Steven Perlman and Russell DuBois

[00:00] RUSSELL DUBOIS: Some technical difficulties. I was trying to get it on my laptop, but the video wouldn't start, so I'm doing it on my phone instead.

[00:12] STEVEN PERLMAN: Okay, no problem. How are you today?

[00:16] RUSSELL DUBOIS: Good. How are you doing?

[00:17] STEVEN PERLMAN: Good. Good. Where back East are you?

[00:22] RUSSELL DUBOIS: I'm sorry.

[00:23] STEVEN PERLMAN: Where back East are you?

[00:25] RUSSELL DUBOIS: Oh, I'm sorry. I'm in North Carolina. So it's 3:09 PM here.

[00:30] STEVEN PERLMAN: Ah, okay. My sister's in North Carolina, right outside Charlotte.

[00:38] RUSSELL DUBOIS: Okay.

[00:39] STEVEN PERLMAN: Yeah, she's been down there probably. I've been here, I don't know, maybe five years now.

[00:47] RUSSELL DUBOIS: Okay.

[00:48] STEVEN PERLMAN: From New York.

[00:50] RUSSELL DUBOIS: Okay. So I lived in New York State for, let's say, through my, during my high school years, like from age 10 to end of high school.

[00:59] STEVEN PERLMAN: Oh, where?

[01:00] RUSSELL DUBOIS: It's suburban New York, just north of Westchester County.

[01:04] STEVEN PERLMAN: Oh, I grew up in Westchester.

[01:06] SPEAKER C: Where?

[01:07] RUSSELL DUBOIS: Putnam Valley.

[01:08] STEVEN PERLMAN: Oh, okay.

[01:10] RUSSELL DUBOIS: You know where that is? Little, little town.

[01:12] SPEAKER C: Yeah.

[01:13] STEVEN PERLMAN: What town?

[01:14] SPEAKER C: Yeah.

[01:14] STEVEN PERLMAN: What town?

[01:16] RUSSELL DUBOIS: I'm sorry.

[01:17] STEVEN PERLMAN: What town?

[01:18] RUSSELL DUBOIS: Well, Putnam Valley was the town name.

[01:20] STEVEN PERLMAN: Oh, that was the town. Oh, okay. Yeah.

[01:23] RUSSELL DUBOIS: Little, small little town, a couple of lakes, a lot of summer people that would come up for the summer from New York City. Yeah, it was nice, nice place to live. But my parents were originally from California. So after high school, I moved back to live with my dad and go to college in the Bay Area.

[01:43] STEVEN PERLMAN: Oh, nice. I was actually just in Croton on Hudson this past weekend.

[01:49] RUSSELL DUBOIS: Okay. All right.

[01:50] SPEAKER C: Yeah. Yeah. Cool.

[01:52] STEVEN PERLMAN: So this is your first call?

[01:54] RUSSELL DUBOIS: Yeah, my first call. So I had to get the stuff out of the way with the video and everything.

[01:59] STEVEN PERLMAN: Right, right. I had one the other day was the first one, so it was good. It was interesting.

[02:05] SPEAKER C: Yeah. Yeah.

[02:06] RUSSELL DUBOIS: So are there some pro forma things we need to go through? Like, I saw something we're supposed to. Reach each other's profile and all that.

[02:14] STEVEN PERLMAN: Yeah. I mean, we didn't do that last time, but we're welcome to do it if you need.

[02:20] RUSSELL DUBOIS: Oh, I don't, I just thought we had to follow, you know, I'm fine with skipping that.

[02:25] SPEAKER C: Yeah. So.

[02:28] STEVEN PERLMAN: So you're retired now?

[02:30] RUSSELL DUBOIS: Yeah, I retired. I retired from working full time the beginning of 2022. I'm a retired architect. And I worked. I worked in a nearby town. I worked in Greensboro. I live in Winston-Salem. So Greensboro's like 30 minute commute away. But then, you know, I. I retired from working in the office full-time to working part-time from my home, which was so nice. I did that from the beginning of 2022 till just last fall, last November. Right.

[03:03] SPEAKER C: So.

[03:04] RUSSELL DUBOIS: That last couple of years, few years was really nice. What about you?

[03:08] STEVEN PERLMAN: Yeah, I retired about three and a half years ago now. And I was in technology, so I was working for my last job. I was working for Verizon. Managing one of their, I wasn't selling phones. I was managing one of their global relationships with Cisco, Cisco Systems. And it was nice. I was traveling. In my career, I've been traveling a lot and overseas, and I really enjoyed that. And then COVID hit, and all of a sudden I was homeward bound. I was thinking about retiring the year before I retired, but then they were paying me to sit home and talk on a computer. I said, I got nothing better to do. I might as well get paid for it.

[03:58] RUSSELL DUBOIS: Might as well get paid, yeah.

[04:00] STEVEN PERLMAN: So I was on the sales side, so sales, sales management, yeah, for my career. I started out in the clothing industry, but made a switch in early 90s, I guess, I started moving over to technology.

[04:19] RUSSELL DUBOIS: Okay. So when you say clothing, that could cover a lot of territory, what particular?

[04:26] STEVEN PERLMAN: So I sold men's and women's suits, sport coats, things like it, but I would sell to the stores. So it was.

[04:34] RUSSELL DUBOIS: Okay.

[04:36] SPEAKER C: Yeah. Yeah.

[04:38] STEVEN PERLMAN: So, yeah, it was fun for that. I traveled, new England. I lived in New York. I moved up to Connecticut, and then I was traveling all of New England for that. So I've been. I've been on the run for a long time. I've been settled for.

[04:53] RUSSELL DUBOIS: Sounds dramatic. One step ahead.

[04:58] STEVEN PERLMAN: One step ahead. You gotta do that. You gotta be one step ahead. But yeah, I enjoyed both things. The clothing was fun, but that industry was changing so much with imports coming in and department stores buying up the specialty stores and things like that. So I kind of started handwriting on the wall.

[05:21] SPEAKER C: And.

[05:23] STEVEN PERLMAN: I made a good bet on technology, so it worked out well.

[05:27] SPEAKER C: Yeah.

[05:27] RUSSELL DUBOIS: So what have you been doing since you retired?

[05:32] STEVEN PERLMAN: You know, trying to figure it out. So we moved out to California about 10 years ago. My daughter who lives about a half hour from us has three children. So 10, 8 and 6. So I spent a lot of time with them going to their games and going, you know, and supporting, you know, I mean, it's pretty much that it's trying to get on their schedule to spend time with them is, it was hard. I had to take them to Cape Cod to do that to get some face time with them.

[06:08] RUSSELL DUBOIS: No, so where you said they lived like 30 miles away. So I, I'm 30 minutes. 30 minutes? Yeah, 30 minutes. Yeah, I'm somewhat familiar with Southern California. Laguna Niguel, is that, that's near Irvine, right?

[06:21] STEVEN PERLMAN: So I'm about 20 minutes from Irvine further south. So I'm right on the, near the water. Laguna Beach is, you know, when people talk about OC and, you know, that, that's the next town. So, so I'm exactly halfway between LA and San Diego along the coast.

[06:43] RUSSELL DUBOIS: Wow. Okay.

[06:45] STEVEN PERLMAN: Yeah, it's not bad. And my daughter's just north of us in Newport Beach.

[06:53] RUSSELL DUBOIS: Okay.

[06:55] STEVEN PERLMAN: It's a nice easy ride up to see them. I describe it as close enough and far enough.

[07:05] SPEAKER C: Yeah.

[07:06] RUSSELL DUBOIS: I had a college friend, I went to UC Berkeley back in the mid 70s and I had a college friend that had grown up in Irvine and I went down and visited him a couple of times and one time he was house sitting, house sitting in a house right on the coast and it was near Costa Mesa. It was, gosh, probably back in those days, and this would have been early 80s, it was probably a multimillion dollar home then. So I shudder to think what it would go for now all this time later. But that was really nice. We had driven from, I think, at that point I was living in the Midwest in Iowa. And my wife and I drove out there and drove across Southern California, across Death Valley. Just knowing that, and it was, I think it was June or July, and just knowing that this evening, you know, our destination was going to be this house on the beach, and they're going to be, you know, sea breezes blowing in.

[08:13] SPEAKER C: Right.

[08:14] RUSSELL DUBOIS: It was so, so nice.

[08:16] SPEAKER C: Yeah. Yeah.

[08:17] STEVEN PERLMAN: It's really nice. It was interesting. Last night we were just watching some YouTube videos and One was 10 best things to do in Laguna Niguel. We've been here 10 years. I didn't know about that. But it was absolutely beautiful. Wow, I can't believe we live here. It's really nice. We like it. It's interesting. One of the reasons I signed up for this is, you know, talk about a wide variety of things. And I think based on where we, they had me a little too liberal on the ratings, but, you know, I think we share some of the same beliefs. But the people in my area, we live on a cul-de-sac, we have five families, one Christian, one I'm Jewish, Baptist next door to me, later day saints across the street from me. And we all get along. We all have different views and we can talk about anything. You know, it's just, it's really nice. And, you know, I look to talk to people, you know, that's somewhat different than me anyway.

[09:44] RUSSELL DUBOIS: Sounds like you've got a little one small step microcosm right there.

[09:50] STEVEN PERLMAN: Yeah, you know, actually, When COVID hit, we started this thing Saturday mornings, we'd go out, everyone bring their chairs, we'd sit 10 feet apart or six feet apart, whatever. And we'd have coffee and we just started a bowl for an hour and a half or so. So it was nice. We kept that up for a year until COVID kind of dissipated.

[10:14] RUSSELL DUBOIS: Yeah, that sounds nice.

[10:17] SPEAKER C: Yeah.

[10:19] RUSSELL DUBOIS: Yeah, I would say, you know, I live in a town that's got, well, Wake Forest University, and then it's got a fairly large medical center. So our town is pretty eclectic with people from lots of different, you know, it brings medical students from lots of different countries and regions of our country. So it's pretty metropolitan and cosmopolitan. But boy, if you go 30 miles in any direction, you are in North Carolina, you know? And it's like my wife and I, we noticed it way back in 2015, I think it was, or maybe 2016, it was before the election. And we went to a concert in some little town. And this was really weird because it was a black blues artist. A guy named Keb Mo. And, yeah, why, why he was performing in this little wide spot in the road in Western North Carolina, I don't know, but we got really good tickets. But on the drive there, we saw so many Trump signs and, and flags and stuff. And, you know, it's kind of like, man, we're not in Kansas anymore. This is really, really, it really brought her home. I mean, and, and I've known that. I've lived in in Winston Salem since 1990. So, you know, I knew that. I knew that, you know, we live in a little blue spot surrounded by a vast area of red, but I really am stroke, not struggling, but I feel like I want to learn how.

[11:52] SPEAKER C: To.

[11:54] RUSSELL DUBOIS: Talk happily and positively to people that I don't agree with politically, you know, and figure out what's the knack. I mean, and I sort of know, you know, you just talk about, you don't talk about politics and you just try to find topics that you agree on that are pretty innocuous. But I'm kind of also wanting to talk about politics and find some way to land on some things, you know, some common beliefs. I mean, you know, I, I would assume that, that most of the republicans, most people that don't vote the way I do are still patriotic Americans and we want, we kind of want the same common goals for the country. We just have different ways of wanting to get there.

[12:46] SPEAKER C: Right.

[12:46] STEVEN PERLMAN: Yeah, I agree with you. And so my microcosm is a little different than yours. So obviously California is very blue. Yeah. We kind of see that.

[13:00] RUSSELL DUBOIS: But you're in kind of a red part of it, aren't you? I mean, they didn't name it John Wayne Airport for nothing.

[13:08] STEVEN PERLMAN: Well, it's interesting because Orange County is becoming more blue, but not in my area.

[13:16] RUSSELL DUBOIS: Okay. Okay.

[13:18] STEVEN PERLMAN: In my daughter's town of Newport, COVID never happened. So, so, what do you mean by that? Well, in their belief. Nobody ever wore masks, nobody, you know. So it's interesting because, so just talking the topics of politics for a second. When I told you about our microcosm, we were able to talk religion, we were able to talk politics, we were able to talk everything. The end, we don't agree, we don't agree, but we just shook hands and continued our friendships. But what's really interesting about my family is my daughter is a practicing Christian. She's very religious. My son is a very liberal. I mean, they're like the two extremes, and I'm kind of, we're kind of in the middle. So it's interesting, the balancing act that we have to do to. And there were definitely some battles with my daughter.

[14:18] SPEAKER C: Yeah.

[14:19] STEVEN PERLMAN: We almost lost contact with her until I said, no, there's no way we we stop having a relationship because we disagree on something. But her, I don't talk politics with her.

[14:30] RUSSELL DUBOIS: That's got to be tough.

[14:32] STEVEN PERLMAN: It is, it is. We're getting to a point, we're at a point now that, you know, it's good, but again, there are topics we don't talk about.

[14:45] RUSSELL DUBOIS: Yeah, yeah. And your son, you said your son's liberal. Does he have a faith tradition that he follows?

[14:53] STEVEN PERLMAN: Not really. He's Jewish, but he's not. So my, he lives in Brooklyn. So, you know, so he supports this guy, Myambi, or whatever his name is. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, he supports him.

[15:10] RUSSELL DUBOIS: Wow, okay.

[15:11] STEVEN PERLMAN: So it's interesting.

[15:13] SPEAKER C: Yeah.

[15:15] RUSSELL DUBOIS: Well, my faith background is that I was raised Methodist. I refer to myself as a recovering Christian. I would say I was pretty devout. My stepfather was a Methodist minister and I really admired him. And I went to church and taught Sunday school and did all that stuff. Always had, I don't wanna say problems, but always a lot of disbelief and skepticism about all the miraculous stuff about Jesus. I think what I boiled down to now is like, I believe in all the teachings of Jesus, but I don't believe in any of the supernatural stuff. And I kind of feel like, you know, that was all things that they sort of tacked on in the 200, 300 years after he was crucified or died or whatever. You know, it's kind of like to proselytize and promote the religion and get believers. My wife, my second wife, is Jewish. And she comes from, she's originally from Fort Wayne, Indiana, and she has, let's see, two sisters and a brother, and the family is really tight knit, but all, almost every single one of her siblings and her nieces and nephews married Christians. So like, and they're all raising their kids in the Jewish faith. So it's just like, this is so cool, you know, it's like, no, but there's, there are, at least in Jenny's family and her, like, she has some, some of her cousins who are married to other Jews, but, you know, it's just like they're, they married Christians and her younger brother. So he married a Catholic woman, and when they, when she got pregnant with the first daughter, she said, Bill, We're gonna have to choose. We're either gonna raise them in the Jewish faith or in the Catholic faith. And she said, if it's gonna be Jewish, then you're gonna need to be involved. And he said, okay, let's raise them Catholic.

[17:18] STEVEN PERLMAN: I don't blame them, because they don't make it easy to convert to Judaism, I'll tell you that.

[17:22] SPEAKER C: Yeah.

[17:24] STEVEN PERLMAN: My first wife moved here from India when she was 16, and she was Christian. I'm Jewish, you know, we raised my daughter kind of both, but neither one of us were really practicing. It was after she got out of college, met her husband and her husband's family that she started her, Christianity. But, yeah, it's funny. It's funny. Yeah, a lot of my second wife is Jewish. Okay. I won't hold that against her, but no, it's, you know, I never dated Jewish women.

[17:59] RUSSELL DUBOIS: Okay. All right. Well, I mean, it's, it's, I don't know what your perspective is growing up. I mean, I assume you grew up in the Jewish faith here in, in, in New York, right?

[18:10] SPEAKER C: Yeah. Yeah.

[18:11] RUSSELL DUBOIS: But now in New York, in New York, I mean, you can't swing a cat without hitting somebody who's Jewish. But most other places in the, in the country, you know, you might struggle to find enough people to form a temple or, you know, at least get a dating pool, you know? I mean, that's my perception.

[18:28] STEVEN PERLMAN: Yeah, even by me now, it's, it's, I mean, there are areas of California that have a lot of Jews, but the, the town we built, we moved to doesn't.

[18:38] SPEAKER C: Yeah.

[18:40] STEVEN PERLMAN: I had a train of thought.

[18:42] SPEAKER C: I don't know.

[18:48] STEVEN PERLMAN: I don't remember. Okay. Hey, you get to be an RH man, you start losing it.

[18:55] SPEAKER C: Yeah.

[18:58] STEVEN PERLMAN: Yeah, my wife, Carly, now is Jewish, but she liked me, you know, not practicing.

[19:05] RUSSELL DUBOIS: Yeah, yeah. I would say my wife and her family, we get together for Hanukkah and Passover, and Hanukkah is especially very cool in her family because they always do it the Friday after Thanksgiving, you know, the actual date of Hanukkah. They all celebrate, you know, kind of like in their own family, but the family gets together. So we have Thanksgiving with all the Thanksgiving foods and traditions on Thursday. And then we do Hanukkah with all the Hanukkah foods on Friday. And then Jenny and I get up and drive back to North Carolina. I should say they live in Richmond, Virginia. So it's like a four hour drive. So we go up there, go up there Wednesday, have a couple of days where we eat and have fun. And it's so cool in her family because It's a large extended family with about 12 or 15 nieces and nephews. And they all pick up where they left off. Every time they see each other, they just stay in real good touch. Now, not sure many of them go to temple on a regular basis. I know Jenny and I don't. Jenny doesn't. We just do the holidays, mostly those main two. But it's just a very family oriented And now we're struggling with what's going on in Israel. You know, we're struggling with Netanyahu and the war and everything. And oh my gosh, I mean, here I am, I'm not even Jewish. And I can see what my wife's family is going through. It's like, you know, wait a minute, if we criticize the Israeli government, does that make us anti-Semitic? You know, does that make us, like, are we, Part of the problem are we pro-Palestinian if we say, I think that Israel may be on the wrong track here, you know, just so... Yeah.

[20:57] STEVEN PERLMAN: That'S a great topic, obviously, and.

[21:02] SPEAKER C: You.

[21:02] STEVEN PERLMAN: Know, a couple of things. One is some good friends of my daughter's and son-in-law are Palestinian.

[21:11] SPEAKER C: And.

[21:14] STEVEN PERLMAN: They'Re Christian, but they're Palestinian. And I see them at soccer matches all the time and things like that, and we get along great. So that's good, you know, there's no animosity, I believe, that way. I think Netanyahu is a monster. And I'm pro, I believe Israel has a right to exist. And they should be safe.

[21:40] SPEAKER C: Yeah.

[21:41] STEVEN PERLMAN: But I think what they're doing is wrong.

[21:43] SPEAKER C: Yeah.

[21:44] STEVEN PERLMAN: If they want to go after Hamas, they, they needed retribution for October 7th, but they're just indiscriminately killing people and taking over Gaza. It's, I think it's me personally, I think it's awful. And I think, and I, and If you take a look at what's happened in the last week with Ukraine, and if you take a look at what Netanyahu's doing, I think Trump has enabled both of them. Yeah, because Netanyahu's just indiscriminately going in. And if you take a look at his threats against Putin, I'm going to put sanctions on you, I'm going to do that. Days passed and Putin pretty much said, I don't care what you had, and yesterday was the biggest bombing event that they've had.

[22:45] RUSSELL DUBOIS: I think it's a really dire situation, as you mentioned, with Ukraine and Gaza and Trump, and who knows, a year from now we might be talking about China and Taiwan, who knows, but it's just like I can't believe that the President of the United States is emulating these these, you know, he's like a wannabe dictator in. Yeah, it just, boy, I think that this one small step program is is really important and would have been important even without Trump. But now I think we've kind of we're in a whole different territory, you know, and I don't even yeah, I don't I don't have a solution.

[23:25] STEVEN PERLMAN: Yeah, it doesn't sound like I'd be sitting in the White House, I guess.

[23:29] SPEAKER C: Yeah.

[23:31] STEVEN PERLMAN: You know, I mean, I look at these as if people are open, and I guess we agree on a lot, so it's not going to be contingent. If we're people are open to listen.

[23:43] SPEAKER C: Yeah.

[23:44] STEVEN PERLMAN: I don't expect to get on the phone with anyone, get on this with anyone and convert them, but just that they can understand different beliefs. And accept the fact that people have different beliefs.

[23:59] SPEAKER C: Yeah.

[24:00] STEVEN PERLMAN: You know, I don't know.

[24:02] RUSSELL DUBOIS: Yeah, I just heard on the radio on NPR, I was driving around today that now Trump is saying that he's going to, in addition to the kind of clamping down on what the Smithsonian museums can show, he's going to go after museums all over the country. And I just thought, well, of course he is, because he's going to try to do that. It's not legal, but I guess a lot of museums get some federal dollars. How many of them would have to close if they no longer take that money? I don't know, but my gosh, it just seems like it's a perfect storm. I was talking to my wife the other day. I said, if one or both of the houses of Congress were not in Republican hands, It would be a totally different matter if Mitch McConnell hadn't held up the confirmation of Merrick Garland to be a Supreme Court justice before, you know, when when Obama was still in office. We wouldn't have as much of a, you know, it's just all these these strange things kind of fell into place that have enabled Trump to just run roughshod over everything.

[25:13] STEVEN PERLMAN: And gosh, yeah, except I don't think they just fell into place. I think since New Gingrich in 1996, they've been working on this.

[25:23] RUSSELL DUBOIS: Yeah, that's true.

[25:26] STEVEN PERLMAN: That Project 2025, you know, it's the textbook. And the Democrats are just too concerned. I'm not a big fan of Gavin Newsom, but I like what he's doing. Someone has a set that is gonna, you know, that making fun of Trump, he's going after Trump. He's a great debater. He's very polished. I don't necessarily like all his policies and his taxations and things like that.

[25:57] SPEAKER C: But.

[25:59] STEVEN PERLMAN: You know, somebody got to do it.

[26:02] RUSSELL DUBOIS: Yeah, yeah. I think the Democrats, the whole party, the whole liberal community is sort of floundering. There's a lot of different opinions and voices and, suggestions as to what strategy, but it just, no one seems to be able to galvanize and lead the left anymore. And boy, I really kind of feel like there was a kind of failure in judgment. And like when Obama was in office and before that when Clinton was in office, it seems like the left wanted to I'm gonna mandate a lot of liberal positions without a lot of explanation or without a lot of marketing and promotion to say, this is why this is a good idea and this is why we're doing this. This aligns with our Judeo-Christian heritage. And it's like, I mean, not to be too pat or to use a cliche or anything, but sometimes I feel like instead of calling it Dei hark back to WWJD, you know, like what would Jesus do? Jesus would have been diverse and it would have included people. And, you know, it's like, how conservative Republicans now, maybe your daughter, maybe it would be interesting to have a conversation with her. It's like, okay, well, if you're a Christian and you say you espouse the teachings of Jesus, Well, how can you, you know, it just doesn't seem very, very Christian to me. Some of the policies, not just of Trump, but some conservative policies, like, you know, expelling immigrants and, or at the very least, not being kind to people that have come to this country in search of a better life.

[27:56] SPEAKER C: Yeah.

[27:56] STEVEN PERLMAN: I mean, you know, Obviously, being in Southern California, I deal with a lot of Mexicans.

[28:03] SPEAKER C: Yeah.

[28:04] STEVEN PERLMAN: You know, the woman that's cleaning my house right now, my landscaper. But workers that I've had at the house, but just people in general, you're dealing with.

[28:17] SPEAKER C: Yeah.

[28:17] RUSSELL DUBOIS: And I get that Southern California, you know, has a lot of being close to Mexico. But in North Carolina, you can't, I mean, if you look at any construction crew, they're half Hispanic and Puerto Rico. Yeah, the best, the best, probably the best career path for anybody that wants to get in construction management. Hey, learn Spanish because most of your workers are Spanish speakers. And I know it's the same in the Midwest. A lot of the people that work in the beef packing and pork packing industry, you know, it's just like, jobs that white people don't want to do anymore.

[28:57] SPEAKER C: Yeah.

[28:57] STEVEN PERLMAN: Well, but what I was going to say is that these people are wonderful. They're hard workers.

[29:04] SPEAKER C: Yeah.

[29:04] STEVEN PERLMAN: They're nice.

[29:06] RUSSELL DUBOIS: They're family values.

[29:08] STEVEN PERLMAN: Family values have met the kids. The kids are nice.

[29:11] SPEAKER C: I mean.

[29:13] STEVEN PERLMAN: And they all believe the same thing. If they break the law, throw them out.

[29:19] SPEAKER C: Yeah. Yeah.

[29:20] STEVEN PERLMAN: You know, they don't want that any more than we want that. They're good people that, you know, that take care of it and pay taxes and are members of the community and so forth. And I like what Trump did at the border, that he shut down the border. I mean, I agree with that. It's what he's doing with the immigrants here that I I even participated in the no Kings March and the other march that they had also here.

[29:55] RUSSELL DUBOIS: Okay. Yeah, I have to kind of grudgingly agree about the border. I mean, I used to be kind of like, well, let it, you know, what is it? A wide gate, a wide gate, but a high fence. I can't remember what that somebody used that term. It's like, yeah, let's let people in. We want these people to get jobs. And contribute to Social Security and pay for our retirement when keep the Social Security coffers full. But yeah, there needs to be a better system to let those people in and to keep out the bad actors that we don't want to come in. And I feel like that's where I feel like the liberals kind of like they drop the ball in not either not explaining it or not keeping their eye on abuses. But it's like, I think they just were very presumptuous that, well, everyone's going to agree with us because.

[30:55] STEVEN PERLMAN: We'Re the.

[30:55] RUSSELL DUBOIS: Best, we're the smartest, we're nice people, so everyone should agree with the liberal policies. And all this time it was just creating this backlash.

[31:06] STEVEN PERLMAN: I mean, if Biden would have shut the borders like he did, In his fourth year, if he would have done it in the first or second year, it would have been very different.

[31:15] SPEAKER C: Yeah.

[31:16] STEVEN PERLMAN: But he was afraid of the liberals. So, you know. That's the Democrat. First of all, I hate Schumer. He's a, what a waste. They got to get rid of him. And he's just a waste. But the Democrats, Don't speak with one voice.

[31:38] SPEAKER C: Right.

[31:38] STEVEN PERLMAN: The Republicans, even if they don't want to, they speak with one voice.

[31:43] SPEAKER C: Yeah.

[31:45] RUSSELL DUBOIS: And they've been playing the long game for what, 30, 40 years?

[31:50] SPEAKER C: Yeah. Yeah.

[31:52] RUSSELL DUBOIS: And as much as I, I have to admire their single-mindedness. I don't really think much of their tactics. Like for instance, in our state of North Carolina, They're gerrymandering crazy, just like they are trying to do in Texas. I mean, North Carolina, back before I lived here, back, you know, before the 70s and 60s, it was, I mean, if you were Republican, you were like a minority. Everyone was Democratic. Now they were racist as hell, but they were strong, were all these Democrats. And Republicans now say that the Democrats, when they were in power, They were just as heartless and just as ruthless and did the same kind of terrible things as the Republicans are doing now. So they're saying, you know, it's really just payback.

[32:41] STEVEN PERLMAN: You think a Democrat could win with Tillis stepping aside?

[32:46] RUSSELL DUBOIS: Yeah, because our former governor, who is a moderate, Roy Cooper, yeah, he could win, right? Yeah, I think it might be close, but I think he's, He's definitely got more name recognition than the leading Republican guy, Michael Watley, who is, I'm not even sure what his background is, but he got in with, I think, the Republican National Committee. I think he was the leader of that.

[33:12] STEVEN PERLMAN: Is he a magnet guy?

[33:15] RUSSELL DUBOIS: Is he what?

[33:16] STEVEN PERLMAN: A magnet, a Trump guy?

[33:17] RUSSELL DUBOIS: Yeah, yeah, he definitely is. I think Trump either supported him or appointed him previously. So yeah, he's definitely MAGA. And Roy Cooper is, he's not a flaming liberal, but he's just, you know, he's just kind of reliable. He's not flashy. He's not, you're, he's not great at sound bites. He's, he's kind of the anti Gavin Newsom, I would say. He's not glamorous and slick, but he was, he was the attorney general before he was the governor. So, you know, he kind of came up that route. So, yeah, hopefully that'll, I don't know.

[33:51] STEVEN PERLMAN: I don't know if flashy sells in North Carolina.

[33:54] SPEAKER C: Yeah.

[33:55] RUSSELL DUBOIS: Well, we had John Edwards, if you remember him.

[33:58] STEVEN PERLMAN: Oh, yeah.

[34:00] SPEAKER C: Yeah.

[34:01] STEVEN PERLMAN: I remember he got a rice also.

[34:03] SPEAKER C: Yeah.

[34:04] RUSSELL DUBOIS: Flashy sold until it didn't, you know.

[34:07] STEVEN PERLMAN: Right, right, right. So how old are your grandkids?

[34:17] RUSSELL DUBOIS: So I've got Three with a, I mean, two with a third on the way. And the oldest is three years old. The second is about a year and a half, a little bit older than that. And the third is another boy. And he's about, he's about three weeks away. Due date is September 10th. And my, my son and his wife, she comes from a family where she was the oldest, and then she had three younger brothers, so they had three boys. After one girl. So we're all kind of sitting around debating, like, are they going to try for a girl for number one and, you know, roll the dice there. And, and, and if they don't get a girl, they end up with four boys under the age of, you know, four or five years old.

[35:01] STEVEN PERLMAN: Yeah, I have, I have the two oldest, the granddaughter is 10 and eight, and the, the youngest is a boy, six. What a difference in raising a boy and raising girls. Yeah, yeah.

[35:19] RUSSELL DUBOIS: So tell me about the three of them. What are they interested in? Like you said, you try to spend a lot of time with them. What's a typical, you know, visit with the three of them?

[35:28] STEVEN PERLMAN: Well, let's see. So Ava, who's the oldest, she's very big into soccer. She's Out here, what they do, everyone does it. It's amazing. You get each beach, each town does this. It's called Junior Lifeguards. So during the summer, there's a seven-week, four-day-a-week, three-hour-a-day training program on the beach. So they're running on the beach, they're calisthenics, they're in the ocean, they're in, you know, and so, The last thing they do, the last thing, you gotta imagine a thousand kids doing this. They run up the beach for a mile and then they swim back for a mile.

[36:16] RUSSELL DUBOIS: Wow. So I never heard of that.

[36:19] STEVEN PERLMAN: Yeah, it's great. Each town does different things, but that's what they do here. So it's crazy, but it's a thousand kids in Newport, Dana Point, Laguna Niguel, they all do it. And it's great because they can go to the beach and you don't have to worry about them.

[36:37] SPEAKER C: Yeah.

[36:38] STEVEN PERLMAN: You know, so it's good for that.

[36:40] RUSSELL DUBOIS: How many adults are supervising all these?

[36:44] STEVEN PERLMAN: They have lifeguards all over them. I mean, they don't all check it at one time, but, you know, they have different segments.

[36:51] RUSSELL DUBOIS: Oh, okay. Okay.

[36:53] STEVEN PERLMAN: Yeah.

[36:53] RUSSELL DUBOIS: Just imagining a thousand people out there swimming.

[36:56] STEVEN PERLMAN: No, no, no. On that swim day, there was the last day, that's a thousand. People. That's a thousand kids. But they have lifeguards sitting on, you know, sitting in the ocean on boards. They have boats all over. They're very well taken care of. They want these lifeguards, you know.

[37:13] RUSSELL DUBOIS: That is so cool.

[37:15] SPEAKER C: Yeah. Yeah.

[37:16] STEVEN PERLMAN: So that's really cool.

[37:18] SPEAKER C: Yeah.

[37:18] STEVEN PERLMAN: So that's over now with soccer. Soccer, which goes through the summer, now heats up. And we got two games. She has three games this weekend. I'll make two of them, you know?

[37:29] RUSSELL DUBOIS: Okay.

[37:30] STEVEN PERLMAN: It's so much fun to watch. And, you know, what's nice is the parents are civil and nice and, you know, play my. No, play my kid more, you know?

[37:42] SPEAKER C: No. Yeah.

[37:44] STEVEN PERLMAN: Screaming or, you know, everyone's there to have a good time and very supportive of the kids, win or lose. And it's. It's really a nice.

[37:52] RUSSELL DUBOIS: Yeah, that's nice.

[37:53] SPEAKER C: Yeah.

[37:54] STEVEN PERLMAN: So she's, it's athletics and she's going into fifth grade now. You know, that's basically her moment, main focus now. My middle one is the smart one in the family. So she does a lot of, she's doing the piano and she's playing tennis, but she's an avid reader.

[38:17] RUSSELL DUBOIS: Okay.

[38:17] STEVEN PERLMAN: So I had just gotten her a book on how to write a story. So it takes you through the steps of, you know, creating the main character and, you know, step by step so she can start learning the process of how to write. And the boy is just a lunatic, very well behaved. We're very happy. I mean, we had them all with us on the Cape. And he's really come a long way in this last year as far as, you know, being civil, but he's a good athlete. He's like dirt biking and driving, anything that has to do with transportation.

[39:08] RUSSELL DUBOIS: Okay.

[39:11] STEVEN PERLMAN: So as well as soccer, and he's actually starting flag football this year.

[39:17] RUSSELL DUBOIS: Okay. All right. Man, it sounds like they really kind of run the gamut. Like, one oldest is active and the younger, the middle one is more of an academic. And then you got your hands full with the boy. I mean, it just sounds like it's never going to be boring.

[39:33] STEVEN PERLMAN: It's never going to be boring with them, I can tell you that.

[39:37] SPEAKER C: Yeah. Yeah.

[39:38] RUSSELL DUBOIS: My grandkids are not really very well formed yet. You know, the oldest is just, you know, he's, he's, you know, just peeing in the toilet now for the first time. And, you know, and you can just not quite, they're almost carry on a conversation with them. You can understand them and stuff, but it's just like he still needs a few more months or a year to really kind of become a understandable human being, you know, where you can carry on a conversation. And then the one that's a year and a half old, he's still in diapers and stuff. So, you know, it's, it's. So, so fun to, to see him at that so, so young. But I, I can't wait for him to, to get a little bit older.

[40:21] SPEAKER C: Yeah.

[40:22] STEVEN PERLMAN: The, the, the, really, the one thing I've learned out of all this is it's so much better being a grandparent than a parent.

[40:29] RUSSELL DUBOIS: Oh, yeah.

[40:32] SPEAKER C: Yeah.

[40:32] RUSSELL DUBOIS: Well, in, in terms of, of kids and, like, in the age 10 and above, I, I tutor a couple of little kids here that I started doing when I was first retired, a couple of little black boys that live on the other side of town. And I started out with the one when he was in first grade as a reading tutor. But after like the first or second lesson, I could tell he read fine. He had ADHD. Anyway, long story less long. They are now 10 and 12, and we don't have a lot in common economically, But it's just fun to be around these kids and hopefully mentor them and expose them to stuff that, because they come from very, you know, low resources, the single mom and the blue collar job. So it's interesting to be able to take them to museums and other events and things. It's sort of a reverse racist little strategy that I have. So I'm trying to get them comfortable being around white people and being around, well, wealthy people, you know, people that have money and know how to, you know, go to a nice restaurant or go to a Symphony concert and feel, feel like you belong. Not like this is, this is such a strange world.

[41:58] STEVEN PERLMAN: So that's fantastic. I really always threatened to do that, and I I just haven't done it yet. I think it's, you know, some sort of mentoring.

[42:07] RUSSELL DUBOIS: I think it's fantastic.

[42:09] SPEAKER C: Yeah. Yeah.

[42:10] RUSSELL DUBOIS: It's really gratifying, you know, I don't feel like I, when you mentioned so much better being a grandparent than a parent, you know, like I, with these two boys, you know, I definitely follow whatever, you know, I consult with the mom all the time, but it's like, I don't have to discipline them. I don't have to, all I have to do is, you know, like take them to lunch and we do fun stuff. And I'm sure with my grandkids, it'll be the same thing. Just be good to them and show them a lot of love and what could go wrong, right?

[42:39] STEVEN PERLMAN: Yeah, that's fantastic. So, what your career as an architect was it residential? What was your main focus?

[42:51] RUSSELL DUBOIS: It was mostly healthcare. When I started out my career, I worked for a large architectural engineering firm in the Midwest that had hospital clients all over the country. And long story less long, I got hooked up with this medical center here in Winston-Salem. And in 1990, the architectural firm had, we were so busy with this one client that we're sending so many people here that were traveling back and forth to Winston-Salem that the hospital finally said, you're killing us with all these reimbursable expenses. Send a small team of people to live here for two or three years. We will pay your rent and all that, and it'll still be cheaper than the airfare and the car rental and the hotels and the restaurants. So myself and two other guys came and I stayed and I switched over to working at the hospital after a couple of years. So I was there from 1990 to 2012 and then it got laid off. The last few years of my career, so yeah, so it's mostly healthcare and renovations in this big medical center. The last several years, I was working for a large developer here over in the Greensboro area who made a lot of his money on apartments around the southeast. But the last couple of years, he's got oodles of money and he purchased like, I think it was an old farm 3,000 acres of land outside of the town. And he's kind of creating a venue like a equestrian center. Oh, that's a place to come get married. So every couple of weeks, he'd email me, and this is here, I'm sitting here at home, you know, just working part time from home. And he said, Hey, I want to build a, you know, here's a, here's an idea for a little gymnasium, you know, for a little fitness center for the farm. So a lot of my time in the last year or so, was just doing these kind of one-off projects that were really fun. They were easy to do and interesting.

[44:58] STEVEN PERLMAN: That's cool. Well, I got like five minutes.

[45:01] SPEAKER C: Yeah. Yeah.

[45:03] STEVEN PERLMAN: You know, people said to me, why don't you go on a board or get involved? You know, technology has changed so much in the last three years that I don't even know how to spell AI. I mean, it's absolutely crazy. But yeah, so things have changed a lot in my industry. Well, AI must affect your industry also as an architect, right?

[45:31] SPEAKER C: Yeah. Yeah.

[45:32] STEVEN PERLMAN: Define it, design a gym for me. There you go.

[45:35] RUSSELL DUBOIS: Yeah.

[45:36] SPEAKER C: Yeah.

[45:36] RUSSELL DUBOIS: Well, I mean, yeah, the little projects that I worked on were kind of unique. But thinking about, like when I started, when I was in school, Architects all drew by hand. We used T-squares and stuff. And then computers came in and computer aided design. So it's been computerized for the last 30 or 40 years. So AI, I have no doubt that it's kind of like, I am so glad I retired when I did, because 20 years from now, I think humans, all humans are going to do is program the computers and sort of facilitate the AI. There's really not a lot that requires, it's not like painting or composing or performing music. Well, gosh, it just seems like any example you come up with, you can figure a way for AI to take it over.

[46:31] STEVEN PERLMAN: Yeah.

[46:31] SPEAKER C: Yeah.

[46:32] STEVEN PERLMAN: And they'll come, the AI, the computers will program the computers.

[46:37] SPEAKER C: Yeah. Yeah.

[46:38] STEVEN PERLMAN: So one of my favorite college favorite professional basketball players went to Winston-Salem.

[46:45] SPEAKER C: Oh, really?

[46:46] STEVEN PERLMAN: Earl the Pearl Monroe.

[46:48] RUSSELL DUBOIS: Earl the Pearl. Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I was gonna say that's the guy that stands out. And I remember, you know, when I was living in New York, he was playing for the Knicks in the late 60s and early 70s. And at that point, I'd never heard of Winston-Salem State. And if you told me, hey, you're gonna spend, you know, over half your.

[47:07] STEVEN PERLMAN: Life living in that town, I would have said, You're crazy. That's funny.

[47:10] RUSSELL DUBOIS: But yeah, yeah, he's quite a guy. And the coach, the coach at Winston-Salem State was kind of a legend too. His name was Big House Gaines.

[47:19] STEVEN PERLMAN: Oh, I passed away.

[47:21] RUSSELL DUBOIS: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[47:23] STEVEN PERLMAN: Is that a- Where'd you go to school? I went to the University of Bridgeport in Bridgeport, Connecticut.

[47:31] RUSSELL DUBOIS: Yeah, okay.

[47:33] SPEAKER C: Yeah.

[47:34] STEVEN PERLMAN: Is what's the sale in the Black College?

[47:42] SPEAKER C: Yeah. Yeah.

[47:43] RUSSELL DUBOIS: It's got. And then, you know, there's like these, these legendary things of back in the 60s before integration, where Wake Forest, which was part of the ACC, they would scrimmage with, with Winston Salem State, but they, they had to do it, you know, they, they. They couldn't tell anybody, right? Because it would have been scandalous to know that, hey, your black team was playing against our white team. But yeah, they just wanted to play good basketball. And they, the Wake Forest players and the team, they knew that they could, you know, get a good game. They just couldn't be open about it. So, yeah, very, very interesting living in this part of the country with slavery and the whole racism thing. Yeah, that's probably another hour conversation we can have.

[48:28] STEVEN PERLMAN: I thought there's no such thing as slavery, isn't that what Trump says?

[48:32] RUSSELL DUBOIS: Yeah, yeah, they're trying to make it sound so bad.

[48:35] STEVEN PERLMAN: That was a good thing. Yeah, yeah. With full employment, all sorts of things.

[48:41] RUSSELL DUBOIS: I guess you could call it that.

[48:45] STEVEN PERLMAN: Anyway, well, this has been fun. I've enjoyed this Russell: yeah, yeah.

[48:49] RUSSELL DUBOIS: So what do you suppose is the protocol here with these one small step calls? Do we ever talk to each other again?

[48:56] STEVEN PERLMAN: I don't think so. I don't know. Well, I guess it was. I don't know how you connect. We didn't exchange anything. If you could still. I should look to see if you can still message people, but, yeah, you know, I think it's supposed to be, at least from their perspective, a one and done. I guess, you know, we're big boys, so we could do what we want.

[49:18] RUSSELL DUBOIS: We can figure it out.

[49:19] SPEAKER C: Yeah.

[49:20] RUSSELL DUBOIS: Well, if we don't talk against. Stephen, it was great talking to you this afternoon. I feel like my one small step career is off to a good start.

[49:27] STEVEN PERLMAN: Good. Yeah, me too. I enjoyed it. It was good. I've had two good experiences. I actually got one more lined up for next week.

[49:35] SPEAKER C: So.

[49:37] STEVEN PERLMAN: I wanted to get two more invites that came through. So I wanted to get these two done first and see if I wanted to continue it. But both Both have been very good. I really enjoyed this Russell.

[49:50] RUSSELL DUBOIS: Well good. Here's to a better future.

[49:53] STEVEN PERLMAN: Yeah, I'll drink to that.

[49:55] RUSSELL DUBOIS: All right. Good talking to you.

[49:56] STEVEN PERLMAN: Good talking to you.

[49:57] SPEAKER C: Bye.

[49:58] STEVEN PERLMAN: Bye.