13. On the morning after our first hard frost in late October or early November, how rapidly the leaves let go their hold upon their parent's stems. I stood for some minutes one such morning under a maple by the roadside to witness the silent spectacle. The leaves came down one by one like great golden flakes. There was no motion in the air to loosen them. The hour had come, and they gave up life easily and gracefully. What a gay company they had made on that tree all summer, clapping their hands in gladness and joyously drinking in the air in the sunshine, whispering wrestling, swayed by emotion or stilled by the night do's, and each and all doing their work. Now their day is done, and one by one they let go their hold upon the parent's stem and fall to the earth. Some come hurrying and tumbling down, some drop almost like clods, some come eddying and balancing down, and now and then one comes down as gracefully as a bird, sailing around in an easy spiral like a dove alighting, its edges turned up like wings, and its stems pointing downward like a head and neck. One can hardly believe it is not a thing of life. It reaches the ground as lightly as a snowflake. If one could only finish his own career so gracefully. What a contrast to the falling of the leaves of some other trees, say those of the mulberry. The leaves of this tree fall on such mornings, like soldiers slain in battle with all their powers in full force. They drop heavily and clumsily, apparently untouched by the ripening process that so colors the maple and other leaves. They are rank green and full of sap. So with alocas and the apple and cherry leaves, they all seem cut off prematurely. But the leaves of most of our native trees, oak, ash, hickory maple, seem to fall in the fullness of time. They have ripened like the grain and the fruit. They are colored like the clouds at sunset, and their demise seems a welcome event. They make the woods and groves gay. They carpet the ground as with sunset clouds. It is a funeral that is like a festival. It is the golden age come back. The falling of these gaily colored leaves seems to make a holiday in nature. It is like the fluttering of ribbons and scarves. It does not suggest age and decay. It suggests some happy celebration. They seem to augment the sunshine to diffuse their own color into it, or to give back to it the light they have been so long absorbing. The day itself drops upon the earth like a great golden leaf falling from the tree of Yggdrasil. 2. It always gives me a little pleasurable emotion when I see in the autumn woods where the downy woodpecker has just been excavating his winter quarters in a dead lamb or tree trunk. I am walking along a trail or wood road when I see something like coarse nustada scattered on the ground. I know at once what carpenter has been at work in the trees overhead, and I proceed to scrutinize the trunks and branches. Presently, I am sure to detect a new round hole about an inch and a half in diameter. On the underside of a dead lamb or in a small tree trunk. This is Downy's cabin, where he expects to spend the winter nights and a part of the stormy days too. When he excavates it in an upright tree trunk, he usually chooses a spot beneath the lamb. The lamb forms a sort of rude hood and prevents the rainwater from running down into it. It is a snug and pretty retreat and a very safe one I think. I doubt whether the driving snow ever reaches him, and no predatory owl could hook him out with its claw. Near town or in town, the English bear would probably drive him out, but in the woods I think he is rarely molested, the one one instance I knew him to be dispossessed by a flying squirrel. On stormy days, I have known Downy to return to his chamber in mid-afternoon and to lie a bed there till 10 in the morning. I have no knowledge that any other species of our woodpeckers excavate these winter quarters, but they probably do. The chickadee has too slender a beak for such work and usually spends the winter nights in natural cavities or in the abandoned holes of Downy. Three. As I am riding here in my study these November days, a Downy woodpecker is excavating a chamber in the top of a chestnut post in the vineyard a few yards below me, or rather he is enlarging a chamber which he or one of his fellows excavated last fall. He is making it ready for his winter quarters. A few days ago I saw him enlarging the entrance and making it a more complete circle. Now he is in the chamber itself working away like a carpenter. I hear his muffled hammering as I approach cautiously on the grass. I make no sound and the hammering continues till I have stood for a moment beside the post. Then it suddenly stops and Downy's head appears at the door. He glances at me suspiciously and then hurries away in much excitement. How did he know there was someone so near? As birds have no sense of smell it must have been by some other means. I return to my study and in about fifteen minutes Downy is back at work. Again I cautiously and silently approach but he is now more alert and when I am the width of three grape rows from him he rushes out of his den and lets off his sharp metallic cry as he hurries away to some trees below the hill. He does not return to his work again that afternoon but I feel certain that he will pass the night there and every other night all winter unless he is disturbed. So when my son and I are passing along the path by his post with the lantern about eight o'clock in the evening I pause and say let's see if Downy is at home. A slight tap on the post and we hear Downy jump out of bed as it were and his head quickly fills the doorway. We pass hurriedly on and he does not take flight. A few days later just as it's undone as I am walking on the terrace above I see Downy comes sweeping swiftly down through the air on that long galloping flight of his and a light on the big maple on the brink of the hill above his retreat. He sits perfectly still for a few moments surveying the surroundings and seeing the coast is clear drops quickly and silently down and disappears in the interior of his chestnut lodge. He will do this all winter long coming home when the days are stormy by four o'clock and not stirring out in the morning till nine or ten o'clock. Some very cold blustery days he will probably not leave his retreat at all. He has no mate or fellow lodger though there is room in his cabin for three birds at least. Where the female is I can only conjecture. Maybe she's occupying a discarded last year's lodge as I noticed there are a good many new holes drilled in the trees every fall though many of the old ones still seem intact. During the inclement season Downy is anything but chivalrous or even generous. He will not even share with the female the marrow bone or bit of suet that I fasten on the maple in front of my window but drives her away rudely. Sometimes the hairy woodpecker a much larger bird routes Downy out and wrecks his house. Sometimes the English barrels mob him and dispossess him. In the woods the flying squirrels often turn him out of doors and furnish his chamber cavity to suit themselves. Four I am always content if I can bring home from my walks a least bit of live natural history as when the other day I saw a red-headed woodpecker having a tilt with a red squirrel on the trunk of a tree. Doubtless the woodpecker had a nest nearby and had had some experience with this squirrel as a nest robber. When I first saw them the bird was chasing the squirrel around the trunk of an oak tree his bright colors of black and white and red making his every movement conspicuous. The squirrel avoided him by darting quickly to the other side of the tree. Then the woodpecker took up its stand on the trunk of a tree a few yards distant and every time the squirrel ventured timidly around where he could be seen the woodpecker was swooped down at him making another loop of bright color. The squirrel seemed to enjoy the fun and to tempt the bird to make this ineffectual swoop.  Occasionally the bird made it pretty hot for him and pressed him closely but he could escape because he had the inside ring and was so artful a dodger. As often as he showed himself on the woodpecker side the bird would make a vicious pass at him and there would follow a moment of lively scurrying around the trunk of the old oak then all would be quiet again. Finally the squirrel seemed to get tired of the sport and ran swiftly to the top and off through the branches into the neighboring trees as this was probably all the woodpecker was fighting for he did not give chase. While I was watching the squirrel and the woodpecker I discovered a crow's nest with nearly grown young the parent crow came low over the fence into the grove and flew to a branch of an oak and alighted only 10 or 12 feet from the ground then it flew to a higher branch in another tree and then to the top of a group of spruces where I saw one of the young crow's rise and take the food how cautious and artful the whole proceeding was. One of our latest nature writers pretends to see what the crow brings her young at such times had I had the most powerful opera glasses on this occasion I could not have told the nature of the morsel she brought in her beak the thing is done very quickly and deathly and it's not meant for the eye of any onlooker there may chance to be about thus all the little ways and doings of the birds interest me they are curiously human while yet they afford glimpses into a new and strange world we look on we are interested we understand we sympathize we may lend a hand we share much in common one nature mothers us all our lives run parallel in many respects similar problems similar needs similar fatalities similar tribulations come home to us all and yet we are separated by a gulf the gulf that lies between conscious reasoning soul and unconscious unreasoning instinct but I must not plunge into the gulf nor seek to clear it here five it always amuses me to see in late may a chippy or a gold bench ride down the dandelion stock that is carrying its frail globe of down high above the grass you are looking out over the lawn when you see one of these silver balls suddenly go down a chippy or a goldfinch has thrown itself upon the stock and born it to the ground for the seed the dandelion seeds are about the first that ripen and the seed eating birds are hard put for food at this time hence these globes are godsend to them not long before I had seen the goldfinches and the purplefinches pecking to pieces the button balls of the sycamore for the seeds they held put up so compactly in May the squirrels are hard put also it is at this season that the chipmunk pulls up the corn and that the red squirrel robs the bird's nest of both eggs and youngs their last year's stores of nuts and grains are exhausted and the new crop is not yet formed I think that the chipmunk has learned that there is something for him also in the dandelion seed but I doubt whether the red squirrel has the ladder has found out that there is something for him in the seeds of the elm tree which usually get fully developed in May the elm affords shortcomings but it's better than nothing the chaff is big and the grain small but probably sweet morning noon and night I see the squirrels feeding in the elms about my cabin and see the road strewn with the elm flakes from which the germ in the center has been cut do they know an elm tree when they see it or did they explore all their trees in quest of food if again I belong to the new school of nature riders I should say they know an elm as well as you or I and the day on which the seeds are edible and that they taught this word to their young but as it is I will only venture to say that at this season there they are in the top most branches of the scattered elms very busy with these green scales reaching and swaying and hanging by their hind feet or sitting up in that pretty way with tails over their backs and hands definitely submitting the samaras as a tease the red squirrel is much more of a hustler than is the gray and will make shift to live where the ladder will starve the red squirrel abides while the gray seems to go and come with the seasons of scarcity or plenty yet I've seen the gray eating the fruit of the poison ivy and apparently relishing it but he rarely disturbs the birds though with this misdemeanor he is probably not entirely innocent small things small doings train our powers of observation the big things all can see who sees the finer shire play of wildlife that goes on about us not all of nature's book is writ large the fine print is quite as interesting and it is this that trains the eye a schoolgirl wrote me one day that she had seen a hawk carrying a snake in its beak now as she had had a trained eye she would have seen that the hawk carried the snake in its talons one of our recent nature writers has made the same mistake in his book birds of prey all carry their game in their talons other birds carry it in their beaks a recent magazine writer errors in the other direction when he makes the crow carry in its claws the corn and is pulled up as the crow is one of the birds that carries everything in its beak emerson says the day does not seem holy profane in which we have given heed to some natural object it is such little incidents as I have been relating that redeem many of my own days and give to my pastimes a touch of something I would not willingly miss from them end of section 13 end of nature near home and other papers by jambrose recorded by 8th fern southern california december 2009


The Crowing County Board approved to send a list of recommendations to legislators on the state's behavioral health continuum of care. After the state shifted to a community-based model of mental health care, there's been a shortage of psychiatric beds. Many clients end up in the county jail or emergency departments while they wait for services to become available. Somebody may be getting service from one organization can't anymore because there's not enough service providers and then they have to look at other organizations and that kind of trickles down to then when you have these emergency situations at the jail or the state. We're at the courts that people can't get those immediate services like they always need to because there's such a backlog of appointments. The county plans to recommend funding for the jail staff to be trained on crisis intervention and funding for community-based residential options. The county also will recommend the state restore funding for county costs of treatment at the Inoco Regional Treatment Center. The state never developed the continuum of care that they promised when the state hospital system closed and as a result of that, counties are picking up the tab. And so the real question is, do you want to fund a mental health delivery system across the state of Minnesota using state resources or would you like that to be a patchwork quilt, county by county by county? Crowan County hopes to gain monetary support from the state to invest in the mental health services in the community. If you enjoyed this segment of Lakeland News, please consider making a tax-deductible contribution to Lakeland PBS.


My name is Mark Schmidt. I'm the director of the political reform program at New America, and I'm going to introduce this event with Monica Potts to honor to discuss her new book about her experiences and her relationship with her best friend from childhood in Arkansas, a really wonderful piece of work. I just want to say a couple of things. I asked to be able to do this introduction because 13 years ago when I was the executive editor of the American prospect magazine, Monica Potts joined us as a staff writer and contributed a lot of wonderful work. And I've really been, you know, it's really been a joy to watch her writing and work evolve over the 13 years since then. And to really become, I think, probably the best writer about economic hardship and poverty in the United States right now. And I don't say that lightly. I think some, I think, you know, some writing about economic hardship and poverty is, you know, to be kind of clinical and data driven, which is fine as a place. Some can be a little pitying and has some distance even as people immerse themselves in people's lives. And I think Monica has just an incredible ability to immerse herself and also draw out what we may not be familiar with about people's lives. It's wonderful to to to watch. The other thing that I want to say about Monica that's always really struck me as this book is a memoir, but a lot of people's first instinct is to is memoirs to write about themselves, people are told right what you know and what you know is yourself. And what always struck me from the beginning was that like that was never Monica's first it's her first instinct was always to learn about things she didn't immerse herself in things she didn't know about and write more about them. And I feel like she's kind of looped around to seeing that her own community her own family her own experiences are, you know, a really important force in in in shaping what she writes and so it's been a really fascinating to watch that evolution in her writing that's that's led up to this wonderful book. So I'm just going to get out of the way and turn it over to conversation between Monica to is a was a new America fellow in 2016 and has maintained all kinds of affiliations with this with this wonderful organization as people do in in conversation with Larissa McParker who was also a new America fellow in 2018 and is a New Yorker writer, and also, you know terrific writer that about all these issues so with that I'm really glad you're all here and welcome to a conversation with with Monica box. Thank you. Thank you mark and again, welcoming everyone to thank you for joining the new America fellows program for this discussion of the forgotten girls and memoir friendship and lost promise in rural America by Monica pots. I just want to add to what's just been said that this book is, it is. It reads like a novel it is incredibly moving, but at the same time it answers a crucial question, writing about rural poverty tends to either focus on the person who gets out and that's the sort of American up by the bootstraps. The narrative, or the people who are unable to get out or have not gotten out and the brilliance and originality of this book is that it does both, and therefore, looks without ever being as as you said to data driven or to sociological looks in an incredibly personal way at what, what caused that divergence. I'm, as you heard, Larissa McFarker at 2018 Emerson collected fellow at New America. I'm a writer at the New Yorker and the author of strangers drowning a book about radical altruism. And before we start a few housekeeping notes, as you heard, but I want to emphasize again. If you have questions during the event, please submit them in the question function the q amp a function and we'll get to them at the second half of the event. And most importantly copies of the forgotten girls are available. You can buy them through our bookselling partner which is solid state books, and you can find a link to buying them on this page. Click the buy this book function and button excuse me and believe me you're really going to want to do that. Monica pots is, as you heard a 2016 National Fellow and a senior politics reporter for 538 the website, and her work has appeared in the New York Times the Atlantic, and the New Republic among other publications, and on NPR. Thank you for doing this event with us Monica. Thank you so much for having me and thanks to mark and to you for those lovely introductions I'm excited to be here. Oh, it's it's, I want to do everything I can to make sure this book is read by as many people as possible. So, I, Mark and I gave a very brief outline of your project but I'm before we get started, assuming that a lot of people here will not have read your book yet. Could you describe the story of it in a broad in broad strokes just so we know where we are what kind of story we're, we're talking about. Yes, so starting about a decade ago, we started to see a decline in life expectancy among the least educated Americans in the United States and that was driven largely by a decline in the least educated white Americans in the US and so I saw this as somebody in the area, and rural Arkansas in the southern edge of the Ozarks this town called Clinton that I grew up in, and I recognized that the populations being described as suffering the, these bad health events that later became to be called death despair by Angus Deaton and in case at Princeton, which is a trio of suicides depression and alcohol related deaths, and some other deaths that led to earlier deaths in for among this population and also more middle population so it was causing a decline in life expectancy in the US. I recognize that this was a population I was familiar with that this was the population I had left when I had grown up in Clinton and gone away to college and I came back home, looking for a way to tell the story in a really personal way because I wanted it to be an insiders few I wanted to sort of revisit what it was like growing up here in a way to tell the story completely I think from start to finish and it I've, I reconnected with my childhood best friend Darcy, who's who did not graduate from high school when I did and went off to college so I reconnected with Darcy I retraced our childhoods. I talked about the ambition and excitement that we shared as young kids the idea of getting out of Clinton which we both shared. We used to look through an atlas and imagine living in a real town, because Clinton is about 2000 people we didn't live in neighborhoods like what we saw on TV. We dreamed of going to California and changing the world. And so I reach a chase that childhood and then I followed what happened to each of us as I left and she stayed. What did you sort of, I mean, there are many ways in which Darcy's life and family were different from yours. The crucial thing you're examining is the point at which your lives began to diverge because as you said when you were young kids like elementary school middle school you shared the reason you were such close friends as you shared this ambition academic talent, but your lives turned out very differently so can you sort of talk about the point probably in high school when your lives began to diverge yours and Darcy's and as an adult what you think the causes were what were the reasons. Well, I think it, I think it started even a little bit earlier really junior high when I was got I had, I kept journals when I was a child and I interviewed Darcy and a bunch of other people and I was really surprised. Looking back as an adult at how young we started to kind of have different experiences and how adults some of those experiences were for my peers. And what I mean by that is really in junior high Darcy started kind of sneaking out and party going to parties with older kids and some of it was really I think kind of innocent it was something that kids do everywhere. I think what was different for us is that we were in a small town where you kind of live in a fishbowl. And it was also a really judgmental town it's in some ways it's a very evangelical community and there are very strict guidelines on how people think children especially girls should act. So Darcy started to, I think fall into the camp that people called the bad kids, she started to party, her house became a party zone. She started to date boys when she was really young, she and some of my other friends had very young experiences with much older boys that I think now as an adult I see is really inappropriate. And so tracing back that I think it was a pattern of her really not finding adults at that time in her life to intervene and steer her in a different direction and give some grace and kind of think about ways that she might be learning and think about ways to help her focus on school, get on the right track in her studies and kind of stay focused on what her dreams and goals were. And I mean along the same lines I was going to ask you and it seemed your mom was not only extremely determined that you get out of Clinton, but she seemed to have a pretty good sense of what that would take and what she needed to do and what you needed to do. Could you tell me a bit about about that and like how did she, how did she figure that out how did she know, but but but what did she know more importantly, like, what did she know. She knew that we needed to have kind of a single minded focus on leaving Clinton from the time that we were very young. And she also in she encouraged us to study she encouraged us to think big. She encouraged us to not feel limited. I think that one of the things I explore is that in a very, a very traditional conservative community where people have very traditional gender norm ideas. The ideas of what girls could do with were kind of limited we were expected to grow up and become wives and mothers. In some cases we were explicitly told that we were going to be help meets for our husband or future husbands. And that was sort of the orientation I think for a lot of young girls. That was not something my mom believed she didn't appreciate life in Clinton she had left when she was young and lived in and around Chicago for some time. And I think that to what a degree that some people might think of as extreme. She focused on us not staying in Clinton and us not getting those connections and those derailments that might keep us here so we had to study we had to think big and she also connected us to opportunities wherever she found them so I think it was a combination of luck. We just happened to find opportunities and we also had a sense that we should take them when we when we had them. One of the stories that I describe is that my mom just from her reading, she was a really avid reader had seen that a lot of women writers went to a college and she didn't know how to pronounce it and she didn't remember what it was she thought it was Brina or something like that. Now I know that it was Bryn Maher which is where I ended up going to school. And she encouraged me to send my scores there when I started taking the ACT for practice and I sent my scores to all these women's I heard back from Barnard when I was only a sophomore, I called them and I said, thank you for sending me these application materials but I'm only a sophomore I can't go to college yet. And they sent me information about a summer pre college program which I applied and got into. I called and I said thank you for accepting me to this I can't afford it. And they found a scholarship for me to be able to go. And so the summer I was 16 years old I spent in New York taking college classes at Barnard College. It was really a life changing event that connected some of my dreams and ambitions to a reality, a sense that it could really happen. I mean something you you point out in the book that I've, it's driven me crazy for years is is the fact that so many people, very logically assume that they more prestigious the college the more expensive it will be, and that the cheaper option is to go to a local college and sometimes that's true but if your scores are good enough, going to a fancy college can actually be cheaper because the scholarship money available is is is there's so much more. It would seem that that would be a sort of easy social fix to make to spread that little but crucial piece of information to the kind of schools that you went to.  You know, I, I don't know I think about that a lot and it also drives me. It's also something that really bugs me and it's bug me for years because I it seems like low hanging fruit to get information to all the college or all the high school valedictorians and tell them that they can apply.  And I think that it's a combination of, there's probably logistical challenges a town like Clinton is very small, you're not going to get a lot of applicants from a place like this. But I don't know the answer because it be hooves colleges to have applicants and especially qualified applicants from around the country so I'm not sure why they don't work harder to do that. It's very frustrating. I found your discussion of the marshmallow test really fascinating because you know as as I'm sure everyone on this call knows. I don't know what you'd explain with marshmallow test is but but the assumption is, I think, broadly that the people who managed to, to succeed, like you have some kind of quality of personal determination or will or it's a it's a matter who who gets out like you and who does not like your friend Darcy and you critique that notion can you tell us a bit about the marshmallow test. Yeah. As you said it's it's a it's something that's really well known but it's this idea that if you put a marshmallow in front of a child and they can wait five minutes and get a second marshmallow. If they can withstand that test and get that bigger reward for the, for the price of waiting that that tells you something about their grit and their character and their ability to persevere. I do. I spoke with a researcher who had complicated the findings from those earlier studies. When researchers look at the whole of a child's life. They tend to find that the ability, the marshmallow test is sort of more of a symptom than of other things that when you look at sociological or socio economic status when you look at their mom's education, all the other markers that we tend to associate with how a child will do later in life. The marshmallow test just kind of fades away as important importance. But I think there's something about the United States that people want to grab on to that idea that there's just this sense that all you need is is just this personality that can pick yourself up from your bootstraps that is all you need to succeed. And I think that you really have to look at a whole person's life because Darcy had that ambition Darcy had that ability and she ran into problems I think that overwhelmed her as a teenager and you, you also need I think other things around you that allow you to take advantage of opportunity and to see it when it's there. And you need to look at a whole person's it's just the whole problems that people face in the whole of the course of their lives are just not solvable by one neat trick. It's just not the way that life works I think. Another sort of thread of your analysis of how your life diverged from Darcy's is religion. You mentioned that she, like most people in your town comes from a family of evangelical Protestants, in which there's a kind of sort of theological fatalism as you describe it. I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about that like do you think, I mean one can draw a theoretical connection between a kind of theological fatalism and a real life passivity but do you think it actually, does it work like that can you see it working in actual people, their beliefs about God their beliefs about what they're able to do in life and what they, how they live their lives. You see a connection, I think it also matters that, you know, this is an area without a lot of resources, it's a small area with a fairly low median income and so that it's not people who are as used to being able to make things that they want to see reality and so if you know there's a problem in town, you know something needs fixed something needs to be rebuilt it's going to require relying on outside sources outside resources, it's going to require a lot of resources to the town itself may not have and so I think when you live in those kinds of conditions, it becomes easier to believe that the God just has a plan for you you just have to accept it. I think people believe that and then that shapes how they respond to challenges that if God has laid out a path for you that that it's. I think a lot of people believe it's actually almost arrogant to challenge it to try to change the course of your life. If that's what God's laid out for you, and I, I also think that if you're in the conditions of your life are maybe not great, then it does become tempting to believe that there's a better world for you in heaven. And I think that's another thing that people believe that God is a temporary home that our real home is in heaven with God. That's not something my mom ever believed she always thought you should take action if if there was some kind of challenge before you. I think a lot about my sister's diagnosis with Tourette syndrome she really took the bull by the horns with that and made sure that she got the care that she needed and she got the interventions that she needed at school so that she could succeed in school. I think that those that kind of difference that kind of different view on life did make a difference for us because she never would have just said, Oh well this is just, you know, God's plan this is just the cross that we have to bear. Well, speaking of crosses that you have to bear I mean one of the, one of for me the most shocking moments of the book is when a friend's a friend of yours mother Susie tells you that not only was she molested as a child, but that half the girls in Clinton were to. Could you talk a bit about that. What do you. Well, I think and she was, she really described and this was something I heard from other people as well. Just a really common. Experience of abuse and neglect in this town. And I think that not not in addition to being molested I think that girls became sexual objects really young. I saw that happen with a lot of my friends older boys would target them older boys would try to date younger women older boys would try to sexualize younger girls. And I think that that was an experience that also kind of shaped how people. Susie described a town that was living with trauma, this kind of collective trauma and individual trauma that people didn't talk about. And that was something that really rang true with me because I can see it and I've experienced it and Darcy's experienced it and I think without without health care, without a really good acknowledgement of what that means and how to recover from it, then you are going to have a population that struggles to overcome future challenges and to really thrive, people can survive almost anything. But when you think about what it takes to actually thrive, you need that kind of base of happiness and safety that I think people maybe don't feel here. I mean you, you also wrote that the CDC found that Arkansas had the highest rate of childhood trauma in the whole country. Why is that I mean there are a lot of places that are poor and why Arkansas, what specifically about Arkansas. Yeah, that year was 2019 and I think that other states that have really high rates of adverse childhood effects, I think it's what it's called, are all also poor and rule, and have don't have a lot of resources for kind of a collective safety way of dealing with those problems because you're always going to have people individual people who experience adverse effects but it's really how your community deals with it how your community reacts to it, the kinds of resources you can draw on within your community and within your family and within your health care system. And I think that when you look at the very role, very poor states without a lot of those kind of collective resources you see those rates of childhood trauma and those rates of childhood adverse effects that it are really hard to overcome. We know now that things like divorce and abuse and neglect and all those things have really long lasting effects on people and overcoming that is not something people can do on their own. But it's really interesting what you've just said because so I think again in terms of of cliches about about community and and the way people live would have that small towns would be the very place where you would have a community safety net where you would have a community that can gather on their own etc whereas like, you know, other kinds of poor places like like cities would have less of that but you're saying the opposite that in fact it's in those rural small towns where community safety net is completely absent can you can you explain that like why is that worse in a place where everyone knows each other. Yeah, I think it's worse in a place where everyone knows each other partly because everyone does know each other. So everyone knows your business or has the potential to know your business I think it at the instinct then is to hide your troubles. It can feel like living in a fishbowl when you're in a small town.  So I think that and they know things about your family's life they know things about your parents that actually can be very isolating. I've actually always found the opposite to be true I've always found that rural areas can be very isolating and it's harder to build a sense of community. This sounds very basic but I live pretty close to town but if I go out my door. I can't walk down a sidewalk and just walk to the store and see people that I know just fellow, you know towns members and wave high and have that sense of community people in their cars instead. I can walk places but I have to walk through like a weedy sneaky ditch like it's not really well cared for necessarily all the time I think cities are the opposite you can have that sense of public space of third spaces if you have a neighbor who's really you can help them sweep their stoop in the fall. I've seen that happen in the cities that I live in I think cities are extremely friendly and it's easier to build those kinds of connections that are different from close friends and different from family but are really really important. And I think small towns are a little bit harder to do that and I think it's something I think about a lot is how to rethink the kinds of physical spaces people live into increase happiness and decrease loneliness. I think that's I mean that's one of the most original and important aspects of your book is the way that you show what you just said. And one at some point you asked yourself a really, a really brave question and that startled me actually I did not expect this question you said, at what point, if any did I bear responsibility for what happened to Darcy. And I guess I would ask you not to not to tell the whole story but to tell us a little bit about what did happen to Darcy, and then talk about, you know, years on having got reconnected with her and immersed yourself deeply in her story. How would you answer that question. Yeah, I left for college Darcy did not graduate from high school, she stayed in town. She really struggled in a lot of different ways she had experiences with substance use disorder. She had experiences with bad relationships destructive relationships. She became a mom at a pretty young age and had two children and continued to struggle through her life with poverty with substance use disorders and that was this. That was how I found her when I when I came back is in the midst of those struggles. I no longer blame myself for the challenges that I had confronting what I saw coming I think when I was a teenager. It's hard to remember what it feels like to be a child basically but I know that when I was 13 and 14 and 15 I felt that Darcy needed help, and that she needed an intervention of some sort. And I thought that there were people who should have worked harder to do that for her. And I felt guilty for not having raised the alarm. I no longer feel guilty for that because I think I was going through my own teenage travails and that I didn't know what to do or how to do it and I don't know if I would have been able to personally help anyway. Because I was also a kid. I regret not staying in touch with Darcy through the years, and I wish that we had stayed closer when I left for college. And I sometimes wonder if that had helped, but I did go through periods of really being angry. Because I felt that there were people who were in a better position than I was adults who could have intervened and help Darcy Darcy was really good at hiding her problems but I'm still amazed that no one saw what happened to her coming. And that's something that I can imagine why you were so angry. I mean, if I'm remembering right it was it was something like Darcy was just told by the school, oh you've missed too many days. It's too late you cannot graduate, but no one had told her along the way like if you miss another 30 days, you're not going to be able to graduate like that is so shocking that that nobody in the school warned her that this was the consequence because it sounded like she did not know. Yeah, as far as she remembers she didn't know and nobody intervened and it seems that at some point somebody should have said Darcy is missing a lot of school let's sit down and have a talk with her and her mom. I think there was also an attitude then this was before no child left behind this was before we really focused on getting more kids to graduate from high school.  And that was really prevalent in our rule town to you know the focus was on the kids who wanted to be there, who wanted to go on to college how to get them their best opportunity, and I don't necessarily blame people for that there's limited resources and so you kind of want to focus on where you feel like you're going to actually make a difference and so I also think at the time you know Darcy still had good grades Darcy still did not seem to be in crisis and so you know there were there are kids who are in much bigger crises, almost all the time. Kids who aren't eating at home kids use parents are abusive kids who are living on their own in their car. There are kinds of things that happen everywhere and you know we rely on schools a lot to solve almost all of those problems. That is very true. So, one of the, well, it's not a twist in the book because you say it at the beginning but if you're again for people who are listening to this who have not read the book.  Can you tell me a bit about that decision. I mean I was, I was coming back a lot anyway partly for the book and I found that I was enjoying my time here. I think when I get older I realized that there were aspects of life in Arkansas that I hadn't been able to fully appreciate because I've been so focused on leaving. There are aspects of country life that feel like home to me that I like I think this area is beautiful. I love physically being here I love exploring the natural world here. It felt like home to me and I never really felt kind of rooted anywhere else I have, I have deep roots here, and my mom is still here and I wanted to be closer to her for a little while. And my partner was into the idea it's beautiful. There's a lot of opportunity here if you want to, if you're in a position where you can take it I think I wouldn't have come back if I wasn't already established in my career and freelancing at that time and able to work remotely. I think also, it was time for me to kind of close the book on Clinton as an adult I needed to, I needed to think about it again in a new different way before I moved on with the rest of my adulthood.  She tried to talk us out of it for several weeks, and she wasn't very happy about it. And she still is where she wants us to leave, and she wants to leave now. But you know, I think that it was, I think it was good. It was, it was what I needed and it was what I think she needed even though she wouldn't admit it. So tell me, I mean you said that life in Clinton was more difficult than you anticipated, and especially during the pandemic, you tell me a bit about like, you know now that you've been there for several years. You know what were the, you should talk a little bit about the good parts, what are the difficult parts of going back as an adult. The difficult parts are those lack of resources, there just aren't, there isn't the same level of ability to meet challenges that I think you would see in a place with more community level resources, more infrastructure. Those kinds of things are actually difficult to live with. We don't really have a, like, that's very abstract. Yeah. We actually don't have a, we don't have a animal shelter really here operating now. And so if stray dogs end up in your yard, you, there's nowhere to call. So you have to, you have to put in the effort of finding who that dog belongs to. And if it doesn't belong to anyone, you have to decide how much you're going to care about the life of that stray dog. And that can actually have knock on effects to human health, like straight dogs running around is not a good thing for communities to have to deal with. Dogs get hit on the road all the time. They can cause accidents. It's sad for the animals. It's an animal will for question as well as a human health question. Those kinds of things, where are you down. I think if you are in a place where you see this lack of ability to deal with a really simple and predictable problem. It makes it harder to think about it kind of takes energy that could be used elsewhere. I think my biggest hope for this community is that they see that they actually do have resources in each other and they can come together to solve some of these problems. There are other issues to funding for things like the library funding for things like the volunteer fire departments, which are all volunteer. Those things are sort of always in question. And so that takes a level of safety, filling a safe and secure away from you. I think if you're living here the lack of sidewalks, which I talked about, I would just love more than anything that for this to be the place where I could walk down the sidewalk and see people I know easily without all the challenge and to feel like there's a town that I'm a community member of in a way that is I think difficult here on another level to there was not good broadband when I first moved here it actually made it hard to work remotely. So those kinds of things take energy away from bigger issues and bigger problems because every day you're doing things like taking your own trash to the dump because there's no truck you know trash pickup. I, we tend to think of those things as really small, but they add up to be difficult problems that people are spending their time and energy dealing with instead of the bigger, the bigger problems does that make sense. Oh, absolutely. I mean that's, that's the kind of concrete example that you can absolutely see. And one thing that that was really striking to me was that your mother, when you moved away. She couldn't really imagine that you could leave Clinton and have a good life, while remaining connected to family and friends and Clinton and herself said something similar and you probably, you know inherited that feeling from her you said quote, I went home less and less often even missing the holidays until some years I did not go home at all. When I left the town behind I lost its people. I could have continued to be friends Darcy or anyone from Clinton but I didn't want to, or really I thought I couldn't. They were what I sacrificed. I excised them all for my life and went forward in colleges if I had no history.  Yeah, I think I thought that there would be problems that would drag me down that there would be some kind of life event that I would not be able to withstand emotionally. So that it would make being in a place like Bryn Mawr college or working in a place like New York where I moved after college harder. I think she still thought and maybe I absorbed that we needed the whole force of my energy to keep me going forward in life. And I think that was because of her own experience she had a trauma in her life that brought her back home and I think I think the idea that you can have an adverse life effect like event that you can seek therapy if you need it that you can move forward without just something completely in life. I think that's something that you take maybe take for granted if you are from, you know, a sense of if you come from a sense of stability that we just didn't have here. I think we always thought that any little thing could knock us off of our course. And I think that that's where that came from. I was very happy to reconnect with some of my high school friends when I moved back here because I, it was nice to think about how that wasn't necessarily necessary and to sort of reconnect with people and restitch those relationships back together. So, I can still join my conversation I forgot to remind everybody to put questions in the question box. I'm going to ask Monica a couple more questions myself but in five minutes, we're going to go to audience questions so please do submit any questions have as soon as you can. So, so I mean, I mean I wanted to ask you more but I should, should go to this next question because I do want to ask you this. Near the end of the book you write. Well, this was what still pinned Darcy and me together, the essential thing we still had in common. We shared a desire for a messy life. We both had a fear of being too settled of being trapped. And we've talked a lot about how extremely different your lives were. But you here seem to be grasping for what remains of that sort of spirit connection that you had as children, the feeling that you are in some really basic sense, similar people. I don't know more about that because, you know, clearly what your, or not clearly how it seems to me looking from the outside it seems that your sense of a messy life is very very different from Darcy's what did you mean by that. Yeah, I think Darcy would probably describe us as both hippies. I am. I never, I never really wanted to get married. I'm still not married I am partnered but I still kind of don't want to get married. I never wanted to stay in one place too long I actually did sort of move around a lot I, I went to college outside of Philadelphia, then I went to New York, then I spent some time in Connecticut, then I moved to DC, then I left DC, and then I uprooted my life to come back to this town I didn't ever bring up and I think part of what I enjoyed about moving back was that is that feeling of kind of bouncing around and and exploring new spaces and being new places and I think whenever I've had the opportunity, I've never been the kind of person who wanted a desk job. I always wanted to move and be moving and go new places and see new things. I think that that's what I kind of still share with Darcy is that she has that sense of movement and that sense of forward motion in her life that can be really good if it's channeled I think in the right way. I think that's what I tried to do was find a career in journalism that would suit that impulse of mine, and find a way to live that would enable me to feel that sense of bouncing around without kind of self destructing. And do you think you'll bounce again. Are you going to be in Clinton for long or are you going to bounce out again. We're going to bounce out again. I don't know where we're going. Sameer gets to choose because it's his turn. Okay, I'm going to with that I'm going to switch to the audience questions document. Okay. So here's the first question, which is a really crucial one. What factors have you and the women you wrote about identified as key to improving their quality of life and lessening those deaths of despair. I, I should end I should. I should say that I think that really good mental health care, reaching into all the corners of the country is really, really, really important. I think we know now I think it's pretty well known that a lot of substance use disorders has to do with untreated mental health problems. I think there's a lot of co, you know, co diagnoses whenever people finally seek treatment. I think dealing with those traumas that I talked about dealing with those adverse effects that can go back to childhood sometimes. That is really key to I think people living better lives whether they have are, you know, facing a death of despair or not. I think that that involves a lot more resources now and then a lot of communities have but I think that's where I would start for sure is better mental health care better health care. Somebody else asks, could you have written this book is anything but a memoir did you consider a more traditionally reported form. I did consider a more traditionally reported form. I felt that it was important to write it as a memoir because I didn't want a sense of an outsider writing it. I wanted a sense of it coming from the inside and looking back. And also because I really wanted to tell the story about Darcy, and it would have been weird to to take myself out of that story so that was that was really the impulse there. Okay, here's another question. How does reporting on rural America shape the way you view the national political discourse. What do you want those of us outside rural areas to take away from your reporting.  I think that I think you should I think people should listen to what people from rural areas are actually telling them I feel like a lot of times there's a lot of reporting about what people in rural areas want, especially politically, what they say they're voting for and then people still don't want to believe it I would just take them at the word. Like, you know, I think that there's, there's a lot of questions, you know, are, are they still going to vote for Trump and it's like they tell you they like Trump and they tell you they're going to vote for Trump so they're probably going to vote for Trump it's not it's not a puzzle you have to figure out. I think also the other thing is that rural areas are not monolithic, you know, that there's rural America overall is there's some diverse pockets in rural America there are pockets that are diversifying. So it's not a one size fits all thing. And then even within a community like mine which is overwhelmingly wide overwhelmingly working class, you're still going to see differences if you drill down. And it's, you know, my whole county has less than 17,000 people now. So it might seem like everyone's the same but they're not so it's and I think it's more important to think of it as a human place with human differences and a human, you know, human scale that it's important to kind of look, look at more deeply. Well, speaking of human differences I mean this is a question of mine I have been wanting to ask you also is. When you came back.  How did people welcome you back as, as one of them, or did you seem different did you feel different like how would how did that whole dynamic work. They mostly welcome welcome to me back and I think they had also seen it as inevitable that I would come back because a lot of people do. Yeah, which is interesting because I hadn't planned on it. I, I felt different. I felt that my experiences had changed the way that I interact with with this place and get in bad ways I had different expectations for how life should look I think then I saw here which is some of the difficulties I described earlier. But I also think I appreciated it more than I was older I really hated it when I was a kid as I described in the book but I appreciated the quiet and the nature when I came back I appreciated the beauty of it. And I think that for the first, I think, for the most part, people were really welcoming and I felt like I was home for a little while. Let's, let's sort of go back a little bit to the moment of divergence and what adults could possibly have done to keep Darcy on a healthier course like, you know, there is this dynamic of once you're labeled a bad kid, you know, teachers and adults in the world giving up on you. But is there anything that, other than having mental health workers in the community which certainly would have helped as you said, speaking now not to people outside rural communities but to people inside rural communities, what would you, what would you like to have them take from your book as guideposts or things that they could do to help keep really smart kids like Darcy interested in school, thinking that school has some relevance to them. I think, I think partly increasing the opportunities at school or outside of school would help, you know, we everything at everything and Clinton was sort of revolving around sports. And so if you weren't in sports, it made it harder to feel part of the school community. But thinking about more arts, more theater, more music, more other kinds of events, you know, celebrating kids differences a little bit better. I do think the town has gotten a little bit better about that celebrating the artistic kids. But I think we could do the I spoke to a couple 19 year olds and they still felt that the artistic kids were kind of overlooked and not celebrated as much that everything revolved around sports. I think that celebrating difference is and celebrating the things that make kids who they are, instead of putting a lot of pressure on them to succeed in one certain kind of way would help. You know, I just think that it's, I think we put a lot of pressure on young kids to know exactly what they're going to do in their lives exactly how they're going to succeed after they leave high school and I feel like taking some pressure off that would help I think kids figure out who they are.  Gosh, I'm forgetting her name Caroline possibly somebody going to graduate from high school going to community college and dropping out because the classes, the classwork wasn't interesting. She'd already done a lot of it in high school and so she felt like, Oh, this is not helping me.  I mean is that is that just that one person or is that a problem that you think happens a lot that the classes are just too boring so that kids can't understand why, why they're important. I think that was Cassandra. Yeah, Cassandra's a nurse now in Little Rock so she's doing very well in her life but she dropped out of her first round of college because she did fell bored and she also didn't see how it was going to immediately translate to something that she wanted to do. So I think that that it's that feeling that college has to translate immediately into what you know what you want to do.  You know, I think that I think that that's something that people don't have here that sense that going to college is good regardless of whether you know exactly how it's going to translate into a career later on. I think that might have to do with the cost, although for Cassandra was totally free. A lot of people have told me that the classes that they take in the beginning are boring I think they have in the state universities here they have pretty strict requirements that involve like algebra to and things like that that you already taken high school. So I think that a lot of people get bored with what they call their basics and it's like a gauntlet that you have to cross through to get to the interesting classes. If I didn't have that I got to take really interesting classes right away so I think that was a benefit for me. And I think it could be a benefit for more kids to. Yeah, yeah. That was very surprising to me. Here is another question from the audience. I live in a rural unincorporated town of 1700. What can retirees do to support our local youth. How can a community foundation help solve problems. Um, teach a class and something that you know at the local library or some other venue like that like if you are a quilter or if you're, if you know how to can food or something like that try to get kids and their parents involved in learning things like that if you want to teach a cooking class see what you would have to do to make that happen. I just think that anything that can get kids and teenagers and their families engaged in in that way and create a new community for them like maybe they would meet people they wouldn't know otherwise. Maybe they would interact with people they wouldn't interact with otherwise they would learn a skill that they don't know otherwise I think those things are all about really valuable.  Could you describe that for us you're coming from this very small town and the other end of the country. In that summer like what did you learn what did you see what was you know how did you change in the course of that summer. Yeah, I um, it was the first time I'd ever flown on a plane, and I was wearing a polo shirt I'd gotten from Walmart and sneakers and shorts and I hopped off the plane and I was just immediately in the biggest city I'd ever seen and bigger than I had ever imagined. And I, we saw travel agents then and so we had gotten a travel agent to get a car to meet me at the airport it was like every last penny that we had to send me there. And I was dropped off at campus and I was having lunch with people there and somebody said she had forgotten her her razors to shave her legs so she was going to go to the drugstore to get some and I was like by yourself I just like blew my mind that she would go walking in a city by herself in the middle of the day even. And so that's what I ended up doing was just walking around by myself without adults around with my friends I made new friends from different places around the country. I saw rent at the time which was still original production on Broadway which I thought was the greatest musical I'd ever seen then and I, I just wanted that life I wanted to walk around New York and see plays and go to the park and eat lunch with people I knew I just it just was really eye opening for me. And I think it was also eye opening for me too because I met people who knew how to apply to colleges and knew how to go to where they wanted to go and knew how to knew how to be adventurous and didn't see geography as a barrier to their lives and I think that was really eye opening for me in some ways too because I hadn't really had experienced that in that way before. And how did it feel to be I mean you talked a lot about the fishbowl feeling of being in your town and how everyone knew everybody and knew everybody's parents and grandparents and if you were a bad kid. Now you're always a bad kid.  I just do what I wanted and be whoever I wanted to be, and it was just this really magnificent sense of freedom of thinking about who I was and creating who I was every day, which meant, you know, experimenting with new ways of being dressing how I wanted thinking about how I wanted reading books that nobody would judge me for reading and, you know, I just was incredibly freeing I don't even know how to describe it but I felt that I had the freedom and I continue to feel that that period gave me the freedom to learn how to find out who I was as if it was this continual journey and not something that other people would decide for me or that my parents would have sort of. I would have inherited from my parents who I was which is what I always felt in the small town. So that kind of experience was invaluable to sort of encouraging me to to leave and to find a new way to grow up. Well on that hopeful note. I think we should wrap up but please everyone by and read this this book it's a really, it's a really, really moving story but as you can see there's also a lot of analysis and hope in it to for towns not just Monica's town but other towns like it. Thank you very much for joining us.


Thank you for joining us for another wonderful national broadcast of the non-profit show. We have Brian Greenwald back and we're thrilled to have you joining us again, Brian. Today's conversation, which is why I said this brings us to our episode all about tech equity and we're going to really go deep into that conversation. We like to start by extending our sincerest gratitude to all of our presenting sponsors. We are so extremely grateful to have your commitment to these shows but to the sector at large. So please, if you have not checked out our presenting sponsors, make sure you go online, do a quick Google search. They will pop up. They are in every parts of the world and really leaning in and supporting you in your mission. So please do check out our presenting sponsors. We are so grateful to have their ongoing support. And thank you to Julia Patrick, the CEO of the American Nonprofit Academy. She allows me to play with her in my, you know, every day here as the co-host. So I'm so grateful to have the opportunity to be here again. Jarrett Ransom, that's me, the non-profit nerd CEO of the Raven Group. So our conversation as I had shared, we have Brian Greenwald back. Brian is the VP of business development at Generate Impact and look at here, you're also on our backdrop. So thank you so much. Yeah, it's a thrill to be supporting the non-profit show. I think it's a wonderful thing. As I mentioned to Julie, I think it's filling a very important gap in the industry and it's a real privilege to be a part of it. Thank you. You know, we have had such interesting conversations you and I offline about all things tech and you come at life from a really different perspective because you're kind of like a yenta in some ways of trying to help people figure out what's going to be a good match, what's going to be a good fit, as opposed to just selling your own product, right? And so you have a bunch of different services and all of these pieces that help an organization navigate technology. And Jarrett and I from day one, and we lived this with the non-profit show, you know, we have seen a dearth in the acceptance and use of technology from the non-profit sector. But now what Jarrett and I have been talking about and kind of seeing is we think that there's more of this issue called tech equity. And so that's kind of what we wanted to talk to you about and get your feelings on it because we think that the non-profits that had a better grip on technology could weather the pandemic better. I don't know if you think that's accurate or not. Well, I think it's, you know, I think the pandemic has laid bare the reality that we are all technology workers now. You know, it doesn't matter what your job is, you're a technology worker, and that shouldn't be saying, well, you know, I need to know how to code an application or I need to know how to be an IT administrator. It's that your job depends on your ability to leverage technology. Now, really well-designed technology is like a transparent window, and you're focused on what you're doing with that technology and really poorly, you know, leverage technology I would consider like a garage door. Like you can hear that there's stuff happening on the other side with the kids playing basketball, but you can't see a lick of what's going on. And so it all starts with the idea that technology is now a basic investment, not a cost, but investment in human capital. And that's where the conversation needs to start. So I'd like to take it down like to the first rung, right? Like what is tech equity? So when we hear this, because when I think of equity, right, like I'm all into the Jedi work, right? The justice, the equity, the diversity, the inclusion, and now we're putting tech in front of equity or inequity. Can you just like go to the very basics of like, what is tech equity? Like kind of a definition? Yeah, I mean, I think that it's kind of an emerging term. And you know, you could reframe it as tech readiness. But if you think about it as an issue of enablement, right? So if, and I like to use analogies, right?  So now ladder that up to a worker in a nonprofit who's trying to now at a distance, but now in talking about adding force to their work and removing friction from their work.  And so thinking of equity as if you don't have those tools, or if those tools are seen as a cost in your organization, your organization as a disadvantage, but then you as a professional are at a disadvantage to do your work. And so technology can level the playing field. It can level playing field across countries can level play playing field across demographics. But it also within an organization, it can level the playing field of each person being able to be the best at what they do in their work environment. And that directly leads to mission outcomes. Right. You know, Brian, one of the things you said earlier was we are all working in a technology based something, right? Like everything is technology involved.  And the the drinks are all like done by technology now. It's like this conveyor belt. And I was blown away and I could have sat there probably for another 30 minutes just watching the assembly line of the fountain drinks and how all of that is now programmed into technology. It's interesting. I just watched the movie The Founder, which is about Ray Cross. Yes. And so thinking about where it started, it started out with the original McDonald's brothers going out to a tennis court with chalk and figuring out a human system of how all of these people are going to be able to work together. And they were able to create a very efficient system that sort of changed the paradigm of how food is delivered. So that is a really perfect analogy of how that's evolved by thinking of technology as unleashing human potential. Right. And so what you have there is that that investment, which probably had a pretty significant upfront investment in figuring out how you could use technology to deliver drinks in terms of fundraising, thinking of it in terms of program delivery, thinking of it in terms of data analysis to be able to measure impact and measure productivity and measure engagement and how that unleashes the ability to do better things, to do more things with less people, more fulfilled people and more effective people. So thinking about the value chain of technology in nonprofit organizations as efficiency, effectiveness and engagement, technology as a force additive, as an accelerator, as an enabler for human potential. And that is why it's an investment and not a cost. I love that. I just want to bottle that clip up and just like make that go viral. It's true. And you know, I love what you said and I totally, you know, I'm waving that banner right along with you. But I want to ask this question and this in some ways is based on my own sense with a conversation I had with you. And that is, how do we know if we are challenged with our technologies if we don't even have the right attitudes? I'm not just saying, you know, a laptop that's not seven to nine years old. I'm saying just like, how do we know? Yeah, I think that there's there's signs of that in all levels of the organization. So in some of those signs, I really thought about this after our last conversation in thinking about like, what are those sort of like signs that, yep, you're tech challenged. So if your board is, you know, if you don't have someone on the board who recognizes technology as investment in human capital because they came from the trenches and they lived through the pain, or someone who has that expertise and has a technology vision and can articulate it and can express as one of the pillars of growth of entrepreneurial growth of a nonprofit is that we must invest technology to compete for donor dollars to deliver mission in the right way to the right people. Now at the line level, it's do these organ to those line line level management? Are they advocating for that technology? Are they saying, well, what's in it for me? Or that's the way we've always done it. If you kind of hear that kind of language or we can't afford it because it's a cost. That's a signal there. Now at the individual contributor level, if you're struggling with adoption, because people don't understand what's in it for them, or if people are spending a lot of time wrestling with the technology, which is not their job, right? And frustrated with it. If you have interdepartmental silos where information sharing is not happening and there's lots of process friction, or if you have people just sort of figure it out yourself, yeah, we don't have the staff to provide you support, just figure it out or find that work around to make it happen, the kind of kluji sort of, I made it work, but it's not really idea or all that water carrying of, you know, all that manual work that happens when you don't have an integrated modern technology stack. Those are some serious signs that your technology challenged and that things need to change. So I'm thinking, and this is a total curve ball, so get ready here, Brian. We're in this, I know, we're in this great resignation. We talk often about how, you know, now is the time to negotiate in your position or to negotiate in that next, you know, career position, maybe with another organization. How might we ask the question to our potential employer to find out if they're tech challenged? Because I'm thinking now we have, you know, individuals moving into other organizations. I want to make sure that I am, I have access to the systems, the training, the technology necessary to be successful. So I told you, this is a curve ball. How do we bring this up in the conversation to know before we even accept a job, if they are set up in, you know, a tech positive way? Yeah, so I think it's like the direct say, can you tell me about your investment in technology? What kind of support does staff have on a day-to-day basis? What kind of tools are going to be provided to me? Can you show me, can you fill me in on how processing technology work together? How teams work together? How do we manage data? You know, what's at my disposal to be good at my job? The job that you're asking me to do. You know, there has been, you know, in certain CRMs, I've seen testimonials where like I refuse to take that job unless I have this CRM because I can't do what I'm being asked to do without it. That's right. And so I think just like you're negotiating for salary or just like you're sort of trying to understand what's being asked for you of you beyond the job description. I think being really direct and saying like, I really need to know, I'd like to know what tools are going to be at my disposal, what support is going to be at my disposal. Tell me about your IT team. And if they're like, yeah, we have this one person who's full-time who does it in addition to, you know, email campaigns, then that's a warning sign. Yeah. Well, thank you for that. You know, I love that question, Jared. And it makes me think of a question that came in to our Friday ask and answer. And somebody said that they, their company issued really old laptops, and it was really impeding their job. They weren't contemplating spending their own money and going out and buying a new laptop just for that work, because they realized that's what they needed, but their organization wasn't getting it. And the question to us was, how do I navigate this on the interpersonal relationship with my spouse?   You know, the nonprofit needs to do that. But I think that's a common situation. Well, you know, we've talked about this before, the fact that I believe in a benevolence economy, which is where the world needs to head, is that for profits need to start acting more like nonprofits, right?  But nonprofits need to act a little bit more like for-profit businesses. And so along with, yeah, pay equity, right? So there's different kinds of equity. So just because you have a heart-centered person, you decided to focus on improving the lives of everyday people, doesn't mean that you should have to sacrifice on salary. Doesn't mean that you should have to sacrifice on tools to do your job well. And so I think it's kind of the employment contract, right? So the organization needs to recognize that if they don't make these investments, they're going to have a lot of turnover. They're going to have a lot of people burning out. They're not going to find the best talent. And that is a challenge, understanding that it's donor dollars that are funding these things and grants that are funding these things. But what is the actual cost of not doing these things? You're not going to be able to raise as much money. You're not going to be able to deliver as much services. You're not going to have the talent that's going to have the kind of impact that you want to have. And so again, I think it falls back to this fundamental understanding of investment. And in my mind, in no uncertain terms, should an employee of a nonprofit be pulling money out of their own pocket to get the tools to do their job. It's not a fair ask. And I think that that's a sign that maybe you should be looking for a more forward-thinking organization to work for. Yeah. Thank you so much. That all of that, again, is phenomenal because we do get that question quite a bit, you know, is how much money should the organization set aside or line item for various opportunities? A big one is the, you know, professional development, but also this, you know, systems and technology and do we have what we need to be successful? And so that's that's a valid question. And I would imagine that many of you that may be watching today's show either live or recording, as you're looking to, you know, negotiate your current position or your next position, that technology and the tech equity is a really big topic. I know I just love that you brought that up, Jared, from the get-go. Like as you are looking at this, and I would add maybe as you're going towards, you know, a review or, you know, re-evaluating where things are within your unit or your team, that needs to be a conversation as well. And, you know, from the organization's perspective, if you're not giving your employees the tools that they need to be effective, you then now have an underutilized resource. And so that is a cost, is a hidden cost, and it, but it's calculatable, right? When you're considering the ROI of that investment and making that mind shift to technology is table stakes. It's, it's non-negotiable that people need to have the right tools to do their job effectively. Wonderful. I love it. Okay, we did not have to blend. I know, I'm just like, hmm, yeah, I think this is a powerful discussion to have that we need to revisit it. And we don't have a lot of time, but part of the things that I wanted to ask you about, that DevTail into this is, is human-centered design. We've had you on a couple times, I've been speaking with you offline, and you do bring this up. And I've got a witness, I kind of like, oh yeah, I know what that is, and how this all works. But I don't think I really do. So I'd love for you to take some time, and I realize that this is a much bigger concept. But could you kind of tag us into that discussion? Absolutely. So, so let's characterize it through the lens of the conversation that we've had so far, right? All of these things, it's really easy for me to say, well, you know, tools are non-negotiable. You know, we need to think this way. But it doesn't happen automatically, right? So actually, human-centered design is saying it all starts with human capital. It all starts with people. And when people come into these complex issues, there's going to be lots of different vantage points. There's going to be lots of different experiences and insights that while they might not align and they might create, you know, organizational friction and organizational dysfunction, if just sort of left to the power structure, the hierarchy of the organization that exists today, what human-centered design practices can do is, first of all, create a level playing field. So when you're doing a human-centered design workshop or going through a human-centered design process, sometimes called design sprints, you know, there's lots of different terms. The bigger concept is design thinking, which is something much bigger than that. What you're doing is you're entering into a co-creation process with everyone who has a stake in the outcome. Now, what kind of challenges are really suited for human-centered design? It's where the answer is not obvious. It's not really meant for like sort of very straightforward problems that have very straightforward logical answers. It's where maybe you don't have enough information or maybe it's a really complex problem that feels chicken and egg and it's not going to be straightforward or where there's a lot of emotions around it or whether there's a lot of different stakeholders that have very different needs or whether innovation is really important. So what you do in a facilitated human-centered design process is you bring all of those voices together and you actually in an activity-based and a co-creation-based type of workshop activity, you're basically serving tons, surfacing tons and tons of insights and then you're doing sort of ideation and prototyping and refinement to come to a solution where you're actually driving towards divergent thinking. So convergent thinking is logically, rationally, this goes with this. Everybody knows that, so let's do that. But oftentimes that doesn't create innovation, but things that don't naturally fit together when you try to figure out ways to make them fit. That tension actually is where innovation happens. That's where new ideas emerge. And then the side benefit of doing a human-centered design process is everyone who needs to buy into that solution participated in the development of that solution. And so because everyone has skin in the game, there's much more a chance for commitment. It's not about consensus. So I would say if you really boil it down, consensus should never be the goal. Commitment should be the goal. But the only way that commitment happened is everyone who is impacted by the change participates in developing that change, even if their ideas don't get adopted. But human learning theory and team building and change management theory really says that if people get a chance to use their voice, they're much more willing to adopt the committed solution, even if their idea wasn't used. So it's a really wonderful way. And it's great for technology because in technology, there's so much complexity and there's so many different preferences and voices. And it's scary and this kind of takes that away. And then finally, since I'm a really long talker, it kind of breaks the 80-20 rule of meetings where 20% of the people occupy 80% of the time because it's activity based. Everyone is on a level playing field. Everyone's voice. That introvert in the corner sometimes has the most important thing to say. But because I'm in the meeting and I talk so much, they never get that chance. So this is a way to actually create some cohesion in your culture as well. Okay, but how do you tag this into the concept of tech equity? Because it seems to me like, you know, people are making the decision, okay, everybody, this is the technology you're going to use. It never seems like we come to the table as a group and figure out or voice what we need. Because technology is one of those, you don't know what you don't know. And so how do we... Yeah, absolutely. That's again, where... And another way of sending human-centered technology, which is something we talk about a lot, is technology lasts. So you start with understanding what are the challenges of the people. And you focus on sort of with technology not being a participating topic, but what are we trying to accomplish? Where are our challenges? Where are our friction points? Where do we need to add force? Where's our inter-departmental or inter-colleague misalignment? Get a really clear understanding about that. Then it's like, how can we build low fidelity analog processes that not considering technology that we know based on our culture and the things we need to achieve are going to really work for us? What's the business needs? What's the business gaps? What's the skills gaps? What's the process gaps? What are we lacking? And then once you really have that lens, then and only then should you look at technology and say, okay, you can make an informed choice about what technology is going to actually meet your human needs. And that is the shift. We deal with it all the time where people want to look at the other end of the line. Let's pick a tool and then figure out and then just tell the staff, this is what we're using, figure it out or even we're going to do the adoption, you know, training and stuff like that. But they are on the outside of that process. Adoption is not going to be what you think it's going to be. And oftentimes, because you didn't do that exploration, you're not even sometimes solving the right problem. Yeah. And they certainly won't be committed to using it or being successful in that. I think the human center design, what you described is what I refer to as design thinking. Is that is that a synonym? Is that the same? Yes. Design thinking is a bigger topic because it involves ethnographic research and massive amounts of data collection. Human center design is really where you can kind of focus in on the human element. But design thinking is something even bigger. I would really recommend checking out Jean Ledka, who is at Darden University here in Charlottesville at the University of Virginia, who is an absolute pioneer in applying design thinking and human center design to business. She really innovated in that and she has courses and there's some great books out there too that perhaps, you know, we can share with viewers. But it's a very effective and especially in non-profits where people are heart centered and people are more willing to sort of have those conversations and do things like draw a picture. It can be a very effective tactic. Yeah. And I love it.  What would you need to be successful? And oftentimes, what I've noticed, Brian, and maybe you're the same, people come from a place of negative, right? I can't do this because I don't have fill in the blank. So I like to start with what don't you have? Why are you not being able, you know, to be successful? Okay, here's what you don't have. So what I'm hearing you say is, right, if you had something that could solve your problem for XYZ, ABC, is that something that would help you in your everyday life, right? And they're like, yes, that's what I've been asking for, right? And so people support that in which they help create. That's correct. And I think you I'm so glad that you raised that point because every human center design process and design thinking process starts with something called a how might we statement. That's right. And so you don't describe things as a problem. Or as you say, how might we improve our fundraising operation? How might we deliver more services to our clients? How might we, you know, enable whatever it is your goal is. And so you always start with building. And the other thing is, it's not a traditional brainstorming. There's no editorializing as you're going through the process.  And of course, you'll get to a refinement stage. But if you leave it wide open at the beginning, you're going to get the biggest opportunity to again, innovate and come up with something that everyone can commit to. There's a great book that I would highly recommend called five dysfunctions of a team, which talks about the difference between consensus and commitment and how commitment is so much more valuable than consensus. And human center design processes help you drive to commitment. Love it. Wow, I'm so excited because these are the types of discussions that I love. I'm, I really, really appreciate you saying some things that kind of clicked for me. And with so many of the questions that we get, different ways of looking at it, I think it's just been great. I think we are going to have some amazing conversations with you, Brian, really exciting to have generate impact with us. Here's Brian's information generate impact.com. Brian is beautiful writer has some blog pieces on within the website that I think is going to be growing and he'd be seeing more thought leadership from him on that. And he's going to really be somebody that we lean on for things tech, but in a different way, not just which button to hit, you know, but literally why are we hitting those buttons. So really exciting to, yeah, really exciting to have this conversation. We're just so appreciative that you would spend time with us. If we haven't met, I'm Julia Patrick, CEO of the American nonprofit Academy. I've been joined by my trusty sidekick, the nonprofit nerd herself, Jared Ransom, CEO of the Raven group. Again, are presenting sponsors. It's so amazing to me, Jared. When I look at our sponsor board, the number of these organizations that have really navigated towards technology, how they're representing themselves, how they're communicating themselves and even offering services. Right. Well, and Brian, as you said, like we all have a technology based service, you know, each and every one of us are truly involved in delivering something to do with technology. So thanks for bringing that to our attention as well. Yeah, it's been great to be here. Yeah, it changes of the way that you think about something and look at the future for me. I mean, it's really an amazing, amazing thing. So I'm again, to our sponsors, we thank you and we are so appreciative of your support of the nonprofit show. Hey, another great episode tomorrow. We will have yet another wonderful guest on. And as we end today, we want to remind everyone to stay well so you can do well. We'll see you back here tomorrow, everyone.