Vignette 1: Moved to Eugene

Well, I moved, first moved to the Eugene area like twenty, twenty years ago to Lost Valley Education Center in Dexter. And I lived there for five years as the registered nurse there, for the community. And then I moved from there to Sacramento because moving back to the Bay was like, too expensive. So, went to Sacramento because I have kids in the Bay Area. And that's where I met Strawberry, in Sacramento, and then we moved together to Las Vegas to help manage and run an anti-nuclear non-profit interfaith organization that was a board member for, and that we became board members for, office managers for. Um, lived in the Las Vegas Catholic Worker Community there in the conjunction with like running that organization. And then it got ... it was getting to ... summers were like 4 months long of 120 degrees so we then moved and tried to figure out some place to move that would be cooler. And I remembered that Eugene had a very nice environment and was not as expensive as the Bay Area and things like that. So, we moved back here, and we've been here for like the past two years. Or a year and a half. Yeah, past year, sorry. 

Activism; Community; Urban-rural

Vignette 2: From Bay to Eugene

I felt like Eugene is sometimes for like a city with kind of like a depressed-ness to it as opposed to like Seattle it's got more of a thriving, like I'm a big city kind of feel. I feel like Eugene is kind of like ... I've noticed that a lot of people from the Food Not Bombs ... OK, pause there. I've noticed a lot of people from the Food Not Bombs group in the Bay Area moved to Eugene. Like I take walks with a friend who's now a nurse at one of the hospitals here and he was in the Food Not Bombs group and my friend Alex moved here from the Bay Area to the Eugene area, and she was doing Food Not Bombs. And I think there was like a lot of feeling like the area was moving too fast or too big or something. And so, they moved something a little bit less big, but more manageable. And I just noticed that there's a lot of people that moved from the Bay Area to here who are trying to see something different. Like I'm in a Jewish for Peace group and I look at the phone numbers on the signal channel like, these are all 510 area codes. These people have phone, you know, cell phones and stuff like that. So, I think there's like a draw to find something that's more manageable. So, I think it's like that's what they found in Eugene. It's a little bit less busy and spread out than like Portland or Seattle or things like that. Or the Bay Area. 

Activism; Community; Urban-rural

Vignette 3: Housing Community

You came ... you described this ... the community we're in right now as we walked through. Can you tell us more about this community?

So, we moved to Walnut St. Co-op which hmm is near the University District and found that that community was good but not really good in a lot of other disability justice ways and gender ways and stuff like that. And we were looking for another community to move into, and this one became available as a low, as an affordable housing option. And so, we moved here a year ago, year and a month ago, when it was just opening. Because it was ... it's only been here for like a year and a month. So, I became a board member for the organization here, the village here, because they needed board members. And then I became a board member also for the Square One Village organization that manages and builds these Co-op type things. So, I'm on the board of both organizations and so I've often served as tour guides here for politicians and architecture students and things like that. 

Community; Gender identity; Disability;

Vignette 4: Housing Community Board

Why did you want to become a board member? 

I think it helps me feel connected to community. I think it helps me feel like I understand what's going on because I have a learning disability and makes it a little hard. Like if I just read meeting notes, it's a little hard to understand what's going on. And I think if I'm actually in the meetings that I see the, the give and take of what's going on. And I think that it's hard for me to process things in English. I mean, not that I have another language. It's just hard for me to process things in language and so it's it is easier if I'm like actually in the midst of it. Probably about 1/4 of the people come to like community meetings and have engagement. It's probably a bit less than that. So, we're trying to build engagement, but it's like not very easy. A lot of people who have been housing insecure, because you had to be with a certain income bracket and stuff like that. There's a certain population that is higher at risk for being housing insecure and there is more gender diversity and disability diversity here in this community than there is in the general population. But I don't know necessarily that it's recognized as being as gender diverse or as disability diverse as it actually is. Because I think a lot of people who live here think they're like they're close enough to being normal, and I don't think they realize how abnormal they are perceived and how many other like requirements they need that other people don't have. Because I think there's a little bit ... like when I served in the Catholic Worker in Las Vegas, there are a lot of people who are serving food, food too on like the meal line and stuff like that. Like we were serving like 100, 200 people a day breakfast for four days a week. They would be like Oh yeah, I just like need to win at the lottery or they were like this, like feeling of like, they're just one step away from really winning. And I think that's how a lot of people here perceive it as, like, they could be living somewhere else. They're just down on their luck. As opposed to that the system is set up against them and that there is no winning this lottery or this like perception that they're able to like just move into like being normal. They're like trauma ... there's traumatized, there's housing insecurity, there's like people who are like we're going to do an inspection of your unit for the for the warranty on the building because they're new. And people are like they're trying to find a way to kick us out kind of feeling as opposed to like we're trying to find a way to include you and just maintain the buildings. And I think there's a lot of housing insecurity trauma that people don't realize they have but yet express it.

Community; Mental health; Repression; Survival strategies  

Vignette 5: Housing Insecurity and Trauma

When you've lived in any kind of scarcity or precarity, you can get like community trauma that can show up in complicated ways. Is one ... is that something the board is like hoping to like figure out a way to provide resources for this particular community as well, or is that? 

I think that's something that certain members who live like at Emerald Village, and at Cottage Village and Peace Village, want to find. I think that's coming to the surface now. But I think the organization, Square One, was like we're going to find housing, and so there's all these resources into like finding people housing but not a lot of resources into like maintaining housing. And like moving here, people had to, like live like had to like, accept okay I'm going for affordable housing, but didn't have to have the realization until they got here that they're moving into a community. And what community actually means and that they're moving into a tiny home, which means that they have to not have a whole bunch of like possessions and stuff like that. And a lot of people who are housing insecure have a lot of their meaning in like possessions. Like I have this like light bulb that will fit and I don't have to like you know, buy another light bulb because I'll hold on to this one because it's almost like good kind of thing, for an example. So, I think there's like more understanding for the board that this is like coming about. That there's like these three aspects of living here and that there's really only funding for like getting people into housing as a political solution, not a whole lot of like, you know, as I said, maintaining housing or helping people like survive and how to like live in close quarters if they've been living on the street for many years or living like paycheck to paycheck. Not really knowing their neighbors, trying to just go to a job kind of thing. 

Activism; Community; Mental health

Vignette 6: Race, Religion and Housing Community

One of the things that's come up is that we're opening another village at a, at a church. The church is selling their property to the organization, Square One, but they want to have some portion of it that remains attached. And at the same time Square One is trying to like honor people who have been oppressed, namely Black community that's been oppressed. But at the same time they want to encourage people who are Black to move this village and like is that really how it works kind of well or is that just kind of setting up a Black village kind of feeling. It's like ... so, I'm not really sure how that's going to play out. Or like if we name it after somebody who's Black is that really like tokenism or ... is that openness to like doing something that's not been done. I mean, it would be nice if we named some of the streets here on ... instead of just being Peace Village having some of the roads being named after people like Audrey Lorde or something like that, so that way people wouldn't be like trying to find out how to get down to someplace and having no names except numbers and stuff like that. Or if we had like a statue or art or something that was not just like, kind of like, umm standard Caucasian art. It would be nice if we had, like, a diversity of things. That way it would be like more inclusive, I think. Even a mural that's not like a Noah's ark. I mean, there is a Noah's ark mural that's inside the pantry that people like it ... liked and also objected to because it's ... we're trying to like get distance from being religious kind of thing. 

That's here ... down here somewhere?

Yeah, in the pantry, there's like a the ... from the old part of the church, the Peace Presbyterian Church that was here or this here. They have all the building that's on the West side of the property. That's all kind of rounded architecture and all the stuff that's this other architect here is on the eastern side of the property where they were going to build their great big church when the church got bigger, but it never did because the population started dying out and stuff. And so the ... where I met you at the, at the circle there there's like a Noah's ark mural.

Is that the only mural or only piece of art?

Yeah, that's the only. I mean, there's like some crosses that are like built into the brick that we can't cover up because it's the brick ... in their brick structure, but yeah. We're trying to like get more distance because not everybody here is like comfortable with like the religiosity. And they never made a ... they never made a thing that you have to belong to a church to be here. 

Community; Religion/Spirituality

Vignette 7: Financial Cost of Community

I felt a little bit estranged, or I felt a little bit the tension at the Lost Valley community when I moved there. And I felt like people didn't really understand disability and didn't really understand like some of the finances I brought to it, and stuff like that. Financial situation I brought to it. I think there were a lot of communities at the time that I was looking for community. There were a lot that had like a very high buy in cost. Like I think there were some villages that I remember looking at where you had to buy in and be at there for like 3 months and then make a significant financial contribution to the community that you couldn't necessarily expect to get back. And Lost Valley didn't have that. But then also like made it that a lot of people would move there and kind of linger in some ways. And that was like not so good. And then there was, like, other communities like Nominus, where I heard there was like a very low buy in to it, but also they had no way of, like, really moving people on who were, like, maybe not really conducive to community. Or maybe destructive to community. That's what I heard.

And Nominus, the overarching organization over Wolf Creek?

Yeah. 

Community; Economics

Vignette 8: Meaning of Community

What does community mean to you? 

I think it means that I have to be able to say to my neighbor, "Hey, you know, I have a case of pneumonia, can you go to the grocery store for me?" And be able to say that to somebody and instead of like I'll just hold on to it and like I'll be better in a couple of days and do without. I have to be able to be up front with somebody and say," I need help" and "can I have some help with this particular task," or "can you not do this thing of having your dog running on my balcony?" or things like that. I think I have to be able to be more upfront and clear with my needs and be able to accept other people's needs, too. 

Yeah. What would you say are the most meaningful communities currently in your life?

I realized the disable the, the Las Vegas Radical Mental Health Collective because I feel like that is really helping hold a lot of like space as a radical mental health space. And we're doing that through zoom and Strawberry's really the primary organizer for that, and I help with like producing like the Zoom link and things like that. But I think that that's a really meaningful community. I think ... me trying to organize street medics for things has been useful because I'm a registered nurse in California. But I'm a registered nurse and have that skill and in retirement but I think that there's quite a lot of community and trying to find health related type things. And I think this community is going to develop into a more functional community than other communities I've been in, but it takes a little time.

This community here?

Yeah, this community at the Peace Village is going to develop into a community. I think Square One as an organization has a really good, umm, as a really good structure of like trying to maintain and have stewardship of the communities they've developed. Like it lets go. the community after it's built and like give it to the members they like help shepherd it on. But I think there's a a feeling like they need to maintain stewardship of these organizations, these like villages they've created. They don't just like let them go and like fail. They want to make sure they succeed. I really appreciate that part. 

Vignette 9: Wolf Creek Community

The people had moved to Oregon with originally ... because there was like a group of people from the East Bay Food Not Bombs group that moved to Oregon way back like 20 years ago. Some of them originally had come from Nominus and Oregon Women's Land and stuff like that. And so, they were familiar with that, then moved to Eugene because it was closer to that area. So, I've heard Nominus for like many, many years, but haven't actually visited there until this past year. It's kind of how I pictured it in my mind. That it would have some like structural problems, some delayed maintenance, things like that. But I found out that my interactions have been very positive, in the sense of like they seem like they really value disability justice. They seem to really value inclusivity and things like that. So, more so than other communities I experience. Like when I was in the Las Vegas Catholic Worker community I felt like I could only have a portion of myself expressed fully. There were parts that were like, I didn't even know that were being suppressed but were ... Like my being Jewish, Pagan was kind of like, oh, yeah, you're Jewish Pagan but it was for, like, is that really helped to be expressed itself? Not really, it was more like it was a Catholic anarchist community that was accepting that there are other people out there but not necessarily like encouraging. Yeah. And just like gender expression there was like "oh yeah, we understand that," but it's like not really accepting it and like encouraging. And to when strawberry was like becoming more expressive after their mom died, it was a lot harder because ... especially with COVID because there was like a lot of like hugging and, and community gatherings that we had at Las Vegas Catholic Worker .. but once COVID hit and people were more isolated and less like hugging, then we started realizing like the problems in the community were becoming more pronounced. 

Were there a lot of other trans or non-binary people in that community?

No. It was like not really encouraged or, yeah, which I didn't realize until I realized that it wasn't being encouraged that I was like, oh, yeah. 

Community; Gender identity

Vignette 10: Race and Community Organizing

And so, I found it very inclusive, to the degree that I think it is ... I haven't felt excluded because of race. I felt excluded because of energy level and things like that, and I can't tell if it's like a racial thing or just an energy level thing. Because that's more of what I have energy about is my energy level. So, I might say if I'm feeling excluded that both because I can't like be as consistent or things like that. But it could be also a racial thing. I think if anything, I'm finding people are trying to like include me like ... not to point too fine of a point one it but I feel like Square One as an organization tried to include me because of gender, of because of how I appear on a picture with other people kind of thing. It's sort of like it's not all like white organization kind of thing. So, I kind of feel like, is that really good? Well, it is what it is, and I'd rather be included than not included kind of thing. And kind of feeling ... I'm not saying that this is there a reason. I'm just saying like I think that's a possible reason for feeling more like there are five people, from the village, who applied to be on the board of Square One, as a, as Community Land Trust members. Because community ... Square One as an organization is trying to have a a third of their board be Community Land Trust members as opposed to like people who own houses helping people who don't have houses kind of thing. And I found that really good but at the same time I think like, "why did they pick me as opposed to one of the other four people, other five people?" And it's like, I have some experience running a nonprofit. So do other people have other experiences. Maybe some people were more outspoken or more harder to get along with. It's hard to tell. But also like I clicked off a lot of boxes of like having housing insecurity and disability and, and gender identity and things like that. So maybe that's why they picked me, because I picked all these like ... clicked boxes kind of thing on their like application. 

Community

Vignette 11: Retirement and Organizing

Ever since I tried to go into retirement from working as a nurse, I went to help with Food Not Bombs, helping feed people because I wanted to learn how to cook, and I learned how to organize better. And I was like organizing for people who were, like, protesting something or trying to like survive on lesser, lesser resources and stuff. I think I've always gravitated in that direction. I think there was a period of time that I did do like the medic crew thing for like Pallotta Teamworks, Avon Breast Cancer 3 Days and California AIDS Ride and things like that. And I felt like that was meaningful, but not as meaningful, for me, or as accessible for me, as like, more do-it-yourself kind of stuff. I found that there were a lot of organizations like the Sacramento version of the Catholic Worker is like this huge kind of like big corporation kind of almost like aspect, where they want you to sign up with a like a schedule to like volunteer. And I was much more comfortable with like just showing up kind of thing or not trying ... because with narcolepsy it's not like I have the consistency or the ... being disabled, the same consistency of like show up on these five days kind of thing.

Vignette 12: Joy, Caregiving and Community

I think connecting with people over artwork and food, helping serve food to people. I think all those things bring me joy. I think helping provide medical care and having like ability to like provide aid and assistance, and I think that provides joy. Yeah, I think those things are high up there.

Has that ... has caregiving always been something that you've been drawn to? You've felt connected with?

I think I've always felt drawn to that, maybe because my mom has had rheumatoid arthritis from, from the age of like 30 or something like that. I've always been like in a caregiving kind of role. I mean, not necessarily I want to stay in that role, but I think that is like something that has felt more comfortable. And maybe something that's had some tangible benefits that draw me towards that. Pretty much a lot that I want to like go from like having caregiving of other people to caregiving to myself, with like metal working and going on trips and stuff with Strawberry. I think that's kind of the direction I wanted to go in with the conversation here. I think I wanted to share a little bit about the community and the joys of being in community and some of the struggles and being in community. But then ultimately, it has more of a benefit than not. I think that's also one of the.

Vignette 13: Accepting People Where They’re At

Like my two kids, I wanted to, like, accept where they're at. I also think that I want to like, with all the other people in the community that I'm in, except where they're at and their stories and their complexity and realize, like, they only have a portion of their stories are telling. So, I think that's shapes how I see my family structure is that I only know portion of what the people perceive is their truth. And I think there's a lot of, like, okay, I hear that this is what you think is happening, and I totally accept that. And this is what you're going with. But I don't necessarily hold it as like, this is their like bottom line set value. It's more like this is their value they've got at this moment right now. Like there's a neighbor we have who has this, like, has like this like political statement that they're trying to make and I see, like, it's really irritating to me, but I also realize like next month it could be totally different. They could be like totally like not on the same like soapbox that they were. And so I'm not seeing it as like as irritating as I could if I thought this person is just doing this thing again and again and again. It's like, well, this is what they're doing right now and maybe they're going to do something different next month. Then maybe 2 years from now, they'll be like a totally different person because their life structure will be different. So, I think there's a lot more flexibility in my ideas of what family structure, stories go, and things like that. 

Vignette 14: Rural Urban

When I was working as a nurse in the central area, I was working at a hospice called My Tree, which is an AIDS Hospice in the middle of the Castro area. And I was working there for like a year or two and really liked being in that Hospice as I was a church nurse there and stuff like that. And then when I moved to Oregon and tried to like figure out where I was moving in Oregon .... because the people that moved here with they, they didn't know where they're going. They just knew they're going to move from the Bay Area to Oregon. Once they got to Oregon, they thought they're going to be welcome because they've been here in Oregon before. And I felt like that was kind of like a, a different plan than I would have planned. I would had a more landing zone kind of thing, but they didn't, and they moved to Lost Valley, which is rural. And I think it was there that I realized, for myself, that my differences in in gender understanding became more pronounced. And I think that's my connection to, the project is that it was there in living amongst people who were really from Berkeley because it was like a intentional community, intentional community that was formed with people from Berkeley who moved to form Lost Valley like 30 years ago or something like that. And then I didn't really interact much with the people of Dexter, more with just people within that community. But I was realizing, like, my gender expression didn't match a lot of what people said when they said male or female. And I think that's where I got more of the idea that there was like something in between.  

And at what point was that?

That was like 20 years ago. And then they moved to Sacramento, and I was like more gender fluid there and then Strawberry identified that I was gender NB kind of thing. And I think that's where it was like more codified as by name, but I think I was having an awakening and understanding when I was living in Lost Valley.

Was it the people there do you think or was it just the point in your life that gave you that awakening? 

Possibly both. I'm not sure, like the specific origins. I think that because the people who had moved to, from the Food Not Bombs group up to Oregon had been from Nominus. There was like this like already some gender fluidity. And I was like, thinking I was where it was, but then I was like, oh, maybe I'm not where I am. I'm maybe drawn to something different. Actually, when I was in the men's group that was meeting at Ocean Beach in San Francisco and realizing like, this is not really for me. Or this is not really where I'm identifying with. I think that was where I was having some of the identity thing too. I was like working at the Hospice and stuff, realizing like I'm more in touch with people who are in the hospice and they're not all like male, female kind of thing. 

Community; gender identity

Vignette 15: Zine about Narcolepsy

This [zine] focuses more on narcolepsy and a bike trip that I took from Sacramento to Glacier National Park for three months. And my experiences with narcolepsy and things like that. 

When did you know you had narcolepsy? 

When I kept falling asleep when I was like 16 and didn't really know what it was that was was while I was falling asleep as much. Because my mom falls asleep a lot and so I thought it was just kind of normal. But then as I was going to college, realized that there was not really conducive to college. 

Vignette 16: Life’s Timeline with Narcolepsy

I think also with narcolepsy my life doesn't have like a continuous life. Timeline kind of thing. It's like it's episodic. And so, I'm like, asleep, awake and asleep, awake kind of thing. And so, I think that like, if Strawberry says I'll meet you back here in like 10 minutes, my 10 minutes could seem like really short or it could be really long. But I like try to meet Strawberry at the right at the right time period because their timeline is much more regular and precise, compared to mine. And I think that I would like to be more flexible and understand that like Strawberry asked me yesterday if I filled out this form for community, I was like, well, maybe I filled it out last year or maybe I filled it out like a month ago. I'm not really sure because it seems like ... it's a Google form and unless I see it again, I'm not going to know whether this is the same one I filled out like a year ago. Because my memory seems really clear, but it doesn't necessarily mean it's really real because I think that's narcolepsy related and stuff like that. And I go into into the zine about how I wake up and I've got, like, a coffee cup in my hand. I don't know where I got it from, but I know that it wasn't mine to begin with, so where did I walk off with this from a coffee shop from kind of thing. There is ... at the time I made the zine, there was one book about narcolepsy from a person's perspective as opposed to a clinical perspective. And then I made the zine because I was, like, super happy to make a zine, the first one kind of. And then there was a book called Wide Awake Dreaming that came out soon after I made this zine. That was another like best seller narcolepsy patient or person perspective kind of thing. So it's the first zine, the only zine I've seen about narcolepsy. 

Do you know other people with narcolepsy? 

Yeah, I went to a couple of different narcolepsy conferences. I wrote that in my second issue of the zine, of the zines series about the narcolepsy conference I went to in Cleveland, OH, and the one that was in Las Vegas. And I compare and contrast the two. And there's like this group called Narcolepsy Network that has a conference every year, but they're kind of really more like drug company focused, like they say they're like patient focused, but they're really kind of like drug company funded. So, it's like a big showy conference kind of thing. And I hear and I was helping organize the one in Cleveland because it was like specifically more like we understand this organization wants to make a big showiness this of it. But it's also cutting out a lot of people who have not who don't have money to, like, attend the conference where you have to pay like $400 to go. 

Vignette 17: Support Network

I think my support network is of medics and of Food Not Bombers and people who I volunteer with. I feel like I get a lot of support from that. I think that's also one of the other communities I feel supported with is like the local Food Not Bombs group. I feel very happy when I go there to help serve food that Strawberry has made and serve it there at the, at the park. I I sometimes feel a little distant from them. But it's probably more connected than I think it is for me. 

The distance to them, is that more about time and connection and how often you're interacting or ...

I think it's just that they're busy with, like, trying to take care of other people and stuff like that and there's, like, they can't focus in on me. But when they do focus on me, I feel really sane. But I think it's more episodic because they're trying to, like, do many things and are stretched in different directions and stuff like that. So I'm not trying to take it personally, it's like, you know. 

Vignette 18: Understanding Gender

I think I've always felt like when I was like living in the Bay Area and my mom was raising me as a child with a sister and that there was like certain things that she had expectations of me that I didn't really feel like were quite fitting. And I didn't realize that they weren't quite fitting for why. But there were certain things like, I think that when I went into like a personal growth thing that was in the Bay Area and I was put into a men's group, I was like, this is not really fitting and I didn't understand why. And so there were, like, a lot of people who had, like, a lot of camaraderie and a lot of like fraternity and stuff like that. That it was like I was open to seeing how that would fit, but it just didn't quite fit right and so I didn't think ... I don't think I heard the term non-binary until much later when I was like moving to Oregon and heard about Nominus and heard about like gender politics and stuff like that. And then I changed my name to Ming and stuff like that, that I was starting to feel more non ... or feeling non-binary. But even at the time that I met Strawberry, I wasn't really identifying as non-binary, just identifying as like not gender normative. And so, it's become much more of a progression. Yeah, to now having a them/he pronoun versus that, he/them pronoun that I had six months ago. But I'm also like not really attached to it because it's like I don't really feel like it's fair to make my mom need to change my pronouns. In her mindset, because I know she's got, like, some learning problems too that are unidentified and like other sleepy problems that she doesn't see as being abnormal. But yes, I can say, I can say that I can tell your language pattern and you're like I'm about to do this, just it does never get done. It's like there's something that abnormal with that. So, I feel like I do that with everybody else. That's like, I'm not needing people to pronoun me correctly, but I don't object to other people having that desire to be pronouned correctly. 

Do you talk to your mom at all about your gender or? 

I have maybe once or twice. Yeah, I mean I don't ,I don't know what her ... I don't actually know what her gender identity is. Because I knew that she was in a relationship with my dad. And then she got divorced from my dad when I was about five, and then she didn't have any other relationships with anybody else through the whole time that I was growing up. And then she's had this other female friend who she's had a long standing like camaraderie with, but I don't really know what my mom sees as her like, or whether she would identify as something different than yeah, I'm just like this way kind of thing. 

Vignette 19: Family of Origin

I'm like fifth generation California Bay Area. 

What part of the Bay Area? 

Berkeley. Oakland, yeah. My great, great grandmother was the first woman voter of Chinese descent. Yeah, before suffrage was for the United States, she was like, registered to vote in California. And then her husband was the first Chinese dentist in California, and then they had a father-son practice, and he was my ... the son was my godfather. Yeah, so I have a lot of relatives in the Bay Area, who don't really talk to me. And I didn't realize that until this past like three months ago that there's always been a black sheep in the family as it were. And I think I'm currently the one. 

Have you ... were you close with them while you lived there or ...  

Yeah. I mean, we would ... my maternal family would have like gatherings like once a month at restaurants and stuff. And people would fight over who's going to pay the bill. Because they would be like, no, no, I'm going to pay the bill and they would, like, snatched the bill out of someone else's hand kind of thing at a restaurant, which I felt was really kind of like something. But my dad's family meets like, once every five years. So, there was always this kind of like, is there something wrong with my dad's family. And I think it's just the way they are, that they meet like, once every five years or ten years and they see that it's totally normal. And my mom's family is like different and so I've often thought, is there, like, something where my dad's upset with me and I don't think he is. I think he's just like, no, I'm doing fine, I'm just retired. I haven't done anything since I retired from the telephone company. Apparently his job was making sure there was like a, the dial tone. And so, it's like really, you're not doing nothing except just tending to your goldfish and, and in retirement. And it's like, I think that's all he does. I mean, I've even made-up stories in my head, like when he was, like in Vietnam, he understood, like, the language they were saying in the Vietnam War. And he was like, in some sort of, like, radio unit doing artillery. And apparently was like shelling in the different direction than they should have been. Because I have studied a lot of Southeast Asian study politics kind of things. And it's like somehow his story just doesn't seem right. Somebody should have said, if you can understand the language there and you're like not even able to, like, leave the military base in like civilian clothes because you're going to be mistaken for being somebody in the opposition. It just seems like there would be a ripe story for like a book of like being like a, you know, intelligent agent or something like that he can't really say what he's doing. But I don't really know that's what he's doing. I just like, there's just like this element of, like, how could you live such a boring life. 

Yeah. Where is your dad now? 

He's in Elk Grove, which is just south of, south of Sacramento. And I see him like once every five years.  

Vignette 20: Metalworking

Max was wanting to demystify metalworking. I was like mystified with metalworking, and I've known Max's partner for like, 30 years or more. And so, was interested in doing this. Max has helped with like some metal working on Strawberry's trike like building up a wheel that had been like kind of loose and beside the spokes and stuff like that and trying to figure out ways to make it work better. And so, I really appreciate Max's like work. He has a studio show at Arch4 here right now. Max and his and his spouse, partner, Alex went to something in the Idaho area because they were trying to find something that did, like taking like metal rocks, trying to get into metal. And it was like an inclusive, gender affirming space that was like, yeah. And I have it in my e-mail somewhere where they went to this.

In Idaho? Wow, that's surprising, but lovely. 

Idaho. Montana. It was like somewhere in that area that they went to for like a month to, like, learn how to like, take it from the ore to the metal. And so, Max is trying to learn how to like, do more stuff so you could come back and teach. And so I'm like his first student, I think, or something like that. 

Vignette 21: The Future

So, when I was at this interfaith non-profit anti-nuclear thing in Las Vegas, I felt like that was going to be my retirement. That I was retiring from nursing, going to be a board member there and watch as that organization kind of like just plodded along. Because the Nevada test site was in Las Vegas, and it's ... despite our like, best intentions, it's never going to disappear because it's a whole government entity, and stuff like that. And even though we had the idea like we're going to get rid of the Nevada test. I had the idea like, that's my retirement. I'm just going to, like, see it play out and as it goes up and down. And then Strawberry pointed out the flaws in that and it's like, yeah, there's flaws let's move from the Las Vegas Catholic worker ... Nevada desert experience plan of retirement. And so, now we're here and I kind of see this as my retirement. That I'm going to like get older here, but then it's also like Strawberry pointed out that this is not really the best place for them. Because of the way the community has like ups and downs and even though it might be fine for me, it doesn't mean it's fine for them. And Strawberry has pointed out that maybe we should go traveling more, so I kind of see that now as my thing is that we're going to take the Prius and maybe go traveling and driving through, seeing Spokane or Seattle or other areas and camp out in the car and have this as their home base. And I see that now as my next five year plan. Is like exploring things instead of like trying to do something on somebody else's timeline. Some board or being directed by a board to collaborate on this particular thing. I'm going to like do more stuff that that helps build me. I've just started doing some metal work. I'm pointing over in this direction because I've got a trilobite that's in a piece of metal and I'm thinking about doing more artwork kind of stuff maybe more zines. I've got some other zines in the works. One about death.