Oral History with Beth Heinberg

Margaret Small: Okay. These are both rolling. Okay. That's not too loud.

Margaret Small: Thank you for sharing your time and the gift of your stories. I've set side an hour and a half for our interview, but at any point we can take a break or end the interview. I'm Margaret Small and I'm working with Blue Ridge Pride and Amanda Wray to record oral histories from elders and members of the LGBTQ community. With your permission, all stories will be archived with special collections at UNC Asheville and available as audio and typed transcript files. I have a oral release form for you to sign. There are two versions. One is with restrictions, which you can just look at what that is on the back. The other is just a deed of gifts. If you can have without restrictions or with restrictions.

Beth Heinberg: All right. Someone's going to transcribe it?

Margaret Small: Yeah. Then, before they do anything with it, they'll show you the ... send you the transcription. You can make any changes. You can indicate anything that you want deleted.

Beth Heinberg: Oh. Nice.

Margaret Small: Which do you want?

Beth Heinberg: Unrestricted.

Margaret Small: Okay. This is unrestricted. If you could sign both of them and then you keep one and then I give one to Amanda. Okay. Also, we have this ... I only got this this morning so I didn't have it before. You guys can fill these out whenever you want. Then you can just give them to me and I'll just give them to Amanda. They're just basically information ... background information that wouldn't be in an interview.

Beth Heinberg: Okay.

Margaret Small: Okay.

Beth Heinberg: Okay.

Margaret Small: Great. You keep one.

Beth Heinberg: Are you going to sign it first?

Margaret Small: Oh yeah. Good thing. Can you tell you're my first one?

Beth Heinberg: This? Do we recycle it-

Margaret Small: No. I'll just keep it for another time.

Beth Heinberg: Okay. La la la. La la la. La la la la la la. Are they going to transcribe that?

Margaret Small: I doubt it.

Beth Heinberg: Thanks for transcribing this, whoever you are.

Margaret Small: Whoever you are. She has these young gay people-

Beth Heinberg: Cool.

Margaret Small: Various genders, that are either grad students or seniors at UNC-A or-

Beth Heinberg: I hope they-

Margaret Small: Teaching-

Beth Heinberg: Have that little thing with the pedal-

Margaret Small: Assistants.

Beth Heinberg: That stops it.

Margaret Small: I don't know how it does, but they seem to be pretty together.

Beth Heinberg: They know what to do.

Margaret Small: Okay.

Beth Heinberg: [crosstalk 00:03:22].

Margaret Small: I know. It's too much.

Beth Heinberg: I'll tell you.

Margaret Small: Okay. [inaudible 00:03:30]. Okay. Today is November-

Beth Heinberg: 18th.

Margaret Small: 18th, 2019. I'm Margaret Small and I am talking with ...

Beth Heinberg: Beth Heinberg.

Margaret Small: Who was born ...

Beth Heinberg: August 4th, 1967.

Margaret Small: Where?

Beth Heinberg: Louisiana, USA.

Margaret Small: Oh. How wonderful. Okay. Cool. There we go. Now, okay. How do you describe yourself in terms of pronoun use and identity?

Beth Heinberg: [inaudible 00:04:04], bisexual, long term relationship. Yeah.

Margaret Small: When did you come to us in North Carolina?

Beth Heinberg: 2004.

Margaret Small: What brought you here?

Beth Heinberg: Actually, I'm going to say 2005. Nancy and I were thinking about retiring here. My sister already lived here with our two nephews. We saw this house for sale by owner and we loved it, especially the tree house in the back.

Margaret Small: Oh how cool.

Beth Heinberg: We somehow got it. We thought we were going to rent it out until we were ready to retire, but then we loved it so much we decided to think about finding a way to move here earlier than retirement. We saw this job at a private school and I interviewed and got the job and quit my job. We moved here. This 00:05:00was all pretty hasty-

Margaret Small: Yes.

Beth Heinberg: After my father's death, my mother lived in Wilmington at the time. Nancy had been pestering me for children, which I did not want. We thought moving here we could enjoy our grand ... our grandchildren ... our nephews while they were three and six and that'd be better than having our own children. We could be here to support my mom after my dad's death and all that.

Margaret Small: Great.

Beth Heinberg: It's a hoot. From Boston.

Margaret Small: Can you describe the changes you've seen in the years you've been here, both positive and negative?

Beth Heinberg: Wow. Well, when we moved here, this neighborhood, West Asheville, was very quiet and seemed like it was barely inhabited. We'd walk, go for a 00:06:00walk, and not see a person. It just felt kind of like we had moved to the country and in the past 15 years it's turned into Williamsburg, Brooklyn. There's so many more people here and so much more night life just down the block from us. We kind of love that, but it's really confusing and it's also kind of hard to park. It's super hard to go downtown and know that you can park. Public transportation needs a lot of work. We're used to hopping on the T in Boston and driving everywhere has really been hard to get used to. It does feel a lot more vibrant than when we moved here.

Margaret Small: Do you think there's anything negative about the changes except the parking?

Beth Heinberg: I mean, it's really hard for people who don't have housing they 00:07:00can afford. That's the main thing. People I hang out with, progressive folks, are very concerned that it's not an easy place to be a black or brown person, not an easy place to be in the service industry if you want to live anywhere near where you're working. Then if you go right outside Asheville you're going to encounter a lot of racism, homophobia, transphobia, and so it's just a dangerous, difficult place to live because it's so expensive.

Margaret Small: Talk a little bit about your life in Boston before you came here.

Beth Heinberg: When I was in Boston, I was totally out to all my students and 00:08:00friends and everybody I knew. There was just no closet and huge, huge queer, radical community. Then moving here and starting to teach middle school at a private school here in the Bible belt was difficult. I was encouraged not to be too out about my family configuration to my students. It was really challenging when I would run into people from school with Nancy in public. It was just like, "Whoa." Going right back into the closet, not really wanting to. That wasn't what I expected when I took the job. I was kind of surprised about that. There were a lot of very conservative families at that school, and the thing was that Nancy and I got married in '04 in Cambridge, Mass and then moving here we were suddenly only engaged. That was kind of a shitty feeling. We were fighting for 00:09:00marriage equality here. I don't know. It was just definitely a step backwards in a lot of ways with our human rights.

Margaret Small: Since you've come here, what groups have you worked with or consider to be an asset to the LGBTQ community?

Beth Heinberg: Let me think. When we first moved here, we started getting involved in getting started ... getting Youth OutRight started. It was a lot, a lot of meetings. There was a lot of fear around opening the first support group for queer kids. A lot of people were very afraid of violence and bad reactions from the families of these kids we were hoping to serve. There was some 00:10:00important legal stuff to sort out, but both Nancy and I felt like we didn't understand why it was taking so long to open, given how important this service would be for these queer kids who weren't being [inaudible 00:10:20] by anything. There was a [inaudible 00:10:22] chapter, but there was no social support group for that population at the time. We felt very urgent about opening it sooner. We had some conflict with other board members at the time. We did open probably a year after we started being involved. We were both facilitators of the group. Nancy was volunteer coordinator. We were super, super active for quite a while in Youth OutRight. We felt good about that work.

Margaret Small: How did the kids react?

Beth Heinberg: Oh, so-

Margaret Small: Like when it first opened?

Beth Heinberg: It was so amazing. We had a lot of help from Time Out Youth Charlotte. They came and gave us a lot of their information and training 00:11:00materials. That was great. It's just so incredible to see the changes in these kids just from having this ... I think it was like even ... was it once a month? I can't even remember if it was once a month or once a week, but we did a lot of facilitation. We just kept seeing the membership grow and grow. It was so bittersweet to see that people would come from two hours away to these meetings. Families were nothing but supportive. They knew their kids needed this. It was just really great. It was all different kinds of kids, all different ages. Yeah. It was a beautiful thing.

Margaret Small: Any other groups?

Beth Heinberg: Then we got involved with Girls Rock Asheville. Actually, that 00:12:00probably overlapped. Girls Rock Asheville is also something that serves a lot of queer and trans kids. They get together and form a band and learn an instrument, write a song in one week and then they perform it at the super hip rock club in town at the end of the week. It's a lot of work all year round just to get this camp happening for one week. It's a beautiful, amazing, affirming thing. For some kids, it's the only time they do get to use the pronouns they want to use and be who they want to be. A lot of them are bullied in school maybe for being a little bit outside the gender or sexual orientation norm. The camp also has a lot of ... it has a real social justice agenda. There are lots of workshops: anti-racism, gender and sexuality, activism, self-defense, zine making. It's a 00:13:00really beautiful thing and it ... I ... it really changes lives. It's such a great feeling to be there. There's so much laughing and crying and beautiful art being made.

Margaret Small: Do you stay in touch with the campers after the summer that they come?

Beth Heinberg: Yeah, a lot of time. There are so many that want to return so that's a good sign that we're doing something right. It's hard because there's ... we're limited to the money we get and the volunteers we get as to how many cameras we can serve. We all wish that we could increase the enrollment, but it's hard to find people who can give up a week. Definitely hard to find people who aren't financially comfortable. A lot of people in the service industry take their vacation days to be able to come to cam. Recently we've been giving 00:14:00stipends because we figured out that was a way to diversify our volunteer base outside of what had been sort of mostly white, lots of retirees helping us run camp. We're always, always working to be ... being better.

Margaret Small: Do you feel like in the years that you've been here that the community, the LGBTQ community, encourages activism or still afraid?

Beth Heinberg: Oh, well I guess I should point out that going to pride has been a huge difference since '05. When we first went to our first pride here it was in the parking lot of Earth Fare Westgate. I'm sure it was probably more than 100 people but that's sort of what it looked like. It was so depressing after being at Boston Pride. It was just like, "Where have we moved? What have we 00:15:00done?" Everyone just seemed so nervous to be there. Ugh. Now it's way downtown. It's thickly corporately sponsored, which I don't always think is an awesome thing, but it's pretty festive, pretty well attended. I'm always running into former students there.

Margaret Small: Cool.

Beth Heinberg: It's magical.

Margaret Small: What about your support network here? How was it to create a community, a sense of family, with the new people you had come to know?

Beth Heinberg: Yeah. I'm trying to think how we first made friends here. Some through our sister, my sister, Nancy's sister-in-law, Kim. Some through Youth OutRight. Some from school. I started with some other people the diversity faculty group at the private school where I was working. That was a good source 00:16:00of good friends. Then, we started going to events held by the meetup, the Lesbian's Social Club started by [Gwyn Croft 00:16:24] and that was a real bump in our social life. We just met hundreds and hundreds of-

Margaret Small: Say a little bit about Gwyn and-

Beth Heinberg: Awesome women.

Margaret Small: That group.

Beth Heinberg: I guess it's just the meetup. It's for lesbians. Anyone can host an event. There's events at bars, but also sporty things and dances. Yeah. The dance is sponsored by Lesbians in the Mountains. They've also been really fun down at Scandals. I think that's who sponsors those dancers, LIM. Yeah. We've met a lot of really good friends through that group.

Margaret Small: Has your experience brought you in contact with a multiracial or multi-class selection of people or does it mostly reflect what you said about the original people in your Girls Rock?

Beth Heinberg: Well, there were a bunch of people who were noticing that the meetups were kind of white. They started this ... hosting this monthly diversity alliance to try to combat that and also work on fighting white supremacy, but also just social and support for women who wanted to party with people who weren't all white. That was a really strong group for many years. It sort of evolved into some other interest groups at this point. One of them is my 00:18:00beautiful anti-racist book group that I'm doing with you, Margaret Small.

Margaret Small: A combination of two things, like how you felt when you first came out and a little bit about your own personal history and then how you think it's similar or changed today to come out.

Beth Heinberg: Oh, just what it's like to be a queer person in this world?

Margaret Small: Yeah, but how was it-

Beth Heinberg: Or when I was a kid-

Margaret Small: When you came out? Yeah, and how you contrast and compare that to today.

Beth Heinberg: Ah, memories. Well, I guess it all started when I was a kid and I started having these beautiful dreams about this woman named Adele. She was just this incredible figure I looked up to. I think I got the name from Adele Davis, the nutritionist, Let's Eat Right to Keep Fit.

Margaret Small: Yeah.

Beth Heinberg: Thought that was such a beautiful name. I started dreaming about 00:19:00this woman, Adele. Then I was definitely always thinking about girls and women, but I was reading these British school ... boarding school stories. I think they were written in the 40s and 50s, these [Ina Gliten 00:19:21] books. They would talk about girls having crushes on other girls, around their female teachers, but they would always frame it as it was just immaturity and they would kind of gently mock those girls who had those patches or crushes. That was sort of my thought about lesbianism as I was growing up. I was like, "Okay. Well, it's common but it's just an immature thing." Freud probably would agree. I was acknowledging it, but also thinking, "Well, as I mature I'll be more focused on boys." Then for a while I was more focused on boys and kind of scared of girls, scared to hang out with them. I felt just sort of ill at ease with them and I 00:20:00felt more comfortable with boys.

Beth Heinberg: In college, for the first couple of years, I was pretty focused on dating men, but still thinking about women and noticing and having crushes on women. Then, halfway through college, I started to sort of try out the label lesbian and it started to feel kind of right. I guess it was late college when I started having relationships with women. I moved to Boston and I was noticing a lot of very handsome men on the T. I was thinking, "Well, maybe I'll reinvent myself now and I'll be straight." I had a couple of dates and they were just gross. I'm sorry to all my old boyfriends, but there was just something way too hard about every single relationship with a man, the translation, the power 00:21:00imbalance. It just felt so right. As a feminist, it just felt so much more right and maybe a shortcut to intimacy to be with women.

Beth Heinberg: Then I fell in with these radical lesbian separatists. I was living in a separatist house in Jamaica Plain. It was just so ... such an exciting time of life. I felt like I was really living my truth. It was all Alison Bechdel talks about in Dykes to Watch Out For, which I was reading avidly at the time. This was in the late 80s, early 90s. It just felt like personal, political all wrapped up together. It just felt so right. It just was what I needed so badly, separate from men and not have to do all that translating and persuading and arguing. I just wanted to skip that step and move on, change the world. Then I had a lot of relationships with women.

Beth Heinberg: Then I was playing a lot of music. I tried out for this band that I was a fan of, Adult Children of Heterosexuals. It was a big queer cabaret band. I went to my audition for ... to be their piano player. I saw this drummer and she was so mean looking. I just loved her look. She just scowled at me over the drum set and she said, "I know you're listening." She said, "Can you commit?" Because they had just gone through many keyboard players and, of course, she went to the band.

Margaret Small: Yes.

Beth Heinberg: I was like, "Yes I can." I started playing with them. We went to the March on Washington. This must've been '93. I think we were playing on the same stage as Ellen DeGeneres, so it was so early in her career that she wasn't 00:23:00in the closet yet. That's weird. I started dating the bass player in the band, who was a bisexual man. We felt like we had to keep our relationship secret because it was a gay band and thought they would look down on us. That was a very strange moment of feeling marginalized by doing something heterosexual. I just started to feel like being at pride, where it would be acceptable to my friends in this band if I were with a girl but not with him because bisexuals were just so trashed all the time. Lesbian separatists saw us as traitors. Straight people saw us as wishy washy or slutty. It was just kind of hard to come out as bi in general.

Beth Heinberg: I just felt like it would be weak or lazy for me not to try to stick with this relationship and not to try to work on coming out, but he didn't want to come out. I couldn't out him. We really cared about this band. It was so stupid when I look back on it, but ... so Nancy was hitting on me at this Washington thing. I couldn't say, "Well, no. I'm dating this man in our band who's your friend too." I was just like, "Okay." I kind of hooked up with her and she actually guessed. She could sense that I was being a little reluctant. She said, "What? Well, you're not dating him are you?" She named that person and I was like, "Oh my God. Who is this psychic drummer in this psychic friends network?" I did admit that I was seeing him and then she was furious and quit 00:25:00the band.

Beth Heinberg: We had this big processing session with the band. They were all really hurt that we hadn't trusted them enough to tell them. It was a really crazy time. Then I was dating her and him for several months, so lots of crying and fighting and trying to be polyamorous but I was discovering that I wasn't really able to be ... I was only 25. I wasn't really able to be truthful enough and confrontational enough and stand up for my own need for space enough to make it work. He wanted to make it work. She did not want to make it work. I started doing self-sabotaging things like just leaving ... I left a message on my 00:26:00outgoing voicemail about I was at his house and just little weird mistakes like, "Are you trying to get caught?" Like to force confrontations. It was a really crazy time of lots of learning, but not sustainable.

Beth Heinberg: That was what kind of turned me off my youthful, idealistic idea that you could be polyamorous ... or not ... I guess I decided that it could possibly work but it was way harder than I thought and all the people involved would have to be onboard more. I also noticed that I wanted to just kind of pour my energy into one person. I decided to try to make a go of it with Nancy. It's 26 years later. Seems to be working out pretty well. Whew.

Margaret Small: Yeah.

Beth Heinberg: That's the story of that.

Margaret Small: Totally cool. One thing, if we look across the years of your life, you've talked a little bit about the fears of being stigmatized in the band for being bi, but how do you look at how the idea of stigma versus inclusion, how's that affected you and how's that changed or stayed the same?

Beth Heinberg: I don't know. I think there's more education around bisexuality. I'm sure there's still plenty of people who have those same old beliefs about bisexuals, just promiscuous or half-closeted or indecisive. There is, in our 00:28:00culture, straight privilege. If I were in a long term relationship with a man, I would be benefiting from that, for sure. I think there's been so much awesome scholarly writing and people speaking their truth that I think it's a lot more accepted now, bisexuality. I hope. It also confuses people when you're in a long term with one certain human being. It's like, "Well, are you still bisexual?" I'm sure plenty of people just say, "Well, now I'm a lesbian because I'm in this relationship," but I still feel like it's important to own that label, if only to help educate people. For a while, I was ... I would make a big deal out of being bi when I was talking to gay people. Then I would make a bigger deal about 00:29:00being gay when I was talking to straight people. I would be more likely to identify as a lesbian in a group of straight women.

Margaret Small: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Beth Heinberg: Yeah.

Margaret Small: Did any of that make you feel excluded, or how did people react?

Beth Heinberg: I don't know. I've had a lot of therapists over the years. I remember when I was in Boston I was trying to get a lesbian feminist therapist. I called my HMO and I said, "I want a lesbian feminist therapist, please." Thinking, "Okay, well, just go through your files of lesbian feminist therapists and get me one." They were like, "Well, we don't ask them that." It was a little hard to find that but I did. I successfully did. Then moving here, I had a 00:30:00straight woman who I felt like was super judge-y. It might have just been my projection, but she was super dressy. I felt like I was kind of having to translate my queer life to her too much. Yeah. Being in a social group with a bunch of people who are not exactly like me orientation-wise is fine, but having a therapist who doesn't get me is not so fine. In the former, I just feel like I'm an awesome activist and I'm just myself and they can like me or lump me, but yeah. I hope that answers the question.

Margaret Small: Were you able to find a therapist in this community who was more knowledgeable about your-

Beth Heinberg: Yeah.

Margaret Small: Reality.

Beth Heinberg: Yeah. Totally. You want a name?

Margaret Small: Maybe later. What-

Beth Heinberg: My best therapist that I've had here was someone who has since passed away who was really able to integrate thinking about race stuff and sexual orientation stuff-

Margaret Small: Cool.

Beth Heinberg: And passing. She would often bring up and point out to me in really powerful ways how similar it is to be able to pass as white versus passing as light enough skin not to have people hate you just for how you're looking. I really enjoyed working with her and thinking about those things with her. They've changed my perspective a bit.

Margaret Small: What do you think your generation has done that will be helpful to future generations of LGBTQ people?

Beth Heinberg: Wow. I think coming out is the main thing, but also political actions. I was involved with ACT UP in Boston, Queer Nation, just so much work that was done around AIDS and is still being done by partners on the WinCap board. I don't know if it's specifically my generation, but all the people who are alive right now there was just so much work done on law, on legislation. I wasn't really so excited about the marriage equality fight at first because it seemed like assimilationist and caving and not very queer when I was thinking we 00:33:00need to abolish marriage, not get it for everybody, but my thinking around that has really changed, especially when I think about families with kids and hospital visitation and that film, If These Walls Could Talk was just a shocking ... if you haven't thought too much about what happens if the partner dies with no rights and the family tries to take away their home and stuff like that.

Margaret Small: Really. Totally.

Beth Heinberg: Artists and activists have made some pretty fast changes in the past few years. The trans community has come a long way and has a long way to go, but it's pretty amazing that so many people who had not even thought about trans people except maybe as a joke are now really seriously having their opinions changed.

Margaret Small: Well, that also just brings up the issue of race and how you 00:34:00think in Asheville it's different to be queer and of a different race than the dominant race.

Beth Heinberg: Super hard. We had a lesbian ... a white lesbian police chief. I thought, "Well, that's going to be wonderful. She's going to change things for everybody." I don't know much about her, but I know she made one very bad decision in a race ... racial incident. That was very, very disappointing. When we first moved here, our good friend [Alissa Cumba Zuena 00:34:48] was telling us that she finally had to shave her head because she was getting so many traffic stops having locks. Just driving with a certain kind of hair and she was 00:35:00getting stopped all the time. That's just one teeny little aspect of living in Asheville with black skin and hair.

Margaret Small: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Beth Heinberg: She was fired from a job I believe because of the way she was ... the way she spoke. Yeah. It's very hard. [inaudible 00:35:33].

Margaret Small: Does she still live here or-

Beth Heinberg: She died.

Margaret Small: Oh. She died.

Beth Heinberg: She moved to Atlanta before dying, but yeah. She couldn't sustain living here.

Margaret Small: Do you think that's true for many people-

Beth Heinberg: Yeah I do.

Margaret Small: Of color.

Beth Heinberg: Yeah. Hard to get good work. Hard to find friends. Hard to find housing unless you're wealthy.

Margaret Small: Is there much of a bar scene nowadays that ... of gay bars in Asheville?

Beth Heinberg: I know of one has closed. I'm not the biggest bar fly on earth, but I do like to go dancing or sometimes play music in bars with my band. I remember in the 80s, 90s it seemed like lots of lesbians were in recovery. That was hurting the bar scene, but good for peoples' health and sober dances were a thing for a while. There might be sober dances here but I don't know about them. I don't know. It's definitely not like when I was coming out, but that was the 00:37:00only place I knew to meet people at the time.

Margaret Small: How do you think from your ongoing communication with people across the spectrum in Asheville what ... how do you think most people meet other lesbians coming out now in Asheville? What do you think it's like to come out in a city where there's not a lot of public access?

Beth Heinberg: Yeah. I don't know, depends on the age you come out. If you're young it could be with OutRight. Older lesbian meetup I think is a really great way to get hooked in. If you're super sporty, there's so many hiking groups and things like that, lots of camping groups. Nancy and I have recently being brave enough to go camping with lots of much handier lesbians than ourselves. I just called myself a lesbian.

Margaret Small: Well, that's very cool that you're expanding into new areas of ...

Beth Heinberg: Activities.

Margaret Small: Activities. Is there anything else we haven't talked about that you think is important for people who look back on these years in Asheville, like 20 years from now, to think about western North Carolina and the identity and role of lesbians and gay people?

Beth Heinberg: Well, I want to give a shout out to [Va 00:38:36] and [Gene 00:38:37] who have this website A Sheville that's been a good resource for a lot of people. Though I want to definitely caution people who think they can move here from San Francisco or New York City and be as out as they were there. It's just not quite as safe. I have to say there's still plenty of gay bashing, 00:39:00especially the further you go outside of the city.

Margaret Small: What about for trans people? Nationally, there's been so many murders of African American trans people.

Beth Heinberg: Internationally.

Margaret Small: And internationally as well. Asheville has that reputation of being gay friendly, but I just wonder if ... what you think about when people look back on this age, what narrative do you think will dominate?

Beth Heinberg: Huh. Interesting. I have a couple of friends who moved here from California. One of them is a trans woman and the minute they moved here that shitty bathroom bill got passed. Suddenly my friend didn't feel like she could leave the house because she could use the bathroom safely. It was horrible. It was really awful and shocking for them and a lot of other people.

Margaret Small: Do you think that has changed?

Beth Heinberg: It's a crisis. My friend is still kind of house-bound even though there are a lot more ... we were in a campaign of getting businesses to hang up signs if they had non-gendered bathrooms. How do you bounce back from something like that? That was only a couple years ago.

Margaret Small: Right. Right. Well, do you think people really remember that and think about it? Is it part of their narrative about Asheville?

Beth Heinberg: I think there are plenty of people who don't look very kindly on North Carolina since that from other states. I know we have friends who don't really want to visit us here. There's a lot of work to be done. That meowing was 00:41:00our cat Joanie Mitchell Ash-Heinberg. We hyphenated.

Margaret Small: Anything else that you want to share for ... and I wanted to also say that if you have any artifacts, they are also collecting artifacts. If you have papers or notes or posters or artifacts from any of the activities that you-

Beth Heinberg: Should it be from western North Carolina?

Margaret Small: Well, that's mostly what they're collecting.

Beth Heinberg: Okay.

Margaret Small: I'm sure there's national efforts.

Beth Heinberg: Because we have a lot of super cool flyers from Adult Children with Heterosexuals and Q-Set, this band we did in Boston that was ... we tried to do covers of only queer artists. That was really fun. We did a Barry Manilow song before he even came out. Sorry, Barry. People need a little push.

Margaret Small: Well, thank you very much.

Beth Heinberg: Thank you.

Margaret Small: Let's see. Now, how do we ...