THE VFA PIONEER HISTORIES PROJECT

alta

“I called the press, Shameless Hussy, because my mother used that term for women she didn’t approve of.  And no one approved of what I was doing.”

Interviewed by Mary Jean Collins, VFA Historian, June 2023

MJC:  So, let’s start out, tell us your name, when and where you were born, if you would.

alta:  Sure. My name is Alta. I was born in Reno, Nevada, May 22. So, I am a Gemini for those of you who care about that.

MJC:  Tell me a little bit about your early life and what influences, either religion or no religion, your parents, siblings. Tell us a little bit about that beginning.

alta: My parents and I shared our house with my grandmother, and my father worked on pianos. When he married my mother, she said, “We should sell pianos,” so she had a basement put in, and she stacked the house with pianos. My room had three pianos in it. My grandmother and I were very close, because when my parents worked, she was our caregiver. My brother was born when I was five, and we stayed in Reno until I was twelve. Because my brother was blind, we moved to California so he could go to the school for the blind.

MJC:  Okay, well, I have to ask, did you learn to play the piano?

alta: I’m very good at the piano. I learned to play, and about 20 years ago I started playing publicly in convalescent homes and at a beautiful performance place called, Chamber Arts in Berkeley. And every year I celebrated Schubert’s birthday by playing Moment Musical, except number 5, I don’t like that one.

MJC:  Well, that was good. All those pianos around you came to some good.

alta: Yes, indeed. I still have one. A piece I play the most is very simple now because I have tremors, but it’s The Happy Farmer by Schumann, and it puts me in a good mood when I play it.

MJC:  When you moved to California, did you move to Berkeley, or where did you move?

alta: Castro Valley, which is 20 miles away from Berkeley. And when I graduated, I jumped immediately into Berkeley and came to Cal.

MJC:  It was a very active period. So, you got active politically pretty soon?

alta: Yes. In fact, as a freshman, I read a column in a Saturday Evening Post, about a county in Prince Edward County, in Virginia, where they had closed the schools. Because if they wanted government money, they had to integrate, and White parents decided they would rather not integrate and they would have their own schools. The Black parents were sort of stranded, because if they had done their own schools, they were afraid they wouldn’t be any better than what they already had. So, they didn’t start schools.

I was so shocked by this, and I was teacher training in Berkeley; I bought this little encyclopedia, put it in a suitcase and went to Richmond, Virginia and contacted the people and said, “I’m here and I can teach.” Now, there was one other girl who did the same thing. We arrived not quite at the same time, but the Black parents decided to not to take us up on our offer, because they still wanted public schools that were integrated, so that the other girl and I returned to our respective communities and I stayed active in civil rights here in Berkeley.

MJC:  Well, those were critical times after Brown vs the Board, and now that I live in DC. I understand Virginia a little better than I did then.

alta: It’s a beautiful place and I actually enjoyed my staying there. My mother, who was very upset that I hadn’t come home yet, said, “Just come home for your brother’s birthday. We’ll send you a ticket.” So, of course I came back and I never left California again.

MJC:  That was the end of Virginia for you. But well intentioned, and certainly consistent with your philosophy, and the times. So, what happened next?

alta: I did go back to Cal and I met my first husband. He wanted to be an actor, so I went with him to the try outs and the director picked me, and I said, “I’m not here to be here. This is my husband. He wants to be an actor.” The director said, “I need you.” And I said, “Well, I’m not going to do it without my husband.” She said, “Okay, we’ll make him a guard.” And it was a Shakespeare play. So, my husband was in sort of a metal suit and he stood holding a spear. She wanted me, because I was very big and strong for a girl, and I could help carry Anthony off the stage when he died.

MJC:  That’s amazing. So, you got started in acting. What did you study in school?

alta: Humanities. I never did any other acting. My husband has become an actor. Even at our age, he is doing group scenes, and in the summertime he’s a wizard and he stirs a pot at the Children’s Fair.

MJC:  Good for him.  That’s fun. So, his dream came true.

alta: Yes, it did.

MJC:  That’s good.

alta: My dream was to become a writer, and that dream has come true.

MJC:  So, what happened after your acting career, your brief acting career?

alta: I got pregnant and we moved to the suburbs. I was a housewife until our divorce. I didn’t do anything but house care and child care. But we learned that the suburbs we bought a home in, had a thing where we were supposed to sign, sort of a home, everybody agrees living in this community not rent or sell to a person other than White. Well, we’d already bought the house, so we got busy. We contacted people, we got publicity, and we made such a fuss that our house started being vandalized. People would throw things at it. They put signs on the door, “Go back to Russia.”

Luckily, it just sort of calmed down after a while because we didn’t go anywhere. We didn’t bring Black people to the house, and after a while, it calmed down. Our marriage ended in divorce and I came back to Berkeley and started again as a student. And I met John Oliver Simon. He was wearing a sign that said, “I will write a poem for you, in exchange for…” any small sort of thing. So, I was doing political work for a Black man who was running for Governor. So, I gave him a button and he wrote me a beautiful five-page poem. And I came back the next day and we were inseparable for the next few years.

MJC:  Wonderful story. Who was the candidate for governor? Do you remember?

alta: Carlton Goodlett

MJC:  Okay. He didn’t win. Right?

alta: Correct. I think he did get on the ballot. And that was quite a project. You have to get thousands of signatures. So, I was going into Oakland neighborhoods with a sign saying, “Register to vote.” I just had it around my neck, and I was going to the various neighborhoods registering people.

MJC:  Excellent.

alta: Years later, one of my foster children, a girl, said, “I heard about you. You were going to all the cathouses in Oakland and registering the whores.” And I said, “I thought they were housewives.” I registered a six-block radius of whorehouses to vote.

MJC:  Good for you. I hope they kept it up. That is fabulous. There are not too many people who could say that. Make that claim.

alta: It’s great. They did register. They didn’t tell me to go away. And they answered the questions. I turned it all in, and hopefully they all voted.

MJC:  Working women, right?

alta: That’s right.

MJC:  That’s fantastic. I love it. So, you were doing voter registration work, which we’re still doing to this day. And then what happened?

alta: Simon and I got married, and we got a house in Berkeley. He decided to try to make a living as a printer. And he, and a fellow poet, Richard Krech, bought a printing press. He taught me how to print. We did everything by hand. We collated the books, we took page by page, then we folded them, and we stapled them.

MJC:  Everything by hand.

alta: Yes. This is the first book that I published under Shameless Hussy. It’s my Letters to Women, which are love letters to women. None of us saw any other book like this, ever. And this was done in 1969. It’s all printed in different colors because I got tired of black paper. And I took them around to bookstores in a cardboard box on the bus. We got into Cody’s Books, and Up Haste on Haste Street, and then New York heard about me and I got orders from New York. And then it just blossomed.

MJC:  Amazing. So that’s the first Shameless Hussy book.

alta: Yes.

MJC:  Were there women’s bookstores at that point, or were they not there yet?

alta: One was just starting called, Up Haste. And they took all our books. One of the women who worked there said, “If she can do it, I could do it” and she became a poet, Linda Lancione. I just went to her poetry reading on Saturday, she’s still writing.

MJC:  Wonderful. Excellent. So, lifelong friend.

alta: Yes.

MJC:  So, Shameless Hussy. So then tell us more about the development of the press and some of the authors you dealt with.

alta: I just happen to have; when Simon and I broke up, it was a reason we broke up, and there was a reason that I left Berkeley. The reason Simon and I broke up, he dislocated my jaw. I have just written a book about it, [Did Abuse Cause My Disability?]. It’s the first book I have talked about the battering I received from my first husband, and my second husband, and my parents. It’s not part of Shameless Hussy. Shameless Hussy was from 1969 to 1989.

MJC:  Oh, when did you publish this then?

alta: Last week.

MJC:  Oh, bless your heart.

alta:  Yes, Thank you. Did Abuse Cause My Disability? You notice I have a tremor. When I was 38, the doctors thought that I had multiple sclerosis. They told me I would die in two years. I said, “I can’t die. I’ve got kids in school.” So, I went out and did everything I could to fight MS. Well, now, none of the doctors think that is what I have. I’ll just read this little bit on the back cover.

MJC:  Okay.

alta: “In 2022, the National Football League was sued by 4500 professional football players for their families, after the players died or became disabled due to CTE; Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy. I think that’s what I have, but there’s no way to tell until after the patient dies. But I did say the things that happened and who did it to me. My parents had already passed away, but both my first husband and my second husband; and I tell you, I was scared to tell them I was doing this. I felt it was so important.

MJC:  It is so important.

alta: Here is a letter from my first husband. Here is a letter from my second husband.

MJC:  What do they say? In essence.

alta: Danny says, “I am profoundly filled with shame and regret.” Simon said, “The last time I hit a woman was July of 1971. I had a moment of self-recognition. This is wrong. This is unworthy.”

MJC:  Well, that’s good to hear that they had those insights.

alta: At the bottom of the pages, there is a poem to each of them. To my first husband, the poem is, Honeymoon.

I smiled against your shoulder as you carried me to bed. The light of our love making can still be seen by star gazers on other planets.

MJC:  Beautiful.

alta: Thank you. And this poem is for Simon. This poem I make up on postcards and people just get such a kick out of it.

Nothing is more beautiful than a blue sky with white clouds. Except my ex-husband.

MJC:  I love it.

alta: One woman in the audience shouted, “But he’s your EX-husband.” I said, “He is still the most beautiful man God ever created.”

MJC:  Giving credit where credit is due.

alta: Here’s a picture of my third husband who never abused me. So, we stayed together for ten years, and he helped with the press. I chose the authors, and he did the publicity and we got world famous, as I’m sure you know. Here’s a picture of his hands, which I always loved. He was a mechanic. His poem is, 

Decades later, I tell angel, Sorry I wasn’t a better wife.

He replies, All I remember is the love.

MJC:  Beautiful.

alta: So, this is the original version of, For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/When the Rainbow is Enuf, by Ntozake Shange. And because I had published the book, I was invited to opening night at Joseph Papp Theater. One of the questions you asked me is, “What was a highlight in your life?” Being there at opening night for a book I had published which has changed the world.

MJC:  Definitely. I saw the play in Chicago.

alta: Okay! Good play. We also published part of her novel, Sassafrass, but she hadn’t written the whole thing yet, which was good for us because we were still doing stapled books. We couldn’t do very big things yet. As we got more famous. Famous thanks to Ntozake, and to Mitsuye Yamada, we did start doing bound books, which bookstores appreciate because when they put it on their shelves you can tell what it is. With our stapled books, you can’t tell.

MJC:  Right, you can’t read the spine.

alta: That’s right. We got Camp Notes in a staple version. And it turned out to be on par of importance historically with Ntozake, because Mitsuye had been in the internment camps. It was the first book by a woman who’d been in the camps and it was the first book to be published in decades because America was in complete denial that we would ever do such a terrible thing.

MJC:  But we did.

alta: And her daughter did the illustrations. Angel picked this book, Camp Notes, and I picked this book, For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/When the Rainbow is Enuf. So, between the two of us, we picked the two most important books that I’ve ever published.

MJC:  Excellent.

alta: While these were getting us known around the country and the smaller stores, I published The Haunted Pool, by George Sand.

MJC:  I remember that. Yes.

alta: Which was given to me by John Wong, working at Moe’s Bookstore. When he saw me sitting across the street at the Caffe Mediterranean, he just picked up the book and brought it to me and said, “You might like this.” It was published by Dodd Mead. I called New York, I reached John Dodd, and I said, “I would like to publish this book that you published.” And he said, “When did we publish that?” I said, “1919.” He said, “You can have it.” And I said, “Really?” He said “Yes.” I said, “How much?” He said, “No, no, it’s free. You can have it. Aren’t you a small press?” I don’t know how he could tell, just because we’re called Shameless Hussy. I said, “Yes, I’m a small press.” He said, “Go for it.”

MJC:  Wonderful.

alta: The same year that I published this, national television decided to do the story of George Sand and call it “Notorious Woman.” It played on channel nine for weeks, and no one else had any George Sand. She had gone out of print in America. She was out of print in England. We got this other book I found, [Lavinia], and we published it. We had two George Sand books, and no one else had any.

MJC:  Beautiful.

alta: We were in the New York Review of Books and various huge things. Ms. did offer to publish me, but they wanted me to change a poem. I said, “I don’t change my poems.” And Gloria Steinem came on the phone. “Well, we just want you to change this one line.” I said, “Absolutely not.” She said, “This would be great publicity for you.” And I said, “I’m not doing that.” So, I have never been published in Ms.

MJC:  Sounds like a fair trade.

alta: Here’s our other really great author, [The Sink, Dear Sky] Susan Griffin. She and I were in the same dorm at Cal. We were in a co-op dorm. And so, she and I became sort of friends. We weren’t really close, but we both knew we were both poets, and we stayed in touch ever since we were students.

Those are the big items. And then I have dozens of other books that I published and eight books by me that I published. The first was, Love Letters to Women. At the last, at the urging of my friends is love poems to man.

MJC:  Deluged with Dudes. Is that what it says?

alta: Yes.

MJC:  I love it. So, these books are in print?

alta: I’m not keeping them in print. The only book I keep in print is, Calamity Jane’s Letters to Her Daughter. This book is still in print because people are still buying it.

MJC:  Interesting.

alta: The reason I got it, is because her daughter tried to get it published and she went to New York and showed publishers the original. Well, New York was not impressed. The words are misspelled sometimes. And it was just little single sheets that the adoptive father had saved. It went to two women who worked in Northern California in a University, and they let me have the book.

MJC:  So, you own that Calamity Jane book.

alta: I own a book, but not a copyright, because I didn’t write it. And when a woman contacted me and said, “You have to pay me for those.” I said, “No, I don’t.” She said, “But I have the books.” And I said, “You didn’t write the letters.”

Anyhow, then a movie producer called and said they want to do Calamity Jane, and “How much would I charge?” And I said, “You might want to call the woman who claims she has copyright.” So, the movie agreed to pay her, and then a TV producer came up with the show about it, and they paid her too, so she did very well.

MJC:  Are the daughters still living?

alta: I doubt it. It was in the ’50s that she was taking the book around to publishers.

MJC:  Right. And they were adults in the 50s. Yes. So how are you preserving all this material for the future?

alta: Well, most everything is in archives at UC Santa Cruz. Some original letters, original documents, and all of the books, and a 30-page interview with me.

MJC:  Okay, good. Excellent. Oh, I’m glad to hear that. Okay, so, talk about the impact you think Shameless Hussey had on the women’s movement.

alta: Within three years, there were four women’s publishing companies in the Bay Area. Diana’s Press, Mama’s Press, and Judy Grahn’s Press. And Diana Press and Mama’s Press were both vandalized. Someone got in and broke the printer, and the collator, and all the stuff, and poured things on the paper so it couldn’t be used.

They had published two books by me, and one, a children’s coloring book. And for that, they got destroyed. So, when people talk about the dangers now, the dangers were severe back then. People hated us, and the people who hated us did not mind destroying our work. Here’s one of the books, [True Story]. As far as I know, it’s the only book Mama’s Press got done before it was destroyed. It’s a book of my own short stories, and the things that people hated us for, like lesbianism, it’s not even in here. So, what the frick, they were destroying things.

MJC:  Well, I’m glad you’re referencing our period now, because it’s the same level of ignorance. Reading it and understanding it is not part of the hateful behavior, I guess.

alta: Right. Okay, I don’t seem to see a copy of the children coloring book, but that’s what it was.

MJC:  But all of them, you have at least one copy preserved in the archives. Or you will?

alta: I have all of this preserved in the archives, but since Shameless Hussy was not part of Mama’s Press, I don’t have any of their documents. I don’t have any of Diana’s, and Judy Grahn and I had a falling out, so I don’t even have her new books. Somebody loaned them to me and I loaned it to somebody else. I was told she apologizes. Well, I’ve read part of it, and she didn’t apologize. So, I don’t have Judy Grahn’s books.

MJC:  So, impact on the women’s movement. How do you think the women’s movement grew because of the presence of these books by women?

alta: Presses didn’t just pop up in California. They just started popping up around the country, and bookstores came into being. So that the books were getting publicized, and women began reading the poems in public. The first all-women’s poetry reading I had, I invited Diane di Prima, and she said, “Oh, you just want to work in factories and have abortions.” I said, “That’s not true.” She said, “Well, maybe I’ll show up” but she didn’t. And Julia Vinograd said, “Just women?” I said, “Yes.” And she said, “That’s not going to be very good, Alta.” And I said, “It might be really good.”

The women who came were, Judy Grahn, whom I still consider the greatest woman poet of that period. Susan Griffin, Pat Parker, who is a Black lesbian. Everybody completely freaked out about one or the other, but Pat, she was a very powerful poetry reader, and me. And then Julia did show up, bless her heart. Julia Vinograd showed up, took the microphone, and said, “I apologize. I thought that because it’s all women it wouldn’t be very good, so I didn’t bring my best work.”

MJC:  Really? That’s honest, I guess. That’s an honest, terrible reality. Right?

alta: We had bumper stickers, wall hangings, all kinds of stuff.

MJC:  So, in effect, the publication of these books, helped to grow the women’s movement.

alta: Yes. Well, Alma carried our books around in cardboard boxes around the country. Was going to small meetings, you know, the small group meetings, and she was part of a creative network that stayed in touch with each other. And she would sell our books at the local bookstores. Her name is Alma Cremonesi, and I believe she’s still alive and living in Colorado.

MJC:  So, did the larger publishers eventually catch on?

alta: Oh sure. Ntozake immediately. I hadn’t even sold the first edition before I got a call from New York saying, “We would like to publish Ntozake.” I said, “Great.” And he said, “Would you consider selling the rights.” And I said, “I don’t have the rights. Ntozake has the rights. It’s her book.” And he said, “Well, would you consider stopping publishing?” And I said, “Why?” He said, “Because we want to publish it.” And I said, “No. I don’t want to stop.”

He said, “What if we send you $1,000?” That was huge. I mean, to publish my books I was getting $20 donations from friends to buy paper. I said, “Oh, yes, for $1,000.” So, Tim Seldes was her representative, a wonderful man. We all got close on friendly terms, and I got invited to the opening at the Joseph Papp Theatre.

MJC:  Wonderful. What a wonderful story that is. And what a wonderful contribution you and she made to Black women being published and recognized. And that evolution is still going on, isn’t it?

alta: Absolutely, yes.

MJC:  So, what else do you remember particularly from that period? Or, if you want to talk about what that period was? Shameless Hussey’s birth and growth and the women writing and being published. What else do you want to talk about in terms of either that period, or what followed?

alta: Because Susie (Susan Griffin) was getting well known, and she had written a play called Voices, that was actually getting ready to be produced on Broadway. Susie invited me back to New York, and Tillie Olsen loaned me the money to go there, because I didn’t have bus fare, let alone airplane fare. So, after the play, which was quite good. We were meeting the producer, and the actress, and we went to Sardi’s. It was on my dream list.

I’ll tell you this. I had 20 dreams in my life of things I wanted, that have come true. And one of them was to go to Sardi’s with the appropriate famous people. So, we came in and we were seated at a big round table. There were photographers and various people coming up and shaking hands. And the waiter asked me, “What would you like to drink?” I said, “No, I can’t have alcohol.” He said, “I’ll bring you a little glass of something. You don’t have to touch it.” I said, “But I can’t drink it.” And he said, “But you need to have it there or else they’ll think you’re in the AA.”

He brought me a teeny glass of something I never tasted. And afterward, I called, and I said, “Mom, guess where I went after the theater?” She said, “Honey, I’ve never been in New York.” And I said, “Come on, guess.” And she said, “Sardi’s?” So, that’s my Susie story.

MJC:  So how did your family take the Shameless Hussy part of you?

alta: They didn’t think it was an appropriate name. Nobody. You can count the number of the people on one hand. There was nobody. Nobody. Until I published Ntozake, I was persona non grata in the women’s movement, in the lesbian movement, in the publishing community.

MJC:  That’s amazing. That’s fantastic.

alta: I started a house for women, we called it Harwood House, in Oakland. And women could come there if they needed to, or they could just come there and live there. So, that was my next project. And in Harwood House, there were people that wanted to start a newspaper. And here came, It Ain’t Me, Babe.

MJC:  Oh, wow.

alta: Somewhere in my precious box room, I have the whole set of It Ain’t Me Babe, with cartoons by Trina and poems by me, and interviews with the main women’s movement of the daily.

MJC:  Amazing. How did you get the word around the country about the creations, and how was that done? By word-of-mouth? Meetings?

alta: Alma Cremonesi went around with her cardboard box, and Angel, my husband, figured out how to get us in Books in Print. And then when we published things that just had to be reviewed, like George Sand, that got the word out. Getting reviewed in the New York Review of Books.

MJC:  That’ll do it. So, you published the books in California, and then they had to be shipped everywhere, I guess. Just the old post office method. So, that was a 20-year period when Shameless Hussy was publishing, correct? And then what did you do next?

alta: From 1969 to 1989 was Shameless Hussy. And then I had gotten interested in video and film, and worked for a while at a small TV station in Hayward, and learned how to do videos. And we did do a video Ntozake performing For Color Girls, and I turned that into film, which got shown in a few classrooms. I hope that it still exists somewhere.

MJC:  I hope so.

alta: I tried a video company called, Better Duck Productions. And I acted in my own movie about a woman who gets raped and decides to go after the rapist, and then decides that would be a waste of her life and decides not to go after the rapist. I talked about this script at a script meeting in New York with a group of women. They took it and ran with it, but they took the idea, the ending, and changed it. So, I didn’t mind that they basically robbed my script. They changed the ending to the woman going after the man and doing something appropriate. The movie is called “Lipstick.” I’ve never seen it.

MJC:  So, it didn’t have a good ending.

alta: Not as far as I was concerned. It was not as spiritual.

MJC:  That’s what I’m gathering. So, you just kept moving from one mode of producing ideas and publishing and creating videos to another.

alta: That’s true. And once I got into housing, like the House for Women, and I became more disabled; there was a time where I couldn’t walk to the corner from my house. I decided that creating wheelchair accessible housing would be on my list. It took me 13 years to find out it was impossible to do in Berkeley. I just could not get the contractor and the tenants and the bureaucracy together. So, after 13 years trying in Berkeley, I sold that building and bought a building in Oakland. And it only took three years to create wheelchair accessible housing in Oakland. Which I’ve done.

MJC:  Good for you. So, you did public service as well as making it usable for yourself, good for you. I mean, you’re a doer. That’s it. That’s the bottom line. So, what else do we need to talk about before we wrap this up?

alta: Well, I have a page of notes here. One of the greatest things was meeting Alice Paul. I had heard that she was in a convalescent home, so on a trip to the east coast, I called the home, and I said, “My name is, blah blah. I’m from California, and I would like to meet Alice Paul.” And they got me confused with the Smithsonian, who also called and said, “We are reporters and we want to meet Alice Paul.”

Well, I got there first, on the same day as the Smithsonian. But since they didn’t realize there were two of us, they said, “We’ve been waiting for you.” And I said, “Oh, that’s nice.” So, I had 20 minutes alone with Alice Paul. And I said, “How are you doing?” She said, “I don’t understand why the Senators are not writing me back. I am sending them letters every week. We’ve got to have equal rights.” And I said, “You’re sending them letters, and you’re not hearing from them?” She said, “No.” I said, “That’s unusual. They respond usually to people’s letters.”

So then, here comes the camera, the sound man, and the real interviewer from the Smithsonian, and the nurses are looking at us saying, “What happened here?” And I said, “Oh, my name is Alta. I’m from California. I can leave now.” And I just walked out. But I stayed and I talked to the director and said, “Alice isn’t getting her mail.” And the woman said, “Oh, she thinks she can write to the President and the Senators.” And I said, “So, where is the mail going?” And she said, “No, no, dear, we just pretend to send it.”

MJC:  Oh, Lord. Isn’t that awful? Isn’t that terrible? That’s just terrible.

alta: So, I said, “How much would it cost to hire a private secretary?” And I hired a private secretary to come twice a week, write Alice’s letters, get them mailed, and mail started pouring in from the legislature and the Senate, and various other groups. And with the Smithsonian article as well, she was able to contact 18 of the surviving suffragists, who came and had a big gathering for Alice. And then two weeks later, she died.

MJC:  Oh, my goodness. What a gift you gave her. That is a beautiful story. Wonderful. I love that story. Thank you for telling that story. Well, she certainly is one of our heroes, and so are you. So there.

alta: Thank you.

MJC:  Well, thank you so much. I so have appreciated your time and your stories. And I know I bought your books back in the day, because I have a lot from Shameless Hussy. Absolutely. And, It Ain’t Me, Babe, I may have some old paper in my pile. Most of stuff has gone to the Schlesinger library, but those are magnificent memories.

alta: I’m glad you’ve got in them in a good library. That’s great.

MJC:  Absolutely. So, I interviewed a woman, Mary Farmer, who ran a Lamma’s bookstore here, so it got me to talking with her about the bookstores and how important they were to the woman’s movement. And she made me aware, as you made me aware, that having the bookstores, and someplace to sell the books, made the books more likely to happen.

alta: Yes.

MJC:  Women were more likely to write them if they knew somebody would actually publish them and get them actually to a reader, right? So, the interplay of those forces, so important, and so important to remember.

alta: Yes.

MJC:  So, thank you so much. It’s just been fun and a pleasure, and I just appreciate your time and everything you’ve done. Thank you.

alta: It was fun for me, too.

MJC:  Good, I’m glad. I’m glad you enjoyed it.