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Oh much better if we all ways thought about interacted with others in terms of our own mount to pole identity is think about what's going on now in our world but trying to do this if ness the insistence that some folk shouldn't be here are some folk aren't good enough to be there and we didn't characterize someone in singular terms that's a black person that's a Muslim while each of us I think may well have a primary identity or way in which we sot of thinking about selves most often or perhaps most strongly but we are many identities I am an African-American woman in terms of class probably go to upper middle class in terms of sexual orientation heterosexual in terms of ability or disability Well the prison of my knee is kicking up a knot vibe going to say I'm fully able in terms of religion in terms of age in terms of nationality all of those specific identity t. Is come together but you know I have an identity as a mom I'm a grandma. I'm a wife I'm a car Lee I'm a museum director I'm an anthropologist so I can be victimized because I am African-American. Or a woman or both but when I claim all of my identities including being heterosexual I could turn and victimize somebody else based on their sexual orientation when we become more thoughtful about and understand the sin Trammell t. Of I didn t. And how I didn't t. . Capture who we are we can actually make a great contribution toward dealing with one of the greatest problems in our world. It's called bigotry. And discrimination. Today we have 2 more stories of identity one identity that is being kept alive in the face of terror and one that was built to bring power to an invisible community identity is more than just who you are it's also you aren't in the late 1970 s. Some lesbian feminists decided that instead of arguing about equality within marriage childcare or lower pay then remove themselves from the fight entirely. Rather than work the changes aside it didn't represent them several 1000 women in North America decided to create their own separate society my co-host Meghan brings you the story of one of these women in the world but she set out to create. Sometimes called Jeb spent her career as a photographer and filmmaker documenting lesbian communities and progressive movements starting in the 1970 s. . Interviewing Joan at her bungalow just outside of d.c. Now inner seventy's Jim is an absolute spark. Ok. You're not the only here. Within minutes of our arrival she's just the dogs barking in the yard crack jokes about her flannel shirt and ushered us aside. 'd on a report she's left out this plate of water with the sponge in it for b.s. She says bees are dying out and with this at least there was a safe place to trick it's easy to see how she was able to shoot such intimate vulnerable photographs of women the truth is when you meet her you want her to like you very badly for lesbians in particular we really were invisible at the time that I came out which is why I decided to become a visual artist than a visual activist because I needed to see myself and others like me Joan authored 2 groundbreaking collections of photography Catherine not a curator at the Smithsonian's Museum of American history says the work had a huge impact on young lesbians Katherine is researching these overlooked moments in l b g t Q history including a time when lesbians forge new societies and even religions so many women who were questioning found her portraiture her books portraits of was Binns was. The 1st time you could see were gay women look like really as a documentary filmmaker Joan knows how to create an opening scene and we begin our chat with a quiet ritual lighting a candle and imbuing a crystal with our intentions for the interview. Usually there would be a blessing. It's akin to the sort of thing she would have done back in her coven Yup coven back in the 1970 s. Joan was part of a group of women who created their own religion. So I'm picking up the big crystal and I'm holding it to put good energy and intention for the interview we're about to do for our new podcast and my name is Joan Byron Actually religion was just one aspect of the movement Joan was a part of the separatist movement was made up of feminists many of them lesbians who tried to create a new world where they could live entirely separate from men separatism gets a very bad rap and primarily gets a bad rap from people who have been centered in society and in theory and in conversations for ever so they don't understand why identity is important because their identity is sort of the default identity this is all happening as women were organizing and demanding neural Xin society but lesbians often found themselves silenced within the feminist movement while the most painful reaction was that many of us had been part of the women's liberation movement in d.c. And when we came out as lesbians we were purged from that group they felt that we were a big threat to women's liberation both on a personal level and on the level that. Feminist movement that was drug going to get credibility in the mainstream would be tainted by the lavender herring of having lesbians as part of their movement so they started their own movement by starting their own society and they weren't alone separate. Form collectives all across America from farms to publishing houses to women's only music festivals they called communes women's lands and even the word women got scrutiny they'd spell it with a y. You now keep in the man out when your identity is invisible are marginalized you have to figure out a way to both be yourself which helps to have other people with you who are like you and make other people see that you are not like them so that's why we formed this lesbian feminist separatist collective they called it the firies made up of 12 women who lived and worked together in 2 houses in Washington d.c. They pooled incomes and split chores publish a separatist newspaper The goal was complete autonomy and it seemed at the time and I still believe this even though I'm no longer a separatist is that it's important to have a period where you do figure out what your identity is and figure out a way to convey that to other people with like identities and to people who are different than you. For 2 years the collective in its newspaper shaped the discussion of lesbians place in society they wanted to dismantle societal confines and change politics capitalism and yes spirituality to fit them the religion that Joan and other lesbians created was one that left behind what they saw as patriarchal traditions I say dynamic Wiccan religion because if I said we were. Witches and Pagans it would freak you out a little more. At that time I became a witch we were reimagining and reinventing everything and if you know anything about culture you know most cultures have some religion to have a spiritual dimension was very important this religion Katherine says made Joan and her contemporaries feel seen at least amongst themselves they made music and sang together or they borrowed from Native American concepts and practices from pagans from ancient goddess. Rituals and wisdom from all over the place to create a new world basically a woman identified world Joan is donating some of the artifacts of her coven including the crystal to the Smithsonian Museum of American history as part of a collection on spirituality Here's Catherine again people know about Stonewall Riots often as being really important and often pointed to as the beginning of the gay liberation movement but I would say that what's happening in the seventy's with queer women is just as important there is history of people that is undocumented or hidden and invisible and there are populations that have never been given respect or recorded and when you don't have the evidence people can say it never happened as a museum if we have archival materials we have letters we have objects that show no it did happen these are things that real people used and this is how they use them in this is what they thought they were doing so it's not only important as evidence but it's people's lives that we're collecting we can't collect them. Well I'd like to through community culture and religion lesbians help create new ways to talk about identity particularly queer identity and with her photographs lesbians a visual identity a photographic history that gives powerful roots to a formerly heading community. Some identities are ones we consciously choose but in many ways our cultural identity creates us were shaped by the art and architecture and music that make up our heritage so what do you do when the cornerstones of your identity are destroyed that's what Syrians and Iraqis are facing today as militants from the Islamic state . Known as ISIS and wipe out their heritage sites. One of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world from his home town of . He's here to learn how to protect his country's heritage that heritage he says is in crisis. Who are. The greatest threat to our cultural heritage and destruction that Iraq is currently suffering from and as ever suffered from in its entire history is ISIS. Thought it up thankfully Mustafa isn't alone in the last 9 years the Iraqi Institute for the conservation of heritage and Antiquities has trained over 300 museum staff and archaeologists like with Staffa Jessica Johnson who is now the head of conservation at the Smithsonian's Museum services center has been working with the institute since it opened Jessica says we may think of heritage sites as crucial parts of our in history but ISIS sees them as perfect targets right now and I saw are a big threat because they're using heritage for political reasons they're going in and destroying sites or museums because those represent something about the history of the people of the country Islamic militants have attack some of the best preserved archaeological sites in the region they've bulldozed engine capitals dynamited ruins and rampage through Iraq's 2nd largest museum in Mosul and they are being driven by ideology alone archaeological looting has likely earned ISIS millions of dollars but it's not just Iraqis history that's being destroyed it's ours to history of Iraq is some of the earliest civilizations in the world so the 1st people who learned to write in the same way we write now the 1st people to tell stories some of which are still told now come from that region it's so important to the understanding of civilization across the world now that's why Jessica is overseeing a course on emergency conservation The goal is to help Iraqi archaeologists catch up on the tools and knowledge that they couldn't access during the rule of Saddam Hussein and the war that followed it the students are learning methods to restore heritage sites that are purposefully damaged but they're also being taught how to protect these places and collections from Natural Disasters Emergency concerts. It is responding to crisis really so it might be an earthquake or the crisis might be looting and war and destruction there stabilizing buildings using satellite mapping to learn the precise scales and locations of sites and documenting existing antiquities all to create recovery plans. More of. The work that goes on in that kind of conservation is just trying to minimize the damage that's happening and as a student at the Institute who works as a surveyor at archaeological sites but it was only ever mean. Even if we aren't in danger of an attack from the Islamic state or the economic crisis we face losing them. So it's very important for us to document everything. That way if things are taken in the future we can identify everything that's been stolen we have it already. So you know Iraq is home to numerous languages and religions and the students here represent almost all of them the class lets them collaborate and create networks of support they can take back home but otherwise with this building. Actually. Jessica says those ties and the tangible symbols of a shared heritage can help unify their country their heritage brings us together in different ways so that we don't just see ourselves as isolated people or isolated families we have a broader understanding of what's important in the world in the way we look at the world protecting heritage even in conflict is important not only for the identity of Iraqis but for the knowledge that lives with that in the legacy of our ancestors . The podcast side door is produced for the Smithsonian by Megan de tree and Tony Cowen see their full team and listen to the entire 1st season of the show at Sci edu. Your tunes to the spot k l w is weekly showcase of the best stories from India Radio producers and podcasts I'm your host actually and Craig bomb. Our final story this afternoon comes from the history podcast The Memory Palace in this episode host Nate Di Maio introduces us to the identities within and out of this world family this is The Memory Palace and they demand 'd. Charles Duke was 25 that spring when man 1st went to space he was 26 when he met daughter he was on leave from the Air Force and mit he went there to get his degree in aeronautics and found out they also had something called astronautics and it sounded cool so we do that too Dotty was a secretary at Harvard Business School they were both from the south and they fell in love and complain together about the winter and were married in the spring he got his master's got into Test Pilot School at Edwards Air Force Base in California Donny like the son of California. Didn't think of the desert when she thought of California though soon her husband was never around in her days were all heat in dust and dashed dreams 'd 'd 'd. Charlie was 29 when their 1st son was born you know when he saw this thing in the Sunday Times front page said NASA was looking for more astronauts for the Apollo program 'd for the moon and that sounded cool sounded cool learned Dotty who thought lugging a baby around Houston would be an upgrade over the Mojave Desert. Charlie was 31 when their 2nd son was born. And Charlie was never around he was training to be an astronaut he loved all of it love learning love the long hours the weeks away studying geology in Oregon in Hawaii in Iceland in Alaska jungle survival in Panama learning how to troubleshoot the far alter of Violet spectrograph how to perform a trans lunar injection while his sons were learning to walk how to make sure their lowercase J.s didn't beneath the line like a fish hook while his wife was learning to do everything everything at the house because her husband was never around because her husband was an astronaut. Charlie Duke was 33 that summer when man 1st went to the moon. He was in mission control his South Carolina lilt was the voice of Houston. As men men he knew coworkers buddies bounded on the moon. That was how things went for astronauts. You were assigned a mission in a role and it meant that one man talked into a microphone while another walked on the moon. It meant that some families got the cover of Life magazine got to meet the president got that at least in exchange for being without their father their husband for days and weeks at a time days in weeks that amounted to years. Dottie was in her early thirty's when she started searching for something of her own some sort of meaning outside of her marriage. And work and smoking weed and flirting with other men. She was a travel agent for a while she liked that she was good at that to trips to London Africa even when it was lonely and there was a home to keep and kids who needed help getting the chain back on their bike finding the stuffed animal that got tangled up in the covers and there was a husband who dreamt of the moon Charlie Duke was 34 when he knew he was going he was back up in Apollo 13 that meant he would pilot the landing module on Apollo 16 and that meant the moon he was $36.00 when his turn came around and his sons were old enough to notice that their dad was never around and had seen enough rockets lift off seen enough smoke and fire and fathers and capsules catching the light as they shrank in the distance and disappeared into the black they were told Lay just beyond the blue sky to know to be scared. In such Charlie said he would take them with him. And so they got dressed for a family photograph. Charlie and Dottie sit on a bench in the lawn he's in a yellow button down his pants matches tie they're both that color that Crayola calls burnt sienna she is in a sea foam green pant suit in a blue curve at night in $72.00 and there are the boys big smiles who knows how many takes it took to get those smiles. The oldest Charles like his dad and his grandfather is 7 years old a big boy hands in his pockets standing tall in front the youngest 5 year old Thomas leans on both his parents one hands on his dad's thigh one's on his mom's who knows how much longer he'll still reach for them like that in a moment like this there in the snapshot. Charlie was 36 years 6 months old when he spent 71 hours on the moon he collected rocks that was the bulk of the mission of a policy in learning about the moon and that's basically what there is to learn about the moon its composition and origins that in what it feels like to be there to leap 4 feet off the ground like it was nothing to see the earth moon sized At one point Charlie asked his partner John Young the Neil Armstrong to his buzz buzz to reveal the pending how long he figured there footprints would be there on the surface no wind no weather Young thought about it factored in all the things he knew about the moon and he knew lots about the moon and figured 4000000000 years. 71 hours out of a life then 36 years and 6 months along. Now 18 change. After all those hours in the classroom in the simulator in the field in the office in line at the cafeteria. Away from his family. In one of those hours 240000 nautical miles from home. One of the last hours on his business trip to the moon. Charlie took that family photo wrapped in clear plastic bent a little bit from the journey and placed it in the dust near the lip of the crater you like the idea that someone would find it someday probably pretty soon maybe even come back or maybe on one of the next missions maybe one of the scientists on the moon base they hope to build in the eighty's would find it. Maybe a colonist maybe one of his own sons on some vacation someday. He didn't know then that he wasn't going back to the moon. He didn't know then that we don't go to the moon anymore. But he liked the idea that his family was there. Where they are still. And will be for something close to forever. Snapshot. 2 boys a man and woman. The moment in their lives. Buy more stories from Nate de Mayo at the memory palace us. That's it for today's episode of the spot you can find this episode or more accurately l.w. Dot org and you'll find a spot under the Programs tab and tell me what you want to hear on the spot do you have a suggestion for a hot cast Mission Beach or just drop me a line at the spa at k l w dot org And thanks for listening I'm Ashley and Chris tune in next week same day same time for another episode of the spot only on $91.00. Features remarkable artists and thinkers who've spoken at the Jewish community center of San Francisco on the next snap judgments Glynn Washington 99 percent Invisibles Roman Mars and cartoonist Abel examine how radio producers construct some of today's most exciting and innovative storytelling here these new masters of radio on Thursday at noon 1.7 f.m. . U.s. Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced that Donald Trump plans to end DACA the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals policy this would affect almost $800000.00 young immigrants many were brought to the u.s. As children politicians now have 6 months to act 2 bipartisan bills could grant docker recipients legal status or create