Speaker 1: Cool Media.
Speaker 2: Hello, and welcome to Cool People Did Cool Stuff. You're
Speaker 2: a weekly reminder that despite all the bad things that
Speaker 2: are happening, there's people who try to do things about
Speaker 2: the bad things that are happening. And I'm your host,
Speaker 2: Margaret Kiljoy, and with me this week to talk about
Speaker 2: libraries is Samantha McVay. Hi, Hi, how are you.
Speaker 1: I'm great? Thanks for having me on again. I love
Speaker 1: being a part of the show.
Speaker 2: Yay, yeah, yeah, Okay, I have a question. You're the
Speaker 2: host of stuff mom never told you? Correct, I don't
Speaker 2: know that your relationship with your own mother. Does your
Speaker 2: mom ever get mad about the implication that she never
Speaker 2: told you these things?
Speaker 1: So that's a loaded question. I don't have time. This
Speaker 1: is a real loaded question, Okay, for need this. When
Speaker 1: I told my mother I was quitting my social work
Speaker 1: job to become a podcaster, which, as you would expect,
Speaker 1: first thing was radio what does that mean? Yeah? That
Speaker 1: was that, and then it went into you know, feminist show.
Speaker 1: Oh no, you've become one of those people who was
Speaker 1: ruining the world, And that proceeded to a cry session
Speaker 1: and I was ignoring each other for a while. Better yet,
Speaker 1: speaking of libraries, I actually myself. My co host recently
Speaker 1: wrote a book based on our show, Intersectional Feminism, and
Speaker 1: I have completely hidden that from my mother in fear
Speaker 1: of her being angry with me.
Speaker 2: Oh shit, I'm sorry that I brought it up. Thank
Speaker 2: you for your honesty about.
Speaker 1: It anyway, bluded questions. But I will say, because my
Speaker 1: mother is absolutely against those things, there's a lot that
Speaker 1: my mother did not tell me.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so you have a lot of material for the show.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so there you go.
Speaker 2: Mine would be the like, there's them. I think it's
Speaker 2: reductrous or something has a meme or headline or whatever
Speaker 2: of a you know, parent just accidentally forgot to mention
Speaker 2: that health issue they've been struggling with for forty years
Speaker 2: that runs in the family. Yeah, I'm just like, whoops,
Speaker 2: never brought that one up.
Speaker 1: I can't add that to the trauma that I've endured
Speaker 1: because I'm adopted.
Speaker 2: So oh yeah, no, fair enough.
Speaker 1: There's so many loaded things that we're talking about. I
Speaker 1: apologize for the trauma dumping.
Speaker 2: Yeah nope. Now I'm just gonna let me see if
Speaker 2: I can come up with another thing to accidentally bring
Speaker 2: up that I.
Speaker 1: Uh, as you can see, I'm handling it well, you
Speaker 1: did great.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, Sophie is our producer. Hi, Sophie, Okay. I
Speaker 2: was when you asked that question, I was like, oh,
Speaker 2: I knows.
Speaker 1: She knows a little bit of trauma. We kind of
Speaker 1: bonded over it. I was like, listen loaded questions. You
Speaker 1: can't come in with those types of questions as an intro.
Speaker 1: I love making an awkward presence.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, no, I'm gonna I'm gonna come up with
Speaker 2: some even worse ones later. That's my plan. Our audio
Speaker 2: engineer is Rory Hi.
Speaker 1: Rory Hi Roy Hello, Sorry about the trauma dumping on
Speaker 1: YouTube arth.
Speaker 2: The music was written for us by Unwoman and the
Speaker 2: main subject this week is New York and probably the
Speaker 2: US's first Puerto Rican librarian. She was an Afro Puerto
Speaker 2: Rican author in puppeteer and trilingual hero named Puta Bepre
Speaker 2: and she is a fascinating subject. I couldn't find a
Speaker 2: biography on her, like a book length biography on her,
Speaker 2: but there's a lot of academic papers librarians. There's a
Speaker 2: lot of academic papers about her and a lot of
Speaker 2: like pop articles about her. So I put together the
Speaker 2: best that I can. Her name was the first one
Speaker 2: on the list that was given to me by a
Speaker 2: librarian at the conference this year, And yeah, I was
Speaker 2: gonna do them all, but it looks like I'm doing
Speaker 2: Purim and the rest will do it some other time.
Speaker 2: Poor A Belprey was born on February second. Normally you'd
Speaker 2: say what year someone was born after you say the date.
Speaker 2: Who fucking knows what year she was born. Sources will
Speaker 2: claim at ninety nine, nineteen oh one, nineteen oh two,
Speaker 2: and nineteen oh three. She claimed nineteen oh three, so
Speaker 2: I'm going to go with that one. I will let
Speaker 2: her self identify birth year. It's almost like weird, Well,
Speaker 2: they're supporting documents claiming other years, so it's not just
Speaker 2: a like we don't trust her or whatever. Right, she
Speaker 2: was generally reasonably cagey about her time in Puerto Rico
Speaker 2: as a kid, and which, you know, whatever, Like no
Speaker 2: one needs to talk about their childhood unless the host
Speaker 2: of a podcast brings it up rudely at the top
Speaker 2: of an episode. So like, she's not a public figure,
Speaker 2: she's a librarian. You know, a lot of what is
Speaker 2: known about her are educated guesses. But she was one
Speaker 2: of five kids who grew up in a loving and
Speaker 2: religious family, most likely Catholic, but she didn't seem to
Speaker 2: write or talk much about religion as best as I
Speaker 2: can tell. She also seems to have written or talked
Speaker 2: very little about being black. We've talked about this before
Speaker 2: on the show, Like on the episodes we did about
Speaker 2: the Young Lords, which is this Puerto Rican I guess
Speaker 2: Hall sort of the Puerto Rican Black Panthers, and that's fair,
Speaker 2: but also they're peers, so it's like, well, then the
Speaker 2: black Panthers are the Black Young Lords whatever, you know, right, Anyway,
Speaker 2: we talked about how Puerto Rican racial identity, at least
Speaker 2: historically looks really different than race looks in the Continental US.
Speaker 2: So it's like, makes a lot of sense that she
Speaker 2: identified strongly as Puerto Rican and that is mostly what
Speaker 2: she talked about. She later married a black man and
Speaker 2: regularly lived in black neighborhoods, but it seems that her
Speaker 2: identity was primarily Puerto Rican. What she did write and
Speaker 2: talk about was her connection to the legacy of Puerto
Speaker 2: Rican folklore. She wrote quote, I grew up in a
Speaker 2: home of storytellers, listening to stories which had been handed
Speaker 2: down by word of mouth for generations. As a child,
Speaker 2: I enjoyed telling many of these tales that I had heard.
Speaker 2: The characters became quite real to me. I remember during
Speaker 2: school recess that some of us would gather under the
Speaker 2: shade of the tam entree. There we would take turns
Speaker 2: telling stories. The best guess that people make it almost
Speaker 2: feels like ghoulish, the way that people write biographies, where
Speaker 2: you're like trying to dredge up this stuff that people
Speaker 2: clearly just didn't really want to talk about, and there's
Speaker 2: no reason that anyone should really care about the real,
Speaker 2: specific nitty gritty of the class upbringing of this you
Speaker 2: know person, But yeah, you know, here we are. The
Speaker 2: best guess is that she was in a family that
Speaker 2: was sort of culturally middle class, but without money, right,
Speaker 2: without much money. Her father was a building contractor who
Speaker 2: moved the family around a lot for work, and she
Speaker 2: grew up speaking Spanish, English, and French, and both of
Speaker 2: her parents were literate. Her older sister at least taught
Speaker 2: in Puerto Rico for ten years before moving to New
Speaker 2: York City. This is one of the earlier waves of
Speaker 2: Puerto Rican movement into the US. And again, if you
Speaker 2: want to hear way more about that. Listen to our
Speaker 2: episodes about the young Lords. Porta graduated high school in
Speaker 2: nineteen nineteen, then started college at the University of Puerto Rico.
Speaker 2: But when Alise got married in nineteen twenty, the whole
Speaker 2: family traveled to New York City for the wedding and
Speaker 2: Poro was like, yeah, fuck it, I'm staying in New York.
Speaker 2: And so she stayed in New York and at first
Speaker 2: she got work as a seamstress, which was one of
Speaker 2: the main jobs available to Puerto Rican immigrants at the time.
Speaker 2: But then in nineteen twenty one, she was hired by
Speaker 2: the Public Library of New York, which means I can
Speaker 2: introduce another hero of the episode. Ernestine Rose never met
Speaker 2: anyone named Ernestine. One day. I'm going to meet a
Speaker 2: trans woman named Ernestine, because trans women loved to name
Speaker 2: ourselves like weird old timing names, said Margaret. And I
Speaker 2: definitely know some like Agatha's and you know, whatever.
Speaker 1: Good name.
Speaker 2: I haven't met a Gertrude yet, but it'll happen, oh hope.
Speaker 2: So Ernestine Rose was named after Ernestine Rose, which made
Speaker 2: her hard to look up because it was a much
Speaker 2: more famous Ernestine Rose. The first, Ernestine Rose was an
Speaker 2: abolition and suffer just who I don't know a ton about.
Speaker 2: But Wikipedia called her the first Jewish feminist, or rather
Speaker 2: Wikipedia's as that other people called her that, and who
Speaker 2: am I to argue with? I didn't read much about her.
Speaker 1: We're going to mark that, okay, I.
Speaker 2: Know, because it was like, you can only follow each
Speaker 2: rabbit hole like a couple steps right, Rose, the younger
Speaker 2: one is like the already the side character. And then
Speaker 2: I was like, now I'm going to read about this.
Speaker 2: I'm like, wait a second, what am I doing? I
Speaker 2: have I have to record at some point?
Speaker 1: Did you chase after so many? Yeah?
Speaker 2: How do you handle the like level?
Speaker 1: I have so many mini series episodes because it ends
Speaker 1: up being like I have a thought and then that
Speaker 1: thought turns into see, we did a whole religious trauma
Speaker 1: and I thought it might be two parter. It's thirteen
Speaker 1: parts all an hour.
Speaker 2: Long, amazing. I really want to listen to that one.
Speaker 1: So it goes bad. I don't do well. I don't
Speaker 1: do well.
Speaker 2: How long ago? How how far back?
Speaker 1: Last year?
Speaker 2: This year? Year?
Speaker 1: Being in this year, because we were talking about just
Speaker 1: overall the new anti feminist movement and then talking about
Speaker 1: anti abortion movements and how it's very much rooted into
Speaker 1: religious trauma and white supremacy. So it became a whole thing,
Speaker 1: and then we went down so many rabbit holes. But
Speaker 1: it's specific honestly to American Baptists and like that. We
Speaker 1: don't even talk much about Catholicism. And that's how deep
Speaker 1: we went in without going there.
Speaker 2: Amazing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it was a thing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, okay, So the answer is that you would also
Speaker 2: now be doing a whole side episode about Ernestine Rose
Speaker 2: one and Ernestine Rose two. I appreciate that.
Speaker 1: You're doing better at controlling this and actually being really
Speaker 1: really like following through things as opposed to myself, who
Speaker 1: I'm like, I can definitely do this in thirteen parts.
Speaker 1: Let's go. So you're doing.
Speaker 2: Great, Yeah, absolutely, Yeah, so much discipline. So our Ernestine
Speaker 2: that we're going to talk about the librarian Ernestine. We're
Speaker 2: going to call her Ernestine even though she isn't related
Speaker 2: to Ernestine Senior, just because it was funny to me.
Speaker 2: Both of them seem cool as hell. Ernestine Junior is
Speaker 2: this white lady who may or may not have been Jewish.
Speaker 2: She apparently claimed she was Jewish and then one historian
Speaker 2: I read disputes this who graduated from library school in
Speaker 2: nineteen oh five, making her one of the first bona
Speaker 2: fide librarians in the United States of America, and she
Speaker 2: hit the ground running to try and make libraries cooler.
Speaker 2: By nineteen oh eight, she was working hard to make
Speaker 2: sure that whatever library she was in was actually integrated
Speaker 2: into the ethnic community that it was part of. So
Speaker 2: that's like the big thing we're going to talk about
Speaker 2: is integrating libraries into the communities that they're part of,
Speaker 2: instead of being sort of, you know, a place that
Speaker 2: shows up and is like everyone should think like these
Speaker 2: white people think. And at the beginning, this meant serving
Speaker 2: the Yiddish and Russian speaking Jewish community that she worked in,
Speaker 2: which is probably the community we've talked about a thousand
Speaker 2: times on this show, because that's where all the weird
Speaker 2: the anarchists and communists from Russia were hanging out because
Speaker 2: they were all Yiddish speaking Jews in like the nineteen
Speaker 2: tens in New York City, and later she moved to
Speaker 2: Harlem to a black and Jewish community and immediately started
Speaker 2: hiring non white people for the library, like Katherine Allen,
Speaker 2: a Black Woman. She also organized the nineteen twenty one
Speaker 2: exhibition of Quote Negro art at the library, which, according
Speaker 2: to author George Hutchinson, Quote marked the beginning of the
Speaker 2: Harlem Renaissance in the visual arts. She made Shit Happen then,
Speaker 2: also in nineteen twenty one, she hired puro Belprey because
Speaker 2: there was a sizeable and growing Puerto Rican community in
Speaker 2: the neighborhood as well. She actually first tried to hire Elease,
Speaker 2: the sister who got married, but then Elisa's husband told
Speaker 2: her she wasn't allowed to go get this job. It's
Speaker 2: like a throwaway line, like most of the things you
Speaker 2: read are like was offered to a Lease who was
Speaker 2: busy and couldn't do it, And then you read the
Speaker 2: slightly more in depth piece and is like her husband
Speaker 2: told her she couldn't, so she didn't.
Speaker 1: She wasn't allowed.
Speaker 2: Yeah, unlike Pora, who did not get married until she
Speaker 2: was forty, which is probably the better way to go
Speaker 2: about it in certain circumstances like an incredibly patriarchal culture
Speaker 2: of the United States at the time, and so Pooro
Speaker 2: was hired as the Hispanic assistant, working in both the
Speaker 2: adult and children's rooms of the library. Her passion was
Speaker 2: clearly the children's room. This was the one hundred and
Speaker 2: thirty fifth Street branch of the library in Harlem during
Speaker 2: the Harlem Renaissance, and soon the library was the center
Speaker 2: of that cultural renaissance, or was a center of that
Speaker 2: cultural renaissance. And I still haven't deep dived the Harlem Renaissance,
Speaker 2: and I'm not going to do it today, But we've
Speaker 2: touched on a few times, like on our episodes about
Speaker 2: Ben Fletcher, the black labor organizer from Philly. Also, my
Speaker 2: great grandmother was like a white artist who knew a
Speaker 2: lot of the people in scene, especially where it overlapped
Speaker 2: with like leftism more broadly. And so I really want
Speaker 2: to learn more about it at some point, but I
Speaker 2: didn't this time. Suffice it to say, Harlem was the
Speaker 2: coolest shit place in the nineteen twenties where black people
Speaker 2: did a ton of amazing cultural stuff, and the library
Speaker 2: was part of it. It was intentionally part of it.
Speaker 2: Because librarians didn't start off as magically known as a
Speaker 2: place where people could meet and do things. It seems
Speaker 2: like they were seen as white places for white stuff.
Speaker 2: Until all these people at the one hundred and thirty
Speaker 2: Fifth Street branch changed that they held talks by like Langston,
Speaker 2: Hughes and a bunch of other folks, and one librarian
Speaker 2: later wrote about this time quote, if you are familiar
Speaker 2: with Harlem, you are aware of the fact that the
Speaker 2: streets are frequently made impassable by the many soapbox speakers
Speaker 2: and their enthusiastic audiences. It occurred to us that if
Speaker 2: people will listen to politics and patent medicines, then they
Speaker 2: will listen to education, provided it as well presented to them.
Speaker 2: So we employed one of the most eloquent and most
Speaker 2: popular of these speakers and paid him to address large
Speaker 2: crowds at strategic corners on the streets of Harlem once
Speaker 2: a week. These people were urged to come to a
Speaker 2: meeting at the library. Some two thousand people were reached
Speaker 2: each week. If out of these fifty appeared at the library,
Speaker 2: we were confident that something worthwhile had been accomplished. And
Speaker 2: so they just yeah, got people to come to the library.
Speaker 2: The other thing that I think is really important to
Speaker 2: take away from that is from the very beginning, soapboxing,
Speaker 2: which everyone understands, is the podcasting of the oldie times,
Speaker 2: frequently mixed up politics and patent medicines, which brings us
Speaker 2: to the next segment of this show, the advertisers, and
Speaker 2: we're back, and so yeah, this library, well the Division
Speaker 2: of Negro Literature History in Prince in nineteen twenty five.
Speaker 2: Ernestine Rose also helped the first black woman get through
Speaker 2: library school, a woman named Nella Larson, who worked for
Speaker 2: a while at the one hundred and thirty fifth Street branch,
Speaker 2: but is much more famous for her place in literature
Speaker 2: as a writer of American modernism. And it's like the
Speaker 2: most important novelist of the Harlem Renaissance. And there are
Speaker 2: biographies about her. And so I'm like, nope, too much
Speaker 2: of a side character. Can't because one day probably topic
Speaker 2: of her own.
Speaker 1: We love bonus episodes on our show, so you should
Speaker 1: do bonus episodes with this.
Speaker 2: I'm just saying I do two a week. I mean,
Speaker 2: I guess you do do five? Yeah? All right, all right,
Speaker 2: fair enough.
Speaker 1: You're doing great, Keep going.
Speaker 2: I am so impressed that you also still have time
Speaker 2: to come on other people's shows. I am genuinely I'm honored.
Speaker 1: For you and for Sophie anytime, all the time. Oh thanks, Yes,
Speaker 1: I love this show. I learned so much.
Speaker 2: Yeah. The other the thing that happened in nineteen twenty
Speaker 2: five is that Poora Bell Prey enrolled in library school
Speaker 2: and soon she's going to become the first Puerto Rican
Speaker 2: library in New York City and probably the country. I
Speaker 2: really liked the source I read that was like, yeah,
Speaker 2: we know, she's the first Puerto Rican library in New
Speaker 2: York City, and it's like in parentheses it's like which
Speaker 2: realistically probably means the country, but they know they can't
Speaker 2: say it because it's not. Because I really appreciate that
Speaker 2: verified because like I everyone knows that listens to this.
Speaker 2: I'm an enemy of any time anyone says the first
Speaker 2: person who did something something because right, like you can't
Speaker 2: prove it just anyway whatever my brain works in a
Speaker 2: very specific way.
Speaker 1: Oh no, I'm with you. Like when we talk about
Speaker 1: first on anything, it's understanding that it has to do
Speaker 1: with who's writing the history, where the history, historical contexts
Speaker 1: come from, and who's also claiming what. So it's always
Speaker 1: asterisk because it also you might they just may not
Speaker 1: be discovered, and that's okay because that's some amazing things
Speaker 1: when you get to discover new.
Speaker 2: Information totally being the first isn't the only thing that matters,
Speaker 2: you know exactly.
Speaker 1: I'm sure she was just excited to be able to
Speaker 1: share her knowledge and her love and her passion.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and she does it. She does it so much.
Speaker 2: She gets involved in writing folklore. She once said, quote,
Speaker 2: one of my duties in the children's room was to
Speaker 2: read the fairytale shelves. Thus the folklore of the world
Speaker 2: opened for me. As I shelved the books, I searched
Speaker 2: for some of the folk tales I had heard at home.
Speaker 2: There wasn't even one. A sudden feeling of loss rose
Speaker 2: within me. And so she's at library school and she
Speaker 2: has this teacher, another Librarrian folklorist, a white woman named
Speaker 2: Mary gold Davis. So during that class she writes a
Speaker 2: children's book called Peezzi Martine. This goes on to be
Speaker 2: published in nineteen thirty two as the first Spanish language
Speaker 2: children's book published by a mainstream press in the United States.
Speaker 2: And it is a romance between a cockroach and a mouse.
Speaker 2: And she is very clear this is not her story.
Speaker 2: She heard this from her grandmother, and it is a
Speaker 2: Puerto Rican story, like a lot of I've only been
Speaker 2: able to track down some of her stuff, and it'll
Speaker 2: specifically say like a Puerto Rican story rather than like
Speaker 2: it'll have her name as the author, but instead of saying,
Speaker 2: like buy what about prey, it would say like a
Speaker 2: Puerto Rican story. It's it's it's pretty interesting.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's so interesting when you see people with the
Speaker 1: love for their heritage, because we've seen it more and
Speaker 1: more than goodness with like the indigenous people bringing their
Speaker 1: own folklore or like any kind of storytelling to life,
Speaker 1: and they share it with people and they make sure
Speaker 1: to write it because they we know with the colonization,
Speaker 1: we know and all this stuff white people trying to
Speaker 1: erase history. Part of raising that history is those lores
Speaker 1: and making trying to make them disappear or trying to
Speaker 1: make them evil. We know all about that. So having
Speaker 1: people who take the opportunity and time to write it
Speaker 1: down so that they can share and be preserved, it's
Speaker 1: such a phenomenal thing to see and being able to
Speaker 1: see their love for their heritage, even like it just
Speaker 1: feels like I'm being honored, like I'm being privileged to
Speaker 1: see and hear about their culture, and I love that aspect.
Speaker 1: Folklore is so beautiful to me, just because of that.
Speaker 1: When I started learning more about like Korean folklore, I
Speaker 1: was like, what, And you just feel this sense of
Speaker 1: connectedness to something that you may not have like in
Speaker 1: so long or ever. So that's something to two with,
Speaker 1: like we should definitely be honoring people like her, Yeah,
Speaker 1: who are preserving such tales and traditions. I love that.
Speaker 2: No, that makes a lot of sense to me. And
Speaker 2: it's interesting because I one of the things that I
Speaker 2: end up I read a lot of like nineteenth century
Speaker 2: folk tales, or rather nineteenth century writing down of folk tales,
Speaker 2: and so a lot of the older ones, the first
Speaker 2: ones in English are often written by these sort of
Speaker 2: white interlopers or like white observers who are trying to
Speaker 2: be good.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: It's like kind of all over the board. They're either like,
Speaker 2: check out this wacky thing that they believe in Japan,
Speaker 2: and other times they're like, I'm white and I've lived
Speaker 2: in Japan for forty years and I've tried really hard
Speaker 2: to do this right, you know. Yeah, And it's like
Speaker 2: really interesting. But people actually writing from that culture, which
Speaker 2: is what we see more now, is you're more guaranteed
Speaker 2: to get the like actual love of that culture instead
Speaker 2: of like yeah, and it's funny too because you'll still
Speaker 2: even see, like check out this weird thing the Ukrainians
Speaker 2: believe over there in weird Land, you know, because the
Speaker 2: Ukrainians weren't white in the Victorian mind, like I mean whatever,
Speaker 2: they weren't, right. It's complicated, but it's complicating, Yeah, but
Speaker 2: it's interesting they bring up this thing about writing these
Speaker 2: stories down because it's when we talk about next. Libraries
Speaker 2: had a problem. They were colonized as fuck, right, as
Speaker 2: like an institution, So the only real stories by the
Speaker 2: library's mind are the ones that are written down. So
Speaker 2: storytelling for Storytelling Hour had to come from a book.
Speaker 2: Western libraries didn't understand the idea of oral literacy yet, right,
Speaker 2: the idea that you can be aware of your culture
Speaker 2: through oral traditions. Poor about Pray broke that she was
Speaker 2: the first person probably to appeal and win the right
Speaker 2: to tell stories that had never been written down. During storytime,
Speaker 2: Mary gold Davis, her teacher, told her, tell your stories,
Speaker 2: but only tell the children that none of these stories
Speaker 2: have been written down, but maybe someday they will. It's
Speaker 2: like this like almost paternalistic, but it's still this like
Speaker 2: love where like yeah, it isn't amazing, but one day
Speaker 2: they'll be real stories. But it's still like, it's still
Speaker 2: the pretty genuine like poor actually has very She thought
Speaker 2: very highly of the white women librarians who sought her
Speaker 2: out and nurtured her career and helped her break into
Speaker 2: this white dominated field. Right, So she told the stories
Speaker 2: that eventually would find their way into another one of
Speaker 2: her books, The Tiger and the Rabbit, which was the
Speaker 2: first English language collection of Puerto Rican folklore in the US.
Speaker 2: And she starts writing, and her branch is doing amazing
Speaker 2: stuff in the black community. And then in nineteen twenty
Speaker 2: nine she transfers to one hundred and fifteenth Street branch
Speaker 2: in a Puerto Rican community, and it's here that she
Speaker 2: really hits her stride and starts kicking ass as a librarian.
Speaker 2: As far as I can tell, she pioneered Spanish language
Speaker 2: content in public libraries. I expect she did it as
Speaker 2: part of a team of people who are also amazing, right,
Speaker 2: But she worked her ass off to get the community
Speaker 2: involved in the library. At some point she watched a
Speaker 2: puppet show at her branch and was like, oh, this
Speaker 2: is the shit puppet's rule. I'm sure, that's how she
Speaker 2: said it. And so for the rest of her life
Speaker 2: she worked with kids to put on puppet shows because
Speaker 2: that was part of it, was that by doing puppets
Speaker 2: you could bring the kids into it, right. And she
Speaker 2: went around to churches, to community centers, to neighborhood organizations
Speaker 2: and schools to put on shows and like just do
Speaker 2: outreach into community. She did bilingual shows regularly too, not
Speaker 2: just Spanish language shows. And this just like hadn't been done.
Speaker 2: She put on events for three Kings Day, a Puerto
Speaker 2: Rican holiday, and she said this quote indirectly presented the
Speaker 2: library to this group in a way that no other
Speaker 2: activity could have done. Their confidence was gained. The library
Speaker 2: put on complete programs in Spanish for children and for adults,
Speaker 2: and basically they did at the one hundred and fifteenth
Speaker 2: branch what one hundred and thirty fifth branch did for
Speaker 2: the black community. And there's a downside to this, although
Speaker 2: I've read conflicting tales of it, there's a problem if
Speaker 2: I actually looking into too many sources, as they all
Speaker 2: started arguing with each other, you know, right, Okay, so
Speaker 2: this isn't the librarian's fault. But instead of racist city
Speaker 2: government's fault. Basically, these two libraries served as quote ghettos
Speaker 2: where all black and Spanish language content could be put,
Speaker 2: where all black and latinae workers could be hired. So
Speaker 2: it was like you try and get hired as a
Speaker 2: black worker, and they'll be like, oh, we'll go up
Speaker 2: to one hundred and thirty fifth and they're like that's
Speaker 2: not where I live, you know, and they'd be like, oh,
Speaker 2: we already have a black library, like we don't need
Speaker 2: another one. And so that's a problem, and this limits
Speaker 2: their career advancement, right because you can only work in
Speaker 2: this one place.
Speaker 1: Right instead of opening spots or making opening doors that
Speaker 1: are like compete with each other. Here you go, good luck.
Speaker 1: And this is because you need to fight this space.
Speaker 1: The small amount of space is all we have for you.
Speaker 1: But anyway, keep going.
Speaker 2: Yes, So in nineteen thirty nine, the Puerto Rican community
Speaker 2: had moved a bit in the city, so she moved
Speaker 2: once again to East one hundred and tenth Street and
Speaker 2: kept up all the same stuff, bilingual story hour, reading clubs,
Speaker 2: puppet theater, you name it. But you know what they
Speaker 2: didn't have at these libraries ads because they were tax
Speaker 2: funded instead of funded by private companies. But we, on
Speaker 2: the other hand, are funded by private companies. And that
Speaker 2: is just the compromises that everyone makes all the time,
Speaker 2: like the following compromises. Here they are and we're back.
Speaker 2: In nineteen forty. She goes to the ala, the American
Speaker 2: Library Association convention in Cincinnati, and while she's there, she
Speaker 2: meets a musician and composer named Clarence Cameron White, who
Speaker 2: is we're going to get to the first like potential
Speaker 2: drama that I'm entirely inferring. The way that the story
Speaker 2: is presented is that she meets him and then they
Speaker 2: get married a couple years later, and everything's happy and great.
Speaker 2: And I started writing it by reading about him and
Speaker 2: being like, oh, he was recently widowed or widowered or whatever.
Speaker 2: He recently lost his wife. The complication she meets him
Speaker 2: in nineteen forty, his wife doesn't tie until nineteen forty two,
Speaker 2: and they don't get married till nineteen forty three. What happened?
Speaker 1: Drama?
Speaker 2: Probably they were just friends and then yeah, are they?
Speaker 1: Can they be friends? Yeah?
Speaker 2: I mean can they? Yeah? Man and a woman don't
Speaker 2: seem posp but like a figure like this, every version
Speaker 2: of her history is going to be a little bit sanitized.
Speaker 2: I mean, I found no scandal. Like I'm not like
Speaker 2: particularly worried that there's some like crazy skeleton in her closet.
Speaker 2: But it's like when you're talking about like a children's
Speaker 2: puppeteer person like, no one's like trying to write about
Speaker 2: anything salacious, you know.
Speaker 1: Being the other woman, you know, her personality and the
Speaker 1: everything about her reminds me of someone like my old
Speaker 1: drama teacher, who are so passionate and so performed, Like
Speaker 1: they perform and they love and they tell stories and
Speaker 1: they understand the importance of puppetry like and bringing in,
Speaker 1: like acting out these different characters. I could only imagine
Speaker 1: what kind of performances she gave in her storytelling, and
Speaker 1: with that, what type of passion she has, and just
Speaker 1: like in her imagination being able to relay these stories
Speaker 1: in a way that she was so successful enough to
Speaker 1: be known to do this as well as writing these stories,
Speaker 1: I just imagine she's just one of those people no
Speaker 1: totally that you can't help but notice anyway. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: then the effort she puts in telling these stories is
Speaker 1: not telling a story, it is living that story for
Speaker 1: the children or with the children, and I could only
Speaker 1: imagine that's kind of how she also lived life.
Speaker 2: I believe it.
Speaker 1: So who knows, maybe some drama does happen, because when
Speaker 1: you have that much passion, you know, yeah, that makes
Speaker 1: it so interesting.
Speaker 2: No, I believe it. And it's it's interesting, right because
Speaker 2: you're talking about someone who never had children and gets
Speaker 2: married at.
Speaker 1: Forty, right, and so you're my type of a woman.
Speaker 2: You're talking about someone who like either lived the like
Speaker 2: cat lady life or lived a like pretty wildlife.
Speaker 1: You know, and there's like there we exist to not
Speaker 1: have either of those things. Margaret, how dad, it's true,
Speaker 1: you're with us, what are you talking about?
Speaker 2: It's true, right, as an unmarried person in her forties,
Speaker 2: no children, Yeah, yeah, no, absolutely. And also and the
Speaker 2: reason that I mentioned, my great grandmother, who's like basically
Speaker 2: living in New York around the same time as an artist,
Speaker 2: also didn't get married until four and then had like
Speaker 2: one child, and that's like wasn't normal at all for
Speaker 2: someone living, you know, a woman living in the early
Speaker 2: part of the twentieth century. Right, So she falls in
Speaker 2: love with Clarence White. You know, he's got his own
Speaker 2: Wikipedia page as a composer and was one of the
Speaker 2: most prominent violinists in the country. And after they get married,
Speaker 2: Pura takes a leave of absence from the library to
Speaker 2: follow him around on tour for a bit, and then
Speaker 2: she goes back to the library and then she's like,
Speaker 2: you know what, I actually want to focus on my writing,
Speaker 2: and so she just kind of wants to be doing
Speaker 2: the art stuff and hell yeah, and so she does
Speaker 2: that for a while. She writes. As far as I
Speaker 2: can tell, she keeps up the storytelling and the puppets
Speaker 2: during this time, but I'm not one hundred percent certain,
Speaker 2: but it's like implied, and she writes like eight books.
Speaker 2: Seventeen years into married life, her husband dies of larynx
Speaker 2: cancer in nineteen sixty. She goes back to the library
Speaker 2: to a new post, one that I think they might
Speaker 2: have made just for her, the Spanish children specialist. And
Speaker 2: so at this point that whole thing about like the
Speaker 2: Spanish language stuff only being at one or two branches
Speaker 2: is not the case. That was actually some of the
Speaker 2: stuff that there seemed to be drama about.
Speaker 1: Is.
Speaker 2: I read some people arguing that sort of ghettoization was
Speaker 2: not as prominent as other people were claiming and that
Speaker 2: it was other issues keeping people from advancing, and I
Speaker 2: read a lot of drama about employment discrimination in the
Speaker 2: nineteen thirties. Basically, anyway, at this point, Spanish language stuff
Speaker 2: all over wherever it's needed, and so she just goes
Speaker 2: to every branch where it's needed and helps plan events
Speaker 2: and helps bilingualize the New York City Public library system,
Speaker 2: which is, if that's all she had done, it would
Speaker 2: have been amazing.
Speaker 1: Huge.
Speaker 2: If all she had done was write those children's stories,
Speaker 2: it would have been amazing. If all she'd done was
Speaker 2: be a puppeteer, would have been amazing. Then when she
Speaker 2: was sixty five, she was forced to retire, because all
Speaker 2: city employees at the time, we're forced to retire at
Speaker 2: sixty five. I don't know if that's still the case
Speaker 2: or not. I actually wonder because at the top, I
Speaker 2: was saying that there's like, all these documents suggest she
Speaker 2: was not born in nineteen oh three, but she told
Speaker 2: people she was born in nineteen oh three. You know,
Speaker 2: I wonder if it was so that she could keep
Speaker 2: working a couple extra years.
Speaker 1: Uh smart, But.
Speaker 2: I'm not sure, you know, that's entirely my conjecture She
Speaker 2: died in nineteen eighty two, but her legacy continues to
Speaker 2: this day. Starting in nineteen ninety six, the American Library
Speaker 2: Organization gives out an award in Belprey's name every year
Speaker 2: for children's books by Latino authors. A librarian originally from
Speaker 2: the Dominican Republic named Viennella Rivas told NPR in twenty sixteen, quote,
Speaker 2: because of her, we have a story time in Spanish,
Speaker 2: we have computer classes in Spanish, and I feel like,
Speaker 2: as a Latina librarian, we have a responsibility to continue
Speaker 2: doing the work that she started. Shockingly, her books are
Speaker 2: out of print right now, despite her being the earliest
Speaker 2: known Afro Caribbean American writer, despite there being an award
Speaker 2: in her name, And yeah, there are still three more
Speaker 2: librarians on that list of cool librarians that I was handed.
Speaker 2: So expect to be returning to this subject. But I
Speaker 2: wanted to read some of her stories on book club,
Speaker 2: but I haven't found a PDF of it yet. The
Speaker 2: Internet Archive had one, but they're hacked right now. I
Speaker 2: found one really short story and so fuck it, I'm
Speaker 2: going to read it to you all.
Speaker 1: Now, do you have a puppet.
Speaker 2: I'll pretend to have a puppy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the full experience.
Speaker 2: You all should act as though I have a really
Speaker 2: amazing puppet.
Speaker 1: Okay, Okay.
Speaker 2: It's actually interesting that you talked about when you were
Speaker 2: talking about folklore earlier, and we were talking about how
Speaker 2: like indigenous folklore is perceived by others. Right, this story
Speaker 2: is going to use the word Indian to describe the
Speaker 2: people that's talking about, right, and it's gonna be describing
Speaker 2: indigenous people, But the American North American conception of race
Speaker 2: isn't necessarily going to apply one to one to in
Speaker 2: a Puerto Rican context. And like so it's like interesting
Speaker 2: because I can't say as cleanly how it relates to
Speaker 2: indigenous culture. Right. Basically, that's my way of saying, if
Speaker 2: the story had been written by a white person, I
Speaker 2: would be suspect of.
Speaker 1: It, but it was not, gotcha.
Speaker 2: The legend of the Hummingbird from Puerto Rico by POORA Belprey.
Speaker 2: Between the towns of Khi and Cidra, far up in
Speaker 2: the hills, there was once a small pool fed by
Speaker 2: a waterfall that tumbled down the side of the mountain.
Speaker 2: The pool was surrounded by pomarosa trees, and the Indians
Speaker 2: used to call it Pamarosa Pool. It was the favorite
Speaker 2: place of Alita, the daughter of an Indian chief, a
Speaker 2: man of power and wealth among the people of the hills.
Speaker 2: One day, when Alita had come to the pool to
Speaker 2: rest after a long walk, a young Indian came there
Speaker 2: to pick some fruit from the trees. Alita was surprised,
Speaker 2: for he was not of her tribe. Yet he said
Speaker 2: he was no stranger to the pool. This was where
Speaker 2: he had first seen Alida, and he had often returned
Speaker 2: since then to pick the fruit. Hoping to see her again,
Speaker 2: he told her about himself to make her feel at home.
Speaker 2: He confessed with honesty and frankness that he was a
Speaker 2: member of the dreaded Carab tribe that had so often
Speaker 2: attacked the island of Barenkan. As a young boy, he
Speaker 2: had been left behind after one of those raids, and
Speaker 2: he had stayed on the island ever since. Alida listened
Speaker 2: closely to his story, and the two became friends. They
Speaker 2: met again in the days that followed, and their friendship
Speaker 2: grew stronger. Alida admired the young man's courage in living
Speaker 2: among his enemies. She learned to call him by his
Speaker 2: Carab name, Taru, and he called her Alida, just as
Speaker 2: her own people did. Before long, their friendship had turned
Speaker 2: into love. Their meetings by the pool were always brief.
Speaker 2: Alida was afraid their secret might be discovered, and careful
Speaker 2: though she was. There came a day when someone saw
Speaker 2: them and told her father. Alida was forbidden to visit
Speaker 2: the Pamrosa Pool, and to put an end to her
Speaker 2: romance with the stranger, her father decided to marry her
Speaker 2: to a man of his own. Choosing preparations for the
Speaker 2: wedding started at once. Alita was torn with grief, and
Speaker 2: one evening she cried out to her god, Oh Yuki,
Speaker 2: U help me kill me, or do what you will
Speaker 2: with me, but do not let me marry this man
Speaker 2: whom I do not love. And the great God yukiyou
Speaker 2: took pity on her and changed her into a delicate
Speaker 2: red flower. Meanwhile, Taru, knowing nothing of Alita's sorrow, still
Speaker 2: waited for her by the Pamerosa pool. Day after day
Speaker 2: he waited. Sometimes he stayed there until a mantle of
Speaker 2: stars was spread across the sky. One night, the moon
Speaker 2: took pity on him, Taro. She called from her place
Speaker 2: high above the stars, Oh, Taru, wait no longer for Alda,
Speaker 2: your secret was made known, and Alita was to be
Speaker 2: married to a man of her father's choosing. In her grief,
Speaker 2: she called to her god Yukiyu. He heard her plea
Speaker 2: for help and changed her into a red flower. Ahi
Speaker 2: Ahe cried, Taru, Oh Moon, what is the name of
Speaker 2: the red flower? Only Yukayu knows that. The moon replied.
Speaker 2: Then Taro called out, O, Yukayu, God of my Alida,
Speaker 2: help me too, help me to find her. And just
Speaker 2: as the Great God had heard Alida's plea, he listened
Speaker 2: now to Tarou and decided to help him. There by
Speaker 2: the Pomerosa pool, before the moon and the silent stars,
Speaker 2: the Great God changed Taru into a small, many colored bird.
Speaker 2: Fly Kalibri, and find your love among the flowers, he said.
Speaker 2: Off went the Kalibri, flying swiftly, and as he flew,
Speaker 2: his wings made a sweet humming sound. In the morning,
Speaker 2: the Indians saw a new bird darting around among the flowers,
Speaker 2: swift as an arrow and brilliant as a jewel. They
Speaker 2: heard the humming of its wings, and in amazement they
Speaker 2: saw it hover in the air over every blossom, kissing
Speaker 2: the petals of the flowers with its long, slender bill.
Speaker 2: They liked the new bird with the music in its wings,
Speaker 2: and they called it humming bird. Ever since then, the
Speaker 2: little many colored bird has hovered over every flower he finds,
Speaker 2: but returns most often to the flowers that are red.
Speaker 2: He is still looking, always looking for the one red
Speaker 2: flower that will be his loss, Tolita. He has not
Speaker 2: found her yet. That's the story.
Speaker 1: All these do remind me of the indigenous tales. And
Speaker 1: the god you were talking about is a Tano god,
Speaker 1: which is of the gods of the Puerto Rican indigenous peoples.
Speaker 1: I have a failing if we were able to dig
Speaker 1: more into her ancestral understand she is probably a part
Speaker 1: of that indigenous group, because that's they're from her area
Speaker 1: as well, like they are from that area. So I
Speaker 1: absolutely believe these are tales from her community. Yeah, which
Speaker 1: is gorgeous, And I love that she was able to
Speaker 1: preserve that and share that, because that's what we know
Speaker 1: when it comes to like indigenous and like especially older
Speaker 1: religious groups, is the is the stories of creation, of
Speaker 1: love in creation. It is so beautiful, and I love
Speaker 1: that she preserved that so we could hear these stories
Speaker 1: I know.
Speaker 2: And I like, I want to find so many more
Speaker 2: of them, and I guess I have to wait for
Speaker 2: the Internet archive to be unhacked or I need to.
Speaker 2: Like I found like some used versions of the books,
Speaker 2: but they were like you know how Amazon.
Speaker 1: Automotba level like yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2: Like they're like price jacked up to two hundred and
Speaker 2: fifty dollars or whatever, you know, right, and yeah, no,
Speaker 2: I I find it fascinating, and I find it fascinating
Speaker 2: that they're out of print, and you know, I I
Speaker 2: hope someone does something about that, but right, especially because like, yeah,
Speaker 2: I love reading the earliest versions of folk tales I
Speaker 2: can find, but usually that means reading white interpretations of
Speaker 2: folk tales and so reading not that. But the oldest
Speaker 2: that I can find is like from the sweet Spot,
Speaker 2: you know.
Speaker 1: Right, and on top of that, someone who heard it
Speaker 1: from an area that she knew, who was familiar with
Speaker 1: that that was her home.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Like one of the best parts to this is learning
Speaker 1: about indigenous people that I didn't know anything about. I
Speaker 1: know nothing about yuko U and Akabat god in itself
Speaker 1: and which we love on our show. We love doing
Speaker 1: like mythical goddesses and creatures and all of those, because
Speaker 1: you know there's so much power behind that, yeah, and
Speaker 1: the reason people believe in them. But not knowing that
Speaker 1: obviously Puerto Rico, it makes sense to know there's an
Speaker 1: indigenous group there, yeah, and community there that needs to
Speaker 1: be preserved and their history should be preserved and deserved
Speaker 1: to be preserved. Uh yeah, probably should be in power
Speaker 1: whatever whatnot. But all of that to say is now,
Speaker 1: like you brought this understanding through the talks of a library.
Speaker 1: I love. I love the connectedness of it, I.
Speaker 2: Know, and I love that it's like the work that
Speaker 2: she did about keeping this stuff alive. And then like,
Speaker 2: obviously language is an important part of I mean, obviously
Speaker 2: Spanish is in the indigenous language, but compared to English,
Speaker 2: for an immigrant community, it's like really important to have
Speaker 2: Stuffy specifically, Yeah, just like making the library a space
Speaker 2: that's actually for the communities as part of I just
Speaker 2: I was really impressed by her story, and I like,
Speaker 2: and it's a lot of stuff that I take for granted,
Speaker 2: like even the story about the origin of libraries. I
Speaker 2: had just been like, right, oh, yeah, of course a
Speaker 2: country has to a country has to have roads. A
Speaker 2: country has to have public lending libraries, otherwise it's not
Speaker 2: really a country, is it. And it's like, well, actually, uh,
Speaker 2: you know, we're pretty new to having them.
Speaker 1: Like, it's also a story about understanding how important that
Speaker 1: history is and librarians are and what they bring to
Speaker 1: a community as we're in one of the worst states
Speaker 1: of for librarians and libraries and banned books, and a
Speaker 1: reminder of like, like how important these stories are, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that so many cannot understand because culturally we should be
Speaker 1: able to learn about these things, and we people should
Speaker 1: know about these groups of people who have always existed,
Speaker 1: existed before them, you know, for us. So all of
Speaker 1: that is beautiful, as well as the fact that you know,
Speaker 1: I love things like the little libraries. You know that
Speaker 1: you see the look a birdhouse looking, Yeah, libraries. But
Speaker 1: in order to kind of take back control from those
Speaker 1: who are trying to ban books and trying to like
Speaker 1: make libraries the enemies somehow, when stories like these are
Speaker 1: so important and then people like her brought traditions and
Speaker 1: tell folklore to life to children who didn't understand or
Speaker 1: maybe for a long time, especially you know, you know,
Speaker 1: as a person who immigrated to the US was taught
Speaker 1: to learn what learn US culture and white culture, essentially
Speaker 1: to truly understand the country if you want to be
Speaker 1: a citizen, instead of understanding that their culture was just
Speaker 1: as important to the makeup of this area, specifically New
Speaker 1: Yorkers who are from Puerto Rico and children who may
Speaker 1: have been born in New York but their families are
Speaker 1: from Puerto Rico and then being able to learn about
Speaker 1: their culture and to appreciate their own culture. Like, wow,
Speaker 1: she did so much in such an early time. Like
Speaker 1: obviously I'm very excited. Yeah, you opened up these big
Speaker 1: box and I'm like, oh my god, I love everything
Speaker 1: about this, including the libraries.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, totally. And it's just like I want to
Speaker 2: fly on the wall. That stuff so bad, you know,
Speaker 2: Like and even it ties into what you're saying just
Speaker 2: now ties into how one of the problems with the
Speaker 2: early libraries, including you know, some of the women's ones
Speaker 2: and the free black ones and stuff, is they fell
Speaker 2: into this idea that like this is for the improvement
Speaker 2: of people by reading philosophy and stuff. And I'll read
Speaker 2: some philosophy here and there. Right, I'm not I get it.
Speaker 2: I'm I think that that stuff matters. But this idea
Speaker 2: that fiction is distinct as this like lesser thing is
Speaker 2: something that we're finally starting to break away from. And
Speaker 2: I think part of the way that we break away
Speaker 2: from it is exactly what you're talking about about, how
Speaker 2: these stories and this idea of culture, like stories are
Speaker 2: how you preserve culture in a lot of ways, and
Speaker 2: so like stories matter, fiction matters just as much, you know. Yeah,
Speaker 2: And I love I just think libraries are cool. I've
Speaker 2: already spoken it too so far on this tour, and
Speaker 2: like I can't wait to speak at more of them.
Speaker 2: And yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: One of my favorite things. Again, like I will continue
Speaker 1: to go to the different cities or different places and
Speaker 1: find libraries. Went to New York and we went to
Speaker 1: the library immediately, we explored everything. But thank you. I
Speaker 1: was gonna say one of the two things. One, I
Speaker 1: love that story. I love being able to hear her
Speaker 1: writing because it is It's exactly right, you know, when
Speaker 1: you thirst for a cultural like folklore, that is exactly
Speaker 1: what I would like to hear. Like that was perfectly done,
Speaker 1: and you telling it was so perfectly like, Yeah, obviously
Speaker 1: Margaret is a writer. She's definitely a storyteller here. It
Speaker 1: is like being able to hear it through you. Both
Speaker 1: of those were shows, kiss, so thank you for sharing
Speaker 1: with me.
Speaker 2: Oh, thank you, well, thanks for coming on to my
Speaker 2: episode about libraries. There's going to be more of them.
Speaker 2: And yeah, if people want to hear more stories about
Speaker 2: stuff that their mom never told them and then accidentally
Speaker 2: ask really personal questions that you don't intend to ask,
Speaker 2: where can they do that?
Speaker 1: Well, we do talk a lot about our trauma as
Speaker 1: in fact, I started Stuff Mom Never Told You by
Speaker 1: talking about the METO movement and the trauma. So there
Speaker 1: you go. But that Stuff Mom Never Told You you
Speaker 1: can listen to us wherever you listen to your podcast.
Speaker 1: We have twelve years worth of episodes. So so if you
Speaker 1: want to go listen to all the different hosts that's
Speaker 1: been there, historical context, you want to hear our reactions
Speaker 1: to like different elections, which is really still stinged, you
Speaker 1: can do that as well. We also have a book
Speaker 1: and it's called Stuff Mom Never Told You. Actually at libraries,
Speaker 1: we were able to find them that the Seattle library
Speaker 1: and a New York library cool Boston who he hadn't
Speaker 1: writen the book yet, so if you want to go
Speaker 1: check it out at the library.
Speaker 2: Is there, Yeah, And if it's not, you should request it.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Please. Also you can find me on McVeigh sam
Speaker 1: Instagram for my doggie pictures.
Speaker 2: That is what Instagram is for as far as I'm
Speaker 2: concerned exactly. Well, if you want to find me on tour,
Speaker 2: you can look at my Instagram or my substack and
Speaker 2: I'll be posting tour dates. And if you don't live
Speaker 2: in the US, you can tell me that. You could
Speaker 2: be like, why aren't you coming to where I live?
Speaker 2: And then the answer is the aforementioned dog. And on
Speaker 2: some level I'm aware that I could probably find someone
Speaker 2: to watch my dog for long enough to go to
Speaker 2: a different country, But why would I want to. I
Speaker 2: like my dog more than I like you, dear listener,
Speaker 2: And that's not even a slight against you. It's just
Speaker 2: how much I like my dog. But that's unrelated. And
Speaker 2: also I have a book out called The Sapling Cage,
Speaker 2: just what I'm a tour about, and you should go
Speaker 2: read it is fiction. I have a bunch of other
Speaker 2: books too, including the most entertainingly titled is Escape from
Speaker 2: Insul Island, So you can go read that if you want,
Speaker 2: and you could also listen to Cooler Zone Media because
Speaker 2: nothing would be funnier than watching me complain about ads
Speaker 2: and then there's no ads and wouldn't that be funny?
Speaker 2: And also you can listen to all the cool zone
Speaker 2: media podcasts that way, including awful lot of shows including Wait,
Speaker 2: there's one I really liked recently. Oh, there's a really
Speaker 2: good it could happen here about the future of coffee
Speaker 2: done by Prop who does hood politics with Prop and
Speaker 2: it is like one of the best encapsulations of climate
Speaker 2: crisis and also how capitalism and extractive practices work, and
Speaker 2: also how cooperativism. It was just like, I don't even
Speaker 2: drink coffee.
Speaker 1: It's also super funny.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I've been long holding that Prop is my favorite
Speaker 2: explain current events person in my life. He starts off
Speaker 2: the episode by just singing a song and yeah, totally,
Speaker 2: so you get past that part.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that always throws me off when host starts singing
Speaker 1: or rapping. I'm like, what the what's happening? I'm never prepared. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but he's like a professional rapper. Yeah, Like, oh, I'm
Speaker 1: just good. It's still stocking though to see it live,
Speaker 1: Like if I'm on MIC or somebody.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but I love it. But stay for the stay
Speaker 2: for the vibes, Stay for the vibes, and that's it.
Speaker 2: We're here at the end of the show.
Speaker 1: Hi. Hi. Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff is a
Speaker 1: production of cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from cool
Speaker 1: Zone Media, visit our website folzonemedia dot com, or check
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