Paul Tran: Hello! Good morning.
Phil James: Good morning. Is that Paul?
Paul Tran: Yes, Hi! Can you hear me? Sorry? Yes, I can
Phil James: probably never start on time, never. Oh, no, that's that's fine. I'm ready to go. I was being early, just to make sure everything is set up.
Phil James: Let me adjust my volume here.
Phil James: Okay, that's pretty good. you know. I'm gonna stop the recording until we're all here. So
Les Wright (he/him/his): okay.
Phil James: okay.
Phil James: and Gary Wasden meet Gary Turner.
Gary Wasdin: Gary Turner, I told Gary he was. Have to be other Gary, because we already have a Gary, he said. No, he is the Gary.
Gary Wasdin: He showed some impressive tattoos earlier. So you got your work cut out for you.
Phil James: Okay, we have a big agenda this time. Sorry for folks who couldn't.
Phil James: les. Have you talked to Mel. Oh, there's Mel. Mel's coming
Phil James: now.
Mel Baker: I had a eye surgery yesterday, so I had to go do a follow up this morning and think I was gonna make it. But I got back in time. So but I can't do all it blurry. So
Phil James: oh, that's just the background.
Gary Wasdin: I have it. Yeah.
Phil James: I'm gonna mute, everybody except who's talking. How do I do that? Magically?
Phil James: okay, people have muted.
Phil James: Okay. Gary Wasden, you're sort of our special guest.
Phil James: Les and or Gary Wasden, do you want to talk about the archives and museum and their relationship to us?
Gary Wasdin: So I can just tell you. I think you know most of you have probably at least heard of us. We're a mother architect, museum located in Chicago. I'm the executive director with all of you. And our.
Gary Wasdin: we exist on a couple of different levels. We are a a museum open to the public. But primarily, we're Research Library Research Archive of Cdsm King fetish and leather. fairly focused on the Us. Not exclusively, but just
Gary Wasdin: because of the limits of our size. In space, we tend to focus more heavily on on us. Related history. We do have some bear history, especially periodicals and collections and especially, you know, overlap within. Obviously the broader fetish mother
Gary Wasdin: communities. So you know, bear history is part of us. We've done a couple of bear exhibits in the past. You know, all of these things are are very intricately woven together. They're really, you know, clear lines of distinction between any of this, but happy to be with all of you. Obviously, as you can tell, this is also my personal life being a bear myself.
Gary Wasdin: So happy chat to be with you talk with you. I think. You know there's probably some potential for opportunities where you know, we can work together and and help because the work you're doing is important and important to us, professionally and personally. So thanks for inviting me.
Yeah, I'm glad we worked it out. I know we've been trying for a couple of months to coordinate calendars, and
Gary Wasdin: it's great to see you.
Phil James: I have. I'm that set of be. I'm in the set of bears. II was a member several years of the Archives Museum, and I've never been, even though I went to Iml for several years. So, and I have the Iml. It's hard to get up north.
Phil James: So les. Do you have
Phil James: specific you know, needs or expectations out of a collaboration.
Les Wright (he/him/his): Well, first up, Gary, welcome. I'm really glad you could make it. And
Les Wright (he/him/his): we have been doing some discussing between ourselves, but
Les Wright (he/him/his): it's it's helpful and necessary that we're all here. you know the Bear History Project is looking or hoping that the the leather archives could be the permanent repository for all of the material that that we collect.
Les Wright (he/him/his): And at this point
Les Wright (he/him/his): I and maybe some others are kind of gathering. I've got a little a couple of file boxes of stuff gathered and ready to to ship when
Les Wright (he/him/his): when everything is kind of like settled and
Les Wright (he/him/his): and copacetic.
Les Wright (he/him/his): yeah. And that's that's kind of the the the skinny of it.
Gary Wasdin: Yeah, I think, apart from the from les. Do you foresee
Phil James: I've I turned off my video because I'm having trouble
Phil James: with jerkiness. Somebody's jerky. I've closed a bunch of other browser windows. Les. Do you foresee a time when
Phil James: members of our
Phil James: Central Committee slash Board, go to the leather archives and kind of
Phil James: see what's there and talk about where things could go, I mean, does it need to be a physical gathering?
Les Wright (he/him/his): Ii don't think so.
Les Wright (he/him/his): that's kind of the expertise of the archivists
Gary Wasdin: itself to know where what would go. Yeah. And I should say, you know, it's not very when it comes to archives and preserving history. That part is not terribly glamorous, because.
Gary Wasdin: you know, things get packed into you know. Preservation, you know, making sure they're, you know, acid free folders. And you know the preservation boxes that you probably see at any research library. Are cataloged. And then are.
Gary Wasdin: you know, literally just on shelves based on, you know, E accession when they come to us. So there aren't really decisions to make about where there are decisions to make that we would work with you all that you could just do remotely as a group, and that.
you know, comes down to
Gary Wasdin: what's coming to us, and you know, are there restrictions placed on any of it. As to you know who can use it, because obviously things come to us not just to keep for the sake of having them, but so that they can actually be used by researchers by community members. So you know, there are questions to address about.
Gary Wasdin: you know, access issues. That would be part of the written agreement that you all make with us. And then, of course, you know, we would love to have you come, I think.
Gary Wasdin: eventually, and not to to get too bright on the road, you know. I think eventually, once we figure some of this out, it would be nice to think about doing, perhaps, an exhibit in the public museum space. That both kind of celebrates. You know the collection the history, and you know some educational purposes about bears, community and bear history. But also kind of acknowledges, and that might be a nice time for those who were able
Gary Wasdin: to come, you know, to do just a like welcoming reception and big kick off and just have a lot of bears, you know, take over the space. But most of the work, as far as the collection goes. Yeah, we would do be able to do remotely with you. All
Phil James: right. And a quick question for Mike. I don't want to put you on the spot. But is there any expectation that Iml would not be in Chicago in the coming few years. I have no control idea or information about what Iml will or will not be doing.
Phil James: You're not gonna speak to the rumor that once Chuck Renzo passed away, which is now been 8 years 9 years, that Iml would not be tied to Chicago, and
Mike Hernandez: that particular weekend, and it would I haven't. I haven't heard any rumors.
Phil James: That's something for all of us to think about is iml is a great gathering time, lots of bears.
Phil James: and that could be a time to see the leather archives and to do some kind of yeah. As as Gary W. Says, there's lots of distractions during Iml, but that'd be a great weekend to then go do some
Mike Hernandez: independently. If I am out. There's a bear event that happens in Chicago that weekend
Gary Wasdin: has kind of died out. It is still here. But yeah, it's covid sort of, I think
Gary Wasdin: may have put the nail in the coffin of that it it may start back up again, but but at the same time, yeah, I mean, Iml is still a great time, and you know, being able to do it. It's a great convener. And obviously there's a large subset of their population that's at Iml. So that's that is a great time, but you know we could make anything, anything work like that.
Phil James: I remember being up on the sixth floor
Phil James: above the dance floor of the House of Blues and running into my doctor like, what are you doing? They were there for the bear event, plus he's like 5 feet tall, so it's hard to see
Gary Wasdin: Phil. Great? Well, yes, okay. I just wanna add a couple of other things. At first I apologize. Stay for the whole meeting. So I did wanna just share, just to put some ideas on the table that we can talk about later. But you know, apart from, you know, the collection. And and last night, just.
Gary Wasdin: you know, almost spit balling. But being open to other ideas, you know there are, you know, also potential ways that we could work together on, you know, digitization of the collection or specific materials in the collection. You know, especially and looking, you know, at potential grant opportunities that we could, you know, apply together, for that might
Gary Wasdin: get us the resources to make some of these available cause, you know, it's first app. Wonderful. Making sure they have a home
Gary Wasdin: accessibility, you know. Yes, people can come here, but for the materials that we're able
Gary Wasdin: to make available, it's always great to be able to to figure out, you know, some things that we could digitize and make accessible through our virtual archives platform online. So you know there's there's additional work like that. That. We certainly would be, you know, happy to to work with you all on, and that would totally be driven again by you all and what you think.
Gary Wasdin: You know our priorities. But you know we're open and receptive to, you know, not just getting the collection here. But you know that's always step one step 2 is okay. What now? How do we? You know? How do we help promote? You know, bear culture bear history. How do we educate people? How do we engage with people?
Gary Wasdin: The vast majority of people that visit us both physically and in person are college students. They tend to be either straight or queer. So it's not your sort of what people have in their mindset of like gay men. That makes the smallest portion of our audience. So it is a lot of people who are encountering this for the first time and learning about this for the first time, and very excited and eager.
Gary Wasdin: So thinking about, you know what we could do beyond adjust housing the collection. You know we're open to your thoughts and ideas about what to prioritize with that
Phil James: great. I'm just going over to our wiki to make sure we have a link to bear archives. I think we do. I'll I'll make sure we do if we don't. Already.
Phil James: Great les. Do you have any other questions about possible.
Collab.
Les Wright (he/him/his): At this point. No, as I say, I'm really glad we're all able to meet now and start thinking about what we can do together.
Nick: Can I ask a quick question?
Nick: Hi! Hi! I'm I guess I'll call you Gary W. So we'll go for Gary, T. And Gary W. So Gary W. Hi, so I'm Nick Mclint. I'm a bear researcher from the Uk. I'm an I'm I'm an academic based at university. Looking into trying to get some funding to look at bear. Les's existing archive that's hosted at Cornell.
I've put a couple of funding bids for it, and I'm gonna be prioritizing that when I get back from where I currently am, which is with 60 fucking 19 year olds in a field trip.
Nick: God God help me. So Gary, WI wanted to hear like you said you have some kind of like bare history in archives already. Could you quickly give us an outline of what stuff is you have already?
Gary Wasdin: Yes and no. I can give you kind of a broad base. You know there are limited things, I mean the the you know. Probably the most cohesive parts of the collection are the periodicals of, you know, various iterations of
Gary Wasdin: bear journals as well as you know other journals that kind of dabbled in you know, newsletters from old clubs and organizations, event flyers and ephemera on posters and things from bear events. There's not a cohesive like
Gary Wasdin: this is the bear collection. A lot of components of bear history, of course, are interspersed in the collections of individuals, and then most of you are somewhat familiar with, you know. Archives come to us. It might be an individual person's collection about the organization's collection.
Gary Wasdin: and then within those, of course, are everything that that person or that organization did. So.
Gary Wasdin: you know, we might have a person's records, and that person might have been a part of the bear community, a part of the leather community. And so within that a. Again. There are stray things, you know everything from correspondence to, you know. Club minutes meeting minutes. You know, there are bits and pieces of some of the earlier you know, bare events and just even bare terminology
Gary Wasdin: being expressed in club documents and things, and those tend to be scattered across multiple collections. So you know, there's there's a good bit here. It's just not a sort of solid sort of like what you all have as your your focus collection. These tend to be bits and pieces scattered throughout. But you know again, a fairly decent amount of stuff.
Nick: Yeah, that that sounds great. And I actually all of that stuff. That ephemera is incredibly valuable because there is so little of this kind of stuff that's been captured except to Les's other archive.
Gary Wasdin: Yeah, III would definitely be interested in like having a chat with you in layers at some point. About kind of developing some grant bits to to to look at these archives and figure out what send them and use them to to do some stuff with. So maybe we can hook up with that later on. And I should also add, just one of the things I didn't mention is we do have a fairly significant and growing collection of fetish art. And of course you know Chunk of that
Gary Wasdin: is, of course, bear art and bear porn, and you know all the kind of visual artifacts of that and massive photography collections. Which a lot of these, I should say, you know from an archivist standpoint. It's it's a nightmare, because there's so much stuff.
Gary Wasdin: It is. Most of it is completely unprocessed from a researcher standpoint that's usually exciting because
Gary Wasdin: it it it literally is just treasure trove of things that no one has ever looked through. So it's what we need is exactly what you're describing of, you know, of people doing research, of actually looking through and finding and uncovering stuff and helping to weave together that story to a cohesive.
Gary Wasdin: you know, bear history. So it it's, you know, again, it's exciting, and it's exciting to see this, you know, happen for bears, because there's there's so many bits and pieces of this spread you know, throughout our collection. So we we'd be happy to help you make that happen.
Gary Wasdin: Yeah.
Mel Baker: let me let me step in and in question. So I work for a nonprofit news organization and we've helped stand up a couple of other smaller news organizations, why, they got their 501. So if we needed to get grants that were specific to international bear history project, would you guys be willing to work
Gary Wasdin: right? Right? That's what I that's kind of what I meant by by partnering with grants. Is that especially, you know, you know, even after you have a 501 c. 3. A lot of grant funding agencies want to see, you know, partnerships and working with organizations where you have that plan of sustainability and where things are gonna live and how they're gonna be disseminated. But before that, you know definitely, you know, our 501 status would be a boon to help
Mel Baker: the doors to a lot of funding opportunities that you might not have right now, so that partnership is intended exactly to do that. Mel. Thank you. Yeah. And one of our big focuses has been on capturing the stories of people through
Mel Baker: Zoom, basically.
Mel Baker: with the possibility that we'll produce them as well. The plan to produce them as a series of podcasts at some point that tell kind of a narrative about this movement, the bear movement, and I think that'd be a fantastic grant to do. I mean, II think, about all the time for so many topics of doing like a sort of storycorps, our own little sort of pinky Storycorps version, you know. And you know, we've talked about doing it. And like, you know, leather and leather history. And I think you know that same concept
Gary Wasdin: a bare history of you know, finding, Grant funding that, lets us, you know, get good equipment. And again, you know, for a lot of this, it's
Gary Wasdin: we can do just zoom recordings, and we have them. But building an infrastructure behind it, so that we can demonstrate the you know the plan to not just collect to the stories, but to preserve them, to distribute them, make them accessible to people to be able to see. And we we just did that with with some oral histories from the eighties and nineties that were recordings made here to Chicago that we just digitized with the State State of Illinois. Grant from the State Archives Association.
Gary Wasdin: That are on our Youtube channel now. And you know, they've already just in less than a year. They've gotten, you know. Well, over 100,000 listenings or viewing. Yeah, they're just they're interviews about kind of coming out and being gay and and like the, you know, eighties in Chicago, and what life was like. And it's it's kind of what you're describing. People just sort of reminiscing about. You know
Gary Wasdin: what they did places they went, events just kind of sharing the memories and and talking. But you know, long story short, is just, you know. I think there's an appetite, for you know that kind of role history. You know, we have an an aging community, and we're losing. You know, these stories constantly. So
Gary Wasdin: this is, you know it. It. It is one of those things where the sooner the better. We you know, can can start to work on this to, you know, to capture those, and then built the platform behind them. Because with with oral histories, as I'm sure you know, it's E. Everybody thinks it's just, oh, you record somebody. And now we've got this audio file. But it is a lot of work to develop an actual platform that shares them. And you need.
Mel Baker: we really need transcription so that they're useful to researchers. So that they have a transcription available. So you know, that's where the grant funding can help us build all of that stuff around it so that it's the stories, but also the stuff that makes it more usable for people.
Mel Baker: You know, we've been kind of trying to use platforms. I'm a professional broadcaster. That's what I do for a living. and we've been trying to come up with some of the better tools. We've been kind of stuck just using zoom, which has very poor sound quality. But I think we're gonna have to live with the fact that
Mel Baker: these store these are not going to be high quality sound recordings. I mean, if you're recording people with cassette tapes in the 80 s.
Mel Baker: You know, the quality is just not going to be there, but you could tell you could, if we had some, grant money for it, and could bring in some produced a producer or 2. We could produce a series of
Mel Baker: narratives, you know, with different people telling about their initial coming out stories. They're coming out is bears, etc., etc., etc. You need to collect collecting a bunch of stories, and then we can look at them and figure out what that might look like. I've been kind of overloaded in kind of over, promising what I was able to do initially.
Mel Baker: because I hold down 2 jobs so
Mel Baker: But I still, I'm I'd still love to talk to the archive about what you've done
Gary Wasdin: my whole life over promising. I always like my my intentions are always good. So II get that. And yeah, I mean, I'm I even just here, I realize, and just like spouting out ideas. And you know, you all can think about priorities, you know. But you know, related to that Mel, I mean, you're you're exactly right, you know. We're always limited, especially when we're doing. You know, there's remote interviews, and and one of the things as you're talking that you know we could.
Gary Wasdin: I would love to think about if we had, you know, if we could identify some funding to get. And we're not even talking about a lot of money, but minimal resources like even setting up like a little booth at a bear event. And again II had that Storycor model built in my head. You know, we're at Ibc or something, and we just have a booth. And people just
Gary Wasdin: come and sit and a space, and there's a microphone there, and they share their story. And we capture it where we can get those live interactions. Because.
Gary Wasdin: you know, when we see people out, we we tend to be seeking out. You know, leaders, people have done significant things, 100% fantastic, but also just getting stories from, you know, regular ordinary people in the community, and what their experiences were like, which is, you know, the value of oral histories is broad. So yeah, there's just there's so much we can do there. And I think a lot of this is for you all
Mel Baker: to to think about, you know, prioritizing, and what seems as as Lee as as lesson a Phil can attest to. I mean that the vision from the beginning was that we would try to capture.
Mel Baker: Try to capture those where
Mel Baker: you know that. W. So we don't keep losing more of our history. But at the same time, what are bears today who identifies as a bear today? Well, how's that change trans bears women who identify as bears younger bears
Mel Baker: bears of color. You know that we really start to try to capture those stories, and we'd already talked about, you know, less being, at events with a tape recorder and doing the Storycorps thing. So I think that's really important that we
Gary Wasdin: yep.
Phil James: We have a list of about 65 people that we
Les Wright (he/him/his): intended interview. We've done about 5 less something like that. And I have another one. I'll be sending you to add on Monday.
Les Wright (he/him/his): yeah. And and I'm glad you know we're we're gonna go ahead with zoom for now. Just to. I will be beating up.
Les Wright (he/him/his): you know, actually conducting interviews for us.
Les Wright (he/him/his): And one other thing I did want to kind of throw up, not to discuss. But to think about is, you know, in terms of collecting ephemera. And
Les Wright (he/him/his): basically everything that's non digital
Les Wright (he/him/his): from outside of North America. 2 things, one. we or I need to identify if their collections are happening elsewhere around the world. And to.
Les Wright (he/him/his): you know, if we gather them in Chicago. International shipping costs are very expensive these days, and that
Les Wright (he/him/his): W will be a real issue. So anyways, let's put that out.
Phil James: Great. Thanks. Gary, W.
Gary Wasdin: thank you. And I am just I'm gonna have to drop off in about 3 min to get to a to meeting, but II appreciate the time, and I will try to pop back in next month as well. But reach out to me. I'm on the Facebook group site there. She can find me there, and les can also share my email address. If anybody wants to reach out and chat about this or any of this, always happy to to talk
Phil James: great thanks. I just made note of the the Youtube channel which I didn't realize was out there. So we'll link to that in our
Phil James: in our meeting our in our website in a wiki.
Phil James: Okay, I'm kind of inclined to turn to Nick, because I know the moons and the goats are aligned, and you might have limited wiki limited Wi-fi availability.
Yeah, it seems okay, at the moment, actually. And maybe all the students have gone to go to the bars and stuff. And so there's more, more bandwidth available. 1 one thing that II thought might be worth kind of penciling in as an action from that discussion there is. Maybe it sounds like me, Mel Les
Nick: and a Guy W. It might be worth the 4 of us kind of setting up our own kind of meeting at some point and having a chat about W. What are we gonna develop here? What kind of funding is available? What kind of stuff we do want to achieve with that and relating to these kind of bare archives. And then this is a kind of distinct project that can be taken forward.
Phil James: Yeah, great. And something that a bunch of us have talked about is the idea of an intern or some other archivist to work with
Phil James: our materials, and that sounds like something that. you know, under the auspices of the
Phil James: archives and Museum, we might do together because they needed it as well. So that's cool.
Nick: Yeah. And II think Les's idea about trying to identify? Are there other international, not even bear archives, but like things like the leather archive, where there's stuff that is highly relevant to bears and bears are covered in it, even if they're not the focus.
So similarly, there's an archive in the Uk called the big Shipsgate archives that has a large kind of leather and fetish archive. And II know that they sorry. A guy guy team. My last name is Mcglynn, MCGL. YNN,
so this is not this other archive in the Uk, though even though they don't, they're not bigger specific. There's definitely kind of bare stuff captured in it.
Nick: So I think that could be part of what we're doing as well as kind of some scoping about seeing what else is the out there internationally that we could work with
Phil James: great and even in our wiki we have, like adjacent communities, listed so we've kind of started to think along those lines. Anything else internationally, Nick, you wanna mention or talk about
Nick: pointed to you as Mister International.
Nick: Yeah, yeah, I mentioned this in the the the Facebook message that I meant. So I think it's worth remembering that international outside of of the U.S.A. is is a lot of places, and it's is, I mean, E, even me, just covering the Uk would be an incredible task alone. And so this this kind of relates to what we
Nick: we've we've talked about for a couple of months now in various bits of chat, which is, I do think it'd be worth a while kind of just steaming ahead with one clear project, which at the moment is the interviews and getting that into kind of podcast format, to develop
Nick: momentum for ourselves to kind of show ourselves. There is something happening here. This is making progress, and then using that as the kind of as a kind of springboards for stuff to develop later on. That will involve getting more international people involved. Because ultimately, that's what needs to happen. There needs to be more people
Nick: who, not just joining the Facebook group, but feel like, in a sense of buy in who kind of wants to kind of be part of a committee and take stuff forward. So I mean, like I said, I'm I'm not suggesting that I want to kind of stop doing stuff actually quite the opposite but I think it's worth kind of
Nick: identifying a couple of very specific things that we've taken forwards to create momentum. And then from that we can build into something more international with like, II mean to me it's a it has always felt that international is
Nick: aspirational for the project, and justifiably, but that it would be worth kind of getting even just the kind of North American bit of it down first.
Phil James: Sure. Yeah, that makes sense, you know. I just.
Phil James: I'm Clintonian in my mind, Bill Clinton. I'm like, I've got a I've got a there's a box which is international and equals. Nick, and I understand the world is a big place, and I think you're right. That we we've already spread very thin, so we don't wanna further dilute what we're trying to do so.
Phil James: That's fine. I think it. It's a little bit of a chick of an egg of do we put out more of the word? You know, we have in our mission statement. It's non white, non, us, as part of our focus.
Phil James: But we can't really grow beyond what we can already do. So, yeah.
Nick: yeah, no, I think I think it's we can. We can be clear about that, like when it comes to for example putting in this in the podcast we can be really, really clear about like we've we've got this kind of backlog of stuff on us bears, we're using this as a starting point. But
Nick: we, we intend to kind of develop internationally, and that will involve that work being led by bears from outside of of North America.
Les Wright (he/him/his): And for for that. We we it's it's about getting those people involved rather than than kind of North American bears leading on that.
Phil James: And we did the interview with mark in London, and that went really well, that went really, really well. So that's a good expansion already of it's not just us that we're talking to and about.
Gary Turner: I know several guys in Australia, and I'm trying to
Gary Turner: motivate, or course one or more of them into being some sort of a contact for us. Because I agree with you. We it's worldwide, and we're everywhere. So we need people who can
Gary Turner: give us an ear and speak up and round up more info in their neighborhood.
Mel Baker: Yeah. And II think we can. Maybe the first focus is we kind of just try to capture as much of the English language,
Mel Baker: bear world as we can, and then obviously, places like Germany would be a high priority after that. But then we have to figure out how we're gonna do translation. And and provide those archives in both say, German and English.
Mel Baker: I guess there's a French bear community, you know. But the point is, I think it's my guess. My sense is that the leather community, and therefore the bear community is probably the strongest
Mel Baker: and, like on the Continent in Europe. And then we have these other places like Australia, New Zealand. Japan has bears,
Mel Baker: you know, to work on.
Nick: Yeah, Mel. I mean, I think you're you're absolutely right there, like talking about the language aspect as well. So at at the moment, and we are I don't know what other people's language capabilities are, but I would guess that we're overwhelming and overwhelmingly, and a kind of Anglo-language committee
Les Wright (he/him/his): and that that is necessarily going to be represented in the kind of stuff that we are doing. And yet there are lots of bears who don't speak English. There's there's a huge amount of work that's been happening in Spanish and Portuguese in Central and South America, because I'm connected with those bear researchers. They don't speak English, and they don't publish in English.
Nick: but that work is happening. And similarly, like you, the big, big Japanese bear community, big Chinese bear community, both in mainland, China and Taiwan and lots of these guys don't speak English. And so there will be.
Nick: I think we we we shouldn't pretend that we can kind of access that simply. And and so again, I think that's why we we prioritize the kind of English language stuff first, and then use that to kind of build like kind of momentum and popularity, and then get people well with those kind of backgrounds and skills involved.
Mel Baker: So here's my suggestion for how a podcast narrative arc would go in English language. So we start with the origins of the bear community.
Mel Baker: We go through its early formative stages.
Mel Baker: And then we kind of go where English, the last one is kind of talks a little bit about how
Mel Baker: it's become integrated in the English language community. And then we
Mel Baker: say that the next step is how the bear community has kind of spread to the rest of the world. And then we figure out some sort of archives.
Mel Baker: where once we have a demonstrated series series one which is our show, which could be anywhere between
Mel Baker: 6 and 8, maybe 10 episodes, half hour to and half hour episodes
Mel Baker: could be longer.
Mel Baker: then we go, and we do season. We offer to do. Season 2, and by that point we have the. We have something to show other people. This is kind of how we're working it. And then we can have people do
Mel Baker: interviews in the native languages, and we can have voice over translations
Mel Baker: that would be a big project, and that but we, if we do the original
Mel Baker: series setup, then we do that so archives, audio archives that are there for academics to use.
Mel Baker: not as face forward products necessarily to get people excited because listening to a 45 min interview with one person. Is not that interesting?
Mel Baker: using that as kind of our, here's our product. And then we can go back for bigger grants to do these bigger projects. And you know, might involve
Mel Baker: less or somebody traveling, and probably less, traveling around and doing more interviews.
Mel Baker: Making connections with these other folks that are doing the other researchers that are doing work outside the Us. I was surprised you said not Germany, because in my mind, I'm thinking. Oh, yeah, well, it's Germany, right? But it it's really exciting to know. No, it's not. As a matter of fact, it's actually in all of these other locations. So there's so much yet to learn. But I think that might be the central focus you're looking at and we could. It's something that's manageable and dual. Doable.
Mel Baker: yeah.
no.
Phil James: Okay. Well, we do have. As we've all been saying, the current focus is getting more of the interviews
Phil James: arranged. I'm amazed at the logistics of getting some of these arranged, but we've got a little bit of infrastructure, which is great. We've got several of them in the can. They've gone really. Well.
Phil James: Chris
Phil James: cometer cover spells his. However, he pronounces his name. He wasn't he, he was a not he was an excellent interview. He's a San Francisco based
Phil James: artists. And so he's very articulate because he can talk about what he does.
Phil James: And he was funny and giggly and and then he had, you know, just some wonderful images. And so that went really well. So we've got a couple under our belt, which is really gonna help. I think, Nick, you're right. We need to focus on
Phil James: getting more of our, you know, job one done. And then we can
Phil James: find some other
Phil James: possibilities. Gary, T. Mentioned Australia. I realize I have some Australia
Phil James: contacts myself who I should just reach out and tell them. You know, we want your community as part of our general community or so.
Phil James: I'm gonna do that as well. And I have a good friend who? He's on the list of potential interviewees who's
Phil James: a Japanese literature.
Phil James: They're young. He ticks so many boxes, you know, speaks Japanese, and he studies Japanese literature, and he's been there, and I'm just gonna push on him, for
Phil James: you know. Hey? Would you be interested in doing some, you know. Could you pull some people out of the bear community there who could do interviews, and he might be available to do some
Phil James: interviewing and or translation. So lots of possibilities. But you're right, Nick. We need to be careful of
Phil James: overreach.
Mel Baker: Great thanks, Nick. What we could do as an intermediate thing, too, is we could also pick a couple of these interviews that have visual components to them. And I don't work in the video space. But we could do. We could do video.
Mel Baker: maybe 10 min little episodes with people who are artists, so that we intersperser some of their artwork where they're there. And those are really great and
Mel Baker: and sticky on Youtube.
Mel Baker: the other. Podcast it can also go on Youtube because most people listen to podcasts on Youtube these days, weirdly enough, even the ones that are just audio. But we could start out with some of these really higher profile ones to to gather attention, especially if we could like recruit
Mel Baker: a young intern archivist, or somebody who has competency and skill in working with
Mel Baker: small video lips. And who's really, socially media savvy?
Phil James: Right? And we've got the you know, and be in. La has said he would help us with training, and I assume that's about that's about interviewing, but also
Phil James: gathering material. So he's another resource there. Andy Satcher, is that his name? Yeah. So he does. You know, la, based
Phil James: video stuff. The only person I know in usual. He's usually in front of a greeting screen.
Les Wright (he/him/his): So great. Okay, let's turn to Mike, we're almost through with our regular time. Yeah, less. Yeah. As a couple of other things I wanted to mention. We move on. I'm fluent in German.
Les Wright (he/him/his): and if you send me to Germany, I'm sure I will find my husband. So match make, and then
Les Wright (he/him/his): as I'm working on bare book 3 one of the next things that I'm going to do is go through all of the Bear World magazine archives
Les Wright (he/him/his): to identify people
Les Wright (he/him/his): to get in touch with who are outside the North America.
Les Wright (he/him/his): I haven't done that yet. And john Hernandez is always happy to
Les Wright (he/him/his): to connect me with them. And you know
Les Wright (he/him/his): Bear will be world. Bear magazine is a great promoter and mouthpiece for us to speak through, and
Les Wright (he/him/his): kind of like the the other thing I was thinking about.
Les Wright (he/him/his): Nick Sage in the United States, and I think Deutsche aids over in Germany
Les Wright (he/him/his): have this model where there's kind of a you know, there's a sage sages for older, gay, and Lesbian people.
Les Wright (he/him/his): They have a national organization in New York City, and then there are affiliated branches in different places around the United States. Each one is independent, but they communicate with each other.
Les Wright (he/him/his): And I just wanted to suggest that is one idea of how to think about
Les Wright (he/him/his): ex, you know, networking and building outside of the Us. Yeah. So that's it.
Mike Hernandez: Okay. Let's hear from Mike. If he's got any updates on the nonprofit front. II sent the articles of incorporation for signature to last round
Mike Hernandez: when the meeting started.
Mike Hernandez: I use the specific purpose of the corporation is to obtain capture, preserve, share, and provide education regarding the history of the beer movement.
Mike Hernandez: I took that off our wiki. If that language is not
Mike Hernandez: good, we can circulate stuff after the meeting to fix up the language. As soon as I have the signature I'll file it, fill out an application for an employee identification number and put the Attorney General, the State of California on notice. But what? What 2 things we need to remember
Mike Hernandez: filing the articles does not mean that the donations that we receive are tax exempt.
Mike Hernandez: Those donations are not tax exempt until the Irs gives us our tax exempt status. So I think one good way to raise money. We can certainly do a go fund. Me, but folks aren't gonna get anything back.
Mike Hernandez: One way to raise money is if we sell merch.
Mike Hernandez: That would not be tax deductible because
Mike Hernandez: fair market value. We're selling a T-shirt for 10 bucks. They're not gonna get a tax deduction, but that would be one good way to get in flux. And then I've got a
Mike Hernandez: you know, we need to figure out whether using someone's umbrella like LA. And M.
Mike Hernandez: Whether donations could be made to LA. Nm. Earmarked for bear history. Those would be tax deductible. But that's gonna require further conversation with Gary. The second thing is, we need odd number of directors
Mike Hernandez: hopefully, odd directors as well. But we need an odd number. We cannot solicit for positions. You can't not tell somebody we're looking for a treasure.
Mike Hernandez: Okay, the board of directors elects those positions. What we want to do is in looking for directors. Try to look for folks who have those skill sets
Mike Hernandez: so that the initial board can say.
Mike Hernandez: Hey, you know Joe's been an accountant for
Mike Hernandez: 20 years, willing to serve as treasurer. We'll have to figure out how long those positions last for
Mike Hernandez: you know what? Whether they're gonna be 2 year terms or one year terms. We don't need to do that today. That's gonna be a by law thing. But since Les is the only unless we wanna name the directors in the articles, in which case they would need to sign as well. The way this goes is less as the incorporator gets to pick the board.
Mike Hernandez: and then the board gets to pick the officers and directors. Okay, we need to be very careful. I've seen too many nonprofits hijacked
Mike Hernandez: by boards. So you wanna make sure that the folks who are coming in have been in from the ground floor and have a similar vision, or you're gonna wind up being out voted elected out of office at some point in time or removed, and then the projects out of your hand.
Les Wright (he/him/his): Yeah.
Phil James: Great. Well, that's a that's a bunch of
Phil James: progress. Thanks less. I'm distracted because someone just asked to join. And now I gotta find my my file of hey? But you can answer the questions
Phil James: I stopped going by. Just are they cute enough?
Phil James: Okay, great thanks for that. Update.
Les Wright (he/him/his): and
Phil James: A,
Mel Baker: I've now lost my notes. So what? Why, Phil is doing that. So Les will also decide how many board members are going to be correct.
Les Wright (he/him/his): Okay.
Mel Baker: So when we have that it'll be blessed will decide there'd be like a 5 member board or a 7 member board or an 8 member board.
Mike Hernandez: Right? There's there's nothing to stop him from
Mike Hernandez: soliciting. Input it's like, Do you guys think it's a good idea to have a 5 or 7. But as the initial incorporator, he has the ultimate decision making power. Until then. Okay, that's just what I wanted to know whether we had to set a specific number of board members before he signs. Okay, that's good.
Mike Hernandez: Thanks for that.
Les Wright (he/him/his): Yay. And and of course, I mean, I want us to have a group discussion, and whatever the collective will is we'll go with but anyways.
Les Wright (he/him/his): to make that official.
Les Wright (he/him/his): We have a broken audio. Okay?
Mel Baker: So I've been through board creation several times with the bears of San Francisco specifically. And
Mel Baker: so we chose. We chose a large board so that we wouldn't have a multi-tiered membership system. We thought if we had 9 people there'd be enough people to always do the work.
Mel Baker: That's probably much bigger than what we want.
Phil James: Yeah, we talked about having committees, right committee heads who reported to
Phil James: either the Board or the Board President. And
Mel Baker: yeah.
Les Wright (he/him/his): yeah. And and
Les Wright (he/him/his): we could at a future time, as a question.
Les Wright (he/him/his): amend that and increase the number of board members at such point that
Les Wright (he/him/his): there becomes a large international
Les Wright (he/him/his): contingent. Yeah.
And
Phil James: great.
Phil James: Gary, I put you on the agenda about merchandise. I already put words in your mouth just to remind people we have a merchandise store. Mike mentioned the idea of selling merchandise.
Phil James: We allegedly are selling merchandise, although I'm yet to see my
Phil James: I'll put my video on so I can say I have yet to see my T-shirt and tank top, but they're apparently on their way, so that'll be great to see, and we've kept the price really low to keep the entry point
Phil James: available for folks.
Phil James: So just people need to keep in mind if they're hoping for something new to wear to summer. Blah blah blah! Give it some time to get the merchandise.
Gary Turner: So, Phil, I wanted to address your delay and getting things shipped is because you you ordered a T-shirt. which they had plenty of, but you ordered a tank top, which they apparently needed to order some, so
Gary Turner: they should be coming in soon if they haven't already, so they can print that and send it to you, and they holding off to send them all at the same time.
Gary Turner: I need something, you know. Strapless. Great thanks for that update. And thanks for hey? Gary, I just got a
Phil James: a note that you've updated the file you've sent around about the logo description. Is there anything that we need to change on the web on the blinky about it?
Gary Turner: I don't think. So II went more with the shorter. What less? It suggested earlier.
Phil James: Okay, cool. I just, I gotta notice that the file
Phil James: someone had updated the file that you've been sending around. So that's fine. I just want to know if there's something
Phil James: major. Great. Okay.
Phil James: Mel. Anything from you for
Phil James: you longstanding central committee member.
Phil James: Oh, you're muted. You're muted. You're muted. I actually have that comment in one of it's podcasting working on for work. I actually have. You're muted
Mel Baker: because it's a COVID-19 store of it. Sorry about the first 4 years of COVID-19, and what we learned it didn't learn, and HIV and blah blah blah, anyway.
Mel Baker: I have not been able to do anything on the podcast or audio cast. I know we are not using squadcast. I'm sorry that that turned out to be much more complicated with be since they've merged with the this editing system.
Mel Baker: Yeah,
Mel Baker: if we're doing month to month. It may be worth just dropping squadcast, and
Mel Baker: we can either stay with Zoom, or we could go to a much simpler format called clean feed, but it does not have video.
Mel Baker: I just hate zoom. Zoom has such low sound quality. But if we're gonna have, if some of these podcasts are gonna be clips from people
Mel Baker: that were recorded on cassette tape back in the day.
Phil James: I guess zoom is not that big a deal? Well, some of what we're some of what we're. We're already using descript to do some of our transcriptions. So
Phil James: that's good. And
Phil James: you know, Zoom, transcription is okay. But the script can take out the words I mean, there's literally a button to take out the words and and do other editing of the file. So
Mel Baker: I am using that a little bit so far. Yeah, how does it? How does it sound? I mean, the problem is that it looks like in the Transcript. You can pull it out. But that person's last word was on an up. They were doing an up thing. They were making it up.
Phil James: I did that 1 h
Phil James: or half hour. You know, Demo, from a company and I haven't used it much since then, but they've they've got all kinds of tricks about, you know. Add a third of a second, or make sure to review it. And here's how to get your cursor in the right place. So I think there's some possibility there.
Phil James: III update from Mike that we're sort of on the verge of off. I'm thinking of it as on the verge of nonprofit status. Then. You know, someday, we'll get this money back. So that's cool.
Mel Baker: Okay, yeah, let's just let's then let's just stay with it. I admit I
Mel Baker: I'm old school. I want to see the waveform. Yeah.
Phil James: but I've I've heard good things about the script. So yeah, I'm impressed with the possibilities. It's I, you know. I forgotten how the 2 companies are even married to each other. Oh, alright found it great.
Phil James: Okay, we have a new
Phil James: meeting Attendee. Which is Paul. So, Paul, welcome. We've seen you on the on the Facebook page. Glad you could make it, and
Phil James: anything in particular you wanted to get out of this meeting, or say to folks, or
Paul Tran: well, I guess first off les well, the reason reason I was kind of drawn to this group was because, I'm in another Facebook group called bring on the bears and the Asians.
Paul Tran: which we can talk more about that later, if you're looking for more Asian bears, I guess. But I mentioned that a long time ago, maybe 20 years ago I wrote an essay
Paul Tran: on kind of like bear culture.
Paul Tran: and the only
Paul Tran: it was really hard to find information about it like long time ago. And I actually ran across les Book. I still have it. The first fair book.
Paul Tran: So that kind of got me into
Paul Tran: the culture. So I am a little.
to say the least.
Paul Tran: But yeah, I appreciate all the work you guys are doing. And I'm honestly, just like really curious. And I would like to help in any way I can. So yeah, thank you for having me.
Phil James: Where are you? Physically? Time zone wise and
Phil James: no help. Oh, I mean? Thanks. You're running a commune in the Philippines, and you're 7 time zones away. And you've got a harem of men outside your door waiting to speak to you. Yeah, okay.
Gary Turner: Oh, it is.
Mel Baker: It is great having you. There's exactly we want. We're trying to like, get away from just a bunch of us old, old bears and that's the whole point. And we want your input. And we want your unique experience.
Mel Baker: And the fact that hopefully, Bardem Bardem started
Mel Baker: as a alternative body sort of thing and an alternative approach to masculinity, that it was okay to be
Mel Baker: kind of masculine and have beards and
Mel Baker: not be a swimmers build body or not necessarily be a body builder and and just, and you know you'd come up to people, and you would just be friendly and rub their bellies and say, Grr, and you know, it was just this thing that was a very different thing, and the original bear movement really was. I'm a bear. You just said you were a bear, and you didn't have to have facial hair. You didn't have to be fit a body type, but it was. It was much a cultural thing, and then, unfortunately, over time, it kind of
Mel Baker: turned into a
Mel Baker: subgroup that had its own rules, which I remember going back to the Lone Star after not being there for a few years, and I'd lost a bunch of weight. and I'm still a big guy, but somebody still. But oh, no, you're not a bear. You're not big enough.
Mel Baker: I'm like
Mel Baker: you, motherfucker. I helped found the fucking club. This started this. I am God damned! Yes, bear! How dare you say that about anybody? How are? How dare you take this movement, which was antibody shaming and try to shame people?
Mel Baker: And I just was furious. I almost threw the drink in his face. I was just like you, asshole. so
Mel Baker: it's interesting to see that the movement did kind of go through these periods where it tried to become smaller. And then it seems that that looks like now it's becoming bigger again. So it's really exciting
Mel Baker: to know that we've got this history and this this kind of alternative way for people to kind of make connections and and love their bodies and love their different body types and
Mel Baker: and not just be all tied into that. So we're really excited to have you here. And yes, thank you. Yes. Can I ask what kind of skill sets you have? What do you do for employment?
Paul Tran: Right now, I'm a high school English and computer science teacher so kind of a weird combination. But yeah, and I used to be a chef, too. So I cook a lot. II, jack of a lot of
Mel Baker: well teaching computer science to high schoolers would probably be really appropriate for this group.
Paul Tran: Right? I mean.
Mel Baker: you know, most of us have lived through different iterations of of tech from Ds onward. I mean, I remember my first using computers and backslash Colon, CC, and you know, to get stuff going. But we're never on the cutting edge anymore. You know, we we have learned, we've gone through all the technology stuff. So
Mel Baker: having people that can help us really
Mel Baker: totally expand our use of social media give us perspectives on how younger people are accessing materials online is going to be just so critical in our mission going forward. So
Mel Baker: you know there's one place you can do it and come to LA. We'll let you all cook for us.
Paul Tran: Yeah, don't be, stranger. If you're ever in la feel free to reach out. But yeah, II would like to help. However, I can. I'm actually going to be at Tbru next week, so I don't know if you
Paul Tran: need me to talk to people or whatever. But I can
Mel Baker: do stuff. There. Tb, are you
Mel Baker: Texas bear roundup. Yeah.
Paul Tran: Put together an actual you know. Kind of media kit.
Phil James: A little wonder woman. Lunch box of.
Mel Baker: you know. 1 one thing we could do that would be very good is we? Can. I can put together a recording kit.
Mel Baker: We're 500 box.
Mel Baker: 600 bucks, maybe, which is little task cam recorder. And you know, we were talking about Storycorps, I can set up something that would be kind of like a story record recording gear
Mel Baker: that would be high quality that we could. Basically, I'm going to be in Texas next month. Okay, I've shipped the. Here's the equipment.
Mel Baker: And here's the instructions. And here's how you use it. And then less is gonna need it 3 weeks from now. So you're gonna put it back in the box and ship it to wet to less, and we could just have one
Mel Baker: set of gear that we send around the country.
Mel Baker: Someday we'll have $500 to be able to spend on such things. In the meantime we could probably do this
Mel Baker: decently with 2 laptops. So somebody brings their own laptop and a spare laptop.
Mel Baker: Yeah, and we could do. Kind of
Mel Baker: this is, where need your expertise? Ii was amazed when the pandemic started. How little of a studio I needed anymore to produce audio.
Mel Baker: how much I was able to do just with software. So there may be other ways to do this.
Mel Baker: using some squad cast, and things we already have for for the things, but for in one, on one interviews. sitting down with people.
Mel Baker: we can probably come up with a reasonably inexpensive set of recording care.
Phil James: Okay, so couple of things. Paul, if you think it's relevant to this group, the the bears and Asians Facebook group that you mentioned. So drop a note into our Facebook.
Phil James: you know. Just add a message there and then we'll kind of cross pollinate from there.
Phil James: less. We want to get into our meeting under the tape that you're soliciting input for the bare book 3 and you know the idea of Co. Branding. Maybe you and Gary T. Should go talk about
Phil James: co-branding. Gary's been very generous with his time about merchandise, and I've been squelching of we only want one logo. We only want one logo. And then Gary comes along and says, Hey, how about art? You came along with the idea of how about Co branded for
Les Wright (he/him/his): the P. Town bear week. So
Phil James: you guys talk about that?
Phil James: Then we also want to mention that you're looking for P. Town bear week
Phil James: collaboration idea, slash activities less. So let's put the word out on our Facebook page because that might just remind people.
Phil James: You know, we've got our, our our arms spread out of things to do.
Phil James: So I'll I'll make a post to
Phil James: the our Facebook group. See if people can come up with some ideas.
Les Wright (he/him/his): Poll, there's people like polls. Polls are good. Yeah. Oh, I wanted to say, Paul, welcome to to the group. And I in the check in the chat. I sent you my my email, and I would love to
Les Wright (he/him/his): talk more about Asian and Asian American bears.
Les Wright (he/him/his): And and yeah, II am going to be in P. Town at Ford all of P. Town bear week. Frank Mahoney, very generously, and through the
Les Wright (he/him/his): nudging or introductions through Gary Turner has.
Les Wright (he/him/his): It's going to put me up at the
Les Wright (he/him/his): at at the at the clubhouse there for the whole time. And Frank has been very again, very, you know, open like, whatever what kind of events would we like to do?
Les Wright (he/him/his): And
Les Wright (he/him/his): so yeah. And and I'm also, you know, wondering about. You know
Les Wright (he/him/his): how we could pro sell various project merchandise
Les Wright (he/him/his): anyways, all there, there are a whole bunch of different things.
Gary Turner: Last I put you in in touch with Frank, and I'm glad that they were able to find a room for you, because my understanding is that you will be in the house that most of the other P. Town bears board and team bear folks will be in there going to and from different events, selling stuff at the firehouse downtown. All of that. So you you will have
Gary Turner: be more simply located as well. I think it's just a little ways up the road from the boat slip in one direction, and the Crown and Anchor and City Hall, Town Hall, and the other direction. You have a lot more access to interview all kinds of other people. Yes.
Les Wright (he/him/his): which is excellent. And I plan to do. And I will also that mention, I will. Yeah, I'm going to follow up with with Frank after today's meeting
Les Wright (he/him/his): with with some ideas. Yeah. awesome. And also, do you know, are you gonna have the yeah, the firehouse, the table where we could leave some
Les Wright (he/him/his): very few project information. Okay.
Gary Turner: yeah. So I guess that means we need to work on some sort of brochure or postcard announces the Bear History Project, and and how folks can get in touch with us. So they remember us. And actually.
Gary Turner: if we have them printed up ahead of time, they could probably be added to the welcome and slash run package that people buy when they come in and register to attend where we can get a T-shirt and all that other stuff. Oh, the bling bag. Yeah. Yes, the bling bag. Exactly.
Phil James: Yeah. We tried to do the QR code route last year
Phil James: actually spent money on that so we can do that for free. So yeah, let's investigate that. I'm just hearing from Jeffrey. One more topic I'm just hearing from Jeffrey Glover on text. He's in New York City, but he will help with the website less, and he'll be in touch with you and me about website options, because we've got kind of this. You know, the week is where we put most current stuff.
Phil James: We're sitting on the domain name
Phil James: but we don't have a way to update it at the moment, and II just can't. I just can't. So Jeffrey will help. He'll he'll get in touch with us next week, and and a couple of things I did want to share to update.
Les Wright (he/him/his): an old college friend of mine maintains my personal website
Les Wright (he/him/his): and is not willing to also do the bear history. One
Phil James: right?
Les Wright (he/him/his): And the issue is
Les Wright (he/him/his): the Te technical stuff technological stuff which I don't understand. But when I tried to make fair history.org go live and turn up in in Google searches, it wouldn't do that. And.
Les Wright (he/him/his): Jonathan, he figured out a way around it, so that when you do, when you do use that
Les Wright (he/him/his): bearhistory.org, it actually points
Les Wright (he/him/his): to a page within my my personal website.
Les Wright (he/him/his): which is so. So the actual addresses is not very history.org, but it does get you there.
Les Wright (he/him/his): So. And that's kind of, you know.
Les Wright (he/him/his): temporary, until we, as an organization actually own
Les Wright (he/him/his): and and can administer the website. And and how this originally came up is.
Les Wright (he/him/his): all of my pages have links and texts that appear at the top of the page.
Les Wright (he/him/his): and there's no way to remove them from the bear history.org page
Les Wright (he/him/his): without having to completely
Les Wright (he/him/his): redo my, you know
Les Wright (he/him/his): my page.
Gary Turner: Well, actually, we'll talk to. We'll talk to Jeffrey next week. Sounds like the last time I checked bear history. oRg. It went to your page on your site, but he was able to change the artwork to use our logo.
Gary Turner: but we have the logo and my personal links
Les Wright (he/him/his): overlaid with each other. That's what we don't want to have.
Phil James: Yeah, okay, we'll talk to Jeffrey about it next week. And
Phil James: hopefully move forward there. Okay, anything else? Anybody? Yeah, quick, quick. I'm assuming that'll be a wordpress site. If we want to embed the podcast that's the Easiest. Put place to put embed codes, you can tap on the podcast when we get them or some of the archives that may be initially have a look at the Facebook Central Committee chat.
Phil James: Jeffrey put a note in there. Wordpress is one of his ideas, but he had.
Mel Baker: He was doing stream of consciousness. So there's a number of ideas that are posted. Okay? And then the other one was, we'll need to eventually stand up a Youtube site.
Phil James: Yeah.
Mel Baker: yeah.
Gary Turner: But III also cast a vote for doing wordpress.
Mel Baker: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Les Wright (he/him/his): yeah, even, even, I have a Youtube channel.
Phil James: Great? Okay? Anything else. Anybody again. Welcome Paul as somebody who hasn't been doing this forever. Before we started, Paul asked me how long this has been going on, and I said, 700 years. I think we're into our, I think we're into our third year of the reboot. Is that right? Less? Yeah. Yeah. So it really, I know I'm the cheerleader, and I say this monthly. But
Phil James: and Mike Mike, thank you so much for your report and your work on the nonprofit side, because that's kind of the next big thing. That's really the next
Phil James: level of.
Mike Hernandez: we have our app together, and we're getting it on the road. So thank you for your work there. I know you're very, very busy. Sorry it took so long to get it done, but we're we're heading the right direction, and I'm glad to. We found the right partner in the leather archives. You know we were trying to get the sent. The
Mel Baker: GLBT. Museum in San Francisco, saying, Oh, bears started here, you should do it, and they were bobbing us off, and LA. Was an option. But this is clearly a better option.
Mel Baker: Sounds like we were both at the same level of wanting to organize. Some projects together. There's a lot more overlap, you know I
Mel Baker: I'm I'm glad. It seems we finally figured that out. So now those pieces are all coming together.
Phil James: Great. Okay, thanks, folks. I'll post
Phil James: usual meeting time for next month. I didn't write it down, but I'll assume it's the second Saturday.
Phil James: and I'll post that to the group. I'll try to figure out what was wrong with
Phil James: The you know what I posted was not a link to the actual meeting, but it should be the same. I haven't changed it. So
Phil James: we'll go with that
Phil James: oh, and also for those of you to go around the Central Committee. If you haven't tried to get access to the like. The interview files. Go try to get access to them, because it might be I invited you. But you you're not in yet, so go, you know. Click on that, or let me know, and we'll try again because
Phil James: less had trouble this morning. So let's say you in now. I also sent you a file by
Phil James: okay, I gave you access. And I sent you the file by email. So it's a rough transcription. But it's there.
Phil James: Okay. Great.
Phil James: Okay, thanks. Oh, Nick and Nick. Yay, I just wanna know where Nick, where Nick is taking all these 19 year Olds
Phil James: volcano. I'll leave the rest of your imagination. And he's in Europe. We don't have to worry about different things in Europe.
Mel Baker: You're you're actually when you're actually on a volcano.
Phil James: We're we're all okay. Gotta go gotta go. Thanks. Everybody. Bye.