Ken Soleyn and Jessica Pokharel

[00:00] JESSICA POKHAREL: I'm Jessica.

[00:01] KEN SOLEYN: And I think the procedure is we would read each other's bios.

[00:07] JESSICA POKHAREL: Yes.

[00:09] KEN SOLEYN: I can go first if you'd like. Okay. Jessica, Saline, Michigan. I was raised Christian in rural Tennessee, the oldest of two kids. At this point, I live in Michigan. And I'm in an interracial, interreligious marriage. I spent most of my career working at education based nonprofits. I have a son and a daughter on the way. My brother passed away 13 years ago.

[00:41] JESSICA POKHAREL: That's it. All right. And so you are Ken in Londonderry, New Hampshire. You were born in St. Vincent, a small island in the Caribbean. My mom belonged to a farming family and my dad was a carpenter. We immigrated to the USA when I was two years old. I went to school from K through 12 in Brooklyn, New York. We lived in one of the poorest sections of Brooklyn, the so-called ghetto. I loved education and going to the library. Like many, I am frustrated with the government. I figure, why complain? Do something. I only want to do nonviolent peaceful actions.

[01:22] KEN SOLEYN: Okay, well, there's the conversation guidance. Why did you want to do this interview today?

[01:31] JESSICA POKHAREL: Yeah, I mean, it seems like the political divide is making it hard for the country to make any progress in any direction. So any small steps we can take to build Understanding with people who have different opinions seems like it'd be a valuable use of time. What about you?

[01:54] KEN SOLEYN: Well, I enjoy dialogue. I spent most of my career working for GE, General Electric, and it afforded me the opportunity to travel around the world and all across the US. I've been to every state except Hawaii.

[02:11] JESSICA POKHAREL: Oh, cool.

[02:12] KEN SOLEYN: And, you know, some of it was, well, most of it was business, but in even like dealing with business people from all over the world, you know, let's say Japan, I've been there. Now I'm retired and, you know, I like to do hiking and snowshoeing in the winter. I live in New Hampshire. With retirement, you get extra time and I figured let's wanted to put some of that time to use. So I've been doing some work just in the Londonderry caucus and the Sierra Club, Londonderry is the town I live in. So it's quite interesting and like I said, having dialogue and understanding the other one's person's point of view, I think goes a long way in getting understanding. And also it's profitable to do business. You have to make alliances. You have to, even if you run a small, let's say, coffee shop, you know, you've got to go, you want to get to know your customers and you want them to have a good product and you take pride in that. And that's where what America is all about to me.

[03:31] JESSICA POKHAREL: Well said. I am, I was a little interested to see on the site, I was looking for somebody with very different views than mine. You seem to have a bit different views, but I couldn't find anybody who was voting really conservative. I don't know if you had that experience when you were looking around.

[03:55] KEN SOLEYN: Well, I would say I have a lot of friends and business acquaintances who are on that side of the fence. And my ongoing joke with them is I say, well, hey, you can be a card carrying MAGA if you want, but if you go into the ballot box, it's a secret ballot. So nobody has to know who you actually vote for, and that's a protection. you know, within the, the framework of voting, it protects the voter from repercussions. You don't have to tell anyone who you vote for. It's secret ballot. So that's, that's one of my ongoing jokes with them. And we can have a cup of coffee or a drink or something, and, you know, have that debate. I, I think lately, though, it's become very polarized. and a lot of that comes with, you know, the Trump administration and the fact that they've gone to this other level of demeaning people, insulting people and so forth. So that, you know, I never thought I'd say it, but, you know, like if you even compare it to, let's say, George Bush II, at least the man was civil.

[05:12] SPEAKER C: Right.

[05:12] KEN SOLEYN: And you had respect for people like McCain.

[05:15] JESSICA POKHAREL: Of course, yeah.

[05:16] KEN SOLEYN: And you know, they're pretty, you know, conservative, but yet a bit more progressive, you know. So anyway, so that's what I do currently. I do a bit of volunteer work and just advocating. I've gone up to our state.

[05:39] SPEAKER C: House.

[05:39] KEN SOLEYN: To testify because My background is in engineering with respect to instrumentation and controls. So like I've been inside of, you know, very industrial facilities, oil refineries, pharmaceutical facilities. So I would say it was a very good career and that I did get a very good worldly view. But the unglamorous side of it, you know, it was a very a lot of travel, you spend a lot of time in the airports and maybe away from your family.

[06:18] SPEAKER C: So.

[06:20] KEN SOLEYN: You know, that sort of adventure is out there in America, which you can get that also, you also have to kind of pay a price for that. You know, everything, everything has a cost.

[06:30] JESSICA POKHAREL: That sounds a bit like my dad's career. He was usually a manufacturing plant manager in various sectors, sometimes Automotive, sometimes appliances, but he was traveling all the time, nationally and internationally. Somehow he's still a Republican. I don't know.

[06:56] SPEAKER C: Yeah.

[06:57] KEN SOLEYN: Well, it's what it's not so much Republican, it's where it's become okay to not play by the rules or break.

[07:07] JESSICA POKHAREL: The law, you know, that's, that's fair.

[07:10] KEN SOLEYN: Or accept money, you know.

[07:13] JESSICA POKHAREL: If we went back to George W. Bush with that example, I would not be so concerned. I would think there probably was, there.

[07:21] KEN SOLEYN: Is that going on behind the scenes, but at least it was a civil affair and, and even bipartisan. If you want to, if you want to progress, you have to have bipartisan. agreements, you know, or nothing's gonna progress. You, you end up, like, with the state legislature in Texas, you know, where it's at some kind of loggerheads or, you know, what is that? What these are the people we're voting in to kind of just go in there and so I don't, I don't know.

[07:58] JESSICA POKHAREL: I mean, these are. Can I ask you some questions about your background?

[08:02] KEN SOLEYN: Sure.

[08:04] JESSICA POKHAREL: I would love, like, there were three things I think your story is related to. I'm interested in your Second Amendment and gun control thoughts, your free speech and immigration.

[08:17] KEN SOLEYN: Yeah, on gun control, I don't feel like a civilized country needs people running around with guns, carrying guns.

[08:31] SPEAKER C: Why?

[08:32] JESSICA POKHAREL: Clapping for you.

[08:33] KEN SOLEYN: You know why? I mean, I hike, I walk on the trails. You know, sometimes someone passes me and we say good morning, hello, smile at each other. Everyone's enjoying himself. I carry a little first aid kit. If I saw someone in distress, I'd certainly go out and help them. I grew up in an era, you know, I grew up as a kid in the 60s in Brooklyn, and we were taught to be polite and, you know, hold the door for someone and how to answer the phone politely, respect our teachers and elders, respect the police. There's no question if a cop told you something, and this is in Brooklyn, and, you know, like, I remember one time I was drinking beer with, I was a teenager drinking beer with my pals in a schoolyard. And, you know, back then you could just go down to the corner store and get a six-pack of beer. And that's for my dad, you know? Right. You know, so, and a cop, two cops pull in and the younger guy goes, you guys are drinking beer, you're underage. And the older one goes, hey, these boys are all right. They live in the neighborhood. because they just knew we were neighborhood kids. And he said, do me a favor, kids. Guys, don't break any glass. If I, if I see any glass, I know where you live. You know, make sure that you dispose of those. And, and because he knew it was kind of like, hey, you're a teenager growing up in Brooklyn, and, you know, it's like a right passage, you know?

[10:16] JESSICA POKHAREL: Yeah, there was, it sounds like there was more of a sense of community and. It's funny hearing that from somebody who was living in New York as a kid because...

[10:28] KEN SOLEYN: There were two facets. I lived in the ghetto in an area called Brownsville, Brooklyn. It was predominantly black and Hispanic. And I went up to middle school.

[10:42] SPEAKER C: And.

[10:44] KEN SOLEYN: There was a big difference between the quality of education. In 1968, my family moved to a predominantly white neighborhood. We were only like one of three families of color. Our origin is Indian from India, but my great-grandparents migrated to the Caribbean to work in the sugar business, cutting sugar cane. You know, so my dad and mom only had, my dad had a sixth grade education, my mom had a fifth. And anyway, there was a big difference living in the two neighborhoods. New York, even being as metropolitan as it was, there was like de facto segregation. In the South, it was segregation by law.

[11:41] JESSICA POKHAREL: Right. It was very open and yeah, yeah.

[11:44] KEN SOLEYN: And you know, there were always like progressive people, you know, our teachers, a lot of them were white and we had a lot of different ethnicities. And as long as you were polite and you, you know, you went about your business and our business as kids was to have fun on the streets.

[12:03] SPEAKER C: And.

[12:05] KEN SOLEYN: Study and, you know, try to get an education. My parents really stressed it. sort of like education was going to be the passport. But we, well, I guess the question with gun violence, you know, my mom was actually shot in a robbery attempt. She almost lost her life. And, you know, I can remember, like, having the anger, but we were also brought up in, you know, Christian in the Methodist Church. And I actually taught Sunday school for a bit as well. So I think faith and the kind of the community that you build through a church, whether you believe in.

[12:53] SPEAKER C: All.

[12:53] KEN SOLEYN: Of the tenants, but at least it's building a community and a fellowship. And I think that's a good thing. Yeah, it's a means of doing good, but like anything else, it can be corrupted.

[13:08] JESSICA POKHAREL: I agree. That community is something that seems to be sorely missing. And, you know, I said I have, I've married an immigrant and he was from Nepal. So I don't know if you were, it sounds like maybe some of this, like, education first mindset may have still been passed down from India.

[13:33] KEN SOLEYN: We have in New Hampshire, we have a refugee population from Nepal. I belong to, I sort of go to some of these multicultural events. I belong to the Democratic Asia Pacific Caucus. So these are, you know, Americans and so that, you know, the Nepalese are very similar in that respect to Indians, but, you know, Indians also has a large sort of class structure as well. And it still exists today.

[14:12] JESSICA POKHAREL: Yeah, that's still present in Nepal as well, in the caste system, which is not, you know, kind of like we're talking about racism in the north and the south, it's no longer sanctioned, but it's still still there. But I, what I see in terms of his idea of community, it's, it's changed my life a lot because, I don't know, we don't, I, I preferred to be alone. I thought like, it's stressful to be around other people. And it was wild for me to see he takes comfort in having family and friends around all the time. um, and it's also kind of blown my mind to see his friends, you know, if he has a need, his friends will drop what they're doing, even if they're, you know, living across the country and come. And I don't have people who will do that for me, maybe my parents, but, you know, he's, he's got 20, 30 friends at that level. And, I, I feel like at this point, most of my friends are Nepali as well, because, they're interested in building community in a way that Americans aren't necessarily.

[15:22] KEN SOLEYN: Well, I see from your bio that you've done a lot of education based nonprofit work. And that's something that I believe in as well because I came up through the public school system.

[15:38] JESSICA POKHAREL: Same.

[15:39] KEN SOLEYN: And what was really able to help me a lot was I went to Brooklyn Tech, which was a magnet high school. You had to take an exam. And it was like a pre-engineering, so you took AP courses in engineering, so it kind of gave you college credit. But I wasn't the greatest student. I was able to garner enough. I went to community college and worked as a lab tech. and then, you know, I got a career in sales and marketing and, you know, that that was able, and that was an instrumentation and control. So from a scientific point, you know, if you measure things, you can control it. That's the, that's the old adage. And it, that's kind of the way I look at it from an analytical point of view. Like, it would be economically better, like, if, if the poorer, if a working person got a good wage that he could support his family, you know, have healthy food, put a roof over their heads, get an education for his kids, and, you know, have that kind of family environment and share that with your neighbors and stuff. You're all going to be paying taxes and spending money. You're going to you're going to be buying things for your home, that's going to stimulate the economy, all through the supply chain. And I think America has got to become a bit more back to being, like you said, a community. It's really what's missing.

[17:26] JESSICA POKHAREL: Yeah, and the income inequality, they really feed into each other. You don't have time and energy for a community or the mindset becomes you know, if you don't have a community, then you're having to pay people to clean your house or watch your kids, and then you just have to work more. And it's a capitalism has its problems, too.

[17:49] KEN SOLEYN: My kids went to Middle School, which the minority kids were sliding in, in achievement. So a bunch of the parents formed a group called helping hands. to do tutoring on Saturday and just that little extra help, you know, so it was an extra kind of like almost an extra half day of school because, you know, it was really a morning and then you'd have lunch and do some fun things, send them home and stuff, you know. But it, it helped. It helps to bring up, it helps to bring up achievement and help them to, you know, get more motivated, even if it's things like in the public school system, if you take away, say music, that often becomes the first thing you chop out. But it's been proven that if kids who take up an instrument or study music become better in math.

[18:46] JESSICA POKHAREL: Yes.

[18:47] KEN SOLEYN: There's some, you know, mental connection there. So I was just wondering as, well, maybe something about what you did, you know, in your career. What's your view on education these days?

[18:59] JESSICA POKHAREL: Oh, gosh. Ooh, it's feeling pretty dire now. And I will say, you've spoken a bit more about your background, that I double majored in college in music and computer science, just to your point about those two things going together really well. Gosh, well, I mean, higher education is not in a good place right now. My son is nine, and at the point when he was born, I assumed that's what I'm going to say, go to college, go to college. Now I'm not so sure. I don't know what's happening with the job market for entry-level people. AI is making that more complicated and so on. But I still do have a love for education and believe in it. If you see that little J in the background, that's the company I work for. It's a journal database of mostly humanities and social sciences scholarly literature. And my work feels so meaningful because we're expanding access to education in a lot of places. Like over the last few years, one of the main projects I've been working on is getting scholarly journal articles into prisons for incarcerated students. and like that changes so much in their lives. So I feel like education still has an amazing place in giving us perspective, understanding ourselves, understanding the world. But that's not translating to jobs and income anymore in the way that it used to.

[20:49] SPEAKER C: Yeah.

[20:52] KEN SOLEYN: We live in interesting times because then, you know, what? Well, I think, for example, America can turn around and become, let's say, leadership in things like transportation and energy. For example, if there were a rail system that was really efficient that, you know, ran from Maine to Florida.

[21:20] JESSICA POKHAREL: Oh, yeah.

[21:21] KEN SOLEYN: And so you, like, I, I could, I could get into Boston and go from Boston to New York in less than an hour, you know, like these trains they have in Japan and in Europe and so forth. And I, I think, I think we're letting all of that waste away. We have a lot of resources, we have a lot of smart people. out there. A lot smarter than me. I met a gentleman who worked at NIH and he got laid off. He said one day they got an email saying go to this website and you'll get your severance package. There's no need for you to come back into the office. Wow. We don't need you. And at first they thought it was a joke. This gentleman was working on a team that was working on Alzheimer's. You know, trying to isolate the gene and there's the science of it, you know, that's what's scaring me is.

[22:30] SPEAKER C: When.

[22:30] KEN SOLEYN: You start to dismiss science and at the top level, at the presidential level. And you have these people in place who are supposed to be like, you know, the government has like the Department of Health and Department of Education, and they're just like political favors. So it's just tilted so much to.

[22:53] SPEAKER C: That.

[22:58] KEN SOLEYN: To that kind of thing where like, is it really democracy? that's what's scary to me.

[23:04] JESSICA POKHAREL: Yeah, I forget which list there's some organization that tracks democracy statuses through the US and, and I think for the first time ever, us got downgraded from stable democracy to, I don't remember if it was tenuous democracy or democracy at risk or something like that, but, yeah.

[23:25] KEN SOLEYN: I, I, I have family in Canada and while my wife does And, you know, we go up there at least once a year and I've traveled there for business and also just for pleasure.

[23:38] SPEAKER C: And.

[23:40] KEN SOLEYN: There'S an example of, you know, there's a bit more even playing field and they teach all the races are equal. They, yeah, you're taxed a bit more. or maybe you're not, I don't know, maybe, but you can see that the tax money is going to public good. A lot of the neighborhoods have like community centers. Even some of them have ice rinks.

[24:09] JESSICA POKHAREL: You can go in, oh my gosh, yeah.

[24:11] KEN SOLEYN: Free and skate around and they have like hockey tournaments and things like that. But I mean, it's not all, and there are places in America, trouble all around it. It's not what's depicted in the news. There are a lot of good people out here, and hardworking people. I don't understand how so many people are getting seduced with this message. And what is that message? I don't understand. What is the endpoint here? What's their goal? Anyway, yeah, so I'm for only very regulated guns. If you're hunting for game and you're going to eat that game, then you're allowed to have a gun. And you should take training in safety and all the necessary measures to operate that weapon safely. That's my feeling on the background I came up through. Yeah, I've seen some really tough things. You know, I've seen some people get destroyed by drugs and alcoholism. I've seen a the house next door was on fire. Back in the ghetto, the landlords would burn down a building just to collect the insurance.

[25:57] JESSICA POKHAREL: Oh my gosh.

[25:59] KEN SOLEYN: But there were times, like for example, we would have a really hot day and we'd have a ghetto beach day, you know, where we'd open up a fire hydrant. and those are great memories.

[26:11] SPEAKER C: And.

[26:13] KEN SOLEYN: There is a life there and people struggle, but I think we were, it seemed like the country was making progression. I think things have slid back, but I think the tables can turn. I think the tide can turn.

[26:31] JESSICA POKHAREL: It's interesting for me to hear about your, you know, New York experience, because I grew up in rural Tennessee, you couldn't see anybody else's house from our house. And my mental concept of New York was, it's dangerous, it's violent, everybody is hateful and rude. And the first time I visited New York, I think I was 17. I was terrified. And I still go regularly. My company is based in New York, so I go at least a couple times a year now. still not comfortable there, but I mean, I definitely didn't have the right perception of what New Yorkers are like as a kid. Yeah, there's rudeness and there's kindness both. I mean, I guess they coexist there. Do you have thoughts about the stereotype of New Yorkers being rude?

[27:30] KEN SOLEYN: No, it definitely, they'll tell you, get the hell out of my way, you know?

[27:37] JESSICA POKHAREL: Right.

[27:38] KEN SOLEYN: And we used to call them.

[27:41] SPEAKER C: There.

[27:42] KEN SOLEYN: Were guys that we used to call shit kickers, meaning that if there was a pile of shit, they would just kick it out of the way. They were that mean, you know?

[27:50] SPEAKER C: Yeah.

[27:51] KEN SOLEYN: You know, and there's sort of a griminess there. I wanted to get the hell out. That's why I live in New Hampshire.

[28:01] JESSICA POKHAREL: Yeah.

[28:02] KEN SOLEYN: I mean, I live in a. Well, our town, it's. It's a town of about 25, 000 now, you know, and. But, you know, it's more like a Suburban, but you don't have to drive very far to hit the mountains or hit the ocean or hit Boston. So, I mean, I. I like kind of going around the college towns. There's usually a lot of good music for not a lot of money. So a place where you could have like a beer and listen to some.

[28:34] SPEAKER C: Music.

[28:37] KEN SOLEYN: For not a lot of money.

[28:39] JESSICA POKHAREL: What kind of music do you like?

[28:40] KEN SOLEYN: Oh, I like all kinds. My dad was a big country and western. You know, I've been to Memphis and Nashville. and we, we grew up listening in the house to, like, Jim Reeves. That was our favorite. And Charlie Pride and Johnny Cash and stuff.

[29:01] JESSICA POKHAREL: Okay.

[29:02] SPEAKER C: Yeah.

[29:02] KEN SOLEYN: And I still have those. I still have, I bought those CDs. I have a pretty big collection, and I still listen to that. I listen, but I look, I listen to jazz and go to see live music and. of course, rock and roll, just about everything, Indian music. And, you know, I like seeing, like, I go, I go to some of these, like, Multicultural fairs. It's probably, I bet there, I bet there's communities in, you know, where you are not too far, you know, that probably get together and have these sort of Multicultural Affairs. airs and things like that.

[29:43] JESSICA POKHAREL: Yeah, I've never been to anything like that. I should look for something.

[29:47] KEN SOLEYN: Yeah, a lot of them are not very expensive. Like we go to one near us and it's a contingent of Nepali, African. I mean, New Hampshire is, I think, about 87% what we would say cockage and white. And we have Hispanic, But even in a small community, like they have some of the best restaurants. So I felt like one way of learning about people's cultures is eat the food. That's the first thing, you know, eat. There's even like there's no, there's a couple of Nepali restaurants near me here. I would say near with them on 20 minutes. and you go in there and get Momos and things like that.

[30:41] JESSICA POKHAREL: Yeah, we've got two Nepali restaurants within a half an hour of us as well. But it's, you know, Momos are supposed to be a community thing, too. That's something that, like, granted, I don't think they, they've been in Nepal for hundreds of years, but the way that it's made over there, and I've done this once, is everybody. puts a mat down on the floor and sits down and you're all wrapping the momos together. Cause it's kind of a lot of work to make them.

[31:07] KEN SOLEYN: We went to, it was a Diwali and this restaurant advertised a Diwali special. So they had like the, not Diwali, it was, yeah it was. But they had powder and lights and it was very festive. There were a number of refugees from.

[31:30] SPEAKER C: Nepal.

[31:33] KEN SOLEYN: That settled in New Hampshire and they have their own sort of community. And there's a lady who and her husband, they're musicians. They're very classical musicians. So they played at, they played at a church up here, and we went to see them. participated in that, in that Duwali celebration.

[31:58] JESSICA POKHAREL: What are their instruments? Like what, what is it?

[32:00] KEN SOLEYN: Very similar to Indian, you know, you have like the tabla, which is, yeah, they're like the two drums and you have the sitar and sarod.

[32:08] SPEAKER C: Yeah.

[32:09] KEN SOLEYN: And harmonium is the sort of like an organ at home.

[32:12] JESSICA POKHAREL: Oh, no, I have one. I brought one back from Nepal because, I mean, my music degree was piano and so it's similar enough, you know, same one hand plus the the other one for the bellows. So I bought a harmonium in Nepal and it took up an entire suitcase to bring it back.

[32:31] KEN SOLEYN: I have a set of tabla drums from India.

[32:33] JESSICA POKHAREL: Nice.

[32:34] KEN SOLEYN: My wife and I went to India, but I went there on business as well. And, you know, it's so fascinating that I just wanted to go back as a tourist. so we went on three different sort of tourist excursions. Yeah, I love, you know, I used to love to travel. I still do. I don't as much, but it really opens your eyes to, you know, different points of views and different cultures. And I think that's really a good way to get understanding. like, you know, food. What would have, what's more American than pizza and tacos?

[33:24] SPEAKER C: Right.

[33:26] KEN SOLEYN: Hamburgers from Germany or.

[33:28] JESSICA POKHAREL: Yeah, I think they are.

[33:34] SPEAKER C: Yeah.

[33:35] KEN SOLEYN: All right, so to kind of get on track, There's a question on the conversation guide. Who has been the most influential person in your life? What did they teach you?

[33:54] JESSICA POKHAREL: Wow. That's kind of a hard question, but I'm going to go with my maternal grandmother. I she was close enough that I could walk through. Through a cow pasture to get to her house. So I was over there all the time. She was self-sufficient and so strong. Two of her three kids died before they were, you know, grown and married. My mom was the only surviving one, but, like. that didn't, she still had such a positive outlook on life and was still so happy somehow. I also saw her love of nature. I mean, we would be doing things like making flower crowns and playing in the creek. And she didn't slow down until she was in her 90s in terms of like, Being willing to run and play with us and like I remember once.

[35:06] KEN SOLEYN: She was swinging on a She was the Tennessee wildflower.

[35:10] JESSICA POKHAREL: She was yes, and I remember once my mom got mad at her because She was swinging on a grapevine with my brother and me, you know how you find a Big grapevine and you can just swing on it She was, you know, I don't know 70 or something doing that and.

[35:29] SPEAKER C: Yeah.

[35:29] JESSICA POKHAREL: Tennessee Wildwood Flower. That's right. What about you?

[35:34] SPEAKER C: Yeah.

[35:34] KEN SOLEYN: Most influential. You know, I I guess you. Anyone would just say your parents has to be the most influential, but. So I'm not going to go with that for. I'm gonna. I'm gonna go with my teachers, okay? in school. And I'm gonna go one particular guy, his name was Mr. Callis. He was Greek, but he was also in the US Air Force, and he taught drawing, technical drawing, like draft. So he gave us the first assignment, and he had, like, a handlebar mustache, and, you know, he was. Well groomed, you know, looked like a very fit guy, even though he was a bit older. And gave us our assignment, you know, and I handed in this drawing and he looks at it, crumples it up and throws it in the trash. I'll try it again.

[36:40] SPEAKER C: Whoa.

[36:40] KEN SOLEYN: But he was a good, he was strict and precise and disciplined. and, you know, he said something like, like goes, I don't care. I don't, I don't care what race you are. I hate all of you equally. But, you know, you knew it in his heart. He was a really good guy, you know, really, really a great teacher. And so he taught me, like, the kind of level of, like, detail, like to, that you have to. I've done a lot of writing for like marketing things and articles and even like white papers. And you have to write them and rewrite them. And it's an iterative process. And teaching probably is as well. Well, I know it is from teaching. And you know, it's an iterative thing and you learn from the kids as well. And I think that's probably another thing that this country has to do is just start paying teachers more.

[37:50] JESSICA POKHAREL: Oh my gosh, yes.

[37:51] KEN SOLEYN: Put that at the forefront of pay grades. And then kids would want to aspire to be a teacher.

[38:04] JESSICA POKHAREL: Right.

[38:07] KEN SOLEYN: I mean, if you're a Christian, Jesus Christ was one of the greatest teachers, right? But it's to get action by teaching. But not all teaching is academic and you know, book learning. I mean, I love books. I used to go to the library, take out six books at a time, take them home, read them and then return them like a day or two later. get six more. Six was the limit.

[38:36] JESSICA POKHAREL: Oh, yeah. I used to get in trouble as a kid for refusing to go outside and play in the summer. I just wanted to read from the time I woke up to the time I went to bed. But you've reminded me of maybe the most impactful teacher I had. I had him later as a college music professor, but when I was still in high school, I was taking private lessons from this pianist. And he said, okay, you're learning this Beethoven piece. What have you learned about Beethoven? And I was like, I don't know. He's like, but what have you read? What have you been reading? And I said, you didn't assign me anything. And he was like, that's not what it means to be a scholar. That's not what it means. You know, like, that motivation to learn things has to come from within. You're not just. doing check boxes of what somebody told you to do. It really changed my perspective of what it means to be a lifelong learner and be a scholar.

[39:38] KEN SOLEYN: All right, well, the next question is, was there a moment you witnessed or experienced the most influenced?

[39:47] JESSICA POKHAREL: Your political?

[39:48] KEN SOLEYN: I can't read. I'm gonna put on my glasses. Where's the moment you witness or experience that most influenced, oh, your political beliefs? Let me, let's see. I think it had to be the news of hearing Martin Luther King was assassinated because we lived in that Brownsville section in 1968. '68. And there was a right after that, there was a lot of rioting and fires. So it was like everything was like, it was like one of those biblical moments for me where it's like hellfire and mayhem. And my dad said at that very moment, we've got to get the hell out of here and started looking for a way out in terms of, like, buy a house. But we were very much working class people. We figured we didn't want any handouts. We wanted to work for what we earned. Work for our living. We knew that. We had that ethic.

[41:09] SPEAKER C: Yeah. Yeah.

[41:11] KEN SOLEYN: But that was a pretty profound political And then the aftermath of that, you know, you did now start to seeing some progressive and I guess the other side would call them socialist movements, you know, and things started to change and yeah, so that one stands out.

[41:33] JESSICA POKHAREL: Okay. I think for me it's something more personal. And it ties back into several of those topics like gun control and healthcare and mental health and LGBTQ issues. So I mentioned in my bio that my brother had died. He was pretty severely mentally ill. He was also gay in this place in rural Tennessee that was not, I mean, people would say the most disgusting things to him. about, you know, your abomination before God and. And all of those things. He attempted suicide a couple of times, including twice with a gun. He eventually completed suicide through a different method.

[42:22] KEN SOLEYN: But that's.

[42:24] JESSICA POKHAREL: That's honestly why I left Tennessee.

[42:27] SPEAKER C: I.

[42:28] JESSICA POKHAREL: Maybe that's the wrong. Maybe that's the wrong thing. Running away from people that are different than you. But I. I felt like I can't be around. people who said those things to him or feel that way. So that's that's that like healthcare was definitely a big issue in that and mental health care and LGBTQ issues. So those that's why those are forefront in my mind.

[42:55] SPEAKER C: Yeah. And.

[42:57] KEN SOLEYN: What what I struggle with is like what went wrong? to create that type of environment. You know, there's this sort of bullying and that person is different. For me, it might have been like the color of my skin. For your brother, it would be that he was gay. But how does that how does that affect this other person's life? You know, you, if you don't like it, you can just ignore them. But, but what, what in, what, how does that affect your life? And I think this is where.

[43:42] SPEAKER C: We.

[43:42] KEN SOLEYN: Need to start teaching our kids to respect and everyone.

[43:48] SPEAKER C: Yeah.

[43:49] KEN SOLEYN: Where do we go wrong? Where are we going wrong? Because it's we as the parents and the generation before us, who were supposed to be the teachers and what went wrong? Was it the technology takeover or so that or something like that? I, you know, that's, that's what I struggle with.

[44:12] SPEAKER C: Yeah.

[44:12] KEN SOLEYN: So I think in your case, you know, to move out of your moving out of an environment, you're not comfortable with.

[44:19] SPEAKER C: In.

[44:19] KEN SOLEYN: Yeah, it's your life. Who wants to live? I don't want to. I certainly didn't want to live in an environment that I'm not comfortable with. And I learned as a kid, you know, if I saw five guys coming down the street, I'd run the other way.

[44:34] SPEAKER C: Oh, right.

[44:35] JESSICA POKHAREL: I guess both of our stories there had ended with a move, right? Like, your dad thought we got to get out of here with the. With the riots, and then I thought, I gotta get out of.

[44:46] KEN SOLEYN: And then that becomes debt. Then, then you put yourself in debt.

[44:52] SPEAKER C: And.

[44:55] KEN SOLEYN: But, you know, it's, I guess it takes, takes another kind of sticking to it is. And, and then you're, to get the opportunities, you know, like, I, I can remember as a kid wanting to get a baseball glove, but we didn't have enough money. you know, but eventually I did get one, you know, so. Yeah, you know, so it.

[45:23] SPEAKER C: It.

[45:25] KEN SOLEYN: I I I just think that there's enough resources and there's enough wealth, and I don't. And we're not asking anyone to give us anything. We just want to earn an honest living, you know?

[45:37] SPEAKER C: Right.

[45:38] KEN SOLEYN: That is the five minute warning.

[45:41] JESSICA POKHAREL: Yeah, I saw that too. Do you want to try to fit in one more question?

[45:46] KEN SOLEYN: Tell me about your spiritual beliefs. How does your faith impact your political views?

[45:57] JESSICA POKHAREL: I don't even know how to say like what I identify with religiously at this point. I go to Buddhist meditation retreats. I'm on paper, I guess Hindu now. because my husband is. But I was raised Christian, first Lutheran, then Methodist. And I was a church organist and pianist for 15 years as a side job. Definitely when that happened with my brother, and partly because sometimes that bullying, be it about being gay or about having a different skin color, is couched in religious terms.

[46:36] SPEAKER C: That's.

[46:37] JESSICA POKHAREL: That's truly disturbing. So I. I took a big step back from the church for a while. At this point, like you said, I still believe in Jesus Christ being a really an inspirational, meaningful. I mean, those lessons are incredibly valuable. And then I also do not see them reflected in the church. so, yeah, I feel like my. My faith and my political views, there's so many. I think somebody shouldn't go hungry or unhoused or, like, tax me. Tax me all you want. I want it to go to roads and hospitals and housing and schools, not to bombing children somewhere.

[47:28] KEN SOLEYN: Not to these Ultra Rich billionaires.

[47:31] JESSICA POKHAREL: That too. And so I really don't understand how someone claims to be Christian and then also doesn't want somebody who's in danger in their home country to come here as immigrant or doesn't want food stamps to be available or so on and so forth. Like that just seems so obvious to me, given my beliefs.

[47:52] KEN SOLEYN: I refer to myself nowadays as more of a seeker than anything else. I'm willing to listen and look at all of the global religions and philosophies.

[48:08] SPEAKER C: But.

[48:10] KEN SOLEYN: It goes back to just.

[48:13] SPEAKER C: Okay.

[48:13] KEN SOLEYN: Let'S assume that God is the one who created this whole universe. Well, gee, in my view on things, anyone that has enough power and knowledge to know everything and create all of this, is really beyond my imagination. It's like being even I can't even conceive how that could be done. So, okay, so here we are. We're trying to we're trying to compartmentalize what God is in a book or in, you know, a verse, one verse or in a statue or So I think a lot of it is mythology and all cultures have mythology. But the mythology is sort of like a lesson. It's sort of like a drama or a play.

[49:10] SPEAKER C: You.

[49:13] KEN SOLEYN: Know, being Christian, you know, the passion play. It's about Jesus. It's a play. So if you think of it in those terms, and then you formulate, like, what's the conclusion of this? Like, in his case, it's like a sacrifice, but the knowledge that, hey, I can come back at any time.

[49:36] SPEAKER C: But.

[49:36] KEN SOLEYN: You'Ve got to go through a lot of suffering for that. And like, I view life as like, I believe in kindness. I believe in peace, I believe you get a lot more done. At least it's worked for me. And then you talk about capitalism. I work for GE, I ran a $35 million business group. It was the manager for it. And we did pretty well, but we had a lot of support. We had a team. We had like-minded people working together. yeah, I, I, I don't see why we need to be at loggerheads with the Republicans. We have different philosophies, but at the end of the day, okay, you won the election. You're the president for the whole country.

[50:24] JESSICA POKHAREL: Right.

[50:25] KEN SOLEYN: But this is, this, this really has to stop. And the, the, the corruption of buying these rules and laws. So, you know, if you donate enough money, then we'll and your oil and gas will, will stop solar energy, you know, rebates.

[50:45] SPEAKER C: Right.

[50:46] KEN SOLEYN: And that's just wrong. It's just, it's just not right, you know?

[50:49] SPEAKER C: Right.

[50:50] JESSICA POKHAREL: Just buy, buy the political outcome you want.

[50:52] KEN SOLEYN: And they can make money. They can make money on solar. Like all of these companies that are invested in oil and gas, like Exxon and so on, they're also invested in, in these other, in the energy business.

[51:08] JESSICA POKHAREL: Making money coming and going.

[51:10] KEN SOLEYN: Yeah, yeah, well, it's really like, I think, leadership and I guess in our communities, one of my conclusions is.

[51:25] SPEAKER C: Sometimes.

[51:26] KEN SOLEYN: It takes a soft leadership, you know, by example. and the working people of this country, like, for example, you know, that group Habitat for Humanity, I've done that a few times. And most of it, most of the people there are Tradesmen, and they're just, it's almost like they just do it on their spare time to help out. And they're just working class people. You know, some of them are on small businesses, but. And that's the kind of thing that I think we're capable of. We just need the leadership to turn it that way.

[52:06] JESSICA POKHAREL: Right. Well, it looks like our timer ran out. It didn't stop the recording automatically, but.

[52:15] KEN SOLEYN: I think you have to stop it and then there's a couple of minutes. I've done a couple of these before and there's a couple of minutes left if you want to just sum up.

[52:23] JESSICA POKHAREL: Okay. okay, so we should stop it.

[52:26] KEN SOLEYN: Yeah.

[52:27] JESSICA POKHAREL: Okay.

[52:31] KEN SOLEYN: Are you ready for dinner? So what did you.