Oral History Program Angela Choberka Interviewed by Sarah Langsdon 3 September 2019 Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Angela Choberka Interviewed by Sarah Langsdon 3 September 2019 Copyright © 2022 by Weber State University, Stewart Library iii Mission Statement The Oral History Program of the Stewart Library was created to preserve the institutional history of Weber State University and the Davis, Ogden and Weber County communities. By conducting carefully researched, recorded, and transcribed interviews, the Oral History Program creates archival oral histories intended for the widest possible use. Interviews are conducted with the goal of eliciting from each participant a full and accurate account of events. The interviews are transcribed, edited for accuracy and clarity, and reviewed by the interviewees (as available), who are encouraged to augment or correct their spoken words. The reviewed and corrected transcripts are indexed, printed, and bound with photographs and illustrative materials as available. The working files, original recording, and archival copies are housed in the University Archives. Project Description The Beyond Suffrage Project was initiated to examine the impact women have had on northern Utah. Weber State University explored and documented women past and present who have influenced the history of the community, the development of education, and are bringing the area forward for the next generation. The project looked at how the 19th Amendment gave women a voice and representation, and was the catalyst for the way women became involved in the progress of the local area. The project examines the 50 years (1870-1920) before the amendment, the decades to follow and how women are making history today. ____________________________________ Oral history is a method of collecting historical information through recorded interviews between a narrator with firsthand knowledge of historically significant events and a well-informed interviewer, with the goal of preserving substantive additions to the historical record. Because it is primary material, oral history is not intended to present the final, verified, or complete narrative of events. It is a spoken account. It reflects personal opinion offered by the interviewee in response to questioning, and as such it is partisan, deeply involved, and irreplaceable. ____________________________________ Rights Management This work is the property of the Weber State University, Stewart Library Oral History Program. It may be used freely by individuals for research, teaching and personal use as long as this statement of availability is included in the text. It is recommended that this oral history be cited as follows: Choberka, Angela, an oral history by Sarah Langsdon, 3 September 2019, WSU Stewart Library Oral History Program, University Archives, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, UT. Angela Choberka 3 September 2019 1 Abstract: The following is an oral history interview with Angela Choberka, conducted on September 3, 2019, in the Stewart Library, by Sarah Langsdon. Angela discusses her life, her memories, and the impact of the 19th Amendment. SL: This is Sarah Langsdon and I am here interviewing Angela Choberka, it is September 3, 2019, it’s about 9 a.m. and we are in the Library. Well, Angela thank you for agreeing to do this with us. We are going to start at the beginning so why don’t you tell me where and when you were born? AC: I’m glad I didn’t have to do research for this one. I was born in Peoria, Illinois in 1971. SL: Okay, are you an only child? AC: I’m kind of an only child in that I was the oldest. My mother had a couple of different marriages and so in her second marriage, after my dad, then I had a little brother that’s about nine and a half years younger than me. I kind of babysat him a little bit but then I went off to college, and so I really had an only child experience I think. SL: So what is your father’s name and what did he do for a living? AC: My father was Donald Berryman and he was actually a suit salesman his whole life. He’s passed away, but he worked at a store kind of like the Dillard’s here, it was a branch of Carson Perry Scott called Bergner’s. SL: Okay, did your mom work? AC: She did different jobs, she is still alive but she did different things. When I was younger she was a hotel manager, and then at different times she ran a little 2 daycare from our home, or worked in offices. So she had sporadic, different kinds of employment. SL: Okay, and what was your mom’s name? AC: Oh Mary Lou Hopwood. SL: Yeah that’s right, forgot to ask. So when you were a young girl who were some of the women you looked up to? AC: That’s a great question. Well, my mom was a single mom for part of my life and so I think I actually really looked up to her quite a bit, and now I wonder how single parents can actually do it. I’ve been a single mom a couple of times when my husband’s gone out of the country or different things and it’s a lot of work and I’m so glad that it is brief for me. I admire her a lot more now for everything she did when I was growing up. But I had a couple of really cool grandmothers too. On my dad’s side, my grandmother was a homemaker, but made a lot of pie, and they had a big garden. That stuff is actually really important to me now as I am older. My other grandmother, she actually worked in a bakery, they owned a bakery and she worked there most of her life. SL: Interesting. So when you graduated high school was college a given? AC: For me it really wasn’t I mean I think in my mind it… you know was totally an option, but my family really didn’t push that on me in anyway. My dad was really happy I was actually a waitress in high school, and he’s like, “You could be a waitress forever and it would be really great with me.” He didn’t really push a lot ‘cause they weren’t college graduates themselves, so I don’t think that was the thing for them. I graduated high school when I was seventeen, just based on 3 when you could enter school, not ‘cause I was advanced or something. I tried to go to community college then but I didn’t quite make it; I wasn’t very serious about school and I didn’t have that sort of model. So now I think a lot about nontraditional students and their experience ‘cause I was definitely that way. I ended up actually dropping out and just being a waitress for about a year and a half. But then pretty soon I was sort of like, “Do I just want to do this? Is this really what it’s gonna be?” So I actually went back to community college and made up those credits that I blew when I first started. And then I transferred schools to Columbia College in Chicago. I’m from Illinois originally as I said, so I moved up to Chicago and that was really great for me actually because I needed the influence of being out of my hometown to aspire to something greater. I really loved school even though I was a little bit of a rebel in high school. I was not a very serious student. But when I was younger I definitely was, I got straight A’s for a really long time, then I went through a rebellious period. When I went back to college when I was grown up, a little bit later, I definitely took it more serious. I was able to work a couple jobs and support myself through school, because we were pretty low income I was able to get Pell grants to go to school. I’ve thought a lot about that recently because my daughter is getting ready to go to school and I’m like, “Bummer you don’t get to get those, like we make a little bit too much money for you.” Anyway, so I did that and worked a couple of jobs and it took me a little while to finish school because I was working at the same time. Then I met my husband in Chicago and we moved to New York City, so I transferred schools 4 again. I’m always joking I have like six transcripts from different schools. For my bachelor’s degree I finally did graduate from The New School in New York City. Then I actually started a master’s program at NYU in English education. I didn’t end up finishing there, I actually finished here at Weber State after Matt came here and got a job. They had the master’s in English here so I finished here. Anyway, I’ve been on a long path for school. I’m actually still in school, I’m working on my Doctorate at the U in Educational Leadership and Policy. I don’t know if I’ll ever be done because I work full time and have these other things I do, but education has really been the path for me to learn about myself and figure things out. SL: Okay well then, so you got your degree in English? AC: Well my bachelor’s degree is in Liberal Arts actually. SL: Just in Liberal Arts? AC: Yeah, I originally went away to school to study Journalism. Then I got into a lot of Education classes and also had all this English credit. So then I ended up graduating with Liberal Arts, and I actually studied a little bit of Anthropology at the end of my degree. I took a couple graduate classes in Anthropology too, so the social science side of understanding how things work. Yeah, I finally finished in Liberal Arts. SL: Okay so you met Matt while you were both in Chicago? AC: Yeah, he had graduated from Columbia College Chicago with a Photography degree and I actually moved to Chicago and lived with a couple of his close friends, but I didn’t know them very well, they were kind of a part of our friend 5 group and I needed a place to live in Chicago to go to school. I rented a room in their apartment basically, and we became really good friends and I met Matt there. SL: So you got married and then you guys moved to New York? AC: Yeah, well he actually left for New York first. He went to painting school there. That’s what took us out there, he went to a school called the New York Studio School. It’s a painting school where you just paint all the time basically. You draw and paint all the time, rather than like the master’s degree where you have to take course work. They did a lot of their work just in the studio. So he went a semester before I did and I said, “Okay I’ll transfer schools.” I was trying to finish my degree and I ended up moving out to New York with him. We lived there about eight and a half years, while he was finishing school and then I started school but then we left. SL: So what was it like sort of juggling school and married life? AC: Well, the challenge probably for me, it’s more figuring out, you know, staying in school or maybe leaving school for a little bit and always going back. I taught developmental English here for quite a while and that’s something I always told students, “Keep taking one or two classes and don’t beat yourself up if you aren’t up to the standard maybe that you think you should be.” Like, “Everybody is graduating in four years or something.” Not many people are actually doing that, but if they had the perfect world then they would. I think just balancing all of those things and still putting that as a priority every time. I took a couple of years off a couple different times but then, “Okay let’s go back and it’s gonna be really hard.” 6 Sort of a mixed thing where you end up spending all of your time doing your school work instead of the fun things maybe people are doing. But for me I kind of like hanging out by myself, reading stuff, or doing homework, and so it works out okay. SL: So it works out good for you? AC: Yeah, the balance. SL: When did you guys end up moving to Ogden? AC: Well we left New York City when we had our daughter. She is seventeen now as I mentioned before, she’s a senior. I didn’t want to go back to school, I was a public school teacher in Brooklyn, and I was like I have this little baby at home; he was working at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which is a really cool job. They don’t pay you quite a lot but the benefits are really good. The challenge was we really couldn’t afford a nanny and then figuring out what you do with a little one while you’re all working, it just felt like a big conflict for us. Actually, it was right after September 11th that I think that had a little bit to do with it too. When you’re living in a big city, you’re really just living to pay rent with the kind of jobs that we had, which is wonderful and it’s really great for when you’re a young person and you don’t have a lot of responsibility. But when you have this little one you’re like, “Okay, so what will her quality of life be with us, with these kinds of jobs and this situation?” Then it turned into a little bit of a military state for a little while because of that horrible incident. We’re just kind of rethinking our priorities a little bit like, “Hmm, you know, all we do is work to pay rent. What will this kid’s life be like?” So we moved back to Illinois where we’re 7 actually both originally from, the middle of Illinois in Peoria, in the Peoria area. Matt was looking for jobs and he had a little bit of a hard time ‘cause he was way over qualified for lots of jobs in the art world because he had worked at the Met, and he had this a certificate in painting and drawing, but he didn’t have a Master’s degree. After about a year and a half, we ended up living back in Chicago. He worked at the Art Institute while I stayed with the little one and did a couple of different little jobs. He applied for graduate school so he could get that degree, which was really actually a really great degree, it wasn’t just for the piece of paper after all. Matt really loved it. He went to Indiana University, and at that time it actually really helped us understand that you could live in a small town and have a really great quality of life, right? ‘Cause we’re really big city people. But then you're like, “Okay, we don’t have to leave an hour early to get anywhere, we can afford a house to live in.” There’s really good food in university towns, you know, that’s really important to us. So we lived in Bloomington, Indiana for two years and that’s when I worked at the Kelley School of Business in the office and Matt went to school. Then when he was applying for jobs at the end of his degree I think he had seven interviews at the conference that they go to for art. He got two campus interviews, both here in Utah at Weber State and then also at Utah State. So we’re like, “Hmmm, maybe we’re supposed to be in Utah.” I had never been to Utah before but I had been to Denver, so I was like, “I could definitely live in the mountains. It’s really beautiful.” So he came out and got the offer from Weber State and that’s what brought us out here. We really 8 love it. It’s kind of like I was saying before, you can afford to buy a house and settle and create roots a little bit and establish yourself and then the kids had a really great quality of life. It’s a beautiful state, so gorgeous, and wonderful people to hang out with. SL: Yes. So when you got here, you said you taught a little bit here? AC: Yeah, yeah. So when we got here, I didn’t have a job at that point and Matt had gotten hired here so it’s kind of figuring out what I was going to do. I had taken teacher tests in a couple of states, in New York and in Illinois. I was thinking about being a teacher in elementary or secondary teacher either way. Then I was just trying to figure out what I was going to do so I became an adjunct in the English department and I taught a lot of developmental English, so for probably about eleven or twelve years I did that, then I actually found a job. My daughter was going to a Montessori school out in Eden and they started needing substitutes so I started subbing. The Montessori curriculum really spoke to me and one of those teachers was opening a school so I started doing some Montessori training. I taught in Montessori classrooms probably for about ten years in the area, in elementary fourth to sixth grade, it’s kind of a mixed age classroom. Then I went back to school at some point again, got my master’s in English, finished that here ‘cause I hadn’t finished at NYU. So that’s a little bit about how we got here and what happened. SL: So the Montessori school, were you still up in Eden? AC: It was there for a little bit and then there was a school that opened kind of in South Ogden. Yeah, I taught the elementary classes there. 9 SL: Awesome, so what was it like teaching in there? AC: Well, I loved that curriculum so much. I had taught when I was in Brooklyn, in an English class in the middle school there. When you live in New York City, well any big city really, artists usually live in the places that nobody else will live for a while ‘cause they need a little bit of a bigger space and live in a more unconventional kind of situation. We lived in a couple neighborhoods like that but the one that I taught in was in Bed-Stuy (Bedford-Stuyvesant). We went and lived there and it was a very impoverished community and not a lot of opportunities. This is where I get into community work a little bit too, thinking about how traditionally a lot of neighborhoods, some of them get disinvested in over time. Then the artists move in ‘cause that’s where they can afford to live with a little bit more space, then pretty soon after that the whole neighborhood starts to get gentrified over time. When I decided to go back to teaching, I did a couple of other jobs in New York too. I worked at the art school and I actually worked in the elevator company for a while, which was really fascinating. Anyway, that’s a whole other story but we’ll talk about that later. I decided to teach in the neighborhood where we were living ‘cause I felt a little bit like this divide between where people move in that might be a little bit more affluent, although not very affluent because they’re artists, but more affluent than the local people, and how they don’t really end up meeting those other neighbors. They just stay kind of in their own little space. It was really awesome; I taught in a middle school that was right in Bed-Stuy. It was very, very hard to be a new teacher and not have much. I mean, I had a couple education classes but I 10 didn’t really know how to be a teacher, it was just based on what I knew from when I grew up. What was really awesome about it is the kids in the neighborhood would see me on the street and be like, “Hey Miss C.,” ‘cause my names a little bit hard to pronounce. But I really saw a lot of those issues. You go into those kinds of jobs and you’re an idealist and you’re like, “Oh we just do it a little bit differently and everything will be great,” like I can make a huge impact. But then you realize the system is set up in such a messed up way. In New York City for example, there’s some of the best schools in the country for young people but then I was working in one that was not one of those. The kids knew that and they weren’t really getting the support that they had a right to; not because of individual people’s issues but because of the way the system is set up. If they needed extra help with maybe mental health, or things like that, they weren’t really getting that addressed. I think ninety percent of the kids I was teaching were in a foster home situation of sort and just really living in a lot of poverty. I don’t want to be too sad about it ‘cause it was a really great experience. I kind of realized after teaching there for a year and a half that maybe the traditional classroom wasn’t the perfect fit for me based on the dynamics that get set up between the adults in the environment and the kids in some ways. I mean, some teachers are awesome and I totally admire them for battling it out, but it is really challenging to try to be helping to support kids when they’re not getting all the things that they need from the system. That’s where I got this passion for thinking about how can we empower young people and also look at the systems to try to figure out how we can fix those in some way. 11 SL: So how does Montessori address those kind of issues? AC: The challenge with the Montessori school is that it was a private school, but the curriculum to me is really powerful because it’s based on this philosophical premise, and I mean, I totally believe in it so I don’t think it’s made up, that little people, children actually come as totally filled vessels already and we don’t need to pour knowledge into them, but that you set up an environment or a situation in that they will be curious and want to learn things. It’s much more about the process of how you go about learning things than like you created some product at the end, which is a little bit more like the traditional system. I think in our ideal state the traditional classroom would encourage curiosity and creativity and those kinds of things. Many teachers do that wonderfully, so I’m not trying to beat up on regular public school teachers ‘cause they're awesome and I can’t believe that they can make it ‘cause I would never be able to handle it that well. I was like, “That is not the right situation for me.” That’s why I got into it and it’s all based also on this idea that the environment should be very inviting and we should see young people as being equal to the adults in the environment. A lot of times, in the more traditional classroom, it is set up so that the adult is most comfortable or it’s set up so the adult is the center or the focus and the fount of all knowledge and then they feed everybody else. But in the Montessori classroom, instead you provide lessons or opportunities for the people to understand and learn but there’s a lot of hands on materials and things like that so you can learn without even knowing you’re learning in a way, but then you really are passionate or care about that part of the process, being taught and teaching yourself a little bit, 12 learning from these materials that have a self-correct mechanism versus the teacher saying, “Oh no you’re doing that wrong,” or “Oh let me tell you how you should do it.” Anyway, it goes a lot broader than that. The basis of it is thinking about how you can influence people to want to learn and to be passionate about those things. SL: So you talked about working for the elevator company in New York. I got to hear that story. AC: Oh that’s really funny. When we first moved to New York, or when I went there and joined Matt, I just temped for a little while, which is kind of planning out offices and stuff. It’s fun because you go to all these different kind of environments, these super fancy places or like some just random other places, and just see how people are living. It’s really fascinating. If you’re a sociologist it would be really awesome. But then I got a temp job up in Queens, which is kind of close to where we were living in Williamsburg, and I started working at this elevator company just as a temp administrative. They called me “the girl,” right? So that’s like the first thing it was really funny that, “You just tell the girl that.” There’s these older women that like smoked continuously at the elevator company and they have that really thick Queens accent. It was so awesome. “Go just get the girl to do that,” or whatever, it was so funny. Anyway, I ended up actually working at that job, I don’t remember how many years, but at least a year or so because I became a permanent kind of temp job. Since it was stable and we needed to pay the rent, I just kept doing that for a while and so that was very interesting, but it definitely encouraged me to go back to school to find something 13 else to do with my life. I’m sure there’s all kinds of other jobs that I could have gotten in New York City but it was nice that it was stable and it had benefits. So I did that for a couple of years. But it was super fun because there were all these salesmen—so, I was working in the sales department—it was definitely like stepping back in time a little bit as far as they all had their suits on. It was like the perfect situation for an office, but like in Queens at an elevator company, and I always thought about it that way a little bit. Like, “This is temporary.” And it’s definitely a sociological study. I mean, that’s what’s so cool about big cities, there are these people that live in these little pockets of the world and they never leave those pockets. I think that can happen in our lives too. But you think, I mean, in a big city you’re more exposed to more things, but you definitely could just live in your neighborhood where maybe there’s a lot of people with similar background or faith and then go to work and those are like the two primary places you go and you don’t really see much outside of that. And that was kind of what that world was like a little bit. SL: Yeah, I think we can all get like that. AC: Yeah, or like the kids, you know. I was teaching when September 11th happened, and this makes me think about it, as we could see the buildings there right across the river basically. But those kids have never been there before, do you know what I mean? There’s many reasons why that is, but it was just really telling to me about sort of how in any situation you can get locked into, and obviously they are probably locked because of poverty and some other things 14 going on too, but that little neighborhood really was their world and there wasn’t much outside of that, they couldn’t see outside of it. SL: So you talked about September 11. So being there, what was that like? AC: Well that was pretty intense. I haven’t been able to watch any of those movies or re-creations or anything ‘cause it was just horrifying. I wasn’t impacted directly, you know. Like, I was there, but literally the buildings were across the water. That day, I was pregnant with my daughter, and we were at the school and then some of the teachers started reporting out that this thing was happening and then parents just started coming to pick their kids up from school, which you could imagine if you’re having this horrible attack. “We don’t know what’s gonna happen next,” kind of thing. Everybody started picking up their kids. Then Matt actually ended up walking home from work because they closed all the subways and closed down the city and he was at the Met. He walked, I think it was about eleven miles, with everybody else in New York City walking across the bridges to get back home. Then you could just see the smoke of those towers for days on end. We did have some friends that—none that worked there in the offices and stuff, but there was this special program where empty space was used for art studios. So we had a couple of friends that were using those spaces at that time. Luckily none of them were killed but one of them, for example, she told us that she was up in the studio and someone tried to convince her, they went under a table or something, ‘cause when it first happened I think people were told just to stay in place. So they went under this table with somebody that said, “Come under the table,” and they were under there and she just got this feeling like, “No, 15 we got to get out of here, right, because we are up really high.” So she and somebody else left and started going down the stairs. Eventually, she did get out before the buildings fell but those other people were probably still under the table. Such a horrible feeling. And like I said, the city really became very military. There was a lot of National Guard and you think of Europe a little bit more with people with big rifles and stuff by all the bridges. The planes were going over all the time, and like the whole city was locked down that day but also for weeks and weeks. I mean, the subways are running again and everything, but it was just a much different environment. Soon after that, I don’t remember exactly how many weeks but very close to that, there was actually a plane crash in Queens and I don’t know if other people were even aware of that. I’m trying to remember, it was just within a matter of weeks there, and we lived in Brooklyn at that time which is really close to where it was. It was just a really weird eerie time to be there, thinking about what else could happen or what’s next. I do feel a little bit like it definitely made you think a little bit more like, “Now why am I living in this place?” It’s really a hard place to live anyway. Although, I do feel like I’m a New Yorker at heart. I love that big city, but a lot of people that live there are able to have a house like in Connecticut or something up state. They get to go and leave for the weekend. But we weren’t in a situation where we could do that, and I think it was just a very, very, very intense time to live there. It wasn’t like I had close friends that I lost or something, but you couldn’t get a hold of anybody and people were so upset and worried because you couldn’t get through. It’s not like we’re used to 16 living in a war torn city. Definitely changed our perspective of about what could happen, and things haven’t really changed, like all these shootings and stuff. I don’t know, we just all feel a little bit like you definitely have to appreciate the moment you’re living in and be here now, but also be aware of anything can happen and we have no control over many things. SL: So living here in Utah, in Ogden, have you been involved in social organizations? AC: I guess I have. I mean, I sort of consider myself a little bit of an activist but it’s not like I’m out marching every day. I’ve been involved in a lot of different organizations, like I’m a sustainer on the Junior League of Ogden, I guess it is a social organization. It was definitely nice to join an organization where there’s a lot of other women from all different kinds of backgrounds doing all kinds of jobs or working at home, doing different creative things that still want to try to impact the community in a positive way. I do love the history of that organization here in particular. When I first got invited to go, I thought, “Oh Junior League is like that fancy lady, you have to be special or something to get in there, ‘cause I’m definitely not from that world.” But in Ogden it’s a little different because it’s a small organization and they’re just really happy to have anybody join, so I think that’s really awesome. So I did that for a little bit and worked on the Oasis Community Garden. As I was mentioning before, gardening is really important to me, although I don’t do it right now, I’m too busy to do it. I just grew up with that exposure to those things and just love digging in the dirt. I don’t know any other official organizations I’m really a part of, but I also always try to kind of join up with other people that are trying to do something. I just really admire people that 17 are passionate about anything, tell you the truth. Like someone’s super passionate about, like we have a bunch of brewers in the area, or super passionate about dogs, or people that have some passion that they're willing to put themselves out there for is really cool. Thinking about this whole education thing and business of it and the systems of it, I think a lot of things that I’ve been involved in sort of speak to that a little bit, although, they might be a roundabout way of thinking through how we set up these systems where people learn or how people take that and how they might build on that from within. Teaching in the developmental English department, I feel like that was definitely a nice eye opener for me. Just for a little background, people are placed in that because Weber State is a regional university that is really open enrollment. So students take a test, or it’s based on their ACT scores or whatever, that they need to have this sort of precursor to the regular English class. We also have it for math too, and oftentimes the students were in both. Either they hadn’t been in school in a really long time and they are coming back, so it is a nontraditional student situation, or they had not gotten what they deserved throughout their education history. Sometimes maybe it was of their own doings too. But I feel like the system that we created does that to students too, it’s not that they do it all by themselves. Anyways, spending a lot of time with the students, and I love them very much, they’re willing to take this class that costs them money that doesn’t count as credit for their degree. So somebody’s tested them and said, “Well you’re not ready for college yet, you have to take this class.” It takes a lot of guts then to sign up for that class and go 18 through it and actually commit to it. I don’t know if I have that much resilience, necessarily, if somebody said I wasn’t good enough. A lot of times, honestly, talking with the students about their experiences, sometimes they’ll be like, “Oh in sixth grade somebody told me I was a really terrible writer,” or something like that. So it’s really about building their confidence up to say, “Hey you can do this and this is how maybe we can give you some tools for figuring it out.” I think being a teacher is a little bit of an activist kind of feel, try to empower people. SL: So for people who don’t know, what is the Oasis program? AC: Oh yeah. Well when I was first involved with the Junior League it was, “I’m just doing this because I was pregnant with my son,” and he’s eleven now, so it was quite a while ago. Oasis actually is this plot of land that is in the middle of East Central Ogden, which is an area that has a lot of challenges and need. At the time when the Oasis was conceived, it was actually a food desert, there wasn’t any grocery stores that were very walkable within that neighborhood. Right now, there is one and it’s called Rancho Market, which opened a few years after the Oasis was conceived. So there was this empty lot and just dirt and garbage, and it's right in the center of one of the main blocks, so it’s between Monroe Boulevard and Maddison and then 24th and 25th so you can’t really see it from the road very well, but it is in the middle of that block. What some folks at the Junior League had an idea for was to create a green space there and a garden. Part of the issue was it was a food desert, but also we have really high obesity rates in that neighborhood, especially for children. 19 Some people donated some of the land, and some was purchased I believe, but I can’t remember everybody's name. But there was an agreement that the Junior League would take over managing that space and so they ended up cleaning up all this garbage that was back there and some really awful stuff, and bringing in topsoil took years and years and years of development. Now it is a thriving community garden where people can rent a plot and its twenty-five dollars a year. If you really don’t have that money then we can figure out if someone can donate a plot for you. You can also get plants and seeds, and all the water and the tools and everything are there. So it’s that community garden, and it does have a lot of fruit trees and some raspberries and things like that too that are open actually to everybody in the neighborhood or in the community. The plots are for the people that rent to them, although we do have some challenges sometimes with things going missing. But you’re like, “Well if people are taking vegetables I guess it’s not the worst thing in the world.” I worked on that garden for several years when I was part of the Junior League. It was really wonderful just to think about pulling weeds and doing this kind of stuff, like how that might benefit that community. This green space is there now instead of this horrible dark, dangerous area. But then, also lots of little kids and people now from the neighborhood spend quite a bit of time there too, so it’s really nice. SL: What made you decide to get into politics? AC: That’s a great question. People ask me that all the time and it’s kind of funny because I have never really thought of myself as a politician. I guess in the last few years, the national scene of politics has become very divisive, just seems like 20 you can’t really make any difference at all in the world in the big scheme of things. I started getting a little bit more involved in going to city council and different things from some other work that I was doing, and started noticing that the city council in Ogden at that time had one woman on the council and then all men, spending time there and thinking about the conversations that people were having and everything. I was just thinking, “I think we need a little bit more of a woman’s perspective,” or you know, a female or just some diversity of some sort. We need some other opinions or voices there. I had never really thought about running for city council. It’s funny, I did go with Junior League—they have really helped to promote these events called Real Women Run events. I think the YWCA and maybe Susan Madsen’s work, they brought that around. I have been paying a lot more attention. I’ve been involved with a lot of that stuff on my own and then also with the Junior League. I was like, “Maybe. Oh, one day I’ll run for the school board,” ‘cause you know education’s kind of my thing. Like, “It would be really cool to be involved in some of those things.” I was on the board at Da Vinci Academy, a charter school in the area, and some people say, “Well why Da Vinci?” I’m like, “Well, because I don’t know if I could have ever gotten on the Ogden School District Board.” I mean, it’s just really hard to get on those boards because of the voting and everything, so it’s much easier to get on the charter school board. I did go to the Real Women Run thing one time and that event is really cool because really the work that Susan Madsen’s done is try to highlight these issues around women’s situation in Utah and really talking about a lot of data 21 points around representation, not only in politics but also in leadership, in organizations, in pay equality, and just all kinds of things like that. I really appreciate the research that her team does, it helps to present to folks and really try to promote the fact that it’s important for women to be in these positions and model for other women. For me, that’s where this Montessori thing fits in a little bit too. A big part of the philosophy there is that you’re modeling behavior all the time for others, that you don’t necessarily have to tell people what to do. Your actions speak louder than your words basically. I had done that probably a year and a half or two years before I ever decided to run for city council. I was actually there with a friend that was like, “Oh I’m going to run for city council.” That’s what she said, I was like, “Eww, I would never get into that.” It was so funny. Then you find yourself in these positions where you’re just looking at these people, you’re like, “No way,” Actually, at the time I didn’t know if the incumbent was running or not but I knew that I had a couple of things to bring to the table and my perspective I guess from being a female, but also we didn’t really have representation from my neighborhood although it is a district seat. My neighborhood is on the historic block in Ogden and people might say we’re gentrified, right? We bought these really giant houses and we’re fixing them up and making them single family homes again, which I don’t think is necessarily a bad thing in this situation ‘cause most of us really do want the people that are living there to stay there too, all the people that are different than us. It’s the reason why we live there, we want our kids to be exposed to diversity and not to be surrounded just by people that look exactly the same or in the 22 same social economic spectrum. We’re also people that want to walk downtown and live a little bit differently than some folks that want to live in the suburbs and drive their cars everywhere they go and stuff like that. We’re like old-fashioned millennials or something, or old millennials that have a little bit of money. We can fix up these old houses, not that we have any money because we’re always doing that. So there was a couple of different elements to that and then also I ran the numbers. I’m a data person and so I had a friend help me look at the numbers of how many votes I would need and how I could go about running a campaign, which I think is really, really important because I have seen, not only women, but some people put their hat in the ring in different situations and not have researched what the thing their going to do is. That’s really embarrassing to have people like, “I’m going to run for this seat,” we’re like, “Well do you know what that position does?” They apparently don’t know anything about the position. Well recently we had that with the mayoral thing, somebody that doesn’t know half of the questions that people are posing to them because they haven’t done any research about it. You’re like, “Why would you be running for this?” I admire people for throwing their hat in the ring, but let’s do it in a way that makes it seem like it’s a serious situation. That’s a very long way around to saying, “Okay, we don’t have representation there,” and then just trying it out. I mean, it is very risky running for anything and it is a popularity contest to a certain extent, around figuring out the right ways to get your name and your message out there to the right folks to see 23 if that will work. In my case it did work and the incumbent didn’t run so, I mean, that makes a big difference actually. Right now, in the city council there’s three incumbents running and they have no competition because it is so hard to win against an incumbent. I’m not saying that those people shouldn’t be elected again. What’s nice is that I did end up having an opponent and I think he was running just so I wasn’t running unopposed. Which I think is one reason to run, to make sure that there is some conversation or some dialogue around to what people want in the community. But that is a really big challenge if an incumbent is running. Unless people are mad at them for some reason, it’s very hard to win. So basically it was about representation of having another woman on the council. At different times we have had three or four. In this particular case, Marcia was the only one that was up there and I was like, “That cannot stand, that cannot stand” because I have had, in all my other jobs and things I’ve done, I’m often in a room where I’m the only person of a diverse background whatsoever, much less a woman or a man, but any kind of outside of Utah, just the different perspective of it all. It’s kind of a cliché, but I’m just a person and I’m just running and that’s totally okay. I think women hold themselves to such a higher standard sometimes that it makes it hard for us to actually do anything because we’re never going to meet the standard of what we believe’s enough. We’re never enough. So that’s part of what I’m trying to model for my daughter and for other people, “Hey, I’m not perfect but I have these ideas and I think that it’s enough just to throw them in the ring and show up.” SL: So what are some things you’ve done while being on city council? 24 AC: That’s what I was saying, as I don’t feel like I’ve done anything yet because basically I’ve been on the council a year and nine months now. Gee sure goes by. The first year it was really just figuring out how does this thing work? I mean, I said I did do research before I started so I knew what the job title was and what the responsibilities were, but really just understanding what the cycle is, what are the things that we get put in front of us over and over. A lot of reading. We have quite a bit of material each week that we read and I do make it a point to actually read all of that stuff. Modeling good behavior. Sometimes, honestly, you cannot read it all but we have a staff, which I didn’t realize before I was on the council that they have this big staff. Well, six people. But they help to write summaries of different things or the history of a particular ordinance or something so you can read that too if you can’t read the giant packet. So at the very least, make sure you read the notes that the staff have created for you so you can have some questions. Basically I’ve been learning how it works and we’re in an interesting place right now because we’re trying to change a little bit of how we work. It’s cool because people are willing to talk about change, because a lot of times people just want to keep doing exactly how you’ve been doing it the whole time. The council members that have come before me have started that; Marcia and Ben and Luis had started some different sort of ways of thinking about how we work that can be a little bit more accessible, so maybe changing the formality of our council. I think it got very, very formal for a particular reason, maybe people just needed some structure, but then it makes it hard for the average citizen to know 25 how to interact with us or make change happen. We’re trying to be a little bit more casual in the public meetings for example, letting people ask us questions and then we often will try to answer back, which in the more formal sense we wouldn’t say anything. It’s more than just a one way street. We did just finish the strategic plan which we have and open kind of fact finding session about tonight. They had put that in motion before I started but I’m really excited about it, because it was a process where there were a lot of surveys done, and focus groups and things like that, to ask the public, “Hey what do you want us to do with this budget?” It’s humongous, it’s like 210 million dollars. Those numbers just get so huge that sometimes we’re just throwing around like, “Here’s 500 thousand dollars, ” and it’s just crazy to throw around numbers like that and have it not be like, “That is a huge amount of money.” But it’s a big city, there’s a lot of money. But to really have feedback from folks like, “What is really important to you? Are the sidewalks more important to you than a giant brand new rec center? What are the priorities that you really have?” We can hear from maybe people who feel comfortable reaching out to us individually or from the people that are really mad, or it’s like these extreme opinions we often get. But we don’t really ask like, “Hey what do you want to see, if we have any extra money?” We’re really lucky in odds right now actually that we do have a surplus sometimes in money from some of that Business Depot Ogden (BDO) release revenue and some other things that are going okay in the city right now. In the past, we have not been in that situation so now it’s the time to say, “Okay, resources are still limited but where should we put our efforts since we do have 26 some ability to do that?” I’m excited to hear about the results tonight and then maybe have some public input too. It’s a five year plan around how we might look at the finances. SL: The finances of Ogden. AC: We’ll see. We do have to have the administrative buy-in ‘cause the Mayor and the administrative side of our government have to enact anything that we decide, so it does have to be a partnership. Today I spend most of my time explaining to people how our city government works. Or the other day I had to explain what the Weber County commissioners do. People don’t know what’s the difference. What are they doing? SL: Yeah they don’t realize there’s a difference. AC: Now we’re talking about changing their structure, or some people are, then they’re like, “What does that mean? Who are they compared to you?” That’s why I spend my time educating a lot of people. SL: That’s okay though. Do you have any big goals that you want to be able to achieve while you’re on the council? AC: I do and that is the challenge, because there’s seven people on the council so it’s like a continuous committee meeting all the time. I explain it to people that you have to figure out a way to get the things that you really care about out there. I think it’s important to say too that I think that everybody that’s on the council now has a desire to fulfill their mission in a productive way, it just might be that they see their role or their mission a little differently than maybe I do or others. I definitely feel like I want to represent the voice or the situation of people that 27 don’t often have a voice, and that’s from my work in education and the United Way side and now my community health side at Intermountain. I look at a lot of data, and it’s not that data isn’t the most important thing but when you see some of the inequities around health and education status, different things like that, that are in our community, which are in many other communities too. It’s just not in Ogden. To me, when I see people in our community, I know that those are things that are affecting them in different ways than myself, so I don’t want to say that I represent people that are in that situation, but I definitely want to bring that voice to light. In some ways I think there’s some other council members that care about that also but they see it from a different lens. We might say, “Oh they’re a little bit more conservative.” But it’s actually that they just see it a little bit differently, whereas I see that our systems and our institutions have perpetuated these issues over time. We need to do some drastic things to readjust, to think about how can we reinvest in different communities and that kind of stuff. This is not on the council right now per say, but there is a perspective out there, I’ll just say a mindset, that’s like, “If we just get rid of some of the people or most of the people that are the problem in the community, then we’d be much better off.” For me, I’m like, “Let’s take care of the people that we have and then everything will work out all right.” Let’s not have people living in substandard housing getting taken advantage of by slum lords that are charging somebody way too much money to live in a situation that’s unhealthy, and they’re taking advantage of the fact that someone is poor, you know, the way that people are profiting off of poverty and 28 treating people this way. So for me, I always bring those things to light. It’s kind of like I’m the person at the meeting where everybody's like, “Oh we know what you’re going to say but you go ahead.” I’m like the one that will always be the reminder of like, “Hmmm, but remember that you know those people probably don’t have access to the same networks of support that you do,” or these are bigger issues than just an individual’s actions and behaviors. It’s a systematic kind of issue. I’m always the one reframing it around how are the institutions or organizations causing this problem versus how are the people? So that’s my underlying subversion of this situation. But in a bigger sense, I do feel that our municipal government, and the organizations and institutions that are here, have a responsibility to think about how they’re supporting community members for opportunity. It’s really awesome that my full-time job has actually somehow aligned perfectly with this. I work Intermountain Community Health and that’s all about looking at how, as a really large institution in our communities, how can we make sure that we are addressing these issues that nobody else wants to talk about? Because in the long run, we are held accountable for people’s health and their wellness. We actually need those people to be working at our institution, we need to build pathways so that people stay working in the healthcare industry so that then we can keep taking care of each other. Really it’s only to our benefit. And I love that perspective from Intermountain’s side and I think that there’s other institutions that are starting to think that way. We’re working really closely with Weber State on an anchor initiative as well through that Ogden Civic Action Network, Ogden 29 CAN group. So we’re both part of this democracy collaborative anchor networks, and ones in higher education and ones in health care. But then we’re trying to bring to the community this thinking around to other businesses and anchor institutions. Anchors are like things that are not going to go away anytime soon, and for me, another big anchor is the city government. How can we make sure that we are not only taking care of our staff members and employees so that they’re better off, but how can you do that for the community too? I can go on and on about that forever but I would like the city council members to understand and think deeply about how some of our decisions like zoning, transportation, and how we build or re-develop areas can promote everybody’s possibility for opportunity. There are some neighborhoods that there aren’t really jobs that you could walk to, places that people aren’t as healthy so there’s a ten year life expectancy difference between the east and west side of town, and that’s not okay. Across our state there’s many other communities that have that as well. But across the country, there’s places that have like a twenty-five year difference so we’re doing a little bit better but ten years is not okay. SL: Yeah, just because of where you live. AC: That aligns with education outcomes and income and all these things are all embedded. So that’s my big agenda. SL: That’s a big agenda. AC: I don’t know how you write an ordinance about that but we’re working on it. We have a resolution around active living, we have some you know council members that are interested in thinking about overall community health. When I say 30 community health, I mean the holistic-like wellness and that means mind, body, spirit. We all see a vision for our future that’s really positive and like we have a place to go, and I don’t know if everybody in the community feels like that right now. SL: So what advice would you give another young woman if they're thinking about getting into politics? AC: Well I definitely have a couple folks right now that I am mentoring, or attempting to mentor, around this that say that they are kind of interested so I think it’s awesome. I mean, the other thing I just want to say before I say the thing to young women is to other women, you have to see yourself as a mentor and someone that’s going to help build up other young people, ‘cause I also think young men are awesome too. Definitely young women, because we have these weird problems that we can’t figure out, like not being able to brag on ourselves or not wanting to talk about ourselves, which I do think in a way is very valuable and important for women to work differently than how we see leadership. I’ve been working through that a lot too, and my own thinking is that I don’t need to behave a certain way to be a really impactful leader. Like that extroverted type A person, you know, like these kinds of things we see maybe as really positive on the men’s side but that maybe we could think about different kinds of leadership also working and validating those in some ways, ‘cause I do have an introvert in my life and I’m actually a little bit introverted myself. Like I said before, I would love to just sit and read by myself all the time, but I make myself do these things 31 where I’m like on the camera and I hate it. I will never watch it. I’m too critical and I just can’t take it. So that’s my first thing is that we need to make sure that we’re tapping people on the shoulder and saying, “Hey, you can definitely do that. Hey, why don’t you check this thing out? Why don’t you look at this?” I’m not trying to force, I don’t think everybody has to be a politician to be successful. I think that we have to be intentional. I do a lot of reading as I mentioned and right now I am really interested in the whole back story about the Rosa Parks story. The story of Rosa Park is amazing but there’s lots of times, like this narrative around her being an accidental activist or something, but actually she was involved in a lot of very serious activism, or worked to change the community for a long time and was supported in being trained and all this other kind of stuff. There was all these other actors involved in the whole movement around Civil Rights that don’t always get acknowledgement, but it’s because they all have different kinds of leadership styles or they all did different things that are really vital and important to make those things happen. I’ve been thinking a lot about that, how you don’t have to be the viewpoint, or the focal point, or the person that does everything, because there is a whole bunch of other people involved to make those bigger things happen. It’s not usually just the one person, there’s people guiding those sorts of things from the background that are maybe even more important. I actually like to think of myself, even though I do have this public role, I also try to work really hard behind the scenes to not be acknowledged but to make sure that 32 you push other people forward too and build up their confidence, and give them a pathway to do that. That’s something that I would tell young people or people or anybody that wants to get involved; it’s not being calculating, it’s being strategic and to think carefully about things that you want to do and then how you would get there. I don’t think that if you’re in politics, if you don’t win when you run, I don’t think that’s actually always the most important thing. ‘Cause honestly I’d have to say, now that I’m in the city council, and I know this is probably not what most people would confess, I don’t know, really, what I can do because politics is very fickle, you know, we could get a new mayor soon and that could totally change the whole perspective, or some of the other council members could change, I don’t know. You hope that you can make a difference in the seat that you’re in and you could push some agenda forward and be positive for the community and that people would trust you in that, but I often think, “Is this the place where you could make the most impact?” I actually love it, I love learning about how the system works and everything but I do want to think about actually changing things. I don’t think it’s necessary that you always have to be in politics to do that there could be some other very powerful ways to make change happen. So being thoughtful about that, and thinking that through a little bit ‘cause I think that there’s power in being an outspoken activist and opposition force. There’s power in changing things in your very small little world. I’ve got a friend, I copied her and I started this Ogden Farmacy, where I’d just go around and pick up people’s vegetables and take them to the food bank. 33 A lot of times people that go to the food bank don’t get a lot of fresh produce, and a lot of times people that have gardens are letting things waste in their garden. She’s started doing this in Chicago, my good friend that I lived with for a while that I mentioned, and she’s changed her whole backyard and even her front yard into a giant garden, and she just does that all the time and then she takes it to their local food bank and has other people drop things off to take there too. I’m like, “That is like the most amazing powerful thing you could do for your community.” You don’t have to talk about it, you don’t have to have a bunch of community meetings about it. It’s like this guy from LA that’s the “Gorilla Gardner,” he started changing all the parking strips; actually they were not even watered or anything in LA. He’s got the ordinance changed that they can be gardens and produce fresh fruits and vegetables, and then anybody on the street can have it. It’s like these little things that you can do, and it’s not little really it’s a ton of work, but those things are really, really important and valuable too. It’s like if you can find that thing that you care about, that you could make a difference with, do that thing because you don’t know how you might be influencing or changing somebody else’s life. So I guess that’s what I would say, politics is one way to do it but there’s other ways to do it too. SL: Yeah there are other ways. So how as a woman how do you define courage? AC: Showing up, just showing up and I think you have to be able to be willing to put your voice in there to whatever you’re doing. We talked a little bit about this already, women are reluctant to find their voice as valid. So just take a chance and say whatever you want to say and do whatever you want to do, you know, 34 that’s courage. That’s what I try to do every day. It’s really hard, sometimes you’d rather stay in bed. SL: Yes. So you have two kids, right? A boy and a girl? AC: Yes. SL: How do you balance the responsibilities between work and home? AC: Well you know I have the most awesome husband. We’ve worked out somehow, even though we get really tired and overwhelmed, we’ve worked out a really cool situation where when we’ve been in school at different times or have major things we have definitely traded off. Like I worked at Kelly School of Business for a time while he was in school. I worked at this elevator company for a while just to get us by. He definitely has continued to support me, like going back to school even though a doctorate just takes forever. I just finished my course work. So over the past four years I’ve been taking two classes a night and my full time job and now the city council. He’s done that many times, where he’s been the single dad during the week. I worked in South Jordan for a couple of years and I was going to school and he was basically a single dad for a couple of years ‘cause I’m working. I’m not saying that he’s exceptional because he’s doing that, but we definitely have had those tradeoffs. I think more lately he’s had more of the trade off because he took on a lot more responsibility with the kids than I’ve had. But now my kids are grown up and taking care of themselves, they’re seventeen and eleven. Eleven, I mean, he’s just very independent, very extroverted. He’s always out with his friends and stuff so we’re always checking in obviously, but he basically takes care of himself. 35 But really, we have just traded back and forth over time to help support each other during that stuff. He always is trying to help me think a little bit more carefully about how committed I am to different things, because he sees it as it can really drive me into the ground, like I overcommit. I have thought a lot about this before—this is getting into my psychological problems here, sorry—but I think I do overdo things to try to compensate, to make sure that I’m good, like I’m doing enough. I don’t know why I have this drive to—like I feel like I am giving back or something but it does also have something to do with not being satisfied. So he tries to remind me like, “What else did you commit to do? What else is on that list?” He hears about it later. But you know, he signed up for it and that’s what I’m lucky that he’s willing to go along with it, “And what other committee did you sign up for?” SL: Yeah, I can understand. How do you think the role of mothers has changed from say your mother’s time and your grandmother’s? AC: Well, as I mentioned, my mom was a single mom for most of my growing up. I’m lucky in that I’m able to devote time to my education that maybe they weren’t able to or didn’t get a chance to do. I don’t know if my grandmothers would have been interested in it because they had other stuff they were doing. I guess in a way, compared to their lifestyle, I have stolen that time back to invest in myself. I’m not sure if they would have been able to do that, just the way that their lives were set up or just the expectations on them. I guess going to school wasn’t the priority, it was like having an income or taking care of the kids and those kinds of things. 36 My mom, she was always very resilient and like finding some job or finding some way to make an income. For me, the education part has been the biggest difference. I’ve been privileged enough to take that time and have a job so I could pay the money back afterwards. I think I’ve had a more stable relationship, she didn’t really have that stability in her life for various reasons. So that’s definitely helped me to do that other stuff. My mom’s really proud of me for being on the city council although she doesn’t totally get it, like nobody understands what job I have. So they’re like, “Now what do you do?” When I talk about working for the neighborhood or healthcare she thinks I’m the person that actually goes out and takes care of people. She doesn’t have the conception of this administrative thing, like trying to get people to change at a systems level. It’s just beyond her comprehension to understand what that would be. I don’t know how that’s different but it was just a different perspective I guess. SL: Yeah. What does the term “women’s work” mean to you? AC: To me, it’s very derogatory. Not that I think “women’s work” is derogatory, because I really admire—like I was saying with my grandmothers and their ability to do the things in life they were doing, taking care of their families, and their homes and stuff like that. I mean, I wish I was that good of a homemaker. I often say, “I need a wife and that would be really great.” In my house we definitely divide up the work in a different way. We share pretty evenly. Although I would have to say, we do agree that I’m thinking about all the stuff we have to do more than my husband is. “Okay we’ve got to do this, this, this, and get this person ready for that,” like thinking ahead or thinking about that stuff more. But yeah. 37 “Women’s work,” to me it sounds derogatory. Although, I admire people that can do things really well and have their house organized and have it together, because I am not that good at that. SL: So we talked a little bit about who you admired as a kid, but now in sort of mid-life, who do you admire? Who has mentored you, who do you look up to? AC: Well that’s a good question. I definitely think that in Ogden we are super lucky to have such great women in the community that have done so much. I think that I’m actually inspired by lots of different women and many of them probably aren’t older than me. I think Ogden is a place where people can do things where it might be harder in other places, and I mean, I could totally be wrong about that since this is where I live now. But I see women that are starting their own business and making up what they want to do, and it totally works out and it is really great and they have a lot of perseverance in those things. I can’t really think of one person in particular or a body, I guess I try to learn lessons from everyone you say like, “Okay learn from that.” Let me think about it for a second, there are just so many great and inspiring people locally. I’ll have to get back to you later about that. SL: Yeah, that’s okay. I understand it’s hard. Okay, before I ask my final question anything else you want to say? AC: I admire you very much for doing this project. I think that there are a lot of great men in the world, so I’m not trying to be gender-ist or something, but I think that because women do work differently it’s hard to celebrate them or to find those things that they’ve put out there about themselves. So I think it’s really important 38 and valuable for all the other women in the community and the men to see what great contributions and benefits have come from this kind of thing. I think that we’re really lucky to be at this university and have the ability to do some of these things. Sometimes people get negative about Ogden and they get negative about Weber State, and we have to look at things as the assets that they are versus going down that negative track. It’s very easy to undermine your own state, so I appreciate it very much. I think it’s cool and I’m excited to learn all about the other women. SL: Yeah, it’s amazing. Okay, so this is a question we’re asking everyone since this whole project started with the 100th anniversary of the 19th amendment, getting the right to vote. The question is: how do you think women receiving the right to vote shaped or influenced history, your community and you personally? AC: Well I definitely vote every time because I’ve figured, “Why would you go through all that trouble but not actually include your voice in anything?” I think people need to know and understand that your local vote counts a lot more than whatever happens on the national spectrum. It’s important to vote in those situations and have your voice be heard, but one vote can make a difference locally. And I think it’s too late after the fact to realize like, “Oh, when we did this certain thing that changed this whole spectrum of things that are going to happen and we just have to understand how those things work.” Otherwise, I mean, it is really true that these local political issues, well, they’re community issues and they can impact your life directly in such a powerful way that you wouldn’t realize if you don’t pay attention. It is hard to pay attention to every little thing that is 39 going on with all the different groups that want your input but you do have to find the things that do matter the most to you and dig in, otherwise you or your family members to come will definitely be impacted in the long term. I think people just sort of saying, “Oh my vote doesn’t matter. What does it matter?” It’s just a shame, it’s a real shame that they don’t think that they can make a difference. I think there’s way too many people doing that. So yeah, I think that’s it. SL: I understand. Well thank you, Angela. AC: Thank you.