president of the United States. Thank you. I am sure that we all agree that it is with great pride and pleasure that he is honoring us with his presence in the 80th year in the life of our club. On the subject of anniversaries, the president of the United States. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. We're a warm welcome that warms my heart and I will confess that it's kind of lump in the throat time also. And Henry, I thank you very much. Chairman, the distinguished ladies and gentlemen here at the head table. I almost feel like we all should be going back to Sacramento. The I forgive me for a bit of nostalgia here. I remember so well those previous eight times and many of them during those happy days in Sacramento. And this time I can claim the best of both worlds. California Homecoming and a reunion with my fellow members of the Commonwealth Club all wrapped up in one. And Nancy and I couldn't think of a better way to spend our anniversary. But it is a pleasure to be back here with the crossroads of trade or meeting places for ideas that stretch our sights to the to the limits of the horizon and beyond. This Golden Gate City is a place where entrepreneurs with great dreams, daring, determination, sharp new paths to progress through the winds and waters of commerce. You provide an appropriate setting for an American challenge for the 80s. With the help of your vision, courage and leadership, we can begin the first leg of a new voyage into the future. A future in which commerce will be king, the eagle with sore and America will be the mightiest trading nation on earth. I haven't come here to echo those faint hearts who have little faith in American enterprise and ingenuity. They plead for retreat and seek refuge in the rusty armor of a failed protectionist past. Well, I believe and I think you do too, that the world hungers for leadership and growth that America can provide it. And my message is that our administration will fight to give you the tools you need because we know you can get the job done. Our forefathers didn't shed their blood to create this union so that we could become a victim nation. We're not sons and daughters of second rate stock. We have no mission of mediocrity. We were born to carry liberty's banner and build the very meaning of progress and our opportunities have never been greater. We can improve the well meaning, well being of our people and we can enhance the forces for democracy, freedom, peace and human fulfillment around the world. If we stand up for principles of trade expansion through freer markets and greater competition among nations. In dealing with our economy, more is in question than just prosperity. Ultimately, peace and freedom are at stake. The United States took the lead after World War II in creating an international trading and financial system that limited government's ability to disrupt trade. We did this because history had taught us the freer the flow of trade, across borders, the greater the world economic progress and the greater the impetus for world peace. But the deterioration of the free world and the U.S. economies in the 1970s led to the decline of western security and the confidence of the people of the free world. Too many otherwise free nations adopted policies of government intervention in the marketplace. Many people began thinking that equity was incompatible with growth and they argued for no growth societies, for policies that undermined free markets and compromised our collective security. There could be no real security without a strong western economy and there can be no freedom unless we preserve the open and competitive international and financial systems that we created after World War II. Prosperity alone cannot restore confidence or protect our basic values. We must also remember our objectives of peace and freedom and then we can build a prosperity that will once again lift our heads and renew our spirits. Now I'm not going to minimize the problems that we face or the long tough road that we must travel to solve them. For a quarter of a century after the Second World War we exported more goods each year to the rest of the world than we imported. We accumulated a surplus of funds which was invested at home and abroad and which created jobs and increased economic prosperity but during the past decade we began importing more than we were exporting. Since 1976 imports have exceeded exports every year and our trade deficit is expected to rise sharply in this year of 1983. In the past few years high real interest rates have inhibited investment, greatly increased the value of the dollar and made our goods as a result less competitive. High interest rates reflect skepticism by financial markets that our government has the courage to keep inflation down by reducing deficit spending. Well if the history of our great nation and the character of this breed called American mean anything at all it is that when we have believed in ourselves when we pull together putting our wisdom and faith into action we made the future work for us and we can do that now. Welp is not created inside some think tank on the Potomac. It is born in the hearts and minds of entrepreneurs all across Main Street America. For too long government has treated the entrepreneur more as an enemy than an ally. Our administration has a better idea. We'll give you less bureaucracy if you give America your audacity. We want you to out plan out produce and out sell the pants off this nation's competitors. You see I believe in what General Patton once said I'm partial to cavalry officers. He said don't tell people how to do things. Tell them what needs doing and then watch them surprise you with their ingenuity. Every citizen has a role and a stake in helping the United States meet her trade challenge in the 80s. We need jobs. Well one of the best job programs we can have is a great national drive to expand exports and that's part of our program. We have only to look beyond our own old borders the potential for growth is enormous a two trillion dollar market abroad a chance to create millions of jobs and more income security for our people. We have barely seen the tip of that iceberg. Four out of five new manufacturing jobs created in the last five years were in export related industries and yet 90 percent of American manufacturers do not export at all. We believe tens of thousands of U.S. producers offer products and services which can be competitive abroad. Now many of these are small and medium sized firms. Our administration has a positive plan to meet the trade challenge on three key points. First lay a firm foundation for non-inflationary growth based on enduring economic principles of fiscal and monetary discipline, competition incentives, thrift and reward. Second enhance the ability of U.S. producers and industries to compete on a fair and equal basis in the international marketplace. Work with our trading partners to resolve outstanding problems of market access and to chart new directions for free and fair trade in the products of the future. Third take the lead in assisting international financial and trade institutions to strengthen world growth and both to the forces of freedom and democracy. Take it together these actions give the United States a positive framework for leading our producers and trading partners toward more open markets, greater freedom and human progress. But progress begins at home. Our economic reforms are based on time tested principles spending and monetary restraint to bring down inflation and interest rates and to give leaders confidence in long-term price stability. Less regulatory interference so as to stimulate greater competition and growth of enterprise and employment through tax incentives to encourage work, thrift, investment and productivity. Now we've suffered a long painful recession brought about by more than a decade of overtaxing and spending and yes, government intervention. But recession is giving way to a rainbow of recovery reflecting a renaissance and enterprise. America is on the mend. Inflation is plunged from 12.4 percent in 1980 to just 3.8 in the last 12 months and in the last six months it's been running at 1.4. We've sought common sense in government and competition not controls in the marketplace. Two years ago we accelerated the deregulation of crude oil and we heard ourselves denounced for fueling inflation. Well the national average for a gallon of gasoline when we took office was a dollar and 27 cents and now you can buy it in most places for less than a dollar. The prime interest rate was a crippling 21.5 percent. Now it's down to 10.5. Tax rates have been cut. Real wages are improving. Personal savings and productivity are growing again. The stock market has hit a record high. Venture capital investments have reached record levels. Production in housing, autos and steel is gaining strength and new breakthroughs in high technology are busting out all over. Katie, bar the door, we're on our way back. I may say to the pessimists who would cancel our remaining tax incentives, I have one thing to say. Don't lay a hand on the third year of the people's tax cut or the indexing provision. Indexing is our promise. It's our promise to every working man and woman that the future will not be like the past. There will be no more sneaky midnight tax increases by a government resorting to bracket creep to indulge its thirst for deficit spending. To pretend eliminating indexes is somehow fair to working people reminds me of Samuel Johnson's comment about the fellow who couldn't see any difference between vice and virtue. He said well when he leaves the house let's count the spoons. Capping the third year tax cut and eliminating indexing and our remaining tax cuts would send the worst possible signal to potential exporters. As I mentioned 90% of U.S. businesses do not export at all and about 85% of our firms pay their taxes by the personal income tax. If those who would dismantle the tax cuts get their way the chilling message to the business community will be don't scrap and struggle to succeed, export, expand your business and hire more workers because we won't thank and reward you for helping your country. We'll punish you. Well maybe I'm old-fashioned but I don't think pitting one group of Americans against another is what the founding fathers had in mind. This nation was not built on a foundation of envy and resentment. The dream I've always believed in is no matter who you are no matter where you come from if you work hard pull yourself up and succeed then by golly you deserve life's prize. And trying for that prize made America the greatest nation on earth. Let us create more opportunities for all our citizens and let us encourage achievement and excellence. We want America to be a nation of winners again so you might as well know that we will not turn our backs on the principles of our recovery program especially on the principles of free trade. The great English historian Thomas Bavington Macaulay wrote more than a century ago that free trade one of the greatest blessings which a government can confer on a people is unpopular in almost every country. Well for some times haven't changed there's a great hue and cry for us to bend to protectionist pressures. Well I've been around long enough to remember that when we did that once before in this century something called smooth holly we lived through a nightmare. World trade fell by 60 contributing to the great depression and to the political turmoil that led to world war two. We and our trading partners are in the same boat. If one partner shoots a hole in the bottom of the boat does it make sense for the other partner to shoot another hole in the boat? There are those who say yes and call it getting tough.  We must plug the holes in the boat of open markets and free trade and set sail again in the direction of prosperity. No one no one should mistake our determination to use our full power and influence to prevent anyone from destroying the boat and sinking us all. There's a fundamental difference between positive support of legitimate American interests and rights in world trade and the negative actions of protectionists. Free trade can only survive if all parties play by the same rules but we're determined to ensure equity in our markets defending workers and industries from unfair and predatory trade practices is not protectionism it's legitimate action under U.S. and international law. Now one example of protectionist legislation that could quickly sabotage recovery is the local content rule. This legislation proposed in the Congress would force foreign and domestic manufacturers of automobiles sold in the United States to build their cars with an escalating percentage of U.S. parts and domestic labor. The Congressional Budget Office concluded that this would destroy more jobs than it would save and that's true it would add substantially to the cost of a new car. What the proponents of this bunker mentality never point out is that the costs of protectionism for one group of workers are always passed on to another group down the line and once such legislation is passed every other industry would be a target for foreign retaliation. We would buy less from our partners they'd buy less from us the world economic pie would shrink chances for political turmoil would increase dramatically rather than reacting in fear with beggar-the-neighbor policies let us lead from strength and believe in our abilities let's work at home and abroad to enhance the ability of U.S. producers and industries to compete on a fair and equal basis in the international marketplace we're very excited about some landmark legislation that i signed last year signed as a matter of fact here in california the export trading company act it's an innovative idea based on teamwork i'm confident it will create thousands of new exporters and i hope some of them are sitting in this room the law is designed to attract manufacturers export management companies banks freight forwarders and other export services into joint efforts to gain foreign markets the commerce department is holding seminars across the country to promote the legislation and the response has been remarkable thousands have attended and in some cases the numbers were so overwhelming people had to be turned away the majority of attendees have not been lawyers tax accountants or forgive me bankers but business people the people who can take this legislation and use it they can expand our markets become exporters or sell to export trading companies who can do it for them the bottom line will be a breakthrough in exports higher growth lower deficits and a tremendous surge in new jobs and opportunities for our people each billion dollars that we add in exports means tens of thousands of new jobs more companies will seek the world of exports when they realize that government is not an adversary it's your partner and i don't mean senior partner we have eased substantially taxation of foreign earned income and introduced a 25 percent tax credit for research and development we're also working to reform the foreign corrupt practices act not to weaken safeguards against bribery but to remove disincentives that discourage legitimate business transactions overseas another obstacle in is export controls on technology a backlog of 2000 applications greeted us when we arrived in office but we eliminated those and relaxed export controls on low technology items that do not jeopardize our national security still there are limits i'm confident each of you understand we must avoid strengthening those who wish us ill by pursuing short-term profits at the expense of free world security trade must serve the cause of freedom not the foes of freedom to export more we must do a better job promoting our products we're strengthening our export credit programs by increasing the level of the export import bank ceiling on export guarantees we're also designing a tax alternative to the domestic international sales corporation that will fully maintain existing incentives to our exporters we've begun a commodity credit corporation blended export credit program for our farmers and that's in addition to the increases this year in the regular loan guarantee program for promoting us farm exports to retain america's technological edge of which there's no greater evidence than california's silicon valley and to revive our leadership in manufacturing we've implemented an r&d policy to enhance the competitiveness of u.s. industry and the world economy in our 1984 budget we've asked for significant increases for basic research and we will seek to improve the teaching of science and mathematics in secondary schools so tomorrow's workforce can better contribute to economic growth we will also seek we will also seek to encourage greater and more creative interaction between university and industry scientists and engineers through programs similar to the one between hulet packard and stanford university finally we're taking steps to encourage more industrial r&d through changes in our tax and antitrust policy and we will attempt to remove legal impediments that prevent inventors of new technology from reaping the rewards of their discoveries supporting american producers gives us the means to press our trading partners toward more free and open markets we're challenging the unfair agricultural trade practices of japan and the european community and we're charting a new course for the products of the future we have agreed to a work program with the government of japan to eliminate trade and investment barriers to high technology industries we have also established a working group with the japanese to actively explore opportunities for the development of abundant energy resources by restoring strength to our economy enhancing the ability of our producers to compete america is leading its trading partners toward renewed growth around the world the world economy like ours has been through a wrenching experience a decade of inflation ballooning government spending and creeping constraints on productive enterprise other countries including many of the developing countries are now making major efforts to restrain inflation and restore growth the united states applaud these efforts and we're working in the international monetary fund to keep a firm focus on the role of effective domestic policies and the growth and stability of the world economy but for all countries international trade and financial flows are extremely important either the free world continues to move forward and sustain the post war drive toward more open markets or we risk sliding back to the tragic mistakes of the 30s when governments convince themselves that bureaucrats could do it better than entrepreneurs the choice we make affects not only our prosperity but our peace and freedom if we abandon the principle of limiting government intervention in the world economy political conflicts will multiply and peace will suffer and that's no choice at all the united states will carry the banner for free trade and a responsible financial system these were the great principles at breton woods new hampshire in 1944 and they remain the core of u.s policy we will do so well aware of the changes that have occurred in the international trade and monetary system in trade for example we've practically eliminated the barriers which industrial countries maintain at the border on manufactured products today tariffs among these countries average less than five percent our problems arise instead from non-tariff barriers which often reflect basic differences in domestic economic policies and structures among countries these barriers are tougher to remove but we're determined to reduce government intervention as far as possible and where that is unrealistic to insist on limits to such intervention in trade with developing countries on the other hand tariffs and quotas still play a significant role here the task is to find a way to integrate the developing countries into the liberal trading orders of lower tariffs and dismantled quotas they must come to experience the full benefits and responsibilities of the system that has produced unprecedented prosperity among the industrial countries we've taken the lead proposing the caribbean basin initiative to encourage poor and middle income countries to trade more and we proposed a north south round of trade negotiations to maintain expanding trading opportunities for more advanced developing countries we seek to build a collective partnership with all developing countries for peace prosperity and democracy at the gatt ministerial meeting last november the united states took the lead in resisting protectionism strengthening existing institutions and addressing the key trade issues of the future while we're not totally satisfied with the outcome of that meeting we'll continue in our support of free and equal trade opportunities for all countries expanding trade is also the answer to our most pressing international financial problem the mounting debt of many developing countries without the opportunity to export debt troubled countries will have difficulty servicing and eventually reducing their large debts meanwhile the united states will support the efforts of the international financial community to provide adequate financing to sustain trade and to encourage developing countries in the efforts they're making to improve the basic elements of their domestic economic programs earlier this week i forward a draft legislation to the congress for additional american support for the international monetary fund leading by the imf as a or lending i should say has a has a direct impact on american jobs and supports continued leading or lending by commercial institutions if such lending were to stop the consequences for the american economy would be very negative this spring in may the united states will host the annual economic summit of the major industrial countries in williamsburg virginia the leaders of the greatest democracies will have a quiet opportunity to discuss the critical issues of domestic and international economic policy and reflect on their individual and collective responsibilities to free peoples throughout the world it's not a forum for decision making each leader is responsible primarily to his or her own electorate but by exchanging views these leaders can gain a better understanding of how the future of their own people depends on that of others and may i just interject here something brand new in international relations has been brought about by one prime minister margaret thatcher when we sit around those summit tables the protocol is gone and we're all on a first name basis and she saw to that i began today by saying that if we believe in our abilities and work together we can make america the mightiest trading nation on earth here in this room and not far from this building are people and companies with the burning commitment that we need to make our country great one of those companies the daisy systems corporation is a computer firm in sunnyvale california it was formed in august 1980 and it made seven million dollars in sales its first shipping year this year it expects to earn 25 million and by 1986 300 million daisy corporation is already selling its products in the markets of france norway belgium great britain germany israel and japan its workforce has nearly quadrupled in the last year well my dream for america and i know it's one you share is to take that kind of success story and multiply it by a million we can do it albert einstein told us everything that is really great and inspiring is created by individuals who labor in freedom with all the wisdom in our minds and all the love in our hearts let's give of ourselves and make these coming years the greatest america has ever known thank you very much god bless you thank you mr president nelson weller president of the commonwealth club california will now conduct the question and answer period thank you professor keith mr president these questions are from your fellow members the first question why do you deny congress access to epa files why shouldn't they see everything well we've we are letting them see everything and as a matter of fact they started squealing before they were hurt we had almost 800 thousand documents which we were ready to make completely available to them and they turned us down there were less than a hundred documents which the justice department felt uh would would have violated the principle of confidentiality because they dealt with litigation and pending cases of that kind and that this in the hands of someone who might leak the information could be adverse to what we were what we might be faced with in such litigation so this decision was made by the justice department in keeping i might add with the tradition of executive privilege that goes all the way back to george washington but now because of the accusations and allegations that have not been forwarded to us or to the justice department as we have suggested but our first made public and many of them without any substantiation we have made available to the congressional committees all of the documents and those in which the justice department believes there is some sensitive thing having to do with this litigation and so forth are whited out but then they are able to we will tell them and inform them what is the nature of what is whited out so that in reality they are being offered and given everything and i think what's happened to them is their eyes have started to glaze over there's so many documents and they don't know how to get out of their request mr president we have some questions on foreign affairs how far are you willing to go in pursuit of your middle east peace plan by applying pressure on israel to meet your peace plan requirement well we're doing everything that we can to speed this up because we believe that to bring the Arab nations the concert the uh might say the more moderate Arab nations that have expressed to us now a willingness to negotiate with israel and try to arrive at a long-term peace arrangement in the middle east but they have predicated it on that lebanon must be allowed now to resume sovereignty over its own nation and this calls for the leaving of lebanese soil of all foreign troops the israelis the syrians and the remnants of the plo that are still in there and we are i must say disappointed by the length of time it's taken and by the haggling in the negotiations because no one of them will leave until all three agree to leave uh there has been some reason for optimism in the last few days we have ambassador habib and his assistant philip draper over there uh helping in this negotiation but we do want to get that settled and get to the table then on the whole overall matter of international peace and i can tell you we will not retreat from every effort that is open to us to bring that about now back to our own hemisphere the recent request for escalation of military aid to el salvador appears to be the beginning of a replay of the early days of vietnam what assurances can you offer that this is not the case i can give you assurances and there is no parallel whatsoever with vietnam we have the instance here of a government that duly elected and just a short time ago in election the people of el salvador proved their desire for order in their country and democracy and that they had no sympathy whatsoever for the rebels who are armed who are trained by countries such as cuba and others of the iron curtain countries they're supplied with weapons that come in by way of nicaragua the the threat is more to the entire western hemisphere and toward the area than it is to one country if they get a foothold and with nicaragua already there and el salvador should fall as a result of this armed violence in the part of the gorillas i think costa rica honduras panama all of these would follow and i ask anyone 50 percent of everything that we have to import comes through the caribbean through the panama canal it is vital to us that democracy be allowed to succeed in these countries as i say it did in that last election now right now el salvador is considering calling a new election hopefully before the year is out but we had a bipartisan team of congressmen go down and witness that last election observe the stories they came back with they were converted any who had had any doubts they told of a grandmother standing in that line who had been threatened by the gorillas that if she voted on that day and incidentally they had destroyed and bombed and and burned over 150 buses so that people had to walk for miles in the hot sun to get to a polling place but they did and they stood in line for hours this woman said to them you can kill me you can kill my family you can kill my neighbors you can't kill us all another woman stood in the line and refused to leave the line she had been shot by the gorillas wounded and refused treatment until she had been able to mark that ballot then she would submit to treatment and they came back and we're convinced that sure there are things to be corrected down there but we're working with them now what we mean by expansion is that we have a limit on 55 of our military personnel only for the sake of training their forces down there and they they need that training so far we've only averaged for the last couple of years 37 of those 55 positions being filled and right now there are 45 we may want to go beyond that 55 but in no sense are we speaking of participation in combat by american forces we are trying to give economic aid which is necessary to their economy because of the destruction of power plants and the and bridges and things of this kind and industries and we believe that the government of El Salvador is on the front line in a battle that is really aimed at the very heart of the western hemisphere and eventually at us now some questions on the domestic scene can social security be saved can social security be saved yes as a matter of fact we really had an example just the other day we started out here on this trip of bipartisanship when the all-powerful ways and means committee heavily democratic of course with a majority in the house chaired by uh dan rostenkowski represent democrat representative uh with barber conable our minority leader on that committee when they brought out i think the vote was 33 to 2 the recommendation for the commission's plan for social security to put it on restore its fiscal integrity now that still will leave additional legislation because that solves the chlor the short-range problem and for a number of years and gives us time then to deal with an actuarial imbalance that still exists out on the long range the 75-year plan for social security but i can assure anyone who is dependent on social security they are going to continue to get their checks we certainly have a timely question now a member asks i have just started working on my taxes start working on when will you start drafting a flat tax rate proposal i lost a word there i have just started working on my taxes when will we start drafting i can tell you we are convinced in washington that there is more objection to the tax system and its complications than there is to the amount of tax you're being required to pay and uh that brought a smile and applause from don reagan we we are studying and looking at including that that the proposal there as to whether that is the way to go but at a simplification of the tax structure it is very much needed and we would like to be able to bring it to the people thank you mr president unfortunately our time is nearly up so this will be our last question oh dear before asking it may i remind you to remain seated until the president and our head table guests have departed and now mr president our last question when will you decide to run for the presidency in 1984 well now the chances are 50 50 that you won't 50 that you will but i have to just repeat the answer that i always you know i don't think this is the time to make such an announcement if you make it that it's negative you don't have any power anymore in washington and if you make it positive then they say everything you're trying to do is political but the other thing is i also believe that the people of this country indicate whether you should run again or not so i'm watching thank you mr president for joining us today next friday our speaker will be the honorable mary calling fuller member of the national commission on social security reform thank you thank you all very much


And okay, I will call the meeting to order at 507 on Monday, September the 27th. And I will have the acting interim secretary call the roll. Okay, Chairperson Lanier. I'm here. Vice Chair Maziarz. Here. Member Hall. Member Hall, are you here? Joe, can you hear us? We need to, I mean, I see him here, but I will mark him here, but we need to let him know. Member Mannheim here. Member Laurent, absent. Member O'Driscoll, absent. No sound. No sounds, okay. Member Shaw. Here. Member Gudger. Here. Member Granados. Here. And Member Warren. Currently not here. Everybody go easy on me. I'm taking, I'm doing the minutes for the first time. So be very slow.  Aren't you, aren't you skilled at? Former being, former being the operative term here.  Yep. I'm, I'm, I'm here. I'm working with Joe. Okay. Oops. Hold on just one second. I wonder, Becca, you, although you think you promoted him to a panelist, if he's not a panelist, he might, that might be why, the way he came in, maybe the problem. He is a panelist. He's in my panelist list and he's not muted. Okay. Well, let me, if I can make him a co-host. I can. Well, I'll continue on with the top of the agenda here. Oral communications. Just doesn't have a microphone at all. Showing. Okay. Weird. Any person from the public may address the board during the oral communications period. All oral communications must be directed to an item not listed on today's consent or regular agenda, and must be within the jurisdiction of the board. Any comments? Hearing none, item three, consideration of late additions to the agenda, additions and deletions to the consent and regular agendas. Any additions? Seeing none, I will move on. We have the consent agenda to approve the board meeting minutes of June 28th, 2012. Approved board special meeting minutes of July 13th. Why don't you go ahead and I will see what I can do. We can hear you now, Joe. Oh, we hear you now, Joe. I got something from Keith that was earlier. Okay, we hear him. I think he can't hear us, but we can hear him. That's the problem. Yeah, he doesn't. Oh, okay, he must have. Oh. I sent him a text, but he was on the phone with Keith. Okay. And then number six, reproved finance committee recommendation to accept the June, July and August, 2021 financial reports. June is on there because it was set for our July regular meeting, which was canceled. We had a special meeting in July instead and we didn't consider those. So that's why there's three months of financial reports. Any comments on the financial reports or the financial committee, seeing none, I'll entertain a motion to approve the consent agenda. I'll approve approval. Okay. Motion by director Gudger to approve the consent agenda. Seeking a second. All second. All right. Director Mannheim, we have a motion and a second. In favor. Say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Thank you. Was that an aye from Elizabeth and Christina both? Yes. Yes. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. And I'll be off the meeting. Thank you, Tom, for watching this carefully. We'll move to our regular agenda. We'll start off with the executive director's report. I'll turn it over to you, Becca. Okay. Well, this is my report combination report for July and August. First, under financial, we got our California relief grant. So that was $15,000. And that is a very good thing. We thank California. Our EDIL, our EIDL loan, I believe I reported to you, but I'll recap our funds were sent to the bank, but they didn't have a complete name. They just put community and left off television of Santa Cruz County. And the bank didn't know there are many accounts there with the name community in them. So they sent it back. And then they contacted us and asked for more information, actually duplicate information. So we sent the same information back to them. So they have all of our numbers and all of our bank information and everything. And they gave us a really short deadline, but we turned it around quickly and haven't heard back from them. They only gave us an email and no phone number or any other way to contact them and they don't respond to... Becca, can I interrupt just for a second? Joe has texted or chatted to let him in again. He's knocking on the door there. Oh, he went back to, he's an attendee again. Okay, let me put him in here. I'll promote him to panelists. He should be there. Joe Hall will be rejoining the webinars panelists. I have a message there. And there he is. Oh, and he's got a microphone this time. Okay, so that's better. He's muted, but... Joe, can you hear us, Joe? Yeah, it's a problem with him coming in this way. He needs to go find the link at 355. Yeah, I sent him that text. Keith, did you tell him that when you spoke with him? I spoke to David. Oh, we thought you were talking to Joe. Okay, well, let's see. I don't know, he hasn't answered my text. How can we... Let's see, I don't know if... Let me put something in the chat. Oh, let me in or I will go back to the telephone. Okay. But perhaps he should go back to the phone, I guess. Okay, hopefully that works. If he looked up, I couldn't. Can you signal him? I don't know. Of course, it's completely blurring this out because... I can call in also, I guess, but this seems bad. Okay, well, let's continue on. Okay, let's see. That's all right. Where was I? Oh, E-I-D-L. So we're in process with them. We don't know if that will... How long that will take to resolve, but we're working on it. In the staff category, we have a chance over July and August to train all of our TV technicians to be proficient at operating the Zoom meeting as well. So for a while, we had two people on every meeting, one doing Zoom and one doing the television part, but we now have a good system and they're well-trained and they're all able to do both. The only meeting we do two people on is the Board of Supervisors meeting, because that's kind of an intense meeting and it has to be perfect. So we have a second person on that one. And that's the only one though. All the other meetings are now manned by one technician. Co-working, our break-even number in the Co-working Center actually have the wrong number now. I put the last fiscal year. We changed fiscal years. Now it's really 10,000 all last year at 10,000. And finally in the end, changed it to 8333, but now it's really 10. And I will fix that next time. We earned something happened in my report there. We earned 9,141,000 in July and 9222 in August. So we came very close to being on the money and we'll make that up. That won't be a problem. We had a big client that moved and that was planned. And so it's not that they didn't like our service, but they were only there for remodeling and they went back to their original office. So that'll be okay, that'll all shake out. Underpaid services, we didn't do any government meetings in July because they just aren't any. And we did 11 of them in August. Not everybody was back. That's a lower number than we usually do. And we have a fiscal sponsorship program that we started a long while ago.  So they can work with a nonprofit and the nonprofit can be their umbrella organization and they raise money as a part of our organization. So they call it fiscal sponsorship. So we have a local producer who's working on a film and has come to us to act as their fiscal sponsor. And it looks like that's gonna happen into a small budget. It's only $10,000, but that's good. We wanna help new filmmakers. And so we're gonna get an opportunity to do that. Great. Yeah. And our new captioners were successfully installed in August. And I wanna thank Victor and Preya who also helped in getting this whole thing going. And it's working great now. It's really, it's perfect. So we're real happy with the new captioners. They're doing their job and Victor is so relieved. Now installation, we're planning our installation of our new broadcast equipment. And that's kind of a big process. And our plan is to do it off, kind of offline or in a sandbox as you IT people would think. We're gonna put it together somewhere else. And when it's all together, we're gonna take it to the county building and install it. And we're working on installing a little of it there as we have to and trying to be able to use remote access so that we don't have to go there so often. And so that takes a little extra planning and some extra apps and stuff. And so we're working on that. We should, we're meeting next week to kind of line out a calendar for that. And so I'll have more information for you next month on that. We're also going through, we're doing sort of a systematic review of all the equipment that we have for our members and that we rent. And we're looking through every single bag, making sure everything's in there, finding lost, broken, worn out pieces and replacing them. And we've been through, we have 20 camera kits. I didn't realize we had so many, but we have 20. And we've been through all of those and we've replaced a few things. And that's been, it's been a good process. And now we have a way of knowing when something's been inspected, how recently we've looked at it and making sure that we just have everything. So when things go out, when I was there for a while I rented some of the gear myself and I noticed that some of it had sticky things on it and they were like, some was messy and some was worn out. So we're just looking through it all to make sure it's all tip-top. When we rent things, we want people to be happy. They rent it from us and come back again. And we also have a big shipping container in the parking lot which we keep things in because we don't have a lot of storage in the building. And that has gotten kind of, it got real messy and it just had everything under the sun in it that we didn't know what to do with. So this year we've had summer cleaning instead of spring cleaning. We've been through the whole thing and we've reduced what's in there by quite a bit. And organized it. So now they're actual shelves with labels on the shelves and things on the shelves in order so that they can, they're useful. We can get to them. They're not way in the back and past and behind a bunch of other stuff. So that has been a good project. We're still working on it, but it is nice. And we're able to clean some things, move some things from the building, put them out there and then have more space in the building for things that we need use of immediately for more valuable things. So moving on to the youth grant, Watsonville Recreation received 25 Pancaster kits from us in mid June. And they have been using them. They used them through September. And that, well, mid September, well actually the end of August, like the first week of September they were scheduled to return. I'm gonna do a survey with the program leader who actually worked with the kids next week. But I have, you know, just comments from him in a phone call word that the kids were engaged and they really enjoyed the equipment. So we'll see what happens. They have not uploaded their video yet. So we don't have that online at this time, but they are working on that. So I believe they will do it. The youth grant committee also voted to approve a new grant. It's a new partnership with Friends of the Library thanks to Keith. And the Friends have developed a six week animation curriculum for kids seven to 12th grade. And it'll be delivered by qualified instructors at libraries all throughout the county. And we have branded the equipment for that program. So it's seven computers and headsets and microphones and real fun mice and it's all in a fun backpack. So it's perfect for kids. Easy for the librarians to check out. And kids will use it on site. They won't be taken at home. And then they can come back later after the class is over and check it out to use on site to work on their animations. And then Friends will move it from one site to another. So it should work its way through the county and we should keep an eye on that and see if we want to grant them another batch of equipment. So that moving through the county could go faster but we'll just let them get started and see how that goes. And they will make short animated features and they will upload them to our channels. So that is my report for July and August. Thank you. I have somebody with a blower next door. Let me close the window. Becca, I'm just curious about the cameras. Does that include video cameras and the DSLRs? Is that all the cameras? Okay. All the cameras, yeah. We've been through them all and we replaced in the DSLRs a battery tray that was missing in a couple little things. And nothing was terrible but they just have been out in the back a lot of times and we found some things. Sometimes they were just a bunch of cables with no cable ties and we just made it clean and more professional in those bags. So we hope people are happy when they open them. Excellent. Thank you. That's cool. Okay. Well, next on our agenda is the Education Committee meeting. I'm sorry. I need to interrupt. We don't have a quorum at this point. The two of you. Joe's gone. Joe's in attendee again. Let me... Oh, I think allowed to talk. Why don't I just let Joe talk to us from where he is? There he is. Well, we were getting audio from him before we were here. I heard him on his phone. He can't hear us. That's the problem is he can't hear us. He can't see the problem. Yeah. Okay, let me try one other thing. I'll try promoting him to panelists again, talking permitted this time and see what happens. But he talked before. Oh, he did? But we... But he couldn't hear us. He just has not heard us. We lost Christina, huh? It's okay. She needed to leave early. So that's not better than our issue. We knew about that. It's a quorum issue. Yeah, it could be that. Now we have a quorum issue, yeah. Here's Joe. Joe, can you hear us? He cannot hear us. I wonder if Joe has something plugged into his audio or something. He had sent a message. I wonder if his AirPods are sitting. He says no. I fixed it. I have no idea what it was. I just hit enough things and it finally worked. Hey. Can you hear us? Yeah. Can you? All right. Tom is very relieved, I will say. Me too. I'm going to start letting you take the notes since you're here now. Joe. I've been trying to get out of taking the minutes. So anyhow, I'm sorry to get lost all that time. All right. Well, we are, where are we? I'm sort of lost track. Hey, we just, did we just lose somebody? Christina. We lost Elizabeth. We lost Elizabeth. She just left. No, my goodness. She didn't even go. She must have, it must just be. She just left. She was in her car. I wonder if she drove into a place with no, so there she is. She's back. And I never got to zoom in by two, said at three, I looked at my spam too, Keith. It wasn't there. Yeah. Okay. All right. I'll look into that. You've got to work on this next meeting for sure. Okay. So we are just about ready here. I have a crazy idea. Chair Lanier. We could have an outdoor meeting in the, in the parking lot at community TV. Yeah. Social distance. One person per parking, parking space. Per parking space. Like a garden. Right. Oh yeah, in our cars. Okay. So let's move it on while we've still got a quorum here. Education committee report, our education chair has not been able to sign on the written report is part of the packet. And there was a late report for the September meeting. There's a little bit. I don't know if there's anything to add, but the reports are there. Keith, you're a member of the committee or do you wish to add anything? I think the report is fairly self-explanatory. Yes. I think the most exciting thing was finding out that Cabrillo has applied for a new journalism program for the fall of 2022. And so David has some connections there. So I think there's a chance that we could work closely with them as they prepare for that program. And that's, that seems to be the best way to get involved is with something new and starting up. And the other thing is David is probably gonna try and create a program with educators for televisions. Education spotlight is the working title. Sorry. But I'm working with him on that. He's a little reluctant to be host, but he's seeing you, Becca, do elected spotlight and he's seen Steve Plage do non-profit spotlights.  I think he'll be fine. It's just, it's not, yeah, it's just, it's easy. I can talk to him about that. We have Elizabeth coming in from 90 degrees there. There she is. Everything's back to normal. Thank you. All right, good. Well, thank you for that, Keith, for jumping in there. Let's move on to the board. Members, staff requests for specific items to appear on the next meeting agenda. Any hearing none? Move on to any announcements. I'd like to make a couple of announcements. I didn't make a volunteer advisory committee report, but I have had several community producers contact me about when the studio is gonna be open. They understand that as long as we're in the red, it wouldn't make sense. I mean, even if we were allowed in, they'd all have to wear masks on camera. So that doesn't seem to be good. But that's interesting that they are interested. One of them was specifically about high schools. There's some students at Cypress High School were interested in doing a program and learning about television production. Great.  Getting the software on them. I don't know, did the little audio booths get wet down, Becca? Yeah, Ian did them. So they should be ready. He did them over the weekend, I think. So they should be all ready to go. Okay.  We did associated faith communities, homeless shelters. We did it before, but they have a new executive director. So we did our new manager. So we did them again and we were planning to do two or three more this year. So as long as we're still virtual, it's actually pretty easy to get people on. So we'll do more of that. That's it. All right, great. Thank you. All right. Any other announcements? Otherwise, I will entertain a motion to adjourn this fine meeting. Anyone? I'll move adjournment. I'll second. I'll let Matreya do it because I actually wasn't hearing from much of it. I'm going to have a motion by Director Gudger, a second by Director Maziaris. All in favor? Aye. Aye.


Welcome to our interview show in which we interview LGBTQ guests who are important contributors to our community. We want to acknowledge that All Things LGBTQ is produced at Orca Media in Montpelier, Vermont, which is unceded Indigenous land. Enjoy the show. Hi, All Things LGBTQ audience. I would like to and I'm very excited. We haven't had that many international interviews, so I am really excited to welcome Richard Zimler to our audience. Hi, Richard. How are you? I'm great. Thanks for having me. And you're in Porto, Portugal. Absolutely. It's a beautiful sunny afternoon here and that's where I am. All right. So, how did you get to Portugal from Roslyn Heights, New York? I know you have that you went to school in the States. You have a bachelor's degree in comparative religion from Duke and a master's degree in journalism from Stanford, right? Exactly. And the story of how I came to Portugal begins in San Francisco, actually. I was living out there, starting in the late 70s, and I walked into a cafe one day, the cafe floor, which is on Market Street in the Castro. And I saw this really handsome man across the cafe and I stayed there and he looked at me and I looked at him. And after a little while, I found enough courage to go up and talk to him. And we've been together for 42 years. His name's Alex. Yeah, we got lucky. Alex Quintanillas, a Portuguese scientist from Mozambique, Africa, which was a Portuguese colony. And after we met, you know, things just clicked and we've been together ever since. We were able to get married in Portugal in 2010. So, now we're married, officially, not living in sin. And so, how I got here? Well, in the 1980s, as I'm sure you and your viewers recall, AIDS hit the Bay Area very hard. It was the only topic of discussion for a while. And everyone was talking about a friend, a family member, cousin and uncle who was dying with AIDS. Very hard time for everybody.  I'm talking about like 1987, 88. He had opportunistic infections. I managed his illness from a distance in some way because he couldn't do it himself. You know, I was talking with doctors and researchers and family and friends trying to organize things. And when he died on May 6, 1989, I was left very traumatized. And I couldn't seem to go on with my life. And it was Alex, my now husband from Mozambique, who said, you know, we need to go someplace where people are talking about something other than AIDS. I really couldn't handle it at that point. And he had received an invitation to teach at one of the medical schools here in Porto. And I was able to get a job teaching journalism, which is my background, as you mentioned. And we moved to 1990 to start over somewhere new. And it worked. Coming to Portugal saved my life. That's pretty interesting and impressive story about AIDS and your brother. I was in San Francisco, I believe around the same time as you. And you had some work. You did some work with Harvey and you knew Harvey Milk. Yeah. Well, you know, when I moved to San Francisco, I moved in with an old friend of mine from junior high and high school. We got an apartment in the Castro. At that time, Harvey had his camera store still with Scott, his ex-lover. And we used to, you know, develop our film there, strangely enough. My friend Carol took a lot of photos. So we were always in and out of the camera shop.  And so I often saw Harvey in the shop and then just saw him walking around in the neighborhood. I wouldn't say we were friends, but we knew each other. We talked to each other. Occasionally rode the bus with him. And he was always extremely kind and friendly and funny with me. Nice guy. Really nice person. And when he died, we were all absolutely in total shock. And you know, it was such an intense time to be there. Yeah. Just politically, emotionally. Absolutely. The whole thing. It seemed to be like the epicenter of what was going on in. Well, few people, few young gay and lesbians will probably remember, but there was a possibility that no gay people would be allowed to teach in California. There was a referendum put to the people. And I worked on that campaign under Harvey's leadership and other people. And it was defeated. Thank goodness.  I know. Although, you know, the way things are going, at least in the States, you know, we could be back to that point pretty quickly. Unfortunately. So Richard, you received the 2009 Alberto Benvenista literary prize in France for the novel Guardian of the Dawn. The prize was given to novels that have to do with Sephardic Jewish culture or history. It was awarded to you at a ceremony at the savant in January 2009. Very impressive. So how many books have you written? That's a good question. I sometimes forget, because they come out in different places at different times. So it's very hard to keep track. But I believe I've written 12 novels and six children's books. I write the novels in English. That's my maternal language, obviously, my, you know, I grew up in the States, and I write the children's books in Portuguese. It's a new adventure for me, my adopted country. And I have a collection of short stories that's come out in Portugal, but that hasn't come out in America or Britain. And I have another novel that'll come out in America and Great Britain in May of next year, I believe. Okay. And when did you start writing? Did you always know that you wanted to be a writer? I know you were a journalist. Right. But, you know, like, what was your idea for your first novel? Get there.   I liked reading. I liked writing poetry when I was a little kid. My mom used to save my poems. And then I guess I got serious about it when I went back to university and did a masters in journalism at Stanford. I was interested in journalism, but I always knew that my real goal was to write novels. But I lacked the confidence, like so many young people. So I studied journalism in part to learn the tools of writing, you know, a sentence, a paragraph, the rhythm of a sentence, the sound of words, how to put words together poetically, how to create a whole narrative that sticks together and that just isn't aren't pieces put together. And so in 1989, I had an idea for a first novel, which eventually became The Last Cabalist to Lisbon, which became a best seller in 13 different countries, and it was an amazing story. And it's based on a true story. It's based on a riot that occurred in Lisbon in April of 1506, in which 2,000 forcibly converted Jews were murdered and burnt in the main square, the main square that's still at the heart of Lisbon. And nobody knew about this in Portugal because countries have a tendency to whitewash or completely forget their crimes against humanity. I mean, I don't know about you, but growing up in the USA, we didn't spend more than an hour or two talking about Native American history, their music, their culture, nothing. Or Jewish, even. Or Jewish. Yeah. So countries tend to forget the bad things about their history. So when I discovered that this pogrom, this riot, this anti-Semitic riot occurred, and that nobody knew about it or wanted to talk about it, I have a very subversive personality. When people would prefer to forget crimes against humanity, I get very enthusiastic. It makes probably a pretty perverse part of my personality. But so anyway, I did the research because I needed to know what daily life was like in Portugal back then, at the beginning of the 16th century. That took a year. Then I wrote the book. That took two years. And then nobody in the United States wanted to publish it because, as you know, we Americans have a geographical problem. We think that the world begins in Maine and Florida ends in California and Hawaii. So Lisbon 1506 was off everybody's radar. And they were probably thinking, oh, who cares? But you know, lots of people. That's right. But readers care. It's a problem of literary editors who lack the confidence in readers. And so I had a crazy idea, which was to show the manuscript written in English to a Portuguese publisher to make a long story very short. She loved it. She published it in April of 1996. It went straight to number one on the bestseller list. And that's why I have a career. If she hadn't taken a risk on a completely unknown author on me writing about a topic that no Portuguese person wanted to know about, then maybe I wouldn't have a career. But it touched a chord in Portugal. People were very curious. They'd never heard about their own Jewish history. And suddenly there was this book out there, very well researched, based on a true event that they could read.  And that's probably why I have a career. Well, and a good career. Thank you. And so I know you write a lot about Judaism as it has seems to have a central in a lot of your writing. And why do you think you're drawn to that?  I think there's a few reasons. When I grew up, I thought that Judaism was passe. It was not of any interest to me because all I knew of Judaism was bar mitzvahs and, you know, weddings and superficial things.  So I studied Hinduism and Buddhism and Sufism and everything, but Judaism. And then I realized when I read a scholar whom I would recommend to everybody, Gershom Shalom, who single-handedly rediscovered Kabbalah, Jewish mysticism, and made it accessible to non-experts. And he's got a wonderful writer with a great depth of understanding. And when I read his books, I realized what a fool I'd been that Judaism has this huge, glorious history of mythology, this tradition of wonderful storytelling, both in the Old Testament and elsewhere. And I started to read all that. And so what brought me to Judaism was its mystical aspects, Kabbalah, and also storytelling. I really love reading the ancient, you know, myths. It's mythology that turns me on. You know, I have a lot of rabbi friends now because of the books, and I have to tell them, you know, I'm not interested in the rules and regulations. I'm not interested in who I should sleep with or, you know, what foods I need to eat or any of that. And so if you're going to be friends with me, you'll have to forgive me because I love Jewish history and I love Jewish culture and I love Jewish mythology, but I don't need any sermons. And the rabbis I know are very open-minded and wonderful, and they share the same interests with me, and so it's great. And then the other thing that interests me so much about Judaism is the persecution. You know, we've been persecuted pretty much everywhere we've lived, whether it's England, France, Portugal, Spain, there's been riots, mass murders, even in the United States, anti-Semitism was rampant back in the 1920s and 1930s and it's still rampant among the militia and the Ku Klux Klan and other groups. And because of this persecution, Jews are outsiders, and I love the position, the perspective of being an outsider.  I like being Jewish and writing from that perspective. I think it gives me a view over history, over my characters that I wouldn't otherwise have if I weren't an outsider, weren't persecuted. Yeah, I think that's really interesting and I think it's important for people to read and know about, even people who are Jewish probably don't know a lot about some of the cultural, you know, I mean, so I think it's really important work. Your new book, The Gospel According to Lazarus, you got one? Can you show us? Yeah. Okay. Thank you. So tell us a little bit about this book. Well, it's strangely enough it relates to my brother's death in a way because after he died I had a very strange dream in which I saw him walking on an outdoor patio of a huge mansion and I was in the mansion looking down at him and I thought he's alive. He hasn't died. I need to talk to him. So I ran outside and I started talking to him and he could speak but he lacked all the emotions that he had in life. All he could feel was sadness. All he could feel was a kind of morose quietness, his enthusiasm, his dynamism, his intelligence. He knew he'd no longer had it so he was very sad. And after I woke up from this dream and I had it several times after he died, I started thinking a lot about the story of Lazarus because as we know from the New Testament and the Gospel of John, Lazarus is brought back to life by Jesus. And I thought, wow, I later realized that this was probably my greatest wish in life to bring my brother back in life at the time I didn't understand that. But I started researching the New Testament and the story of Lazarus and life in the Holy Land 2000 years ago and I became fascinated with the story, what it would be like to wake up in your tomb and be told you were dead. And of course you wouldn't believe it. But slowly, your sisters and your best friend Jesus would explain to you what happened. And so that's the first chapter of my novel, is he wakes up in his tomb completely disoriented, very fragile, and his sisters, we know he had two sisters from the Gospel of John tell him you were dead. And the worst thing for him is he's lost his faith because he was always told that he would see heaven and God and maybe angels. And here he is and he remembers nothing. And he turns to his best friend from childhood in my version, their childhood friends, Yeshua Ben Yoseph, I use their Hebrew names because part of the goal in my book was to give back to Jesus and Lazarus their Judaism. They were Jewish. Jesus never renounced his Judaism. And so he discusses with his best friend what's happened to him. And the rest of the novel takes off from there, what happens to Lazarus, what happens to Jesus, and the sacrifice that Lazarus must make to try to save his friend. Interesting. In a moment, I'm going to ask you to read something from that novel. But I'd like to ask you first though, before we do that, is what were your writing influences?  Well, like most American kids, when I was little, I read comic books, and then I read the young adult literature we have, everything from To Kill a Mockingbird to The Phantom Tollbooth, all those great books we have. And as an adult, I discovered Dostoevsky very early. He became an influence. William Faulkner taught me how to write. I studied his novel Light and August very carefully, by myself, and learned how he kept my attention without any tricks, without any car chases or gratuitous sex scenes or children kidnapped. I want to learn how he did that. And Willa Cather is a huge influence. I think an underrated American writer, probably because she was a woman, writing in a rural context. Willa Cather's novels are still completely readable and up to date, whereas some other writers, they seem so antiquated. They seem to be talking about things that have nothing to do with our time now. But I would highly recommend all of Willa Cather's novels, especially My Antonia, which is one of the most beautiful books any American or anyone has ever written. And so, you know, when I have other influences like everybody else from Saul Bellow, Phillip Roth, Jane Austen, I try to write as well as they do. I probably fail, but you know, that's my goal is to write beautiful books. And when do you write? When do I write? Well, COVID has changed a little bit about that. I used to write in the mornings because I was more alert. I'm a morning person, you know, I was very dynamic and alert and could focus. But COVID, I think, put me and everyone else through a period of so much stress and worry that I needed the mornings to just be quiet and calm. So I'd listen to music, watch little TV, maybe watch a little NBA basketball because I'm a basketball fan. And do anything but write because I didn't need the stress. And only in the afternoons would I start to work on a novel. Lately, it's a mix. You know, I try not to put too much stress on myself. I'm 65 years old. I don't have the endurance I once had. So I try to be a little bit kinder to myself and write whenever I'm in the mood and not try to push myself too hard because it doesn't work. I know what you mean. So I'm going to ask you if you don't mind. I mean, I think we should have another interview at some other time because we have not covered everything that I would like to have covered, but we seem to be running out of time. So if you don't mind, if you would read something from your latest novel, The Gospel Equating to Lazarus, I'll take a grade. Oh, thank you. I'm going to read from close to the beginning of the novel. Lazarus has been awakened in his tomb and he turns to his best friend, Yeshua Ben Yoseph, Jesus, for support and to try to understand this unique experience. And this is Lazarus narrating, my throat is desperately dry again. So we retreat into silence while I go down more water. At length, he, Yeshua, stands up and goes to my window. I sense he needs to look into a world beyond our concerns. With Yeshua, there has always been the danger of his descending into too deep a chamber inside himself and never emerging. When turning back to me, he takes a deep breath.  He says, I don't understand. You stopped breathing. Apparently you were dead for two days. He clearly believes the truth in what he is telling me. So I do not laugh. When I taste blood in my mouth, I realize that I have nibbled away some crust from my lips. My old friend studies me closely. I expect him to speak within me, as he sometimes does when voicing his thoughts aloud might endanger or compromise us. But he says nothing. My sister told you this, I ask. His eyes grow glassy. Yes, they said your fever worsened them that you became so weak that you weren't able to move. Mia said that she was rubbing your feet with oils when she felt the tremor in your soul leaving your body. She checked on your breathing and there was none. Given that I'm here now, she must have been mistaken, I say. Marta confirmed that you were dead. That's very hard to believe. Yet that's what happened.  He nods as if no other conclusion is possible. Echoing the psalms, he says, as you know, I have always filled my quiver with the unlikely and the improbable. That's true enough, I think, and yet I use certain, I ask. After he confirms that I was dead, I imagine the man I've been only a moment before standing behind me, observing me, unwilling to come forward and join me. That is beautiful. Thank you. I'll be looking forward to reading. Is it in English now? Yeah, I wrote it in English. It came out first in Portuguese because my books are such best sellers here that the publisher works very hard to get them out really quickly. But we can get them in English. Oh, yeah, yeah. If your local bookstore doesn't have it, you can order it easily via whatever your favorite bookshop is. Absolutely, because we want to read it in that group. Thank you. Thank you so much. That really touched me. It was really beautiful. Thank you. So on our final note, do you have anything that you would like the audience to know about you or about your work? Well, you know, if you have any more questions about my writing, please go to my website, which is just Zimlercom, Z-I-M-L-E-R dot com. Please stay safe. Please stay healthy and sane, and please do all you can to fight against the evil, strange, ignorant people who are trying to ruin our world. Please do everything you can. Well, thank you, Richard. On that note, we'll talk to you later. Hi, everybody. I'm here with Penny Mickelberry, who is a very talented novelist, playwright, pioneering journalist. Welcome, Penny. Thank you, Anne. It's wonderful to be able to speak with you. Well, it's great to have you here. I first learned about you when I heard your editor, S. Andrea Allen, on a publishing panel. And I have an abiding interest in publishing, women's publishing in particular, lesbian feminist publishing in a more particular sense. And at the end of the panel, the facilitator asked her for books to recommend, and she recommended God's Will and Other Lies by Penny Mickelberry. And I ordered it immediately, read it, and loved it. So thank you for this, Penny. Thank you. Thank you. And I thank the universe for S. Andrea Allen. She is a force of nature. I can't wait to talk to her on the show. It's pending. What I loved about this collection is its range. I mean, there are older lesbians with agency. And that their older lesbians period is a wonderful gift to many of us as readers. But it's a whole range of people. And I love the novella. And so I encourage our audience to get this among Penny's other novels that we're going to talk about later in the show in the interview. But before we start with that, I thought if it's agreeable with you, I'll read a little bio from the book. I have so much biographical information that I was a little, you've had a very rich and continuing to have a very productive life. So I thought I would just read the blurb on the bio on the book if I may. Penny Mickelberry is a pioneering newspaper, radio, and television journalist, based primarily in Washington, D.C., which is no longer true. You're in L.A. now, right? That's correct. Who also is a teacher of both children at a Los Angeles Charter Middle School and adults in the Los Angeles Public Libraries Adult Literacy Program. Are you still doing that, even with COVID? No, not doing either of those things because of COVID and other things. See how book bios can stay in the past? Yes. Well still, you're an award-winning writer of stage plays and a co-founder of Alchemy Theater of Change, a young people's acting company, and that was in New York. That was in New York. You did that for three years, right? Yeah. I lived in New York for 16 years maybe. Did you really? Yeah, and loved it. I really, I miss it a lot. I know. I went to college there and lived there a couple years after I graduated, and I also miss it a lot. Yeah. You are the recipient of the Audrey Lord Estate Grant and your resident writer, a Hedgebrook Women Writers Retreat. Now let me indulge myself and read a little about the short story collection. This new collection of stories, God's Will and Other Lies, joins your catalog of 11 published mystery novels and three successful series. The Mimi Patterson, Gianna Maglione Mysteries, two-time Lambda Literary Award finalist, the Carol Ann Gibson Mysteries, which won the Gold Pen Award by the Black Writers Alliance, and the Phil Rodriguez Mysteries and the novel of historical fiction Bell City. So this is a wide range of productive output, Penny. Congratulations. Thank you. I read a review. I read a biography of you in contemporary Black biography that emphasized your ongoing involvement with theater and play writing. And I was wondering if we could start by my asking you to talk a little about that. You have four plays, which one has just been reproduced in 2000? Well, I've probably got six or seven finished. Theater came as a love early to me. And at about the same time, well, no, actually before I thought I wanted to be a newspaper reporter. My mother was the librarian at Spelman College in Atlanta. And I was fortunate enough to be able to spend a lot of time on campus. And one of the places where I kind of hit out was the theater department. And the gentleman who headed the theater department was, if I call him irascible, I think that's kind, but he was a notoriously irascible man. And the fact that he allowed me in his theater, everybody marveled at that. But I sat in the dark during rehearsal for, I don't know how many productions. And I was totally mesmerized. And then I'd see the productions. And it was magic to me. It was, it was a miracle. People talk about, oh, the movies are magic. Theater was magic. And I wanted to do it. But no, and there were two caveats. One, I did not want to be the director, which is what he was, because he was a screamer. And he screamed at people. And he yelled at people. And I was so very shy. So I thought, no, I can't do that. And then I knew I couldn't be an actor because I was so very shy and I couldn't do that. But everybody had a book. They had the same book. And I thought, now that I could do, if I can figure out how to make sure that all the actors are reading my words from the book that I did. And that's what I thought. It's like, okay, this is what I'm going to do. And I became a writer of mystery novels. And this is the truth. Because I thought, all right, I've got to earn a living. And everybody knew that the only people who starved to death faster than playwrights were poets. No money in it. You do that for love. So I thought, okay, I'll write these books. And if I can earn a living writing mysteries, then I can indulge my love of theater. Well, some people get writing, get rich writing mysteries, I haven't. But I love doing that. And I love the theater. So I write plays and have readings and you know, hope to get a full production one day. But I do it because I love it. And I keep writing books because I love it. And what can I say? And I'm still standing. So we all, yep. Well, let's go to the journalism because you started your journalism career in college. I have here that while still in college, you worked at the Atlanta voice during several summers. And upon graduation, you became the first African American reporter at the Banner Herald in Athens, Georgia, where you got your BA. That was while I was still in college. I worked, yeah, I worked full time. I worked at the Atlanta voice summers. That was a weekly paper in Atlanta. And I worked full time at the Athens Banner Herald, my last year at the University of Georgia. And I had applied for a job there. And they made it very clear to me that they did not hire black reporters. But I could work in one of the other department's production or whatever they had me. So I said, okay, because I was intent upon working my way into the newsroom. Lot of activity in Athens, Georgia in the 1960s, lots of demonstrations and things. And I was a participant most of them. I don't know when I went to class. I didn't do that very often to my parents just may, but I was also glad I went to most of the demonstrations. And the publisher came to me one day, he said, okay, he said, can you really write? And I said, yeah, I can.  So you're it. And I thought, okay, I'll take that.  So have at it. And then when I left to go to the Washington Post, he said to me, is there anything I can do to keep you here? What would it take? And I thanked him. But the Washington Post has offered me a job and I kind of got to go there. So that was that was the beginning of my journalism career. And that was in 1971. You started working for the Post. Yes. And then you worked in journalism in various capacities for 15 years. Yep. I was a radio reporter after the post and then a TV reporter after radio, all of that in DC. And you say in this, you're quoted in this biographical encyclopedia entry that after 15 years in journalism, you became dissatisfied with reporting because you perceive changes in the profession that you didn't like. For example, the sensationalism and the emphasis on public put on public figures, private lives. You wanted to be a reporter from your earliest days, but when it came to the media business, you didn't care for the profession anymore. Is that true? Yeah. Yeah. It became the news business rather than simply journalism. Which is what it is now. Yeah. It's the news business. And that really was heralded by the growth of technology because for a century news was disseminated via print. And even up until the middle of the 20th century, the majority of people got their news and information from newspapers. Most cities had two newspapers, a morning paper and an evening paper. And then there was radio, but people still relied on newspapers for news. And then along came television. And it really was a game changer. It really was because pictures are captivating. People want to see. And there were images that did change the world. I mean, the coverage of some of the civil rights demonstrations with the turning of hoses and dogs on Black children in Alabama and Mississippi changed the course of the civil rights movement. Because people had reported it. But when people saw it when it came into their living rooms, then you think, OK, something else is happening here. We got to do something. So it is not that television was totally detrimental or that it was a totally negative thing. But then it changed again. It morphed into this fascination with people's private lives. And you actually had reporters combing through the trash cans of people on Capitol Hill, senators and congressmen. And I'm not doing that. I'm just not doing that. I'm just not going to do that. Or in the case of me, I covered government politics in D.C. and one of the mayors was a notorious womanizer. And my station wanted me to report. I'm not reporting on that. I'm not.  Most probably so does his wife. And if she lets him come home, it's not my job to do anything about that.  I'm not interested. And so that's kind of when I was ready to part ways. Well, and I think the print newspaper industry is really in decline. They're really strong. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, it really is. It really is. Although it seems to me, and I have no empirical evidence to support this, but it seems that younger people are discovering print journalism that online, I think. Yeah, that they read newspapers. Rather than reading just Twitter feeds and that kind of stuff, they actually read news stories. And so I do hope that portends a change. I mean, to have newspapers go away, I think would would be not only awful, it would be dangerous. I think it would be dangerous. Well, let's turn to the publishing industry, apropos of print culture. I'd like to start this segment of the interview by quoting you to yourself. This was in an interview with in the Lambda Literary Review, which is also just a few years ago changed to an online publication. I read it avidly. However, the journalist asked you, and the other people who were interviewed, you know, how as a woman of color, you confronted as a lesbian of color, you confronted obstacles and so forth. And how are you going to fare in the future? And now, if I may quote you, you say, I have no idea what the future holds. And I don't spend time thinking about it. It will take care of itself. And I will take care of myself. I will be so bold as to say, though, that if BLF press and buywater books are part of that future, I'll have a place in it. I'll also be so bold as to say that black and brown women writers, queer or not, will not, despite the desperate and deplorable efforts of those who shall not be named, disappear or stop writing, they are too many and they are too good. What an optimistic and I think valid quotation. Would you mind responding? Well, to respond to the part of it that references me, it is true. I mean, I don't spend a lot of time thinking about what the future holds. I'm just happy to still be here. And I am grateful. I am overwhelmingly grateful to be published by buywater books and BLF press. And yeah, I do think if they're still in business, I'll have a home. And I'm grateful for that. I don't know how I got so lucky, but I'm still here. I do not spend a lot of time worrying about however what the future holds. And I stand by that quote, the future will take care of itself. And it is my job to take care of myself and I will do that. There are far, far, far and away too many black and brown women who write wonderful stories, who tell wonderful stories. And they exist in every corner of the globe. And they're not going to stop. Some of them are just getting started. And then you have instances, for instance, in the Middle East where some of those women got started and there is the effort now to tamp them down. It's not going to work. There are too many of them. And they're everywhere in South and Central America, in every part of Africa, in India, in China, in places where women have traditionally, not only not had the opportunity, but have been barred and banned from exercising their intellectual capacity to write and tell stories. They're not going to stop. They're not going to stop. And it doesn't matter what they try to do to them. They're not going to stop. I hope you're right. You must be. It's got to be. I am an optimist too. I think once the page is open, you can't close it back.  There are too many of us. And fortunately, there are still enough of us still standing. President and company included who were there to kick open some of those doors. And as long as we still stand, we will continue to kick at the doors. I have no intention of being quiet or going silently away. When people go, you know, how old are you anyway? It doesn't matter. I ain't dead. And if I can keep at it, and if I can continue to have a voice that somebody will listen to, I am going to make certain that those young women have a place to speak and to be. I will always write. I love writing, but I don't have to. If there's some young people lined up behind me, some young women, and the publishers say, you know, you could give some of these young women your place at the table. Excellent. Yeah, but we need everybody. I mean, that was so refreshing to me about your collection of short stories. It wasn't all 20-somethings. You know, we're as diverse age-wise as any other. Oh, absolutely. Well, that collection was dedicated to black women of all ages. I mean, there's one woman in that story who leads the story. She's 90 years old, blind and insistent upon going to a Black Lives Matter march. She can't see, but she's in a nursing home. In a nursing home. But she said, what I've heard about these young people, these Black Lives Matter children, she said, I like them and they're having a march and I'm going. You know, and that's not just hyperbole. That's not make believe. Those women are real. You're there. Let's turn to your writing career and your publishing. You say that your influences, speaking of pioneers and trailblazers, are Octavia Butler, Nikki Finney, Gondolin Brooks, Nikki Giovanni, and James Baldwin. And you have been, are there any other influences? You say you many, many, but those are the main ones. Do you have a right? I'm sorry. Go ahead. No, I just, I referenced those particular writers because they write what I do not and cannot. The poets, because I could no more write a poem than I could take wings and fly or, you know, run the LA marathon with my knees, which most days they barely will take me up and down the steps. James Baldwin because of his essay writings, not because of his novels, because of his essays that are so brilliant and so insightful and incisive. And he has a way with words and language that really rend me specialist sometimes and Octavia Butler because I mean, I could no more write what she writes, what she sees, what she envisions, how she crafts stories around these characters in a time and place that I can only imagine. I think that's marvelous. So I love them. But other writers are many, too many to speak about. Well, let's we're getting toward the end of the interview, believe it or not. Let me ask you to do a little reading if you wouldn't mind and weave into it information about your current writing projects. Okay. This is from Two Wings to Fly Away, if I hold this up. Sure. This is, this was published by Bywater in 2019, I think. And I'm just going to read the opening pages of this book, which will set the tone and the stage. The book takes place in Philadelphia in 1856. Did I say this was a novel of historical fiction? It is. It takes place in Philadelphia in 1856. Slave catcher. The hissed word hung in the air, freezing Eugenia Oliver's insides colder than the damp November evening air shelter skin. Though Eli's bare feet made no sound on the worn cobblestones and his two brief words were whispered. Jeannie's body reverberated as if a cannon had been fired next to her. She was headed home. She was almost there, almost safe and warm. But she changed direction and walked toward Main Street. The fast, loud pounding of her heart in her suddenly dry mouth where her fear manifested.  She moved with purpose toward the danger coming her way. The white man slowed his gait from a trot to a long legged stride as he entered thatchery lane, definitely looking for someone. His head swiveled from side to side. His eyes searched but found nothing but shuttered windows and barred doors. Jeannie was annoyed with herself. She should have heard the danger in the silence. It was suppertime thatchery lane. There should have been the clamour of children and women, the clatter of horses and wagons. There should have been the call of the lamp lighter. Instead there was the silence of fear that only the presence of a white man could bring and the anger. That was more dangerous than the fear. Jeannie took a deep breath and caressed the Derringer pistol in her pocket. She and the white man were close together now. She knew her neighbors could see her as clearly as the stranger. She also knew that inside half a dozen of the barred and shuttered houses were pistols and shotguns aimed at the white man.   They would die and their homes would be burned to ashes. Jeannie's chivalry in November was not to blame. This man, however, was no slave catcher. Jeannie was certain of that, though she could not imagine who he was and certainly not what he wanted, not in this area of Philadelphia inhabited solely by blacks, free and otherwise. The man removed his hat as Jeannie approached not a degree and he spoke before she could speak. Good evening, sir. Jeannie returned the greeting, adding a question. Have you lost your way? I lost a boy I was chasing. Is the boy a thief? Why no, not that Ah, if not a thief, then why was I chasing him? A good question and I have a good answer. The man spoke confidently. He has information I need and he ran when I approached him. I chased him and saw him turn into this lane. Perhaps you saw him and the man described Eli as if he possessed an artist's etching of the boy. Jeannie studied the stranger. His clothes were well made and of equality, though not the clothes of a wealthy man, but confidence aside, he seemed too worldly to be naive enough to follow, to chase the black man into his own residential quarter, given the unrest of recent times, not to mention the encroaching darkness. Do you know where you are, sir? I am lost to tell the truth. He allowed his words to trail off as he looked closely at the black man to find the deeper meaning of his question. I know I'm in the black quarter, if that's what you're asking.  Good God. Jeannie watched the surprise spread across the man's chiseled features and then the revulsion and finally the denial. I am nothing of the sort. It is a heinous and cruel occupation. One of the, I could think of no worthy punishment. Jeannie could think of several worthy punishments, but she dared not speak them. After all, the stranger was a white man, even if not a slave catcher. Thank you. This is, you're at work on the sequel now. Yes, I am. I am at work on the sequel and oh, I hope to have it finished really soon, really, really soon. Well, we'll look forward to that. Penny, Micklebury, thank you for joining it. It's been wonderful. Thank you. It's been a pleasure to talk with you. Thank you for having me. Thank you for joining us. We'll see you in two weeks, but in the meantime, resist.