00:00:00.379 - 00:00:20.530

Got it. Perfect. Thank you. Yeah, that's it. I interview people a lot too and I'm one of those people that I am much more interested in what they're saying to me than I am in writing notes. So, um Yes, so. Ok. Yes, I noticed that with

00:00:20.540 - 00:00:34.659

my first interview, it was just, I was trying to write notes and, but I was, it's so much better to just be engaged and listening. So I'm just gonna go ahead and make this smaller. I already have in my head of the questions I wanna ask

00:00:34.669 - 00:00:50.729

you, but I have a list as well just in case I miss anything, I'll just have it right today. Here you go. Ok. Um Do um do you happen to know a little bit about what the project's about? I don't know what um professor told you

00:00:50.799 - 00:01:12.010

or very, very, very little. Um Basically that it's just about the 2017 fires and people's responses to it. And since this is a human development project, I'm assuming that there's some element of either development or health or well being or et cetera, but I don't know

00:01:12.529 - 00:01:33.510

more than that. Yes. So my focus on for, for my paper would be um basically the students and how um from the faculty perspective, um how they noticed, um and the way things were handled for the students during the tubs fire. Um I do want to

00:01:33.519 - 00:01:47.440

know everything about like um your own experience and what you went through, uh the focus on the paper and some of the questions that I'll ask are about things that you may have noticed from the students. Like, were they dropping off? Were they more engaged with

00:01:47.449 - 00:02:02.839

school because they had one thing to focus? So I just wanted to know basically that that would be the focus, be sure, sure that, that helps. Um Because I can, I can definitely do that. So you want to start with your questions and we'll see where

00:02:02.849 - 00:02:22.000

we go. Yeah. Um So just to start off, um do you mind um recalling basically everybody talks about how it was a weird night before the fire. Um You want to tell me your experience and what happened right before and, and then how you handle it?

00:02:22.009 - 00:02:45.440

Were you prepared for something like that? Ok. Um No, that this is, you know, it's um in anthropology, one of the things that we study is that these kinds of events have that sort of um they're epical, they're markers in time. And so everybody who experienced

00:02:45.449 - 00:03:03.690

it who's still alive has their, where were you when the fire happened? Story? Um which if if what you study is text, in other words, how people tell stories, right? These are fabulous moments because you can line up all the different versions and then you can

00:03:03.699 - 00:03:22.880

compare them and what are the similarities and what are the differences and all that kind of stuff? So, yes, I have my story. Um, and it goes like this. So I live less than half a mile south of Coffee Park. Ok. And so um in a,

00:03:22.889 - 00:03:45.979

in a neighborhood that is um uh according to a recent study that was done up Sonoma County, we are one of four census tracts in the county um that have not, have not um improved our standard of living in the last 10 years. The average, no,

00:03:45.990 - 00:04:09.110

the median income in my neighborhood in Sonoma County, California is $26,000 a year. So we are a very poor neighborhood. We're a very um uh ethnically mixed neighborhood. A lot of people. Um A lot of households here, English is a second language and it's spoken primarily

00:04:09.119 - 00:04:27.660

by the kids because they're going to school. And so I wanna, I say that as context because it shaped what happened the night of the fire in really dramatic ways, right? And it was the first time, at least in the city of Santa Rosa, we'd been

00:04:27.670 - 00:04:49.160

through something like this. And so people made decisions in that moment that are now how we deal with crisis. You know, I saw people using the same strategies in my neighborhood during the pandemic that we developed in the first fire, if that makes sense. Right. So,

00:04:49.299 - 00:05:08.869

so my story goes like this, I had been to San Francisco that day. Um, I think it was October 8th, right, which happens to be my sister's birthday. So I remember, um, because the, uh, hardly strictly bluegrass festival was happening. And so I had gone down

00:05:08.880 - 00:05:23.730

with some friends who liked that kind of music and which meant I'd been away all day, I'd come home, it was late. I was exhausted, you know how it is when you've been out all day doing something like that. And, and so I noticed the wind

00:05:23.739 - 00:05:38.510

and it was making me feel uncomfortable because it, as it, whenever it's that wind that's blowing from the wrong direction, you know, the warm wind, it just feels wrong like it makes the hair stand up on the back of your neck a little bit. Right. But

00:05:38.519 - 00:05:59.079

I didn't, it wasn't that strong when I first went to bed because I went to bed early because I was tired. Right. And then at some point about maybe about between 12 and one in the morning, I was awakened because a little one of those pop

00:05:59.089 - 00:06:19.480

up, uh, metal gazebo tents, you know that you can buy that. People use them at events, right? You have the pop up tent that's just the canopy and then the legs that canopy blew into my bedroom window, smashed up against the bedroom window amazingly, didn't break

00:06:19.489 - 00:06:34.549

the window. I still don't know to this day why the window didn't shatter but it didn't, but it was a huge loud crashing noise. Right. And so you can imagine you wake up and you're like, oh, my goodness, what was that? What happened? And so I

00:06:34.559 - 00:06:55.200

went out into the backyard mostly to see is the window? Ok. Right. And is anything broken? And that's when I realized that the wind was just howling like crazy. And I couldn't see any fire at that point, but I could smell it. It was really, really

00:06:55.209 - 00:07:16.089

strongly in the air because again, I'm very close to where the path of the fire comes across the freeway. Right. And, and so I go back inside and do what we all did, which was get online, you know, Facebook and Twitter and, and none of us

00:07:16.100 - 00:07:36.320

knew about Niel at that point. So nobody was on our phones. We were just on laptops or on your, you know, on your, um, social media, on your phone and nobody could figure out what was going on. And then we started, somebody started posting some of

00:07:36.329 - 00:07:56.170

the police calls and the fire response calls that were starting to come in because they were following the local fire department or something like that on their social media. So all of this is like 2nd and 3rd and 4th hand and I remember sitting there when

00:07:56.179 - 00:08:18.369

the first uh evacuation orders came through that were for places like fountain grove. So at a distance from me and, and thinking, well, it's never gonna get here. I don't need to worry. I was still in my pajamas. Right. And I finally began to realize, I

00:08:18.380 - 00:08:32.760

think about two that I really needed to get dressed and I really needed to try to get ready to leave if I had to. And I started putting things in the car. I was trying to catch my two cats, one of whom cooperated and one of

00:08:32.770 - 00:08:50.330

whom just vanished in the house somewhere and I never did catch her before having to leave. And then as I was going out to the car, I realized my neighbors were too. And so I knew people, I knew my immediate next door neighbors, I knew some

00:08:50.340 - 00:09:08.450

of the people across the street, but not everybody in every house. And so we started going and knocking on the doors of neighbors that we knew this was the part that carried over after this fire into all the fires after. Um, and sometimes people would come

00:09:08.460 - 00:09:23.479

to the door and sometimes, you know, people knocking on your door at 2 a.m. in the morning in my kind of neighborhood is not always a good thing. Um And so people wouldn't come to the door. Uh And so it took a while before we were

00:09:23.489 - 00:09:43.369

sure that everybody on the street at least knew what was going on. Nobody was sleeping through this. Right. Whether people decided to leave or not, and many people chose not to leave. Even when the evacuation orders came by about three o'clock when we all began to

00:09:43.380 - 00:10:02.960

actually get into our cars and leave. If you looked north, if we were standing in my driveway and we looked north, all we could all see was this giant red wall, the whole sky glowed bright red and all you could hear were all the propane tanks

00:10:02.969 - 00:10:22.059

exploding in Coffee Park. It sounded like bombs going off. It sounded like a war, right? Um And I'm sorry, I might have, might have my mind says it was two in the morning, but is it 3 p.m. No, 3 a.m. It's 3 a.m. right? So it's

00:10:22.070 - 00:10:40.119

dark, right? It's at night it's dark and so you, this glow is just surreal, right? It doesn't, your mind? Can't make it make sense if that makes, if that makes sense. Right? Um And so we're all getting in the car and I remember my next door

00:10:40.130 - 00:10:57.729

neighbor Sylvia looking at me and saying basically in Spanish, you know, God bless you. I mean, let, let's, I hope we make it. I hope we come back to houses is and none of us expect it to. I drove away not thinking I would ever see

00:10:57.739 - 00:11:24.169

my home again. Um, and we got really lucky. Uh No, we didn't get lucky. Those three or four, huge fire trucks and, uh, firefighter groups from the East Bay, from Berkeley arrived and they, they drove down a cross street across coffee Lane where the flames had

00:11:24.179 - 00:11:39.799

burned down to that street. And they decided, ok, this is gonna be where this, we, we're, this is where we're gonna try to hold it. And because they were reinforcements, you know, they still had water, they still had guys, they right, they were able to do

00:11:39.809 - 00:12:01.539

that. And so my house, what is, is still here and I got to come home but it wasn't until five days later. Oh, so I didn't know right, all that time. Um, I went to down to a friend's house who was one of the people that

00:12:01.549 - 00:12:15.599

had gone to the concert with me because I couldn't get him on my phone. He wouldn't, he had turned his phone off because he was tired. Right. So he turned his phone off and at that time we didn't know where the fire was. He lived south

00:12:15.609 - 00:12:28.320

of me down in Roseland, but I didn't know whether the fire, I didn't know where the fire was. I didn't know if he was at risk or anybody of my other friends were at risk. And so I was trying to get him. So I just drove

00:12:28.330 - 00:12:49.260

to his house because at that point it took me an hour to get from around Ville Road in, in Santa Rosa. I don't know if you know where that is, um, kind of to, to Sebastopol in Roseland it took an hour. Wow. Because the traffic was

00:12:49.270 - 00:13:09.229

going about two miles an hour because it's so hard to get out of these neighborhoods. There's so few ways out and once you get out onto a main drag, if everyone is trying to go, you can't go anywhere. And so everybody knows the fire is behind

00:13:09.239 - 00:13:28.650

us. That's what we fled and you're in your car with all of your and you can't go any faster. So in some ways, the evacuation was as terrifying and kind of surreal as everything else. I get to his house. That's when we're start, the sun's coming

00:13:28.659 - 00:13:46.890

up because it's taken me so long to get down there. Um The reports are starting to come in that give us a sense of where the fire is and where it isn't. And I spent basically that following week can, because classes are canceled. So now we

00:13:46.900 - 00:14:06.750

can make the transition to what's going on on campus. Um, classes are canceled. Uh, campus is closed but not completely closed because people living in the dorms have nowhere to go. So they're trying to figure out how to evacuate campus. They're trying to decide, do we

00:14:06.760 - 00:14:25.039

evacuate? How close is the fire? Where is it gonna stop? Because by now there are fires coming over the hills, right? Because there's another fire over in Glen Allen and Sonoma. So there's fire there, you know, the tubs fire, but there are other fires. So the

00:14:25.049 - 00:14:42.299

house where my daughter grew up is burning in Glen Ellen at the time, I'm evacuating but it's a different fire. So I don't know about that yet. Does that make sense? Um So by the morning we're starting to, to get that information. I end up staying

00:14:42.309 - 00:14:59.219

in Roseland with friends. I spend most of my time at Bear Farm. Um, The outdoor garden there, the, the land paths garden. I don't know if you know it, it's a community garden and activity place helping because, because it was an outdoor space and because it

00:14:59.229 - 00:15:19.130

was a community garden, people knew to go there. And so there was food, there, people were dropping off food supplies. Um Medical people came to distribute masks there and the people running Bear farm were feeding 200 people a day, breakfast, lunch and dinner for a week

00:15:19.799 - 00:15:43.630

because it was a refugee site basically. Right. Um So that was my experience with the fire I lived and my house survived and even that silly cat that wouldn't get in the crate survived. Um But it was pretty traumatic and it was pretty, you never knew

00:15:43.640 - 00:16:00.929

from moment to moment. It took a week before the fires were actually out. And so I, I've been trying to explain it, especially to family members back east. We grew up with things like hurricanes and so a hurricane as a disaster or even really an earthquake

00:16:00.940 - 00:16:17.770

as a disaster. You know, an earthquake is over in seconds and then there's the aftermath and it's horrible. But, you know, except for aftershocks it's over. Same with the hurricane. The hurricane arrives and it's terrible and it moves through and it's gone and it might take

00:16:17.780 - 00:16:41.659

a night but it doesn't take a week to, to know that it's over. And that was a very weird difference for a disaster because I think it, it prolonged that period of, I don't know how to act except to be safe. I don't know when I

00:16:41.669 - 00:16:57.530

can start trying to pick up the pieces. I don't know. I, I actually snuck back into my neighborhood before the, um, evacuation was lifted just because I couldn't stand it any longer. I wanted to know if I still had a house. I, I just couldn't wait

00:16:57.539 - 00:17:17.260

any longer to know. Yes or no. Does that make sense? Psychologically? Right. It was like I can't do this anymore. I need to know. Right. Yeah. Is that I don't want to spend our whole time talking about my experience. But that was, that's what I want

00:17:17.270 - 00:17:32.020

from you is the talk about your experience. But also like, I, I feel like a little nuggets here and there about, um, my report. But I think the most important thing is I really want to know about your experience. Ok. Well, so should we shift to

00:17:32.030 - 00:17:52.349

students? And, and so, so what happens. So it's a week. I, I can't remember now exactly how many days worth of classes were canceled. The other thing to sort of remember in this context is the pandemic hadn't happened. So we didn't all know how to teach

00:17:52.359 - 00:18:13.709

online. So we didn't have this set up to, to do. There was no zoom. Right. And so in 2017, if classes are canceled and campus is closed, it's the, right now I had a, we had canvas. So I had a website so I was able to

00:18:13.719 - 00:18:33.930

check in with my students, those who still had internet access. Right. But not everybody did. And a lot of people who, a lot of students who were able to leave the area and go home had done so and didn't necessarily have the same internet access at

00:18:33.939 - 00:18:52.750

home with their parents as they'd had when they were in the dorms on campus if that makes sense. Um So I wasn't, I was trying to check in with students almost immediately, but I wasn't sure I, I couldn't get to everybody and I wasn't sure why

00:18:52.760 - 00:19:15.189

people couldn't answer. I had no way of knowing why people might not be able to answer an email. Right. So, when we finally did come back together, so that year I was teaching my full load was three classes. But I believe that year I was still

00:19:15.199 - 00:19:32.060

grad coordinator. I was either grad coordinator or chair. There was a reason why I was only teaching two classes that semester. Um One of which was one of my grad seminars. And so that was easier because the graduate students are used to working on their own.

00:19:32.069 - 00:19:55.430

We didn't necessarily have to meet in class per se. But the one that was much more, that became the focus of my attention as a teacher, if that makes sense was my methods class. I was teaching an anthropology methods class called material culture studies. And as

00:19:55.439 - 00:20:22.109

it happened, because I was doing a big project on that, we call the Santa Rosa Neighborhood Heritage Mapping project. That was this big interactive online mapping project um that was supposed to be culminating in the 2018 celebration of the 150th anniversary of the founding of the

00:20:22.119 - 00:20:37.660

city. So we were getting ready for this big birthday party, right? And then 2017 happened, but I'd been having to start the pro I started the project in 2015. So I had thought that what we could do for our methods class is my students could get

00:20:37.670 - 00:20:52.810

the opportunity to go work in the field with me because Santa Rosa was close and easily accessible. It was wasn't like, you know, going to another country to go do field work. It was close by. And so all of the students and they're only 15, it's

00:20:52.819 - 00:21:12.619

a lab class. So it's small, right? They divide it into about four groups and they'd each picked a neighborhood that or an aspect of the neighborhood that they were gonna be working on and they had already started those projects and then the fire happens. And when

00:21:12.630 - 00:21:38.599

we got back together of those 15 students, two people no longer had a home, two people had lost their jobs because the place where they were working like the big hotel up on the hill in, in Santa Rosa had burned down. One person, their home was

00:21:38.609 - 00:22:02.199

still intact, but both their parents who didn't live together had lost their houses. So both their parents had moved in with my student and her boyfriend. We're in a, in a one bedroom studio apartment and we're now sleeping in the other room. People were in trauma.

00:22:03.520 - 00:22:24.729

And so I did what a lot of other faculty did at the time, especially with a class that small, I wanted to focus on what people most needed to do. Right. That minute, forget classes, right? Um What do you need? What, where are, what's your situation?

00:22:25.479 - 00:22:48.160

Um Can you continue to participate in class? Are you in a situation where, you know, you can participate or have you had to go home to Sacramento? Right? Because the place where you were living doesn't exist anymore with me. So we went through a whole lot

00:22:48.170 - 00:23:15.699

of really difficult conversations that day in class, took care of each other. I mean, people, people who had lost their jobs were terrified. Sorry, go ahead. It cut off it, cut off. Am I back? What is your back? Your back is just like, completely, you froze

00:23:15.709 - 00:23:31.550

and then everything that you said for about 30 seconds or a minute just went like, so we were, we were basically deal focusing on people's trauma and what they needed in that exact moment for that first day. And what I did was I said to the

00:23:31.560 - 00:23:51.280

students I need, here's what I want you to do. I want you to um go, you know, go home class is over and so go home or turn off the internet, what, whatever you need to do and um I'm gonna leave it up to you to

00:23:51.290 - 00:24:10.829

decide how we go forward with this class because remember it's October, it's early October, it's before midterms, but it's not the first day of class. So things have already started and people among students in particular are worried about. Am I gonna get, what, how am I

00:24:10.839 - 00:24:28.670

gonna go to school? Am I gonna get, how do I get grades for courses? I've already paid for and they're expensive if we can't keep doing the class. And yet I don't even know if I can get to campus. See what I mean? So there's a

00:24:28.680 - 00:24:51.229

lot of anxiety on campus at that time. Um on the part of students about how do we finish? How can I finish? Right. I lost all my textbooks. I don't have lots of things like that going on. Um So when we got back together the next

00:24:51.239 - 00:25:13.250

week, the people in that methods, class came to me and they said, what we wanna do is we want to keep going with our projects, but we wanna make our projects about the fire. So they completely flipped to doing little research projects about the material culture

00:25:13.260 - 00:25:32.859

of disaster and response in Santa Rosa because they'd already done a little bit of the background work starting their original projects. And so this made it kind of easy. One of the groups that changed the most stopped focusing on the original neighborhood they were gonna work

00:25:32.869 - 00:25:52.329

on and started recording all of the what they call the fire material culture. So the signs that got hung up on the freeway overpasses thanking the firefighters and the signs that went up in store windows saying, you know, the love is thicker than the smoke and

00:25:52.339 - 00:26:15.540

the signs up in Coffee Park about, you know, we're not a zoo. Don't, don't come, don't come stare at us, right? Things like that. Um They did this amazing project that was all done with their cell phones, driving around taking pictures. Well, yeah, that kind of

00:26:15.550 - 00:26:34.430

thing. Um They this two of the students who were in that group, two graduated at the end of that year, but two of the students in the spring semester presented that research in one of the student research symposia for that spring. Wow, it was amazing, right.

00:26:35.640 - 00:26:56.400

So that was, that, I think that shaped my experience about how my students were reacting because we all got to know each other really well. It's 15 people plus me, that's 16 people. We got to know each other really well. We, we got to take care

00:26:56.410 - 00:27:16.310

of each other. Um, the student, especially the student that had lost her home, ultimately ended up withdrawing from the class, but she still hung out with us because we, she knew we weren't judging her and she knew that we already knew her situation. So she didn't

00:27:16.319 - 00:27:39.630

have to explain it to us. Right. Mhm. Um I feel like we've gotten maybe away from your questions and I'm worried about that. Oh, not at all. This is perfect. This is exactly what I wanted to know about. You know, how many students withdrew, how many

00:27:39.640 - 00:27:58.130

like how, how did people come together in this difficult time? Right? I think my students just because of the unique situation they were in of that project being in a methods class that was all about looking at how people express identity with stuff in a social

00:27:58.140 - 00:28:17.270

level above the individual. That's what a neighborhood is, right? Um They had already done all of this background work both in terms of knowing the places and in terms of, you know, classic sort of anthro professors stuff. We'd made them read, I'd made them read all

00:28:17.280 - 00:28:36.199

this, here's how to interpret material culture and this is what it means and blah, blah, here's how to document stuff. So what it meant was they could use the class to do their own processing of the event. Does that make sense? I think that's exactly what,

00:28:36.260 - 00:28:54.079

why people made that choice because I didn't tell them they had to do that. They, one of the groups proposed it and the other groups, you know, talked about it and I think we ended up with one group still stuck with their neighborhood approach. But part

00:28:54.089 - 00:29:11.640

of, but they were still studying what, what people had done during the fire in that neighborhood. Um because it was one of the places it was south of highway 12, so it hadn't been impacted. All right, dogs are ok. Mine is being very good. This is

00:29:11.650 - 00:29:29.650

why I got the walk in first so that he would sleep through this with a luck Jesus. Here we go right there. Thank you. Ok. Sorry about that. That's quite all right. I totally get that one. Anyway, I think that made my, it certainly made my

00:29:29.660 - 00:29:48.270

experience as a professor unique, somewhat different from the experiences of my other colleagues who were trying to teach a, you know, a class of 100 and 20 freshmen in intro biological anthropology or something. And they couldn't do what I ended up being able to do with

00:29:48.280 - 00:30:08.670

my students. It was a very different experience. Um One of the groups actually focused on Bear Farm that place I was telling you about that became the refugee site. Um, anyway, sorry, I'm just gonna, I'm gonna take her out just so she's take her out. I'm

00:30:08.680 - 00:30:45.900

gonna enter, I'm gonna enter the Bear Farm URL in the chat. So you've got it. Ok. Yeah. Yeah. Sure. Mhm. Ok. Ok. So they did, um, yeah. And are you sending me uh the Bear Farm website or a project that the, the, no, I don't

00:30:45.910 - 00:31:04.619

have any of the projects anymore. Um They belong to the students. And so um I used to have some of the photos, the fires, what they called the people who did the fire material culture project called it the Fire sign project. Um And I used to

00:31:04.630 - 00:31:22.349

have some of their slides but I gave them all, you know, some of their images, but I, they were not mine. So um but anyway, this is the place. And so what you've got is a private nonprofit community garden, Urban Garden, right? In a, a very

00:31:22.359 - 00:31:41.319

low income area where a lot of people were used to. I mean, the, the garden exists because people are supplementing their food budget with those with the crops grown in that area. But it's also a community hub. It's a place prior to the fire every Friday

00:31:42.540 - 00:32:04.609

um evening that the weather was good. There were potlucks at Bear Farm. They've always, they had always done that. And so when the crisis hit, places like Bear Farm became places that people could go for resources. Um And that's exactly what my students were, were studying,

00:32:04.619 - 00:32:28.579

right? Um That, that particular group. Um One did the fire signs, one did um the neighborhood just south of 12. Um That is a historically um black neighborhood in Santa Rosa. Um It has Martin Luther King Junior Park in it. Um which is another so park,

00:32:28.589 - 00:32:52.319

right? Outdoor space. Um It became um a kind of center. It has the a child care facility that's where the um, head start program was based. Um So again, it was a site where families in the neighborhood had always been coming for resources and to get

00:32:52.329 - 00:33:13.560

together and have parties and things like that. And so that site became of focus in the recovery after the fire. It was also really close to, oh, that was so one of the students did a project on the, what happened at the fairgrounds in Santa Rosa

00:33:13.719 - 00:33:33.729

because that became the, the, um, what do you call it? The, it was partly a refugee site. Um, because the county fair is held there, there are stables and so people who were evacuating, large animals could bring their animals to the fairgrounds and there was a

00:33:33.739 - 00:33:54.400

safe place for them to be. Right. Um There were people brought campers, people camped out in the, in the fairgrounds. The Veterans Hall which is across the street from the fairgrounds was a site because it was indoors. You could take people who were, had breathing issues

00:33:54.410 - 00:34:12.820

and there was a filtration system on the, on the air conditioning so that they could breathe. Right. The mall, the Santa Rosa Mall became the site of refuge because it was indoors and it was filtered cot town, both of them cot town and downtown because the

00:34:12.830 - 00:34:32.310

smoke was everywhere. The smoke doesn't stay where the fires are. Right. Everybody was coughing and wheezing places. Hardware stores, like Friedman's had giant huge boxes of masks at the front door that were just free. You could come and get a mask so you could breathe in

00:34:32.320 - 00:34:59.350

the smoke. Right. How long did that last two weeks? Um, well, the fires burned for a week. So then after, so that smoke just right billowing up and then, um, it was several weeks. It was till the weather changed. Some, it had to rain. Really? No,

00:34:59.629 - 00:35:28.409

before the, the smell of smoke really left. Oh, I just, it's all good. Well, I'm trying to remember more things about students. So, and what I'm also realized this is interesting. So I'm also starting to have to be very careful to remember which things happened in

00:35:28.419 - 00:35:49.909

the 2017 fire and which things happened in the 2019 classes that were canceled and, or shifted online because of the evacuations where they did evacuate campus and then what happened in the pandemic because we've now had three, at least three of these iterations on campus and

00:35:49.919 - 00:36:12.500

it was like I was saying earlier, we learned the first time strategies and techniques that we then used the 2nd and 3rd time, especially with the pandemic, with the some of us, some faculty I know from having people say so encountered teaching fully online as a

00:36:12.510 - 00:36:34.100

surprise in the pandemic. But many of us didn't because the fires had already gotten us started learning how to do that as an emergency. Does, does that make sense? The only thing we didn't have was zoom? Hm. Right. So it made real time actual teaching difficult,

00:36:34.110 - 00:36:53.260

but I learned how to record lectures and post them online in the first fire because I had to, because not everybody could come to class because they've had to go home. Right. And home was a long way away and we didn't want people to not be

00:36:53.270 - 00:37:13.530

able to complete the courses. Yeah. Right. Um Sorry. No, go ahead. No, I think this is just such an amazing point of adaptation. I think I can really make a focus on my paper about how we've adapted or how you guys adapted to something absolutely horrible.

00:37:13.540 - 00:37:32.370

But also it makes things like this possible. Um Yeah, I can tell you a so if you don't mind, I was just gonna try and not talk about things that happened more recently. But I'll give you one short story about that adaptation that I think is

00:37:32.379 - 00:37:56.260

very anthropological, right? Um So fast forward to the pandemic. OK. After the first immediate total shutdown, whatever, however many weeks or months that was, I was making my first very timid foray out to the grocery store once that became possible again. Right. And I was masked

00:37:56.270 - 00:38:19.500

up and, and I'm walking, I never walking down the frozen food aisle in the safe way. And here comes this gentleman from the other direction and he's wearing a Sonoma Strong t-shirt and I can tell that it's one of the ones that the fire department was

00:38:19.510 - 00:38:36.100

giving out in the first fire. And that's, that's when that slogan is created, right? And I do this thing that anthropologists are famous for doing. We're very rude. We just walk up to total strangers. And I said, was that the only clean T shirt in the

00:38:36.110 - 00:38:58.840

drawer this morning or did you put that on, on purpose and through his mask? He says, no, I put it on, on purpose. We have to bring it back. We need it again. Hm. That is a moment where that he, he just literally performed. Ok, we

00:38:58.850 - 00:39:24.610

learned this, we learned that this sense of community support and connection helped in the first crisis. So now we're at the third crisis and I'm gonna do that again. I'm gonna, I'm gonna invoke that again. Does that make sense? Right. And that's the best example I

00:39:24.620 - 00:39:43.310

can give you of somebody literally putting it a shirt on so that not just his mask was preparing him to go back to the grocery store but his wardrobe waste preparing him right to go to the grocery store. Yeah. Thank you for sharing that. That's wonderful.

00:39:43.350 - 00:40:05.540

Isn't that amazing? Um, and I think there's a lot of, I think that's exactly what's happened here. I had strange conversations with. Ok. Now my dog has arrived. Um, I have had strange conversations with a number of colleagues in particular in other cities like New York,

00:40:06.780 - 00:40:27.850

um during the quarantine and, and one of the things that we talked about was that they talked about that they would express over and over again was the sense of surrealness and how they'd never done anything like this before or they never had anything like this

00:40:27.860 - 00:40:56.149

happen before. And the more they use that language, the more I realized that in Sonoma County, we had, we had experienced trauma, collective community trauma. We had experienced the failure of things like communication systems or access to services or right that your school system is shutting

00:40:56.159 - 00:41:27.729

down, right? And that is a qu quit. That is a really powerful qualitative difference at the community level between how we went through the pandemic, how fire communities in the West. Let's say that because it's not just Sonoma County that's been experiencing this, right. Um mm

00:41:28.659 - 00:41:46.840

We don't, we're not really necessarily sitting here ticking off a list of, look at all the tools we have developed to respond to crisis and we can use this tool kit in the next crisis because we now expect there to be more than one. That's the

00:41:46.850 - 00:42:05.610

other sort of part of this narrative that I'm starting to hear creep into people's language is people no longer the 2017 fire. People like this will never happen again. And then it did two years later and then the pandemic hit. And so people are now in

00:42:05.620 - 00:42:23.550

a place where they've begun to think about disasters as a not constant everyday thing, but something that will happen more than once in their lifetime. But I still don't think we're sitting here with a tool kit list at checklist saying, ok, now I know how to

00:42:23.560 - 00:42:43.729

do this, this, this and this, the, I was helping a friend who was dealing with tornado warnings in Iowa two days ago, create a list for her go bag because I know what a go bag is and I know where mine is in the closet. Right.

00:42:43.780 - 00:43:04.959

That's, that's the kind of checklist stuff. I mean, I think a lot of the, the kind of tools I'm thinking of are we're not conscious of them. They're not like the go back, right? They're more almost psychological responses. So when the 2019 evacuations hit, the people

00:43:04.969 - 00:43:27.310

across the street had just moved into the neighborhood. They were brand new. They weren't here in 2017. Moreover, they had moved here from South Africa. They were black. So they are black, South Africans and the mother the elderly mom when the high, low siren started, her

00:43:27.320 - 00:43:50.290

adult daughters were saying, mom, we have to go, we have to evacuate and she was afraid because her lived experience as a Black South African growing up in apartheid is not that the police sirens are a good thing. Right. And apparently it was at that moment

00:43:50.300 - 00:44:02.100

that I showed up on their front door knocking on their door saying hi, I'm your neighbor across the street. And I just wanted to check that everybody is ok and we're getting ready to evacuate. And do you have, you know, are you good to do you

00:44:02.110 - 00:44:19.540

have space in the cars for everybody in the house? Things like that, right. That these are, we learned that in 2017 that we needed to make sure. And the lady said, no, we're fine. Thanks so much. Good to meet you. My name's Doreen. You know how

00:44:19.550 - 00:44:40.810

to meet your neighbors. Um, it wasn't until several months later, she came over and said I wanted to tell you that you were the only reason that my mother agreed to leave the house because she figured if the white lady across the street was evacuating, then

00:44:40.820 - 00:44:58.719

it was, you know, it, it, yes, it's a right this, it's real. We need to get out of here and I wouldn't have probably gone over it. You know, in 2017, I knocked on the people whose doors I knew. Now I knock on everybody's doors. We

00:44:58.729 - 00:45:29.310

all knock on everybody's doors because we don't know who hasn't heard yet and in this instance they'd heard but they weren't sure what it meant. How about that? How about that? For an interesting piece of? Ok. I just need a minute. Yeah, me too. Um, I

00:45:29.320 - 00:45:48.719

also want to make sure I want you to look at your list of questions. Um, how far we've gotten from what you need? I, I think I have more than what I need. I really, you, I have the questions but you answered it. Everything was story.

00:45:49.090 - 00:46:05.280

So it's like I have more, you know, I have my questions. Are you answer my questions better than I could have asked them is what I say. I don't have quantitative stuff for you. I don't know how many students um you know, had to withdraw. I

00:46:05.290 - 00:46:24.860

don't know that data, the school, the university may have that data for you. That might be something to ask. Um Doctor Smith about is that, you know, to see if the school has statistics, the university has data available um because they would have done that assessment.

00:46:24.870 - 00:46:44.370

There was an afterwards report that was done by one of the university offices about the university's response that might be good for, for more quantitative data in particular for you. That might be an idea. But you're right. All I have are stories that, but that's what

00:46:44.379 - 00:47:01.719

I I mean to be writing my paper on, I honestly, I prefer the story aspect. Um but you did say like out of 15 2 people lost their houses, right? That one withdrew. So that's, I mean, perfect. I will, I think the most interesting things to

00:47:01.729 - 00:47:19.060

read are the stories. I, I mean, and then yes, so I have, I have an idea for you. Um and I can send this to you as an attachment to an email because I have the article and I know your human development. Um And so this

00:47:19.070 - 00:47:40.810

might be a little bit odd, I just read. So there is a um um a very amazing uh kind of new rock star archaeologist in the US whose name is Sonia Adela and Sonia Adela is I believe an Asya tribal member. So she is a native

00:47:40.820 - 00:48:11.510

person and she has done a lot of work in what's called the repatriation of um native burials, native um material culture, native regalia, um being repatriated given back, right? Not given, returned to having been taken from um tribal organizations being returned by museums, being returned by

00:48:11.780 - 00:48:32.439

uh government agencies that are holding these things in collections, right? And this process of repatriation as you can imagine is very, very emotional. And so Sonia has recently written an article, I believe the date on this is 2019. So it's, it's recent enough that it would

00:48:32.449 - 00:48:58.449

be useful if you want to use it as part of why ST not just stories, but storytelling becomes important in circumstances of trauma. Her article is not about the repatriation itself, the stuff, it's about what she has now observed among the people, the tribal people who

00:48:58.459 - 00:49:20.689

are the people receiving this stuff and taking it home and the way they need to, the way they need to tell stories, they need to, they need to tell the story, not just of the stuff but of the repatriating of the stuff. And what she says

00:49:20.699 - 00:49:40.969

is that over and over again, she has these people say that it is the the sharing of the stories together with people who have similar stories is an act of healing explicitly, an act of healing, which to me sounds like a human development topic. Can I

00:49:40.979 - 00:50:03.949

just say? So she describes, she, she cites another author for this term, but I use it the way she uses it. She describes this as story work and I think you might like to see that. Well, I'm gonna send you the article. OK, so that if

00:50:03.959 - 00:50:21.709

you, if you think it would be useful, if you, you know, run it by Doctor Smith, make sure he thinks it would is appropriate. But I think that term story work, we did an exhibit at the museum, which I is, I'm now on their board. I

00:50:21.719 - 00:50:38.659

kind of retired to go hang out at the museum and do this kind of work um full time. Um We did an exhibit, oh, I'll send you, you could look at that. Um I'll, I'll send you that URL as well. I'll do a follow up email.

00:50:38.669 - 00:50:58.149

It'll be easier, right? And I don't wanna take any more of your time, but um I really appreciate everything. Um So we did an exhibit on the anniversary, the first anniversary of the fire that we called from the Fire. Do you, have you ever heard of

00:50:58.159 - 00:51:16.340

the concept of a community curated exhibit? Do you know what that is at a museum? It's, it's where? So the, the curator of an exhibit is the person who puts together the exhibit who picks the things and then picks what is written about them. Picks just

00:51:16.350 - 00:51:39.040

creates the interpretation. That's a curator. So what happens if you say to an entire community? You are the curator, how should we remember the fire? What would that look like? So we, we opened up this exhibit and we had everything in there. We had artists who

00:51:39.050 - 00:51:59.370

had created art out of bird objects. We had the fire hose that the guy used at Safari West to save all of the exotic animals while he watched his own home burn down, right? He's running the fire hose right from the barn to, to make to

00:51:59.379 - 00:52:14.879

keep the fire off where the animals are, but his own home is burning while he's doing this and he knows it right. We had um one of the faculty who was then in the art department at Sonoma State who's now gone on to a whole other

00:52:14.889 - 00:52:36.340

career, created these clay vessels that were in the shape of the round barn that burned down. So they were round and red and they had a little cone top. And then he invited families who'd lost their homes to the fire to send him ash. And he

00:52:36.350 - 00:52:55.219

put the ash inside the pot before it was fired in the kiln. So that the ash glazed the inside of the, of the vessel and every single one was unique. And he did over 100 of these, we had all of the pots we had. You can

00:52:55.229 - 00:53:17.270

imagine we had or people telling their stories. There's an organization in Sonoma County called Listening For a Change, um which is a private nonprofit that essentially does oral histories. They actually have a new documentary out about the fire and its aftermath and it just aired on

00:53:17.280 - 00:53:35.260

PBS. If I can find a URL for it, I'll send you that as well. Ok, thank you. Um But what happened, what happened Maria in the exhibit is that it became a shrine. You know, some people go to a museum and they go to the exhibit

00:53:35.270 - 00:53:54.870

and it's like, yeah, I saw the exhibit. Not this time, people came back again and again, we we used to not, not have completely jokingly say the budget for Kleenex for this exhibit was like bigger than the ex instal like budget because people came to mourn

00:53:54.879 - 00:54:18.260

and they brought their friends and they brought their family and they brought school kids and they brought everybody and they came again and again and again to stand in front of the exhibit and then tell their fire story. That's story work. Yeah. See what I mean.

00:54:18.879 - 00:54:36.489

And so I think one of the most interesting things I love the adaptation part. I love the guy in the grocery store with his Sonoma strong t-shirt shirt. And I think that's incredibly powerful and meaningful because it is how we are learning to deal with a

00:54:36.500 - 00:55:04.469

world that is increasingly uncertain. And I love that what we learned here was that the greatest strength is in the community because that's what Sonoma strong means. But I also think that Adelaide's work is a powerful way to see this, not just as adaptation in case

00:55:04.479 - 00:55:23.459

of next time, but also healing from the last time. And those two things are connected. The story work is both because, you know, you know, the stories your grandma used to tell you about this is how you should be in the world or the stories as

00:55:23.469 - 00:55:41.229

teaching to someone who doesn't know yet me telling my across the street neighbor, it's OK when you hear that siren, but here's what it means and you really need to do this. That's storytelling that teaches, but there's also storytelling that heals. And I don't think those

00:55:41.239 - 00:56:08.530

two things are separate, right? I think that's in the end, that's what the word resilience maybe means is that you have to both heal and prepare and learn. Yeah, I should probably stop talking because I'm gonna start crying. No, it's beautiful. I just really big. Thank

00:56:08.540 - 00:56:23.719

you to you for the time to talk to me about this. For me. I listen, I love story. Like I will listen to people tell me stories and this is just fascinating. So I mean, it's, it's so powerful and just having I just moved to the

00:56:23.729 - 00:56:42.909

area. So, um yeah, so I know that I need to create like get prepared for fire season and I've been talking to um my roommates about it and um like they, this house has been neglected a lot. There's um a forest in the back and we

00:56:42.919 - 00:56:55.919

need to cut down some trees. We have to like do some, I mean, I don't think we can do some burning but just certain things that we can do to like clean up and thinking about getting him a gas mask, maybe, possibly if I need it

00:56:55.929 - 00:57:15.649

for breathing, if it just things like that, that like sign up for Nel Nel N I XL E because that's what the county is still using. And then I don't know which city you're in are you in? Ok. So cotati may have its own, but so

00:57:15.659 - 00:57:35.500

many of the municipal districts, so the cities may have their own emergency alert things and you want both your city and your county, right? And well, I work at, um, I work at the library so perfect. I also would need the Santa Rosa. Yes. Yes. Yes.

00:57:35.989 - 00:57:51.090

Um Well, listen, this was really lovely. Thank you for that trip down memory lane. Um I wish you well with your project. If you end up coming up with, it's like, oh, I wish I had asked that or now that I've heard this from someone else.

00:57:51.120 - 00:58:09.820

Can I come back to Margie and ask more questions, the answers? Yes. Um Can I real quick? So I'm gonna send you the Adelaide article. I need to write all this down because I will forget I'm gonna send you. We have in the museum exhibit from

00:58:09.830 - 00:58:24.090

the fire. We have a link to a couple of different things, the to the old catalog of the exhibit itself. So you could just kind of look at what was there. But then the other thing that we have that you might be interested in is we

00:58:24.100 - 00:58:43.820

did what we called the firewall, which was an uh at the time felt very experimental. Now that everybody does everything online. It's like old news. But at the time, nobody had one of these, we created a portal where people could upload their own images and texts

00:58:43.830 - 00:59:02.060

from all over the community about the fire. So these are photographs that people took of things like what was left of their home or the fire signs or um notes that they wrote about the experience and you might want to take a look at that just

00:59:02.070 - 00:59:24.709

because it's that broader. It's not specific to the school. But to, especially if you, if you weren't here and you don't have that experience, that's a really quick way to get a visual um storytelling that came from the community and came, we left it open for

00:59:24.719 - 00:59:46.570

a bit after the exhibit. But basically, you're looking at what people put up in 2018. So right after the fire, OK. And I'll send you the URL for that separately. So it'll be the exhibit catalog and then the firewall. And then if I can find a

00:59:46.580 - 01:00:06.639

link to the Listening For Change documentary, I'll, I'll put that there as well. I may not, I don't know. I'll, I'll see. OK. Thank you. Thank you so much. Cool. It's great meeting you. It was great meeting you. Good luck with your project. Um Which library

01:00:06.649 - 01:00:27.360

do you? So you work at the Santa Rosa Library? Which one? The Norton Town, the one northwest? You, that's my neighborhood. You're like, I live about a half a mile west of where you work. OK. That's my neighborhood. So I will need to work in about

01:00:27.370 - 01:00:44.520

an hour. So, all right. Well, safe journey from um I will get this stuff to you. I'm probably gonna go grab breakfast first. Um And then I will post this to your um email. OK. Thank you so much. All right, you're welcome. Take care. Bye. You

01:00:44.530 - 01:00:47.090

too. Bye. Oh, wait, let me make sure.