Not sure how to start this but I guess I just will start with the twins. Kirk Russell was living in New York City when his twin brother Tom was located in Washington state. Early in the 1970s Tom went back to New York to pick up Kirk. He told Kirk to pack his stuff and come with him, which he did.
This was the mid-1970s. Feminism and a growing number of feminist writers spurred the founding and growth of women-owned and operated presses. These were small businesses started on shoestring budgets by dedicated women willing and eager to get the words of feminist and lesbian philosophers, historians, novelists, poets, and artists into the public sphere. As a bookseller, I wanted to get their books to readers.
During the contra war—a right-wing terror campaign waged by ex-national guard mercenaries of Nicaragua’s ousted dictator and funded by the U.S.—over a hundred thousand people from the U.S. visited Nicaragua. Many of us traveled and volunteered with purpose. For example, delegations of elected officials mobilized by progressive organizations, ecumenical study tour groups, long-term volunteers with Witness for Peace, caravans carrying material aid with Pastors for Peace, medical teams, coffee and cotton harvest brigades, and journalists.
Michael Moore was in the center of the flourishing music scene in the 1960s and beyond. He was a founding member of the jazz/Latin/funk band called Obrador. Michael passed away shortly after this interview in 2023. He was 76.
Around 1970, Steve Wilcox and a group of friends decided to lobby for the legalization of marijuana. We formed an organization called BLOSSOM: Basic Liberation Of Smokers and Sympathizers Of Marijuana. I was the sympathizer since I didn’t smoke pot and nobody was doing edibles yet, except for the occasional fibrous brownies. We wrote up a list of ideas, goals, and tasks, and we assessed what each of us could contribute to the effort.
Our music and what we wore were the things most visible to other generations. Lots of creativity was going on in our relationships and our denial of materialism. Times “were a changin’.”
There was a new rule at the co-op. It was a warm summer, and men were regularly coming into the store without shirts on. Now this was troublesome for some of the women who saw inequality and male privilege in this display.
I was a puppeteer for many years, an art form I used in teaching to engage, entertain, and educate. In the late 1980s I worked at the Department of Ecology as a transportation coordinator to get people to drive less, take the bus more, walk more, and bike more to work. With this in mind I came up with the idea to do a giant puppet show