you were pretty fortunate in the sense that you maybe had a little bit of a shield from some of that negativity there, too. But you were allowed to see it, right?

[19:57] RUBYANN GAGLIO: Yeah.

[20:02] MIKE GAGLIO: Sorry. Well, that's. That's. That's really touching. Yeah. To be. To be good in spite of it is. Is really good. I've learned from you in that regard, too. Yeah. Like I said, I've always admired the way you do that, and it took me a long time to learn some of these things, but I really. Well, I guess I'll just take an opportunity real quick to thank you for having the patience to instill to me some of the things that you've known since you were young. So with that. So then, like, what was I. What's one of the most unexpected parts of your life?

[21:00] RUBYANN GAGLIO: Well, you. Yeah, I mean, my life. I never thought I would be married or have my own children. Yeah. I just. That was not in the plan. The plan was to be an actress, buy lots of land, have lots. Well, I wanted to adopt children, have nannies and a staff, of course, because, you know, I needed. Would have needed help, but. So, yeah, I wanted to have lots of children and then each child to have a pet. And so that would be part of my, like, the animal conservation or, like. Well, yeah.

[21:47] MIKE GAGLIO: Oh, yeah. Like, you wanted your own game preserve.

[21:49] RUBYANN GAGLIO: Yes, I wanted my own. So, like, kids didn't have to pick just a dog or a cat as a pet. They could have picked an elephant. This is, of course, just, you know, childish thinking or not, like, perfect world kind of thoughts, I guess. Big goals, because, yeah, I wanted every child to have something to love, and that would love them back 100%, but something. They also had to be responsible for something to teach them. So, yeah, I never plan. I don't know. In my view, I never plan on having a husband or a child of my own. So then when it was like, hey, we're pregnant, I was like, oh, my God. That wasn't in the plan, but okay, gotta restructure, revamp, and here we are. And I have still fulfilled almost every one of my dreams and goals, but instead of alone with you, so that's been really nice.

[22:43] MIKE GAGLIO: Well, thanks.

[22:44] RUBYANN GAGLIO: You're welcome. Thanks for coming on this journey with me. Yeah. Cause really, like, everything. Even having a nursery, having land to, like, well, not a lot of land, but, you know, a little plot of land to have my own garden. Because remember Grandpa had. Even though this was El Paso and people think, oh, you can't grow anything here. Grandpa grew up on a farm, and so in our backyard, we had plum trees, apple trees, pumpkins, our own tomatoes, chili, mint, everything. Like, we would go outside to pick food, and I always thought, oh, yeah, when I grow up, I'm gonna have a farm. So, yeah, like, this whole big picture thing was land with a farm, animals, children. And it might not be the way I imagined it, but all of those things are touched on in the way we've built our lives.

[23:41] MIKE GAGLIO: You've kind of got a little bit of each of those. Yeah. Our tomato patch kind of fizzled, didn't it?

[23:46] RUBYANN GAGLIO: Well, yeah, it's, it's a little fizzled right now, but we've got pecans and mints.

[23:51] MIKE GAGLIO: That's right. We got some other stuff. Well, you just kind of answered my, my other question here was, how has your life been different than you imagined? But, yeah, you talked about all that. Yeah, I would, I would agree with you if I can just reflect on my visions of what, what I thought things were going to be like. Yeah, it was kind of the same thing. I kind of knew that I was going to have kids and stuff one day, but it certainly wasn't in my plan to have kids as early as we did. And I always knew I wanted to be a biologist. I just didn't know that being a biologist would take the turn that it did and it would be implemented the way we are doing it. I was inspired by Jacques Cousteau, and I used to sit around with my grandpa watching Jacques Cousteau, and I thought that was really cool, all of that. And I always thought it was going to be out in the ocean, but, like, you fell in love with the desert, and I think that you and I have choosing to stay in El Paso together, you know, and really deepen our, I mean, our roots do go down deep already here, but we've really planted them in deeper because this place is beautiful.

[25:06] RUBYANN GAGLIO: It is. It's beautiful.

[25:08] MIKE GAGLIO: Yeah. And I think people ask us sometimes, why don't you guys go to, like, Austin or California? And I feel like, well, those places already have people fighting for them. El Paso needs a voice like yours to help people come to Keystone and see what is just so beautiful about a scrubby, bushy, desert wetland.

[25:34] RUBYANN GAGLIO: Right. Love it. It also instills personal pride. Like, you know, people say, oh, well, pals so proud. But really, what do you know? Like, what, what are you saying with that? Like, is it just an esoteric feeling or, like, a. Not esoteric. I'm an abstract. Is it an abstract feeling or. What are you proud of? Like, we have so much to be proud of. Our history. Our history as far as the native peoples who've been here, the mexican history, the american history, the plants. I always go back to the plants because I feel like, yes, water is life, but without plants, we don't have food. Food for animals, food for us, plants are medicine. There's so much here that we do have to be proud of. But we have to be taught that so that we recognize the beauty of this place and we can say with real pride, with real meaning behind it. Yes. El paso proud.

[26:42] MIKE GAGLIO: Woo hoo.

[26:43] RUBYANN GAGLIO: Woo hoo.

[26:46] MIKE GAGLIO: So if you could do. I'm going to change the question that I have.

[26:51] RUBYANN GAGLIO: Uh oh.

[26:54] MIKE GAGLIO: So if your grandpa would come back, what would you take him to see?

[27:01] RUBYANN GAGLIO: Oh, well, for sure. Keystone, our house, our little patch of land. Like, what would I take him to see in our own personal lives or all over the place?

[27:19] MIKE GAGLIO: What do you think he would say about. About your work at Keystone?

[27:22] RUBYANN GAGLIO: Oh, he would be proud. He would be happy and he would be proud. Mm hmm. He really would. He would like our lives a whole lot.

[27:34] MIKE GAGLIO: That's cool.

[27:35] RUBYANN GAGLIO: He would.

[27:36] MIKE GAGLIO: Yeah.

[27:38] RUBYANN GAGLIO: He's obviously the most important figure in my growing up.

[27:45] MIKE GAGLIO: I liked your grandpa.

[27:47] RUBYANN GAGLIO: He did. There's only one small incident, but that's okay. He was protecting his granddaughter that she loved more than anything.

[27:54] MIKE GAGLIO: We were young.

[27:55] RUBYANN GAGLIO: We were young, and it was one incident compared to, like, lots.

[28:06] MIKE GAGLIO: Gosh. Yeah. That's all my questions. I thought. I kind of thought we would talk a little bit more.

[28:11] RUBYANN GAGLIO: Well, that's okay. I mean, we. Yeah, well, yeah. Cause I think it's scary to get too personal also, because obviously, when you asked me a question, I was like, oh, no. Oh, no. Gotta stop right there. Take a break. I have to, you know, it's hard. It's hard to reveal like this. I do invite more people, like, to try this because all of us are important. We all. Every single person should be proud of their own lives and who they are. And we all have a story and we all have something to teach. Life is beautiful, and we should know each other culturally, spiritually. Like, we should just know about each other. And this is hard. And I know you tried, like, to ask me questions that were personal, and I stopped you. I didn't stop you, but I hesitated.

[29:14] MIKE GAGLIO: No, no. Actually, I want to say, too, like, the idea of being the. The idea of being a philanthropist doesn't just mean you write big fat checks to people.

[29:30] RUBYANN GAGLIO: Right?

[29:31] MIKE GAGLIO: And I think that's one of the things that you and I have learned in our journey because of our different backgrounds and our approach to looking at money and where we thought we were going with our lives when we were kids and stuff like that. And now we realize that, yeah, it's great to be Bill Gates and be able to write checks for tens of millions of dollars to fund some sort of research. It's also really, really great to be the person that does that. Research.

[30:08] RUBYANN GAGLIO: Exactly.

[30:09] MIKE GAGLIO: You don't have to make $50 million to enjoy living every day, doing the things that other people sort of vicariously wish they could do.

[30:22] RUBYANN GAGLIO: Right? We can all contribute in a small way, you know, grassroots. And I think that's, like, again, going back to Grandpa when he said, oh, we're poor, miha. Like, we can't be philanthropists. And I. Even though I wanted to be rich, like, I didn't know how I was going to get there, but I was like, I got to be rich if I'm going to do this. But then I realized, yeah, there are grassroots ways to do this. And I was doing those things even as a little girl, picking up cans, when people say they don't know about recycling. I remember recycling at six years old. We would take our cans to school for fundraisers. Like, come on, people, we've been doing this our whole lives. Don't act like it's new, you know, and that's philanthropy. We are all philanthropists if we want to be picking up trash when we see it, pulling weeds, that we don't. Well, I have an issue with the word weeds, you know, because a lot of weeds are actually.

[31:19] MIKE GAGLIO: Cause weeds are just misplaced wild plants.

[31:21] RUBYANN GAGLIO: Right, exactly. Exactly. But, yeah, there's things that we can all do that will help, you know, helping your old neighbor next door who can't feed themselves. Like, all of that matters.

[31:34] MIKE GAGLIO: Yeah. I also recalled the way you've taken these issues that are sensitive to you, that are evoking all kinds of emotion in you and stuff. These issues. You've also taken your work at Keystone to use that as a vehicle to support the support networks for people struggling with those types of issues, you know? And again, it's like, here we are. We have this park that we manage, and we get to be a part of every day, but we get to use that as this vehicle for doing social good on so many different levels. And. And I'm getting all choked up now, too. Cause it's really important. I would have never been able to do any of this without you. For sure.

[32:29] RUBYANN GAGLIO: That's how I feel. Well, I am grateful to have you by my side to do it. I feel that it's been easier to accomplish these goals because I have you to help me.

[32:42] MIKE GAGLIO: What's next?

[32:43] RUBYANN GAGLIO: What's next? Oh, my gosh. Um. I don't know. I mean, I just keep. I keep wanting to grow the park, grow the programs do. Oh, man. I really want to do is grow lots of native plants because we don't know all of the native plants. You know, people don't know and I really want to do that. Grow native plants.

[33:10] MIKE GAGLIO: Sounds like fun.

[33:11] RUBYANN GAGLIO: Save the bats. I want to save the bats and save the ocelots.

[33:17] MIKE GAGLIO: It'd be cool to have ocelots in the park. I don't know if that's ever going to happen.

[33:21] RUBYANN GAGLIO: No, we're not. We're not in their migration path. But they are down in Big Bend or they should be down in Big Bend.

[33:30] MIKE GAGLIO: How fun.

[33:32] RUBYANN GAGLIO: How fun, how fun.

[33:34] MIKE GAGLIO: Well, thank you for participating in this. This is fun.

[33:38] RUBYANN GAGLIO: Thank you for choosing to interview me.

[33:40] MIKE GAGLIO: Thank you for doing the work that you do at Keystone and as a master naturalist.

[33:44] RUBYANN GAGLIO: Thank you. Oh, I almost forgot. I did want to. You are a big part before we. You are a big part of me being at Keystone because I remember, I don't know if you remember when Sydney was little and how Marcus was our neighborhood. I didn't really know what Keystone was. I just knew that somebody that we admired was like, hey, I'm raising money to save this area. Do you want to come to this fundraiser? Do you want to help? And. Okay. Hal said, this is cool. Let's do it. Fast forward a few years and you're doing work there with Kevin. And I didn't really know much about that history of Keystone like that. It goes back 4500 years and the water, I didn't really grasp the magnitude of it until I started volunteering there. Because you were there and then freaking Kevin died.

[34:47] MIKE GAGLIO: Yeah, I know he died.

[34:49] RUBYANN GAGLIO: And it was like, who is going to take up this mantle and who's going to throw the cool equinox parties and the star parties? Who's going to keep that alive? And I don't know why that man touched my heart so much. I really don't, but he did. And I was like, we gotta keep it up. We gotta do it. So that's how we started, really was throwing the equinox parties and star parties and then. Yeah, just growing from there.

[35:20] MIKE GAGLIO: You're talking about Kevin von Finger.

[35:22] RUBYANN GAGLIO: Yes, Kevin von Finger.

[35:24] MIKE GAGLIO: He was a big hero of ours. He was kind of a pain in my butt for a little while, but then when we started working together at Keystone, he became a real hero of mine. He was always a hero. You know, he was the guy that always asked the hard questions and did some of the hard work and so.

[35:43] RUBYANN GAGLIO: Right. But then after that, well, and then.

[35:46] MIKE GAGLIO: And just when we got to start having the opportunity to work with him, he died.

[35:49] RUBYANN GAGLIO: Exactly. But, you know, it's what really pulled us in and then learning that there is even more people involved and how much we love and appreciate them, like Bernie and Melissa. Like there are so many people. I think that's why I like Keystone so much, because it truly is a grassroots thing. Like, we fought the railroad, nobody wins the rail against the railroad, but we won against the railroad to save that land. And that was important.

[36:20] MIKE GAGLIO: And there it is, right in the middle of the city. Great little open space nature preserve that's home to hundreds of species of migratory birds. Thousands of birds on any given winter day.

[36:31] RUBYANN GAGLIO: Yes. And yeah, who would have thought seagulls and pelicans would be in El Paso, Texas?

[36:37] MIKE GAGLIO: We see them all the time.

[36:38] RUBYANN GAGLIO: That's pretty cool.

[36:39] MIKE GAGLIO: Yeah. Well, cool. Well, thanks for all the work you do.

[36:44] RUBYANN GAGLIO: Thank you for coming on this journey with me. Sweetheart.

[36:47] MIKE GAGLIO: Sweetheart, I love you.

[36:48] RUBYANN GAGLIO: I love you too.

[36:49] MIKE GAGLIO: Right.

[36:50] RUBYANN GAGLIO: Ciao. Ciao.