00:00:00MARIA RODALE
LIZ BRADBURY: -- computer, yes?
MARIA RODALE: Yeah, I see it.
LB: Let's go. Now, I have to read you these things that are important. My phone
is off, okay. With this project, the Bradbury-Sullivan LGBT Community Center and
Trexler Library at Muhlenberg College will collaborate on 40 years of public
health experiences in the Lehigh Valley LGBT community collecting and curating
local LGBT health experiences from HIV/AIDS to COVID-19. My name is Liz
Bradbury, and I'm here with Maria Rodale to talk about her experiences in the
Lehigh Valley LGBT community during this time of COVID-19 epidemic as part of
the Lehigh Valley LGBT Community Archive. So, at the beginning of this, I have
to say -- oh, wait, here I'll do that -- thank you for much -- so much for your
willingness to speak with us today. To start, can you please state your full
name and spell it for me?
00:01:00
MR: Maria Rodale. M-A-R-I-A R-O-D-A-L-E.
LB: Thank you. Will you please share your birthdate?
MR: January twenty-fourth, nineteen sixty-two.
LB: Okay. Do you consent to this interview today?
MR: Yes.
LB: Do you consent to having this interview being transcribed, digitalized or
digitized and made publicly available online in searchable formats?
MR: Yes.
LB: Do you consent to the LGBT Archive using your interview for educational
purposes in other formats including films, articles, websites, presentations,
and other formats?
MR: Yes.
LB: Do you understand that you will have thirty days after the electronic
delivery of the transcript -- so we will deliver the transcript that will be
00:02:00transcribed after this interview to you -- to review your interview and review
any parts you'd like to delete or withdraw from your interview for this project?
MR: Yes.
LB: Okay. So I am actually going to turn my air off because it's making too much noise.
MR: And I can't hear it.
LB: I'm having to yell. Yeah, but I'm having to yell, (laughs) and it's weird.
Okay. Okay. So the first part of this, and, you know, you can say whatever you
want about the -- however you want it to go. We have three props on here, one of
them is that, what was the first time -- to start it off -- that you remember
the first time that you became aware of the disease?
MR: I first became aware of the disease in probably nineteen eighty-three or
eighty-four when I was actually a student at Muhlenberg College, and my brother
David gave me an unpublished manuscript to read. I don't remember the book, but
00:03:00it was definitely talking about the possibility that there was an epidemic that
was about to happen. My first response was like, "Well, why are you giving this
to me?" and then as I read it, I realized he was kind of giving me a heads-up.
So my brother David was gay, as everybody knew, and was very open about it, and
we all loved him dearly. And so that was my first awareness of -- that something
was happening.
LB: Yeah. I just want to interpose in this that this -- one of the reasons I
think we're doing this archive is that lots of people don't know stuff. And in
fact, this is going to go into the archives for thirty years into the -- 20, 30
00:04:00years into the future, and there will be a lot of things that people don't know.
In fact, it's shocking when -- how much people don't know. Lots of times that
most of the people who work at our community center are about half my age, they
don't have a -- they don't understand a lot of this. I was going to say they
don't have a clue, but that's not true.
MR: Yeah.
LB: But they don't understand a lot of stuff. So talk about how that proceeded.
What happened for you as far as that stuff went?
MR: Well, first of all, my brother came out as gay when he was maybe in his late
teens, early twenties, and it didn't surprise me. I wasn't upset. My parents,
obviously at that time, were quite upset, but they really came around. They came
around quickly, and he was just such a delightful and wonderful person and kind
00:05:00of the life of the family, so... So nineteen eighty-four, he gave me that book,
but I was just like -- you know, at that point, I was very young and a single
mom going to college, so it wasn't really my problem. I personally was not gay
or doing drugs or anything -- any of the risk factors. But I don't even think
back then we knew what the risk factors were other than it was related to being
gay, so... Then, I would say -- well, his birthday December twelfth nineteen
eighty-five. I remember he had a birthday party. I remember I wore black leather
00:06:00pants. (laughs) But he was coughing a lot and -- coughing and sweating, but he
was like, "Oh, it's nothing," and he had actually been to the local doctor who
had diagnosed him as having bronchitis. And so we're like, "Oh, it's just
bronchitis," and he was like, "Oh, it's just bronchitis." And then December
twentieth, he and his partner Mark were about to go on -- away for Christmas
together. He was at the airport, and he was coughing so badly that Mark was
like, "You have to go to the hospital. There's something wrong here." At that
00:07:00point, I knew it might be AIDS because of what he had told me about, and I
remember calling a couple of my friends. I was like, "You know, I think my
brother has AIDS," and they were like, "Oh, no, he's just stressed out. It's
winter; it's just bronchitis." But when he went into the hospital, and they did
the test, and he did have AIDS, it was -- well, first of all, it was a death
sentence back then. So this is nineteen eighty-five, it's a complete death
sentence, and none of the nurses or doctors wanted to go near him because we
didn't know. Nobody really knew at that point exactly how it was spread. And I
remember my mother like -- well, first of all, she was deeply upset and crying
and -- but she was trying to find private nurses to take care of him in the
00:08:00hospital. I'm like, "Mom, we'll do it. Let's -- let's... Let's take shifts." So
all of us had shifts, and we were with him. And I remember on December
twenty-third, I had my -- so this was like three days in the hospital -- I had
my last exam for Muhlenberg College. So I was like technically graduated at that
point, and I got my stuff together to go in for my shift, which was a late-night
shift. It was like nine to threein the morning and so I remember I had a little
tray of a McDonald's milkshake, McDonald's coffee, my journal. And I went to the
room, and I said to the nurse outside. I was like, "Do I need to mask up?" and
00:09:00she's like, "Well not anymore," and I'm like, "What do you mean?" She's like,
"He expired." (sobs) And I went into the room, and my whole family was there. I
don't know why -- oh, it's before cell phones, so I don't know why that's how I
found out, but that's how I found out. So my parents were there. The woman was
who his friend, Sarah who was with him when he died was there. Some of his other
best friends were there, his partner Mark, and it was just... He was dead.
LB: Wow.
MR: Three days and... I mean and --
LB: He was there three days in the hospital?
MR: Yes. And so he had died of, well, pneumocystic -- the pneumonia that is
00:10:00common with the AIDS patients and... So, needless to say, we were all devastated
and stunned.
LB: How old was he?
MR: He was only thirty. That was his thirtieth birthday party.
LB: Oh, God.
MR: And I was twenty-three -- I was twenty-two, so...
LB: When you were taking care of him and others were taking care of him, was
that you were really doing nursing care for him?
MR: You know, it --
LB: Days, gosh.
MR: -- not really. They would do the technical things, but we would be sitting
with him and communicating with the nurses and things like that. So the nurses
did get over their fear and put on all their equipment and do what nurses are
00:11:00supposed to do, but it was not something that everyone was willing to do. I
think certain nurses took it on. And I remember he must have been on a lot of
painkillers because the conversations were really interesting. (laughs)
LB: What do you mean?
MR: Well, he'd be like, "Oh, gosh, I -- I'm seeing the most incredible gardens,
I wish you could see them." (laughs) In retrospect, I think he knew for a while
he had AIDS. I remember the Christmas beforehand, I had made some offhanded
00:12:00stupid remark like, "Oh well, we know David will always be here for Christmas
because he's gay and --" you know. And he gave me a look that was like don't
count on that, and so... I mean, he didn't even make it to the next Christmas.
LB: Yeah. Did he tell other people in your family before you found out? Was it
because you -- or did you-all know at the same time about...?
MR: That he had AIDS?
LB: Yeah.
MR: We all found out at the same time when he was tested in the hospital, so... Yeah.
LB: I mean there's so much stuff, you know, because so many things were
happening then in the world, and people didn't know about it. People didn't know
00:13:00where it came from. Was that something that you were aware of earlier or any time?
MR: Well, I think I was peripherally aware of it and scared for him. What
happened for me is I had already planned to move to Washington, DC, with my
daughter. I had a job lined up, an apartment. And then our family situation, of
course, there was the family business that was a factor in it and my brother had
been considered the heir of the family business. And my father kind of alluded
that he needed me to stay, and I was like, "But I've got this stuff lined up,
and I need to... I made commitments to people." When I moved to Washington, DC,
00:14:00my apartment was in the Dupont Circle area, which was a hotbed of the AIDS
crisis in Washington. And so every day, walking my daughter to school and to
work, I would see people who were dying just... It was horrible because I felt
that they were looking at me as a white, straight woman, and being like, Fuck
you, you know? And I wanted to say to each and every one of them, it's like,
"Well, I lost my brother, I feel for you," but I was just trying to get by at
that point and... I think the hardest thing too is that I wasn't with the rest
of my family grieving. I was doing all that grieving on my own, and they were
00:15:00doing their grieving without me, so there was a weird disconnect.
LB: Were you aware of like...? Could you just fill people in because I kind of
know about this, but what David was doing before he died? He was involved with
the theater, wasn't he?
MR: Well, that was earlier. By the time he died, he had been actively involved
in the company business, working specifically on social media back then and
computers and working for different magazines as -- in an editorial aspect. I
often think like if he would have lived, we would have been way ahead of the
curve on social media and the internet. He was one of the first people involved
00:16:00with like online communities. I remember he would take his laptop and go to
phone booths and plug it in and upload his (laughs) stories and his -- before it
was called blogs -- they were kind of blog posts. He was definitely involved in
the business and had committed to it. But he and I had also talked, because he
lived in Provincetown for a while and I would go visit him there, and that he --
his heart wasn't in the business, so... There's a lot of complicated theories,
but the truth is he was in a very high-risk group at a very early time.
00:17:00
LB: It was the time.
MR: Mm-hmm.
LB: Yeah. So let me just ask you, and I know this is hard, but after he died,
was it something that...? I mean I know how involved your mother was in all
sorts of stuff after he died, and maybe you weren't. I don't know where you were
at that time. It sounds like you were in DC. When did you come back --
MR: Well, my father made me promise that I would only stay there for a year and
then I would come back after a year. So when I came back, I started working for
my father at the company, which again in retrospect I was glad I did because he
died five years later. So I had that time with him, which was really precious.
But by the time I came back, my mother, well I will say, she never got over my
00:18:00brother's death, ever, and I think a lot of her recurrence with breast cancer
that she had was her grieving, her feeling of loss and sorrow. It impacted her
and my father's relationship too because they were both grieving, but they were
also products of their upbringing where it was hard for them. They didn't go to
therapy together or -- you know? So he was a very traditional father in that
respect where he kept it to himself. And I often think his increased travel at
that time of his life was like a way of dealing and maybe escaping his pain and
sorrow. But there's no question it left a giant, giant hole in our whole family
00:19:00that never was filled again.
LB: I think people may not realize that the numbers -- number of deaths -- and I
think people need to understand that about things that are happening today. But
the number of deaths that had happened particularly with young men, young,
creative men in the nineteen-eighties had an enormous impact on everything that happened.
MR: Right.
LB: And here is an illustration of that because you're talking about how
differently that could've had an impact on -- you're talking about the
publishing company, is that correct?
MR: Right, the publishing company. But the publishing company, the family, it
was a devastating blow to us. My mother channeled her grieving into her
activism, which was really brave and courageous. Because in the later -- from
00:20:00nineteen eighty-five to the nineties, early nineties, there were still not a lot
of people especially parents who were speaking in support of the gay community,
and her whole message was about loving and accepting our children for who they
are. It was kind of stunning how many people didn't think that at the time and
maybe still don't.
LB: So at that time after he died, was there an acknowledgement of what he died
from? Because people were so afraid of that kind of stuff. I mean soon after
because really, we -- I've had people that were close to me that died that
nobody knew what was wrong with them. Nobody said anything. They just -- you know?
MR: I think in the newspaper it said pneumonia, but we were very transparent and
up front, you know?
00:21:00
LB: Yeah.
MR: I mean, from the day he died, it was -- my mother, myself, my siblings, my
father is like he died of AIDS, he died of AIDS and -- you know? I don't think
we felt the stigma of that, or if we did, we felt it was important to work
through the stigma. Yeah.
LB: Well, I know your mother really rallied her friends to support causes. And I
think some of their sons that had died as well, [probably?] rallied then that it
really was the source of a lot of the funding that came through FACT, the Gay
Men's Chorus, and stuff. Do you remember that kind of stuff, or what do you
think about that?
MR: Yeah, no, I mean I definitely remember her being a major activist. I think
00:22:00that she got a lot of her loneliness from my brother leaving -- was fulfilled
through that community. She was involved with the AIDS Quilts. She was a member
of the Harvard AIDS Institute International Advisory Committee. So she made the
most out of her tragedy to try to help others. For me, it was not a matter of
public activism because that was her terrain and she was doing a great job in
that world. I think for me, it became more a form of like personal activism in
00:23:00terms of how I interact with people and a lot of the writing that I do. It
wasn't the time for me to be a public activist because that was her role and --
LB: Well, talk about that writing that you do or you did then about it.
MR: Well, I've been a blogger since two-thousand six. And I've written a few
books where I've never shied away from the fact that he had AIDS, but I've never
also addressed it specifically. It's like, oh, I had a brother who died of AIDS.
The book that I'm working on now and that -- that's (laughs) the "Why Sex
00:24:00Matters" book is there is I'm working on a book about love and how we can learn
to love each other and -- through not just relationship but through work,
through the environment, through politics, and through connecting with all sorts
of diversity not just the LGBTG, whatever, but racial diversity, sexual
diversity, all of it. I'm one of those people who -- like I've been just quietly
observing and watching and studying and researching, and this next book that I'm
working on will be my contribution to the conversation.
LB: Hmm. I think that's like a theme or...? You've sort of described what the
00:25:00theme was, but thinking about the point that you're trying to make, I don't mean
to be obvious but that's sort of -- or is it just presenting a lot of
information? Are you trying to really communicate some specific thing that you
want people to understand?
MR: Well, I mean it started as me trying to understand for myself and
understand. And just curious -- curiosity like, well, why are people like this,
and why do we -- why are people so anti-gay, and why are people racist and --
you know, so... My approach that I'm taking is that it all starts with each of
us individually and how we learn to accept ourselves and love ourselves and then
share that in everything we do and connect to others in that way. So there's a
00:26:00lot of research and science and -- but it's -- ultimately, it's a personal
journey that we each have to take to become loving people and to be aware that
just because we say we're not racist doesn't mean we aren't racist. Or just
because we say we are okay with people being gay doesn't mean we're actually
okay with that. We have to show it and walk the talk and be that in our lives.
Ultimately, that's all that really matters. Because when you die -- we're all
going to die, and for or better or worse, I've seen a lot of death in my family,
and what lasts? What lasts? It's that loving relationship that lasts and the
00:27:00ripples that we make in people's lives, positive or negative.
LB: Mm-hmm. Is this a different kind of book than other things that you've
written, or what were some of the other things you've written?
MR: I've written a gardening book. I've written a book on women and pleasure.
I've written a book called Organic Manifesto, which is about why we use
chemicals and how that all happened. I've often gone through phases like, well,
all my books are so different, what's the thread that connects them? And it's
really all about learning how to make ourselves and the world better and showing
all the connections between things of which when you can see the connections
00:28:00then you can see oh, oh, that's why it's important, and that's why it matters,
so --
LB: Exactly --
MR: -- it's something.
LB: -- it's that -- oh. It sounds like your earlier experiences, it has -- they
have contributed to this trajectory in terms of how you've been working with
this. You think that's true?
MR: Totally, totally. Yeah.
LB: Let's see. Let me see what these other questions are. Sometimes I hurry. So
you were living here. Were you seeing with David's friends -- because other
people were dying too. It's interesting that the other people that I've
interviewed, they seem to be just a little bit after that really devastating
early time. And that's not going to be true for everybody because this is, I
think, the fifth interview I've done. But were people seeing in the Lehigh
00:29:00Valley this kind of rapid realization of the disease? Were other people that
happening to, his friends or David's friends who were in the Lehigh Valley or
other people that were around always (overlapping dialogue; inaudible). Like
David's death is such a shock to everybody because they didn't really expect
this when it happened? What do you think about that?
MR: Yeah. David had a lot of friends all over the place. Most of them are dead,
most of them are dead. In the Lehigh Valley, I think there was... The big shock
for my brother's death was as much the family business -- the heir, David Rodale
of Rodale Press as it was the AIDS thing. Probably because I've been a single
00:30:00parent since I was twenty, I mean I don't hang out too much. (laughs) I don't
have a social life, so I was really just kind of watching other people, and it's
classic. There is the traditional Lehigh Valley people who do not have a lot of
compassion, and they're more traditionalists I would say. And then there's a lot
of wonderful people who were very warm and supportive and welcoming. I will say
00:31:00I didn't experience and I didn't see my mother experiencing, although she might
have, a lot of hate or trolling. But this was before the internet, so I'm sure
people kept that to themselves or kept it within their smaller groups. I don't
remember seeing or hearing any of that, but I do remember feeling my parents'
shame. Although they worked to overcome it.
LB: Because of the whole thing? Because of (overlapping dialogue; inaudible) or
because he had AIDS?
MR: Because he was gay, because AIDS was a sexually transmitted disease, because
00:32:00they failed keeping him safe -- all those things that parents feel. One of the
most important things though for me personally is that his partner Mark is still
alive and healthy and has been an incredibly important part of our whole family
all these years. He worked for my mother, he worked for me, he continues to stay
involved and we're -- we've been very connected with him.
LB: Is he still in Lehigh Valley?
MR: Yeah, he is. Mark Kintzel, he's a wedding planner, he does incredible weddings.
LB: (laughter) So let's see. We talked about a lot of different things. Let's
00:33:00see. So you were saying this -- and I can really understand this -- that your
mother was finding solace in the activism. And then I could see why you might
not have wanted to step into that because she was doing that. Were you aware of
pretty much all this stuff? I guess I asked you this already, but were you aware
of what she was doing? Because she even -- I don't know if you were part of
this, but she narrated a big concert for the Gay Men's Chorus at the church on
Center Street. And it was a musical performance about a young man who killed
himself actually, and she was the narrator for that. Were you aware --
MR: I wasn't aware that she did that, but I'm not surprised at all because
that's the kind of thing she really loved to do. Yeah. Yeah.
00:34:00
LB: I got the impression that she was really whipping up an enormous amount of
financial support for FACT because there was -- they got an enormous amount of
money coming in. And I know Billy Leh who were -- and he and other people that
were part of the community where people could afford to make significant
donations. And then I would guess that other people that she knew were losing
sons as well. I've often said that you can get LGBT people to stick up for your
rights, but when you get to the parents of LGBT people, that's a whole different thing.
MR: Yeah.
LB: Yeah. They're like lions with their kids and they can be -- yeah, they can
be rejecting, but they can also be extraordinarily -- and families in general
too. I think that these families speak out.
00:35:00
MR: For the record, I have to express that one of the challenges with that is
that the memory of David became more important to her than the living. And I
think that's a wound that my siblings and I still carry is that we weren't
enough to fill that hole. And that's our own personal work we had to do. Our own
personal activism was how do we become whole, healthy, happy human beings
knowing that that trauma happened to all of us, not just to her but to all of
00:36:00us. And we were kind of on our own to figure that out.
LB: Mm-hmm. Yeah. What other siblings do you have?
MR: I have my oldest sister Heather, then Heidi, and then David was next, and
then between David and me, there were seven years, and then my younger brother
Anthony, so three years younger than me. So there are four people left.
LB: Yeah, sure, yeah.
MR: Yeah, and none of us were as funny and charming and delightful as he was. (laughs)
LB: Well... (laughter)
00:37:00
MR: It's true. It's the truth.
LB: Okay, but...
MR: I miss him terribly.
LB: Yeah, I can understand that but... I mean there's a lot of factors that make
one say that, and it's not just because he wasn't that way but also because you
were younger. You were influenced by losing him, and that is an influence of
things too, so...
MR: Mm-hmm.
LB: And so many people who were lost in those circumstances left people behind
that were in that -- in the same circumstance. It was such a shock. It's such a
shock to you to lose someone who was young and seemingly so vital and healthy.
That's the thing that is so, I think, devastating for people.
MR: Yeah, I mean any death in a family is devastating. But that was like the
00:38:00beginning of just a whole societal death -- you know, the death of creativity,
the death of fun. (laughs)
LB: [What happened to that?] Say, explain what you mean by that because I don't
think people always get what that means.
MR: Well, in my research on my own history and social history, the sexual
revolution happened in the sixties and the seventies. There were great things
about it, and there were bad things about it for men and women, for gays and
00:39:00straight people. But the truth was it was kind of free for all, and you could
make of it what you wanted, and a lot of people did. And then when AIDS came, it
kind of [claps] put a clamp down on that. And, you know, there were the
religious people who were saying that's God's punishment. There were all sorts
of things happening. I'm not a person who judges, so I don't have a view on...
To me, it's just all evolution. The AIDS moment was an evolution of how we think
about sexuality, and probably a cycle from excess to conservatism. And I
00:40:00remember when I was working in Washington, I was working for a progressive
political -- socially progressive PR company, so I was doing activism in my job
actually. And it was the moral majority, Phyllis Schlafly, all those ministers
who have now since been exposed as being (laughs) gay pedophiles themselves.
(laughs) But I was also working on the Anti-Apartheid Movement and the
anti-Contra thing, so I've always been a socially progressive, active person,
but I think that was just a real shift. I was reading some of my writings from
00:41:00that time period, and I'd see a lot of parallels in what's happening today, you
know. The whole evangelical backlash is extremely similar to what was happening
in the nineteen-eighties and early nineties and... But if you think about what
we've accomplished since then, it's enormous. One of my big philosophies that
I'm writing about is like we -- and if you look at things in the moment, they
seem like awful and terrible and the world is ending. But if you look at them in
the context of the full history of the world, we've come so far, and we'll
survive it. We might not all survive this, but people will survive this and will
keep moving forward.
00:42:00
LB: Yeah, I really agree with that. I think that people will often say -- it can
be very privileged to say this is the worst moment. I mean, really? (laughter)
(inaudible) McCarthyism, (inaudible), flu epidemic of 1918, come on, it's... I
think that's true. How do you see this? I mean, you've been -- you lived through
that epidemic, you're looking at this epidemic that's happening now. What do you
think about the relationships of how people are dealing with it and stuff like
that, and how you're dealing with it? What do you think about that?
MR: Well, I think this one is both similar and incredibly different. So similar
is the sense of like anxiety and dread. I mean just the shutting down of the
00:43:00whole global economy is very different. AIDS didn't do that. AIDS shut down a
lot of things but not for everyone. I mean, of course again, applying that
historical viewpoint, we'll get through this and we'll learn from it and we'll
evolve, and it's kind of exposing. Just like AIDS, AIDS exposed a lot of things
that were hidden. If you think about like a lot of the artists who nobody knew
00:44:00were gay, Freddie Mercury who like a lot of redneck kids, wow, that's awesome.
Well, you know what, he was gay, so... I think that that's what's being exposed
now in terms of racial discrimination, financial discrimination. You've got all
the big companies that are siphoning off all this money and not paying people a
living wage. So I do think there's connections, but this is probably more far
reaching in its impact perhaps, I don't know, so...
LB: Yes.
MR: Who knows? I think it's going to get worse before it gets better also. I
don't think we know the final outcome of this. And then you layer on climate
00:45:00change, environmental degradation, yeah. A lot of the work that I'm doing is
around de-shaming sexuality. I've said in some of my talks that I've given, how
we treat nature is how we treat women and how we treat women is how we treat
nature and-- and that's what I want to get to the bottom of through all of this
is having more openness about the whole discussion, less shame, more openness,
but also reconnecting sexuality and pleasure with love.
00:46:00
LB: Mm-hmm, mm-hmm, mm-hmm. I think you saying how we treat nature is how we
treat women, I need to hear more about that because I think that's so true that
I want to scream it from the rooftop. So talk a little bit more about that.
That's a brilliant thing to say.
MR: It goes very deeply into our history, our religious history, but it's not
just religion. It's just social history of male domination, patriarchy, which is
not just the man thing, the patriarchy. In all my research, it's like women are
just as complicit in patriarchy as men are. But it's the idea that nature and
people are here for our -- to be used as opposed to being in a reciprocal
00:47:00relationship. I mean who doesn't want to be in an actual reciprocal relationship
sexually, emotionally? That's where the pleasure is, right? That's where the
love is when you feel seen and heard and understood and cared for, and everybody
wants that no matter what your sexuality is or your gender. So what I'm trying
to kind of untangle is how do we build a world based on that? And obviously, it
starts in childhood, early, early in childhood, and it's a long-term plan. It's
00:48:00not an overnight thing. But I think all these, whether it's AIDS or COVID are
all kind of messages from the universe saying, "Wake up, wake up, wake up."
Let's see the world in a more full and rich way. And just dominating things are
not going to solve our problem and control. Domination is the same as control, so...
LB: So what is your relationship with the farm?
MR: The Rodale Institute?
LB: Yeah.
MR: So when my father was alive, I was on the board of directors of the Rodale
Institute with my father. When my father died, I shifted my focus over to the
00:49:00company, and my mother became more involved with the institute and my brother
Anthony. And then in -- like around two-thousand eight, two-thousand nine, I
came back on the board. I became the cochair of the board with our longtime
legal counselor Paul McGinley. And as of today, I'm still on the board, but my
daughter Maya is now the cochair of the board, so... So my activism has always
been more on the quiet, unseen side of things. My job when I was cochair was
like, okay, how do I untangle this organization, nonprofit from the company, how
00:50:00do I help it to become independent and stable and accountable, and I was able to
accomplish that, so... And now, with the sale of the company, we sold the family
business two years ago, and all the land now belongs to the Rodale Institute.
They're in decent shape and we sold just in the nick of time because nobody
should want to be in publishing right now in the world, (laughs) so...
LB: That's for sure. (laughs) I just want to say, I'm just going to -- this
doesn't belong in this, but I want to say I love the institute, and we got all
our plants there for our garden. We have a big garden on the roof of our garages
00:51:00in our -- the city. We live in the city, so --
MR: Nice.
LB: -- we get an enormous amount of food from our -- and we love getting the
plants from Rodale, so, and nothing made us happier. I hadn't been out of the
house for about thirty days, and when I went -- I was nervous when I went to
pick up the plants. I had my mask on, and everybody was so great, and it was so
safe, and everybody had their mask on, and I said, "Okay, these are my people."
MR: Yeah, yeah. Well, I mean it is connected because a lot of my work with the
Rodale Institute is what taught me about understanding nature and how people
treat nature. And writing Organic Manifesto, I saw, oh, oh, well, we want to
control nature by spraying it, killing things. It's the same as like wanting to
eradicate races or sexualities, but nature is diverse. Nature is sexually
00:52:00diverse, (laughs) nature is racially species diverse, and the healthier and more
productive the land is, the more diverse it is. So to me, there's lessons from
nature that we can apply to all these issues that we're dealing with. It's all connected.
LB: Yeah, it is. So are you familiar with PrEP? What do you think about PrEP?
MR: What?
LB: PrEP is the pill that people can take so that they won't contract HIV if
they come in contact with it. And PrEP is --
MR: I think I've seen some commercials for it, which I've not done any research
on. But if I would apply my gut knowledge of what I know about advertising and
00:53:00health, I think it's probably not the best thing. I mean probably the best thing
is to just be cautious and careful, right? But I don't know. What do you think
of it?
LB: I think it is the answer to ending the spread of HIV/AIDS in Africa.
MR: In Africa?
LB: Because people cannot always control what happens to their bodies, and
that's an unfortunate reality. So that if people take PEP or PrEP, they won't
get it, and that maybe the circumstance of women. I mean --
MR: Yeah, I mean --
LB: -- the idea of relying on one drug and hoping that that's going to solve all
00:54:00the problems. But on the other hand, I don't think there is any way to solve
this problem without some kind of (inaudible) intervention.
MR: Yeah. I would trust your view on that. I mean, I'm not anti-drug and I'm not
anti-vaccine at all, all my kids are vaccinated, I hope we have a COVID vaccine.
I think what's happening in Africa is as much a social, cultural... Again, it
gets back to patriarchy and how women are treated, so... And if there's a pill
to help them, great. But that's not --
LB: And that's --
MR: -- the long-term answer.
LB: Yeah. Well, I guess that's true. I think that the long-- and certainly,
there are people in the United States, and I don't disagree with them either,
00:55:00that say, well, it being careful includes... There's a lot of requirements to be
careful when taking this drug because you have to be tested and you have to be
aware and you have to acknowledge that you're at risk and stuff like that. So
that actually puts people at a higher level of safety too. It's kind of the idea
of getting a vaccination or the idea of wearing a mask and getting a
vaccination, you can't just hope it's going to be okay. Especially because --
and I think you are talking about this too -- we don't know that much about
COVID at all. COVID-19, we don't know what its -- where it's going to go. I
agree that we will get through this, but we don't know what's going to happen.
And that's the thing about -- we have the ability to figure it out but not
really fast.
00:56:00
MR: Well, and I'm grateful that there are drugs now that AIDS is not the death
sentence that it was when my brother had it. I just remember that feeling like,
this is it, there's no -- zero chance of survival. But now, it seems that a lot
of people are surviving and doing well. So that's great.
LB: There's also a drug called PEP that's -- it's also an emergency drug so that
if people have a circumstance where they're highly at risk if they take it
within seventy-two hours of that exposure, they won't. The chances are so high
if they do it correctly that they won't get HIV. (inaudible) was saying, well,
there's still chance if you do it right quickly so that, again, if people are at
risk in a circumstance where they took a chance that was dangerous or also they
00:57:00were in a circumstance where they couldn't make the decision as to whether or
not they were going to do something that was a high risk thing, they can protect
themselves. That's another thing. This is something we know that can protect
you, so it gives you the ability to take back the control of your own life. It's
an important thing for people who might be under pressure to do something that
they can't control. We're seeing in COVID-19 now that people who are poor are at
much higher risk of dying. And part of that is something that we have to take --
we all have to take responsibility for, so...
MR: Yeah. The corollary with AIDS is like you're -- you have risk factors that
make you afraid that you're going to get AIDS. It's a much narrower risk factor
00:58:00than COVID. You know COVID is like everybody, anybody, but especially the poor
people and people of color, which... But that seems to be changing too, so --
you know?
LB: Well, it has to do with the level of contagiousness or the level of
contagion, and (inaudible) HIV is hard to get. You have to do certain things to
cause it to be at risk, compared to COVID, which we don't even know really --
MR: I know.
LB: -- where it's coming from exactly. It's similar to other diseases that have
happened in the past where people have no idea really where it was coming from.
And there's lots of diseases that we live with every day that we really don't
understand where they're coming from with them. At the time of HIV and AIDS and
00:59:00when David died particularly, there was a lot of government action that was very
poor in response to -- I mean really no response. And that's something that you
think you personally were aware of for -- or other people in your family were
aware of as something that was very frustrating. So I've talked to other people
who said that it was -- that was the most frustrating thing and there's --
MR: Oh yeah, I mean, it was Reagan, and Reagan and Trump were like cut from the
same cloth in a lot of respects. (laughs) That's why it's -- it feels like this
cyclical thing. I had the chance recently to meet Norman Lear. One of my
theories is that, okay, what changed -- and he's not involved with this TV show.
01:00:00But meeting him and learning about him made me realize like, okay, televisions
probably has more to do with changing outlooks than politics. So Will & Grace
for example, [he wasn't?] involved with Will & Grace, but you watch Will &
Grace, and all of a sudden, it's like it's normal for there to be gay people and
to like them the way he did with All in the Family or the -- I think it was The
Jeffersons or one of those shows. I watched a documentary about him that was
really great. So I think that government is always the last to change because
they're trying to follow their constituents who are made up of a diverse group
01:01:00-- some who want change, some who don't want change. So I do think the media can
play -- has played a major role in change. And then once it gets normalized
socially, then politicians feel more comfortable supporting things, which is
great because it's -- television is -- movies are like a creative outlet, which --
LB: Yeah. I think that we certainly are in a situation where -- in the flu
epidemic of nineteen-eighteen, which I talk about all the time, I talk about it
with regard to art history and also because my grandmother died in this flu
epidemic of nineteen-eighteen. She was young, she was thirty-two when she died,
and mostly young people died in the flu because of a variety of factors that
01:02:00were really specific. There was no understanding of exactly what was happening
there. And when it ended, it really ended for several reasons but one -- not the
least of which was one of every three people in the world had it, herd immunity.
And a hundred million people died but then, also, it just mutated and stopped
and disappeared. And it was a shocking thing but -- and it had an enormous
effect on the economy, and yet, nobody ever talks about that, talking about the
economy. So it's interesting that when the economy bounces back, which it
clearly did into the nineteen-twenties, people had no -- people don't talk about
it. And that seems to be a big thing about what some people are talking about now.
MR: Although in the nineteen-eighteens, nineteens, the global economy was not as developed.
01:03:00
LB: True.
MR: I think that's really, to me, the big differentiator. It's spread around the
world and showed just how like dependent we've all become on each other. And
now, everybody's shutting down, and it's going to be interesting to see what
happens next .
LB: That's a very good point. When you were talking about it -- I wrote a little
note. When you were talking about David, was he -- what hospital was he at?
MR: He was at Lehigh Valley Hospital.
LB: Mm-hmm. And in general, I mean, were there doctors that understood what was
happening, or what was that feeling like?
MR: Well, like I said, his general practitioner was like, "Oh, you've got
bronchitis." Again, I don't think he even thought to check him for AIDS. I don't
01:04:00remember. I wasn't... I don't remember any doctors or even any nurses, their
faces because everybody's covered. I do remember that we got the test back and
that he had it, so... And I can't really speak to the doctors.
LB: Did he know that he had it?
MR: Pardon?
LB: He didn't know that he had it?
MR: Oh, no, he knew. Once the results came back, he knew that he had it.
LB: But I mean that was when he was in the hospital, wasn't it?
MR: Yeah.
LB: So he didn't know he had it until he was in the hospital.
MR: I think he suspected that he had it. But like anybody, you don't want to
think the worst.
01:05:00
LB: Yeah, sure, of course.
MR: So if the doctors tell you have bronchitis, it's like sure, I'd rather have
that than AIDS, you know? (laughs)
LB: Yeah, yeah, and at that time, if the doctor had told him differently, it
probably wouldn't have made that much difference because there wasn't was --
there was very little that anybody had any sense. I don't think anybody that was
a -- that was HIV positive and had AIDS in the early part of the eighties made
it. There were unique circumstances, but it was pretty unlikely that people are
going to be able to figure it out. And then some of the drugs actually killed people.
MR: Right.
LB: Some of the things that people... Even in the next two or three years or
four years, the drug circumstances that kind of did stuff for people didn't
01:06:00really save their lives. So I guess the... It's interesting because there --
really I think of your family as being extraordinary leaders in making people --
and cutting edge on everything. I mean you're the leading edge on every single
progressive thing that's happened in the Lehigh Valley. It's pretty impressive,
like yay team.
MR: Thank you. Thank you.
LB: But also that you really introduced I mean in a very public way -- I'd like
to think that your mother is -- was very much -- and your brother in ways of
indicating that AIDS had come to town and people need to pay attention to it.
Because it's not going to go away just because you don't want it to be here. And
I thought that was a very outspoken, clear way, and you're talking about those
01:07:00kinds of things too.
MR: Yeah. But definitely my mother that was her -- in many ways, the crowning
glory of her life was the AIDS work that she did. And there was an organization
she was involved in too, I think, called The Compassionate Friends where it
wasn't just AIDS, any parent who lost their child and dealing with that, so that
was her gift.
LB: Yeah. But I guess it sounds like you -- if you would think about it if this
hadn't happened, that your entire life or her entire life would have been vastly different.
MR: Everybody's life would have been vastly different. I'm not saying it would
be better or worse. It would have been more fun. (laughs)
01:08:00
LB: Although, I don't know, who knows? Because sometimes, you read those kind of
science fiction books where the person goes back in time. And when they come
back, things have changed, and it turns out that they have led an incredibly
dull life because they didn't have the adversity that they had to deal with.
MR: Between my brother dying, my father dying, my mother having all her health
issues, it's made me do a lot of spiritual work and searching. And if I think
back to... I had lots of conversations with my brother where he was pretty sure
he was going to die young. He's like, "Yeah, I can't just see myself being
older," and I think a psychic had told him he would die a violent death. I've
01:09:00done a lot of research on that as well and talking with all different psychics,
and my view is that we're all here to learn and grow, and death isn't the ending
of the soul. We just have to keep on learning and growing and loving.
Ultimately, what can you take with you? Your love and what you've learned,
that's it. And if you don't take that with you, then it doesn't matter because
you're dead. (laughter)
LB: That's a good point.
MR: It felt like hedging your bets.
LB: Yeah. I think that's true. Hmm, I think that's an interesting point of view,
01:10:00and I think you're right. I do think you're right about that. Yeah, we've got a
little bit more time left and so -- but thinking like when you talk about this
and you want future -- when you're talking to future generations, because we
are. I mean truthfully, there's no information from the flu epidemic of
nineteen-eighteen, there's nobody who you could really... Because we're right in
the middle of COVID so we have -- I mean somebody's going to read this twenty
years from now and go, "This is what's going to happen!"
MR: Yeah, yeah.
LB: It's like watching World War II movies where they made the movie after World
War II when we know we won or the movie during World War II where people have no
idea whether we're really going to win or not or what's going to happen. And I
think that we don't know what's going to happen with regard to COVID. We do kind
of know what happens with regard to the AIDS epidemic, which was so frightening
to people when people didn't know it was happening, and yet, it's not over. I
01:11:00mean there are people still -- literally millions of people who get AIDS and
have to die from it, and people who are living with it have to still take
enormous amounts of drugs, and it affects their health every day. So what do you
want to say about that epidemic to people who are going to read -- watching this
maybe thirty years from now when -- you'll be probably around, I probably won't
(laughs) and (overlapping dialogue; inaudible) --
MR: No guarantees to anything.
LB: You never know. I think that's really what we all are learning from all of
this. But as something to talk to people about saying you need to know this
about that time.
MR: About AIDS or COVID?
LB: You can talk about AIDS, and when we talk about HIV/AIDS and the epidemic
01:12:00itself, which was nineteen-- the dangerous time of the epidemic was from
nineteen eighty-five to nineteen ninety-three. And after ninety-three, people
were able to get pretty effective drugs, but before that it was a death sentence
for almost everybody particularly in the late eighties. So we can look back at
that, and we can talk about what that was like so that people -- because we
lived through it so that people thirty years from now can hear what that was
like. We can also talk about COVID, and they know what's going to happen and we
don't. Interesting to talk about either of those things. So go ahead and say
whatever you want. I mean --
MR: Okay. So when it comes to the AIDS epidemic, I think what I would want
people to understand was that it was both social and personal for so many
01:13:00people. And that it wasn't just a statistic but there were all loved, unique
individuals. And in way that it was like a -- this might sound controversial,
but it was like all those people made a sacrifice to our understanding of love,
sexuality, gender, humanity. And it was a beautiful, terrible time and gift that
they gave to us. I don't know if that's applicable now to what's happening in
Africa because that's -- feels kind of different. But similarly what I've read
01:14:00in Africa, there's not a lot of freedom to love whether you're a woman or a man
or whether you're straight or gay. A lot of what my daughter and I have done
research on is the idea that love is dangerous to society. Gay love is dangerous
but also like in Africa, a woman -- girls don't always have a choice of who they
marry, men don't have a choice necessarily. It's economic choice. So I do think
that it's like -- all of this part of like a revolution in love and how we need
01:15:00to learn as a species, as humanity how to value and respect the importance and
power of love. And with COVID, I'd say it's similar. I mean, with COVID you have
the health concern, you have the economic concern, and then you have the
political concern, which is like what the hell is going to happen? Are we
heading into a fascist dictatorship? And then the environmental thing, are we
going to all die in environmental plots? I don't know. So what can you know?
What you can know is that everything you do everyday matters. And all you can do
is do what you can do every day to make the world a more loving, healthy, safer,
01:16:00kind, and compassionate place. And with social media, I think the other big
difference between then and now is social media. And I know there's a lot of
people who are like, "Oh, social media has ruined things." No, social media is
like -- it's like Pandora's box that's opened up, you know. So we can now see
what's really going on inside of so many people. It's ugly, and it's horrible
but you know what, it's like that's the first step of healing is being to see
what the issue is, and it's very educational. So I'm a big believer in using
social media and learning from social media about what's happening but also not
contributing to the negativity. To me, it's not a liberal or conservative. I see
01:17:00liberals being just as awful as conservatives. That kind of meanness, and it's
not me it's you, it's you're the problem, I'm not the problem. I mean all that
is like -- yeah. It's like how can we come together? And unfortunately, we don't
have a leader who knows how to bring people together. But even Obama who knew
how to bring people together for a lot of liberals didn't know how to bring them
together for conservatives. So I think that's the challenge going forward is how
do we create leadership and find people to lead who know how to unite and how to
01:18:00respect the differences that people feel. And there are strong differences. And
they may not be legitimate differences. We might not like them or believe in
them or even respect them, but they're real to those people, and they happen for
a reason. That's why I think for me personally, and I do -- I wrote children's
books on the side, and I launched a Children's Imprint at Rodale before we sold.
I think if we can get to kids and teach them, it's going to be a lot easier than
fixing grown-ups because you can't fix other people.
LB: Yeah. It's an education issue. It's an information, education issue I think.
01:19:00
MR: Yeah. And a lot of what conservatives have done really well is infiltrating
the educational system and planting their seeds into textbooks. I mean that's a
real thing. I had a friend whose son was going to Christian school, not Catholic
school, Christian school in Florida, and I asked if I could see his textbook,
which was all online. It was an iPad textbook. And what I was stunned to see is
that the final paragraph in the religion course was the most important thing you
01:20:00can do to honor God and to be a follower of God is to resist abortion, to be
against abortion. I was like, really? I didn't see that in the Bible. I've read
the Bible; that's not in there. (laughs) So there's all sorts of people putting
their agendas into things, and can we create a better agenda? I mean we're
creative people, we can, we must.
LB: Yeah, amazing.
MR: It's shocking.
LB: Yeah. I mean when you read that kind of stuff and you think. I was watching
a show out of the UK, and it was a -- this was a comedian. It was on a -- sort
of a game show. It's called QI, and I really love it. And this young woman said
01:21:00that when she was -- she's a comedian, and she said when she was a kid, one of
the questions they were asked, in a perfect world, what would you want to have
your job be? And she said the boy -- little boy next to her had written down, in
a perfect world, I would want my child to be a war correspondent. (laughter)
Wait, a perfect world? (laughter) Yeah. You know so, I mean that's kind of the
thing about pointing out the obvious to people and...
MR: Well for men, I mean because men have been -- I've done a lot of research on
men too because men have been repressed emotionally. War is one of the few
places where they are safe to express their emotion. And the bonding, the male
bonding that happens there is a great romance for a lot of men. Until we find an
alternative for that, they're going to keep seeking that excitement and passion.
01:22:00
LB: Yeah, yeah.
MR: Weird.
LB: It is weird.
MR: People are weird.
LB: It is, it's pretty weird, yeah, but we're still dealing with it anyway, you know?
MR: Yeah. (laughs) We're here today.
LB: Hmm?
MR: We're here today.
LB: We are, and I do think that we can get through these things, and tough,
horrible things happen. I mean people got through plagues, and people got
through all sorts of horrible war, and there is a human spirit that comes
together and takes a step back and says, "Okay, now, we've got to do this thing."
MR: Yeah.
LB: But in the meanwhile -- I think that's one of the reasons that we're doing
this project is to remind people about what's going on. Because you can say,
Well everybody in those days fought this thing. That's true. There are people
01:23:00who had all sorts of different experiences. And I can also say that one of the
things that's come out of the interviews that I've done that I've shared with a
couple of people, there's one person who said, it was David Moyer, and he said
he was a nurse with the Health Bureau and so he came in contact with literally
dozens of people who died. And one of the things he said was that
psychologically, people will tell you -- great counselors will tell you that if
you -- if somebody close to you dies, it takes a couple of years, you get over
that. And you don't really get over it, but the terrible quality that affects
every moment of your life begins to dissipate after a few -- after several
years. But during the AIDS epidemic, people were, and even in the Lehigh Valley,
going to funerals every week with people. And then the devastation that caused
01:24:00that had such a profound effect on people that it's impossible to even
understand what that could be like. And it happens in war too. We're seeing
people die, it changes your entire ability to be able to cope with things and
stuff like that. And so when we have a big epidemic, it's really scary because
really psychologically, people can't really cope with that kind of devastation, so...
MR: Yeah. And what's interesting about -- I remember with my brother's funeral,
I think there was -- like a thousand people showed up. It was both awful and
wonderful at the same time. Mostly awful, but it felt good to see all those
people and to not feel quite so alone. But now with COVID, it's like you can't
01:25:00even have a funeral for people. I mean that's going to, I think, have lasting impacts.
LB: It certainly has a lasting effect, and people don't understand that it's
affecting love, drastically affecting love.
MR: Right, yeah.
LB: You can't hug people.
MR: I mean even people who aren't dying of COVID. I just read in the paper that
Dorothy Baker just died last week, and she was a longtime family friend and I --
LB: I didn't know that. I missed that because I --
MR: Yeah. I still read the Morning Call in print, so... (laughs) But, yeah, I
mean, I would have definitely --
LB: For edification of people watching this, Dorothy Baker was the county
executive of Lehigh County at one point, so right. That's who you're talking
about, right?
MR: She was the wife of Dexter Baker who's CEO of Air Products and Chemicals.
But she was my parent's neighbor, a longtime family friend. Yeah, I mean she
01:26:00just died of old age, but --
LB: Well, we knew somebody who died, and he was one of the guys who's the
president of Reading Pride, and we watched his funeral online. They had an
online funeral thing, and it was hard. It wasn't really livestreaming. We didn't
get to see it. It was sort of on, and it was hard. And Tricia, "You know this is
very hard," and I said, "Well, yeah, but if it weren't for COVID, we would be
there. We really know this guy and this -- we would have been there, so not only
is it frustrating, but think about if we were there and whether that would have
been better for us or --" you know? It's very hard to imagine. In a way, we're
just kind of in limbo right now. I was feeling that we're just waiting for
01:27:00something to -- and we know what's happening because of social media. And that's
what I was going to say about the flu of nineteen-eighteen, that in
nineteen-eighteen, nobody really knew what was happening. That's why they called
it the Spanish flu because the Spanish -- Spain was the only country that even
was reporting on it because they weren't one of the countries in World War I.
Everybody else wasn't allowed to talk about it, really. It was (inaudible) to
talk about it, and you could have gone to prison for mentioning that people were
dying in your town of it now.
MR: Really?
LB: Yeah.
MR: Why?
LB: Because during World War I, they had passed the sedition act where you
weren't supposed to say negative things about your country. You're saying like,
"Yeah, my brother was in German-- you know he was fighting in the Sorbonne" or
whatever they say. "He was fighting in Belgium, and he died of the flu epidemic
01:28:00with a whole bunch of other guys in the big makeshift hospital," that would --
you could go to jail for saying that. And if you said that in Allentown, for
example, thousands of people died, and if you said thousands of people are
dying, that was saying negative stuff about the United States. You weren't
supposed to do that. So it wasn't in the newspaper, it wasn't -- you'd think
they'd say people died, but they wouldn't -- weren't talking about this, the flu
epidemic, we're not handling this well. They couldn't say that. So that's why
they called it Spanish flu because Spain was the only country that was in Europe
or a western country that wasn't in the war. So they were talking about it in
the newspaper, so it seemed like it was the only place where it was happening.
And in reality, I don't like to call it the Spanish flu because it wasn't the
only place it was happening. It was happening everywhere, and literally millions
of people, everybody that was alive then had it. Pretty much, one out of three
people had it, so everybody knew somebody that had it. And the contagion of that
01:29:00was enormous, plus it specifically struck young people, so, which had to do with
the combination of other flus that had happened before and stuff, and the fact
that there was no flu vaccine and stuff like that. But it literally at the end
of fifteen months just disappeared and people stopped getting it. Obviously, it
had mutated to something else, but --
MR: Well, that's a perfect example --
LB: -- you know
MR: -- that's a perfect example of how we've evolved, but we don't really think
about it because now anybody can say anything negative about the country. I mean
you hear the remnants of that kind of anti-sedition thing with the way Trump is,
and a lot of conservatives are like, "Don't say -- don't disrespect the flag,"
blah, blah, blah, but they'll disrespect Obama or Biden. (laughs) We've gotten --
01:30:00
LB: But we can also say one of the great things that's happening right now is --
I mean and this is great, and people are seeing how people are dealing with
protestors unfairly, and you would see instances of inappropriate actions by the
police. And then when it happens, it can be out to everybody, and you really
can't deny it.
MR: No, you can't deny it.
LB: If Trump says something that doesn't make any sense or if anybody says
something that doesn't make any sense. If the CDC says something that turns out
not to be true, everybody knows about it pretty fast, and you do have to check
to be sure.
MR: Well, yeah. Everybody who's paying attention [and thinks?] about it. There's
a lot of people who still don't want to pay attention or are still just looking
at very narrow news sources.
LB: And that's certainly an important thing to --
01:31:00
MR: But I'm a big fan of Twitter for example because you can follow so many
different news sources. It's funny it's like you read five different versions or
ten different versions from ten different countries and piece together a more
realistic picture. But not everybody is doing that.
LB: As opposed to not being able to have any information. So that we know very
specifically what happened with the Supreme Court this morning, which was, yeah,
this thing, and we knew about it the minute the stuff came out. And so while we
can't get really active print media in the same way that we used to be able to,
we had investigative reporters, those things were tainted too. So the best thing
that we can do now is that if we want to know, we (inaudible) information, and
we will find out about it. And I think that is a big plus because --
MR: It's huge.
01:32:00
LB: -- years ago we did not have that opportunity to do that.
MR: Yeah.
LB: Positive, very positive thing. Well, I think we're at the end of this now.
Oh, I'm supposed to say this, wait a minute, I've got some stuff. I have to say
don't forget that -- so at the end of this time, what we do is we send this. The
people that are doing this archiving take this from -- coming through Muhlenberg
College and they send it to some interns that will transcribe it quite rapidly
-- it's quite remarkable -- and then they will send that. We should get that
within thirty days, and we'll send that to you and then you can look at it. You
can think, oh, this is the wrong name of this person or something, or I
shouldn't have said this or something, or you could say, yeah, this is fine,
[I'm with that?]. Or you can say, no, I hate the whole thing. I hope you don't.
But that does give everybody an opportunity to look. Trisha actually looked back
at the one that she did. She did a different interview, and she said, "It wasn't
as bad as I thought." (laughter) She saw the video, and she hated it, but when
01:33:00she read it, she thought, no, this is -- it's not that bad. So I think people --
MR: Well --
LB: Yeah?
MR: -- I definitely enjoyed talking with you about all of this.
LB: (overlapping dialogue; inaudible) talking with you, and I'm going to turn
off the video right now. But I just want to thank you again and then I'm going
to turn it off because we're using up the [videos available?].
END OF AUDIO FILE
