Phil James: hey, there, Hi, there, I see, Bill, anybody else.
Phil James: It's just me, so far, so far i'm in 2 places like, it's, just me, just me. Yeah, I don't know why I'm on my phone and on my computer.
Les Wright (he/him/his): Hmm. okay, don't be.
Les Wright (he/him/his): And I've got my screen has gotten darker and I can't find the brightness control for my
Les Wright (he/him/his): 3.
Les Wright (he/him/his): You.
Thank you.
Phil James: I'm gonna call back with my.
Les Wright (he/him/his): if it's done.
Phil James: Okay, there's audio. Oh, and there's video. Yay.
Les Wright (he/him/his): okay.
Phil James: okay. Let me see.
Phil James: somebody said they weren't gonna make it. I think that was Jeffrey Glover.
Les Wright (he/him/his): Okay.
Phil James: full screen. Okay, there, I am full screen.
Phil James: Okay?
Phil James: Well, I'm sorry you're having
Phil James: green problem. I can see you. Fine. Yeah, II fixed it. Oh, good. Okay.
Phil James: Let me make A, let me send a note out in the Central Committee channel.
Les Wright (he/him/his): Okay?
Phil James: I'm afraid people forgot that it was M moved a week.
Les Wright (he/him/his): Okay, yeah.
Les Wright (he/him/his): Well, I did. Sherry got send Gary. Bos didn't a reminder last week
Les Wright (he/him/his): you gave them instructions how to get here.
Phil James: He's the mother archives person.
Les Wright (he/him/his): He? Yes, exactly.
Phil James: Okay, Gary is typing something.
Mel Baker: Hello!
Phil James: Hello! Hi! There!
Mel Baker: Sorry about that. I
Mel Baker: somebody called in, sick at the last minute, so they begged me to do the traffic reporting. My.
Phil James: okay, there you are. There you are.
Phil James: Gary's having issues with time zone.
Les Wright (he/him/his): Gary, if
Phil James: Turner or Washington Turner.
Oh.
Les Wright (he/him/his): okay.
Phil James: I'm gonna have to duck out a couple of times to do traffic reports. So no problem.
Phil James: Anyone talk to Mike or Nick.
Les Wright (he/him/his): I communicated with Nick. I don't know, a weeks, 10 days ago, and he says,
Les Wright (he/him/his): they're all really swamped with work at the university, because they've. you know, cut back on personnel and teaching faculty is being swamped with extra duties, and
Les Wright (he/him/his): and he apologize for that.
Phil James: Okay.
Phil James: Gary wants to argue about time zones.
I'm chatting with him about that.
Phil James: But what is there to argue about time zones? I think he's confused about? He thought. Maybe the meeting was at 7 Am.
Phil James: Because that's East Coast 10 am.
Phil James: That's East Coast for 10 Am. Pacific time, even though I told him twice.
Phil James: It's 10 Am. Pacific time
Les Wright (he/him/his): that that's why I always, you know, when I email people, I always say. you know, 10 am Pacific.
Les Wright (he/him/his): 3 one Pm. Eastern.
Les Wright (he/him/his): and then
Les Wright (he/him/his): Nick, I give, you know Greenwich, meantime.
Phil James: Yeah. But you know we're worldwide now.
Les Wright (he/him/his): right?
Les Wright (he/him/his): I mean, what I'm doing is trying to avoid exactly Gary Turner's confusion.
Phil James: Well, II don't know that there's anything that any I don't know anywhere. We don't say 10 Am. Pacific.
Phil James: and it's always 10 am. Pacific.
Les Wright (he/him/his): Yeah. Yeah.
Les Wright (he/him/his): Well, yeah, no. I think it's easy for people. They'll see the number and then just assume
Phil James: yeah, except 80% of us are here in pacific time, and not everyone else who's not in Pacific time is in
Phil James: you know. whatever you call the other one
Phil James: non pacific time. I'll just call it non pacific time. Anyway, I'm just asking questions about
Phil James: merchandise, because I thought he was going to
Phil James: take down everything in the
Phil James: store. That wasn't the current logo.
Phil James: but he also was updating the logo slightly, so I don't know if that's happening.
Les Wright (he/him/his): Yeah, well, and I've also communicated with him recently about
Les Wright (he/him/his): you know, because of traumatic life issues and his stroke he has
Phil James: like cognitive issues. So things are not sinking in that. We assume they are apparently.
Phil James: Who wants the meeting? Link? Okay? So
Phil James: where's the meeting? One
on the Facebook page.
Phil James: Yeah, that's what I told him. But he's still looking
Les Wright (he/him/his): well. In the meantime I have a question.
Les Wright (he/him/his): I kind of came across a link, and I and I friended this guy. He's called Ted Bear, and he's selling bear calendars and merchandise of himself.
Les Wright (he/him/his): and I tried to order a calendar for the.
Les Wright (he/him/his): you know, for the Bear History Project archives and
Les Wright (he/him/his): he says. You know, you need to contact me here through Facebook Messenger.
Les Wright (he/him/his): and I will sell it to you through Facebook.
Les Wright (he/him/his): And and I do either
Les Wright (he/him/his): bitcoin or cash app.
Mel Baker: Yeah, yeah, anybody that's using bitcoins bullshit just don't go fuck himself. It's hardly worth like. It's not worth
Mel Baker: archiving. Some guy is selling like 5 of these things and hoping to scam people. And yeah.
Les Wright (he/him/his): well, you know. And the thing is, I said, you know, well, okay, number one, how much does it cost? And number 2?
Les Wright (he/him/his): Yeah, I guess I'm not. Gonna I don't do bitc coin. But if I do cash app.
Les Wright (he/him/his): how you know, how do you get my at address? And he just says
Les Wright (he/him/his): it's here.
Les Wright (he/him/his): and there's nothing here. So, anyway. So that was the end of that, I mean for a scammer. He's incredibly stupid.
Phil James: No, Nick just texted me, he said.
Phil James: He? Let me update by Whatsapp. Great. That's what I need is to log into one more thing.
Phil James: He said. He's on a field trip of students. But he's
Phil James: you sent me update. By
Phil James: what's that?
Phil James: Okay, let me see if I have that on. Okay, why, this is going on. I'm gonna duck out and do my next Sacramento report. Sorry.
Phil James: Let me see if I can find Nick's update.
Phil James: Let's teach
Phil James: Nick. Okay, so I forgot. You sent me your number
Phil James: applied for Grant to access and explore less. Less is archive. At Cornell
Phil James: the grant would support Les joining me on site for a week accommodation and subsistence. developing a map of historical Us. Bear sites of interest and producing a report for bear history projects.
Phil James: It's luckily competitive.
Phil James: But fingers crossed.
Phil James: Also, I'm meeting
Phil James: some key folks from the Uk. Bear seeing James O'neil and Mark Ames for chat tomorrow, we'll update on how things go. Oh, excellent! Excellent! Yeah.
Phil James: okay, so that's his update.
Phil James: Great. Okay?
Les Wright (he/him/his): So I think you remember, we I think you and I and Mel did the the
Phil James: online interview with Mark Ames in London.
Les Wright (he/him/his): which was amazing. Anyways, I followed up with him by email afterwards. you know, and had said that you know he described what he had. I said, you know you have a remarkable amount of material
Les Wright (he/him/his): anything you could, you know, forward to. The leather archives would be great, but you know what you have is very important to, you know London and UKB. History and I put
Les Wright (he/him/his): him and Nick in contact with each other because Nick was gonna guide him to
Phil James: to the people he needs to talk to in London. Right? I thought we got his name originally from Nick and Nick.
Phil James: How do I put this? Nick wanted someone on the Sense Committee other than Nick to contact him. And now it sounds like everything is punky dory. So that's good.
Les Wright (he/him/his): Okay?
Phil James: Cause, Nick is saying. Kind of the same thing is that he was getting ready to have a chat with Mark. And he said the same thing by email. So that's all. Good.
Les Wright (he/him/his): Okay, okay, yeah. Good. Okay.
Phil James: Well, I was hoping Mike would be here to talk about nonprofit data.
Phil James: I wait till Mel get back to talk about
Phil James: Squadcast and the script.
Phil James: but I think the good news is.
Phil James: you know, we're paying for a descript. And it's doing a good job at translation of an audio file or video file. I mean, it looked okay. I didn't look at every detail. But
Phil James: what's nice is we now have a way to transcribe.
Phil James: If we continue to use zoom.
Phil James: you can transcribe the audio into a transcript with the script.
Phil James: and that's a good use for it, you know. So far Mel and I are still trying to figure out how to get descriptive, to work, to get squadcast to work.
Phil James: I did attend their little class, which was good.
Phil James: Hour, long, video or hour long. A web, what do you call it, they kind of did it in podcast, format.
Phil James: which is on Youtube. So that was great.
Phil James: That's excellent news. I mean, in the past.
Les Wright (he/him/his): you know, when I've had transcribe interviews. It takes freaking for ever.
Les Wright (he/him/his): And and it used to be that, you know, you would hire.
Les Wright (he/him/his): you know, like a grad student, or pay a part time. Archivist. cause, you know, cause it's it's grunt work. It's secretarial type work.
Les Wright (he/him/his): right? And it's as I say, it's incredibly time consuming. So that is excellent.
Phil James: I don't know if you looked at the transcription so far, but not yet.
Phil James: and I didn't use any of it's got all kinds of built in fancy tools where, if the transcription has, hey? There, it's a transcript we're talking about.
Phil James: I'll just use sign language until you get back.
Mel Baker: Okay, now there we go.
Phil James: I was just saying, I did the I sat in on this podcast. That the podcast. Flashescript people did kind of learn some more about
Phil James: how it works get a little more exploration. So that's good.
Phil James: And plus, I was just saying to less.
Phil James: we did the automatic transcription of the mark
Phil James: interview the Xxl Marc interview.
Phil James: and we got a usable file out of that. I haven't looked at every last detail, and I didn't do anything. Fancy like it will, you know, replace the spelling of names, or
Phil James: you can automatically check out all the ooze and the odds or the Ums and the Oz and I haven't done that, but it did do a transcription so
Phil James: that could save us a lot of time in and of itself.
Les Wright (he/him/his): But I will. I haven't looked at it yet. But fairly soon, you know, as as the time approaches for me to do to do a a bare tracks
Les Wright (he/him/his): column on the history of bears in in England. II will mine it for information, and then.
Les Wright (he/him/his): you know, get the whole transcript so that I can. you know, set it up as as as a manuscript for for bear. Book 3. Yeah.
Phil James: So we have it both in the video format.
Phil James: And we captured the audio format, and whatever
Phil James: comments we made are in a third file. But then in a fourth file, is the transcription into text. So it's all there in that folder
Phil James: if you need a pointer back to that folder, let me know. But that's where that all is. So. No, I think we're on our way with. we're making use of
Phil James: the the script, at least for
Phil James: Okay, Gary cannot unmute or turn on video.
Phil James: Okay,
Phil James: wrong keyboard.
Mel Baker: I did. I did watch part of the video. So using the to take the Us. And the Oz out, you have to be kinda careful with that, because
Mel Baker: it may sound really unnatural if it cuts it in such a way that somebody's ending on an upcut or something. So you kinda have to
Mel Baker: play with that, if you're gonna like, turn into actual other types of audio. So
Phil James: it looked like it was going to be.
Phil James: It looks like it's something that you know Steven Spielberg doesn't use this software, but you know it would. It might go a long way. I think it would be great to at least correct names, and maybe some.
Phil James: You know, you can build a dictionary, which is our terms of art. So you know, that'd be good, too. So I just. I just transcribed it and said, Alright, it's there available right away. I didn't actually go in and
Phil James: and massage a file, so I'll go back and look.
Mel Baker: But but, on the other hand, there are, one of the people that produces the show that airs on our station voices of the community. He uses the script exclusively, and he edited it that way. He uses that that system, I mean. I kind of appalled to an old audio guy like me, but his show sounds fine, so I'm nitpicking.
Mel Baker: As long as I had an original file to work with. Assuming I ever
Mel Baker: get on to this project, we get enough stuff for doing a
Mel Baker: series of podcasts.
Mel Baker: Then I'd probably want the raw files to work with.
Phil James: Don't even say ever.
Phil James: I will say, II will. We are not doing this much work so that this might someday be a thing. It's going to be a thing it will be
Phil James: as Les was just saying. you know, our first real.
Phil James: totally external person. Interview the Mark xxl. One. That just. And you were there. Now, you know, that went really well,
Phil James: okay, I'm encouraging
Phil James: Gary, to Gary Turner to log off and log back on what what we should call the Bank of America solution. Okay?
Les Wright (he/him/his): So say that
Les Wright (he/him/his): our our first interview with Mark Ames like that is a great sign that we we can now move forward and know that it's all going to work.
Phil James: Yeah, we can do it in zoom if we need to. You know, we're paying for
Phil James: the full squad account and desk, so it'd be nice to make use of that, but at least we know we could use that for something. So that's good.
Les Wright (he/him/his): love it.
Phil James: So I have questions for Gary. When we ever hear from him about.
Phil James: I thought, it's gonna take down anything in the store. That's not the current logo.
Phil James: But I thought he also was going to
Phil James: update the logo a little bit. I think he said he wanted to tweak the number of stars or something. So
Phil James: if there's anything to say about that.
Les Wright (he/him/his): Well, then, he's going to have to write a whole little description of what everything in in the logo means.
Phil James: I asked them to do that. Yeah.
Les Wright (he/him/his): whatever
Mel Baker: God, good boys need a spanking, too. Right?
Phil James: I have my homo shirt on.
Mel Baker: I was going to wear an appropriate shirt, but I just got out of bed and my pajamas to do this this traffic, so I look like crap.
Mel Baker: I got a call at 3 a. M. Mel. I'm sorry to Potty. That's a person called in sick, and you cover the assault. Your old shift, your old weekend shift. God, okay, yeah, all right.
Phil James: Okay, I'm talking to Gary and
a
Phil James: of the total logo. I don't know.
Phil James: Gary is working on a description, Gary Turner.
Phil James: but he's not done with the description. So.
Les Wright (he/him/his): okay.
Phil James: that's in the work. Well, that's good.
Phil James: Okay, les, anything else from you at the moment.
Les Wright (he/him/his): Well, let's see. Yeah, a few things. I made some notes, because.
Les Wright (he/him/his): you know, out of sight out of mind. Oh, yeah. We talked about about the mark, Adams. Interview.
Les Wright (he/him/his): a second thing. Kind of a
Les Wright (he/him/his): A very recent development of a bear friend up in Ottawa
Les Wright (he/him/his): is, you know, has invited me up to visit, and he's
Les Wright (he/him/his): in the process of arranging
Les Wright (he/him/his): for me to do, you know?
Les Wright (he/him/his): Q. And a. And reading and bear history stuff at at a couple of places in Ottawa. He's also hoping on
Les Wright (he/him/his): this happening in in Montreal. And just yesterday I heard from any events organizer in Toronto who asked me,
Les Wright (he/him/his): they want autographed copies of a couple of my books
Les Wright (he/him/his): that they're going to auction off, and I took the opportunity to give them all of you know, the Bear History project information and background, and told him that I was going to be in his neck of the woods, and would be happy
Les Wright (he/him/his): to go to Toronto in person.
Les Wright (he/him/his): you know. You know. And any of these events I do. You know, I really
Les Wright (he/him/his): promote the Bear History project
Les Wright (he/him/his): and the last thing, and I'm taking today as as a kind of
Les Wright (he/him/his): a prodding. I need to stay on track with a scheduling
Les Wright (he/him/his): oral history interviews and kind of my priority at this point
Les Wright (he/him/his): is to interview people for for the bear, for the Bear Book project right? and I printed out, and I'll check the our. Our compiled list. So far.
Les Wright (he/him/his): and the only person I can think of off the top of my head from that list that I, as I said before II have concerns about is, you know.
Les Wright (he/him/his): interviewing Jack Fritzer because of his age. But he has Po. He has been publicizing himself forever all over the place. So
Les Wright (he/him/his): It's not like he's gonna disappear from the historic record if we don't interview him
Phil James: right. But you, I'm glad to hear you think that we currently have the technology. We can schedule one and do it. If nothing else. We can do it in zoom
Phil James: and use the script to transcribe it. I'll go back and look at how that transcription went of the one we did with Mark.
Phil James: Okay, yeah.
Phil James: And then, you know, I'm mostly retired, so you can schedule like schedule a time or 2
Phil James: with Jack and whomever, and I can probably make it other than the end of this month, beginning of next month I'll be in Salt Lake City.
Phil James: pounding on Mel's friend's door for
Phil James: Michael Aaron, the is he ghosting you or something?
Phil James: No, it's it's worse in my mind. It's He wants to do this interview.
Phil James: and he keeps saying he's interested, and it keeps telling me he's super super busy, he slammed. Please get back to him. Please get back to him. Please get back to him, and literally we've been doing this for a year.
Phil James: so I will. I will call him and give him hell.
Phil James: Not too much pressure. But I just told him like, Hey, for the fifth time I'm gonna be there.
Phil James: End of February beginning of March, if you want to, and I've sent him a couple of pages of if you want to do an article. This, by the way, left is and it's actually Mel who raised the idea of.
Phil James: There'd be an interest in a LGBT genealogist. And I said, Oh, there's a whole group of us, and we wrote up kind of a page
Phil James: thing about what you know what might be interesting.
Phil James: And so this friend of Mel. Is the editor of Q. Salt Lake City
Phil James: Monthly, like the Bar, but monthly, and he sounded interested. So I send him information about that. So
Mel Baker: can you resend? Send me that material? Maybe we should pound that into a press release.
Mel Baker: Are there going to be other members of the group there this
Phil James: during this period, this upcoming period of this group? Not that I know of. No. my Venn diagram is not that small? I have other
Phil James: like, I'm in a group of queer geneal local, queer genealogists who I'm having dinner with next week.
Phil James: but none of them are bare.
Mel Baker: No, not not not around the bear stuff. So that's that's
Mel Baker: that's the sidebar thing. That kind of might pull Michael in is that he gets to tell the story, and but honestly we could. I'm always coming up with ideas and then never following through with them. But we could also pitch Salt Lake Tribune with the town newspaper.
Mel Baker: and if we put it together, low press release, we could even send out a
Mel Baker: except for the local TV stations, might get you on local television.
Phil James: Yeah.
Phil James: Well.
Phil James: okay, I'll talk to you technically. Offline.
Phil James: Gary, says Ger. I have no idea why I can suddenly join.
Phil James: but my audio and view are both disabled.
Phil James: We're not answering my question. Nope.
Phil James: okay,
Les Wright (he/him/his): Eric writes that.
Les Wright (he/him/his): he says, my monthly event gets between a hundred 50 and 200 guys which are the bears as well. We have over 42,
Les Wright (he/him/his): and a half 1,000 followers on our Instagram feed over 5 and a half followers on Facebook and over and over 6.3,000 on Facebook page
Les Wright (he/him/his): in exchange for donation, which be my autograph books, we would gladly promote you on all our social media.
Phil James: Okay? And that's wh. Who who is this? We should add to our
Les Wright (he/him/his): okay. His. His name was Eric, Major.
Phil James: Is it. Eric, ERIT. K. With the C.
Phil James: Just to see. Okay, Major Major, as in not Minor Yup.
Les Wright (he/him/his): he, he says. I host a monthly event. It's called
Les Wright (he/him/his): bears in excess event.
Les Wright (he/him/his): and it's every third Sunday.
Phil James: And I think.
Phil James: Toronto okay.
Les Wright (he/him/his): I still have never been to Toronto, and people say wonderful things about it for queer folk.
Les Wright (he/him/his): And I can give you his email.
Phil James: Oh, well, bears in excess Toronto. They have a
Phil James: Facebook.
Phil James: They meet at bar.
Phil James: Spa excess.
Phil James: Okay, yeah. What's his email?
Les Wright (he/him/his): Okay, email is say it. And then spell it bears in excess
Les Wright (he/him/his): no spaces.
Les Wright (he/him/his): BEAR, SINE, XCEE. At Gmail.
Phil James: It's access spell, like, except EXCE. SF. Right? Correct.
Phil James: Okay, yeah. I found their Facebook page. They are bears and excess.com.
Phil James: Oh, yeah, they do lots of cross posting with the fair world magazine.
Les Wright (he/him/his): Yep.
Phil James: okay, yeah, I will.
Les Wright (he/him/his): Yeah, he said, we're a media partner with bear world. Yeah.
Phil James: So would we want to post a link to their page somewhere.
Phil James: Okay, they are partners with the Fluffy's channel.
Phil James: Never heard of. Well, that's a Youtube channel.
Phil James: Great. Okay. I'll link to them.
Phil James: Okay, mention it.
Phil James: Oh, that's so. That's 2 guys do that.
Phil James: Okay? Good. Alright, that's kind of that's the fluffies have a Youtube channel.
Les Wright (he/him/his): Okay?
Phil James: Okay, Gary can hear us and see us.
Phil James: Okay. Gary, Hello, sorry you can't fully join.
Phil James: you can.
Phil James: Gary, I mean, use this text
Phil James: for chatting if you want I just still have the those 2 questions about logo slash merch which is.
Phil James: can you take down the mo? Can you take down the merge that the sort of the quote unquote
Phil James: old, the middle tier logo that
Phil James: bear project bear history Project international with the bar. That's kind of the old new logo now.
Phil James: so that all we have is the current logo with the bare flag ish looking logo items and then number 2. Gary is, do you want to?
Phil James: It sounded like.
Phil James: Oh, yeah, I can remove the old logo design. Okay, great. It sounds like you were still working on
Phil James: updating the new logo a little bit with some tweaks. So
Phil James: let us all know when you're done with that, and also.
Phil James: as Les mentioned.
Phil James: if you can
Phil James: write up like the reasoning behind the logo that'd be good to have in in the can. So
Phil James: we'll have that as well. And then the other thing for you, Gary, specifically, is. you're gonna write me some text for
Phil James: a page for you on the wiki, so I'll post that when you do, it's because you're certainly important enough that we should mention you. Well, I do mention you in the Wiki, but
Phil James: it doesn't. It doesn't go anywhere. So
Phil James: most of us on the Central Committee have a have a page, a short little page.
Phil James: Okay, thanks. Great thanks. Gary.
Phil James: Thanks. Les anything else from you?
Les Wright (he/him/his): well, pretty much. That's it. I am.
Les Wright (he/him/his): You know I have a number of projects going right now and
Les Wright (he/him/his): and why I'm needing to like be get consciously refocus. Is that
Les Wright (he/him/his): you know I'm hustling to meet the deadlines for the for the bear tracks columns which you know. Take 2 or 3 days, I mean, they're short little things, but they, too.
Les Wright (he/him/his): 2 or 3 days to to fully research and revise into readable text. And the last 2 weeks.
Les Wright (he/him/his): you know, my correspondence has been like eating up more and more of my
Les Wright (he/him/his): my writing time.
Les Wright (he/him/his): so I need to flip, you know. Do do do do the do the writing first, and then do the correspondence afterwards.
Les Wright (he/him/his): and reprioritize some of what I'm doing.
Phil James: Yeah, yeah.
Phil James: you might. You know, when Nick people like Nick are talking about. And I'm sure you already think about this. You're an academic person.
Phil James: When people like Nick are talking about.
Phil James: there might be money for
Phil James: archival purposes. You should certainly think that some of that money is for some kind of assistance. Somebody to do.
Phil James: you know, proofreading somebody to do scheduling for you, for you know these the various things, so I don't know where the lines between your book writing
Phil James: and bear history practicing international are. But
Phil James: you know, between those you should make sure.
Phil James: You know you're getting the assistance that you that will help you. So you can focus more on the content, because obviously, people like your content.
Les Wright (he/him/his): But you know, and that would be great. And I just this morning.
Les Wright (he/him/his): Because Toronto was asking for autographed copies of bearable comparable to II finally followed through and tracked down.
Les Wright (he/him/his): who is now publishing those books, and how to go about ordering discounted author copies
Les Wright (he/him/his): because they're both now retailing those paperbacks at $60, and the hard covers at $170, believe it or not.
Les Wright (he/him/his): And anyway, so and I'm going to approach them first.
Les Wright (he/him/his): To publish bear book 3. Since they did the first 2,
Les Wright (he/him/his): and then that kind of you know, frames the book it as an academic book. So so, which is, you know, anyways, I had thought I wanted to do this, as you know.
Les Wright (he/him/his): for a more kind of popular general readership.
Phil James: But anyways, I mean that works out fine. Yeah, okay, also. On both of those fronts front and
Phil James: on the book front we link to somewhere.
Phil James: I mean so for bear track. Whenever I see that you publish the bear tracks article. I add it to our wiki, but I'm not sure I got them all. So
Phil James: if you go to our wiki and go to the bibliography, and resort by either your name or I think your bear tracks articles. The title of the article that I put in always begins bear tracks, so you know, resort by your name or resort by the title, and just make sure I've gotten them all.
Phil James: And then each
Phil James: article well, the article
Phil James: I'll link back to bear World magazine. So that's fine. The books I probably put in some link for the books. If there's if it's either, not where you currently get those books.
Phil James: or there's a more preferable place you want to link to let me know I can update those
Les Wright (he/him/his): already. Yeah, so I yeah, II will! I will search by my name and
Les Wright (he/him/his): as I've been sending in the bear track columns, I'm numbering them
Les Wright (he/him/his): so I will, if I can. I will, you know, add that to the title so that they will hopefully auto sort into, you know, chronological order publication.
Phil James: Okay?
Phil James: I look at the the date. You know you have a dateline on the posting in. So I when I see that in Fair World Magazine I use that plus.
Phil James: I have a date that I post it to our wiki so that people can just quickly see. Well, what's what's new. In the last 2 weeks they can look there so, but if those are, if there's any big discrepancies there, let me know, and I don't have a I'm not using any numbering on the bare track
Phil James: article, but you know, just have a look there, and I you know just I make sure
Phil James: I might have
Phil James: sorry to interrupt. I'll be back in a minute. Okay, okay. les. I think I have your name in there, all correct, but just kind of have a look at what I cause. I do them one at a time. So there's a chance. They're not all
Phil James: 100% consistent. So let me know if you see anything in there that
Phil James: wonky.
Les Wright (he/him/his): Okay, we'll do.
Les Wright (he/him/his): Oh, also.
Les Wright (he/him/his): you know II sometimes am like a cat having kittens. I get so anxious and concerned, and
Les Wright (he/him/his): a little, you know, freaked out about stuff.
Les Wright (he/him/his): I did see the where the bears are documentary
Les Wright (he/him/his): that they had interviewed before, not used, and it turns out the documentaries all about
Les Wright (he/him/his): the series. You know where the bears are full. Stop.
Phil James: Okay, it's not about bears per se.
Les Wright (he/him/his): I guess that was for their you know, their personal
Les Wright (he/him/his): knowledge, understanding
Phil James: so, and that original, the original director passed away.
Les Wright (he/him/his): Oh, that was bare city. Oh, okay, alright. And and I've been in communication with the surviving partner of Bear City.
Les Wright (he/him/his): and I've asked him
Les Wright (he/him/his): to kind of, you know. Kind of do a history of Bear Bare city from the beginning, you know, up to present day, because apparently the
Phil James: the partners passing cause huge problems. Yeah, is that by any chance, Kevin Kelly?
Phil James: The name sounds familiar, but I have small world. It's a small world.
Phil James: Kevin is somebody. Do you know where he is? Kevin is? Somebody I know from Indianapolis happened to meet in Indianapolis. and I remember, you know I took him. I took him to dinner a couple of times.
Phil James: and one of my coworkers said, so. Let me ask you like when 2 guys, when 2 gay guys go to dinner, you know who pays.
Phil James: And I said
Phil James: he calls me Daddy. I pay for dinner. And this co-worker, I live. He we literally were stopped crossing the street. I had to drag him out of the street. He was dumbfound. Yeah. Well, you? Asked Buddy. Okay, that's enough for the paper.
Les Wright (he/him/his): And and I'm wondering if you know I recently connected with
Les Wright (he/him/his): you know, we're we're we're out there, you know I'm no, I don't remember. Different people find their way to to me. But I recently connected with
Les Wright (he/him/his): Charlie Hopwood, who's in Baltimore. who is?
Les Wright (he/him/his): He's been a big mover and shaker in the bear community in the the Baltimore DC area. So
Phil James: okay,
Phil James: I'm texting with Gary that you can hear us. But yeah.
Phil James: so
Phil James: I'm saying, Yeah, texting is fine. He's having trouble with. We think that this meeting settings.
Phil James: okay? Great thanks. Les.
Phil James: We have mailed back yet.
Phil James: I've got some right stuff from January, but I don't think there's anything we need to talk about.
Phil James: Les. I have a note about the North American bear.
Phil James: Is that convergence or convention? The nab weekend in Lexington, Kentucky. Is that like? Is that something you you were going to do and couldn't do
Les Wright (he/him/his): correct. I'm gonna follow up. I'm gonna do wanna follow up with 2 different interviews.
Les Wright (he/him/his): one with. He's he's Hooper. Who is the current, or up until this this weekend you know North American, Mister North American bear to talk with him about.
Les Wright (he/him/his): You know the the bare contests in recent years.
Les Wright (he/him/his): and the other is with my blank on his name, the the organizer of this event. It's a traveling. It's a moveable feast.
Les Wright (he/him/his): you know. They host different different clubs. Host it. So it's in a different city every year.
Les Wright (he/him/his): So yeah, I ended up. I mean, I had planned to go. They had invited me, and they. you know, giving me a free vip pass. And I was setting up interviews.
Les Wright (he/him/his): And then let's see.
Les Wright (he/him/his): one was I got Covid.
Les Wright (he/him/his): and so I'm not gonna make travel plans a. And then
Les Wright (he/him/his): A friend of mine who lives just over the the State line in Kentucky from Cincinnati.
Les Wright (he/him/his): wanted to go. So I made all of the travel and accommodation arrangements within.
Les Wright (he/him/his): and at the last minute he said, Oh, I have to drop out because I'm moving to Vermont.
Phil James: Yeah, there's like, so I'm gonna have to reschedule. You know, all of that stuff. So I just
Les Wright (he/him/his): said, Okay, no.
Les Wright (he/him/his): this is too crazy. It's obviously not meant to happen. Yeah.
Phil James: okay.
Phil James: cool. Okay. Let's see, what else do I have?
Phil James: okay, you're gonna look and see if we have all your bare track things. You're gonna look at the links for books.
Phil James: your books.
Phil James: So I'm gonna be in Salt Lake City in.
Phil James: Oh, I want to move the next meeting.
Phil James: Okay?
Phil James: Because I have a conference that day.
Phil James: So
Phil James: I'm gonna be in Salt Lake City
Phil James: the 20 seventh
Phil James: through the
Phil James: the
Phil James: so other than I mean. I can't possibly do
Phil James: interviews during that week, but then
Phil James: I'm pretty good. So our regular meeting would be
Phil James: Saturday, March ninth. But I have an all day conference that day. So
Phil James: can we move this meeting to Saturday, the sixteenth of March.
Phil James: Okay, let me get my calendar. Okay.
Les Wright (he/him/his): okay, so that's
Les Wright (he/him/his): March sixteenth.
Les Wright (he/him/his): It'd be 18 time, 1, 8 pm.
Phil James: 10 am. Pacific.
Phil James: Yeah.
Phil James: okay, I'm gonna move the meeting to the sixteenth. I assume
Phil James: Mel was available, because this is a temporary thing that he's bopping in and out.
Les Wright (he/him/his): Okay, yeah.
Les Wright (he/him/his): yeah. I have now
Les Wright (he/him/his): say that weekend is the local Syracuse
Les Wright (he/him/his): strengthening our tribe weekend event sponsored by the local leather club. And I'm sure that's you know, drop in and out as I'm interested thing interested things. So
Phil James: okay, you think you're available?
Les Wright (he/him/his): Yeah, that's that's fine.
Phil James: Okay, is Mel, having technical issues here today. No, Gary, he's not. He's
Phil James: he's bopping in and out because
Phil James: you got to call at 3 Am. To do traffic reports which he used to have to do on Saturdays, but not now
Mel Baker: sorry about that. I'm done for the rest of the
Phil James: traffic. It's fine.
Mel Baker: Not until 20 after 11 is my next hit, so I had a cluster of 3 I had to do here at the top. So
Phil James: it turns out that the big accident in the Bay Bridge tunnel. That was last.
Phil James: What was it during the week last month? Yeah, that was a nightmare. Yeah. yeah, apparently those are. That was friends. The car that was hit is friends of friends of mine.
Phil James: Oh, my God! So you know, he, this guy that I know is the He's a manager at the Cap Club, south of market.
Phil James: though they're gonna have a memorial service. It wasn't people he knew really well, but it's people they knew on site. And I think 3 people were killed in the car that was in Mini coop that got slammed by a
Phil James: I think it was a big rig.
Mel Baker: you know.
Les Wright (he/him/his): So what is the Bay Bridge Bay, the Bay Bridge Tunnel.
Phil James: Yeah. So you know, the Bay Bridge goes island. Oh, okay, okay, yeah.
Phil James: So that this Mini Cooper was stalled. And you know, there's no shoulder in those little tunnels
Phil James: right? Could easily.
Les Wright (he/him/his): Yeah, there. There is a train bridge.
Les Wright (he/him/his): a train track that goes over the freeway on the north side of Syracuse, and
Les Wright (he/him/his): for years now It's like at least once a week some big rig, you know, crashes into it.
Les Wright (he/him/his): Because, you know they're they're on their GPS. There are, like, you know, a dozen signs. There are flashing lights.
Les Wright (he/him/his): There's a big warning sign and they all say they didn't see any of it.
Les Wright (he/him/his): and this goes on all the time.
Les Wright (he/him/his): and of course, The the owners of the railroad refused to raise the bridge. so the city has no control over that. Okay.
Les Wright (he/him/his): that damn it.
Les Wright (he/him/his): Sorry
Phil James: II don't think I want to know.
Phil James: Somebody's got to be spanked.
Phil James: Yeah. Mel, can you make
Phil James: Saturday, the sixteenth for the next meeting rather than the usual time, which is the ninth?
Mel Baker: Yeah.
Phil James: okay. yeah. That's not a problem. I. By the way, I mean Saturday the sixteenth. Yeah.
Phil James: I will be there, but I may not be be able to see very well, but I'll be there. I'm going to have eyes surgery the day before, so if I have a patch over and I'm like Argh looking like a pirate.
Phil James: we'll get you a hook for hand just to complete the look. Maybe a stuffed parent
Phil James: stuff parrot. I don't wanna hook for a hand. I use my hands for other things. Now, if I had an attachment. Do you ever remember? Do you remember the movie entered the Dragon? No, it was a parody on it was a parody on Bruce Lee's movie. It was a Kentucky fried movie, and they had a parody on enter the Dragon and
Mel Baker: the the main villain had an attachment for his hand to take care of all of his mistresses. So gratitude and it's got a dildo attached to it.
Mel Baker: Look up Kentucky fried movie, anyway.
Mel Baker: my thoughts, my my thoughts did go there. I'm sorry.
Mel Baker: so I'm sorry. I was hoping never to have to do these bullshit
Phil James: back and forth things. But yeah, don't worry about it.
Mel Baker: Yeah, it's very. It's a rare thing.
Mel Baker: quick question about your this thing you're going to insult like, is it a major conference, a minor conference? Or you're just going there for some of your own work? Or last year it was 10,000 people in person
Phil James: and a million people online.
Phil James: It is the major worldwide genealogy Conference. Okay? Then we should put together.
Mel Baker: If you're interested in some publicity for might, it'd be more for yours yourself and your work as a genealogist.
Mel Baker: you know a gay black genealogist from San Francisco who's coming to set to Salt Lake City, and this is his.
Mel Baker: Do you know his lifelong ambition is to do genealogy work, and why that is, and you become a very interesting character. So if I'm like a local news organization and I'm covering
Mel Baker: the event and I'm going. Oh, God, what do we do for this one? We go down there. We take some photos. We take some video. We talked to a couple of old ladies and then to get this press release, saying, Oh, well, he's interesting. He's not the normal stereotype of what we'd expect to see at one of these conferences. Let's do. Let's interview him.
Phil James: Yeah, I'll I'll think about that. There's there's other people that help me put together the material that we did for this interview. So I'll send you that.
Phil James: Just so you can see that.
Mel Baker: Okay. Have you ever written a press release?
Phil James: No.
Mel Baker: it's real simple.
Phil James: Okay. Anything else. Their history from you.
Phil James: Mel left.
Les Wright (he/him/his): No.
Mel Baker: Now, what's the deadline for writing the lurch chapter.
Les Wright (he/him/his): December 30. First.
Mel Baker: Okay.
Les Wright (he/him/his): yeah.
Phil James: Get to it.
Mel Baker: Alright.
Phil James: Okay. Gary, anything else from you? In the midst of time of the
Phil James: chat window.
Phil James: Nothing more at the moment. Okay, great. So, Gary, think about those things. They write up of the logo.
Phil James: the taking down of the old logo item.
Phil James: and then your page, your Vanity page, for lack of a better word that we'll put into the Wiki
Phil James: you know. No, no rush on any of those, but let me know when those are done, and when you get the logo stuff.
Phil James: resolved, then I will certainly promote logo wear and obviously buy some logo wear myself.
So
Phil James: I just haven't wanted to confuse people since. We said, we just want the one logo at a time. So
Phil James: great. Thanks. Okay. I'll write up some notes about this meeting, and I'll see some of you on the
Phil James: sixteenth.
Mel Baker: Yeah, you'll have our gratitude.
Les Wright (he/him/his): Okay, take care, folks.