Episode 599
with Avery Trufelman, Camille T. Dungy, and Olive Klug
Podcaster Avery Trufelman unpacks her podcast Articles of Interest, in which she reveals the history behind fashion and clothing, including prison uniforms and the debate over pockets; author Camille T. Dungy discusses her latest book Soil: The Story of a Black Mother’s Garden, which chronicles her attempts to diversify her garden in the predominately white community of Fort Collins, Colorado; and singer-songwriter Olive Klug performs "Song About America," inspired by their experiences as a queer artist touring across the nation.
Avery Trufelman
Podcaster and producer
Avery Trufelman is the host and creator of Articles Of Interest, a podcast about fashion for people who think they don't care about fashion. She’s investigated ballet shoes, prison uniforms, preppy clothes and explains what these all mean to us. Previously she hosted the podcast The Cut from New York Magazine. She was also a longtime staff producer on 99% Invisible, a weekly podcast that explored the process and power of design and architecture. Her new season of Articles of Interest is in the works. Website • Twitter
Camille T. Dungy
Poet and author
Camille T. Dungy is the author of four collections of poetry and two collections of essays. Her most recent collection, Soil: The Story of a Black Mother's Garden, recounts her seven-year odyssey to diversify her garden in the predominately white community of Fort Collins, Colorado. BOOKLIST calls it "a significant, beautiful, meditative, and wholly down-to-earth memoir." She has been the finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, a Guggenheim Fellow, a NAACP Image Award nominee, and the winner of an American Book Award. Her poems have been published in Best American Poetry, The 100 Best African American Poems, the Pushcart Anthology, Best American Travel Writing, and over thirty other anthologies. Website • Instagram
Olive Klug
Singer-songwriter
A key player in the new wave of contemporary folk singers, Olive Klug makes earnest, queer acoustic folk music with the central goal of allowing listeners to tap into their feelings. First making waves on TikTok, Olive is self-styled after genre icons like Joni Mitchell and Brandi Carlile, Olive is known for their beautiful tone and vividly honest storytelling. Their sound is reminiscent of the Golden Age of American Folk Music, but with a uniquely modern lyrical sensibility. Their first album Don’t You Dare Make Me Jaded is out now. Website • Twitter • Instagram
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Luke Burbank: Hey, Elena.
Elena Passarello: Hey, Luke. How's it going?
Luke Burbank: It is going very, very well. Mostly because it's time to do one of my very favorite things of the week, which is to play a round of station location identification examination with you. Are you ready?
Elena Passarello: Oh, yeah.
Luke Burbank: Wow, okay. This is where I quiz Elena. On a place in the country where live wires on the radio. She's got to figure out where we are talking about. Okay. The first of two twin port cities to be founded. So there's a couple of port cities. They're kind of considered twins. This place was known as the spot where sail meets rail. Okay. So kind of important, you know, kind of transition between something that's on a boat and getting on the train lake.
Elena Passarello: Or a bay.
Luke Burbank: Yes. Yes I think it's good. That's a good start. Okay. How about this. It's got both the first and last Carnegie libraries that were built in the state that it's in, which is the state of Wisconsin.
Elena Passarello: Oh. Okay. So it is the town that is the sister city of Duluth, Minnesota. But I don't know what the name of that town is.
Luke Burbank: I'm giving you the point. It's Superior, Wisconsin.
Elena Passarello: Superior! Superior!
Luke Burbank: You got it. You got it. Where we're on the radio and KUWS. So shout out to the folks in Superior where Sail Meets Rail. All right, ready to get to the show.
Elena Passarello: Let's do it.
Luke Burbank: Take it away from it. It's.
Elena Passarello: This week, podcaster Avery Trufelman.
Avery Trufelman: Gender is a construct. Pocket disparity is real. Like no matter what.
Elena Passarello: And author Camille Dungy.
Camille Dungy: I just started small. I started with a small little plot, and I kept going and growing and figured that the community would catch up to me because I was right.
Luke Burbank: Yeah.
Elena Passarello: With music from Olive Klug and our fabulous house band. I'm your announcer, Elena Hacerlo, and now the host of Live Wire, Luke Burbank.
Luke Burbank: Hey, thank you so much, Elena. Thanks to everyone tuning in from all over the country, including superior, Wisconsin. Of course, we asked Live Wire listeners a question for this week's show in honor of Avery Truffle Man and her great podcast articles of interest. We asked the Live Wire crowd, what's an article of clothing that you can't seem to let go of? And we are going to hear those responses coming up in a minute. First, though, we got to kick things off with the best news we heard all week this. This is our little reminder at the top of the show that there is good news happening in the world, and we're here to talk about it. Elena, what is the best news you heard all week?
Elena Passarello: Okay, maybe stretching. Best news, but for me, it really totally counts. I got to take you to Muskegon, Michigan, birthplace of Iggy Pop, if I'm not mistaken, where there is an animal rescue nonprofit called Heaven Can Wait Animal Haven.
Luke Burbank: Solid name, by the way.
Elena Passarello: Great. Very, very good. And it's kind of their mission is to, like, keep cats out of euthanized shelters, particularly feral cats. So they manage these colonies all over the regions that have hundreds of cats in them. And I guess that's kind of expensive. And they're, you know, really kind of a shoestring organization, all volunteer. I don't think they have a brick and mortar space, but they came up with a genius fundraising idea initially for this Valentine's Day. But I think you could do it any time if you want, just go to their Facebook page, Heaven Can Wait Animal Haven and you can name one of their feral cats after your ex and then they will neuter it.
Luke Burbank: Hahahahahahahaha that is so, so petty, but I totally support it in the service of making the lives of some cats better.
Elena Passarello: That's right, and your trap neuter return is kind of the way to to help the community of not just of cats, but of birds and rodents that other animals and help control the pet population. Like Bob Barker always told us.
Luke Burbank: All RIP.
Elena Passarello: But wait, there's more. This is not the only cool animal organization that has such a program. The San Antonio Zoo has a program where you can pay $10 to name a cockroach, that will then get fed to one of the reptiles in their reptile house. You can also pay $25 to name a rodent who will, you know, get fed to one of the reptiles. Or if you're if you're interested in a veggie option, $5, you could name some form of vegetable that will then become food for a velociraptor or whatever is the name of a reptile. I think that's a dinosaur.
Luke Burbank: I love this sort of full circle nature of this because let's just say, you know, you fall in love with whomever, and then you do one of those things where you name a star for them, which is totally ridiculous as a concept. And then when things don't work out, you name a watermelon for them that's being eaten by a hippo.
Elena Passarello: That's right. Although I would kind of be into having like a cockroach named after me that then gets fed to a really cool snake, like I'm not. I mean, I would that would not make me sad.
Luke Burbank: Honestly, if you're somebody like me, if they're just talking about me and thinking about me, I feel like that's. I mean something.
Elena Passarello: No such thing as bad press.
Luke Burbank: Right? If you took the time to name a cockroach after me and feed it to something else, I'm still living in your head, rent free. I've also got animals involved in my best news that I saw this week. It takes us to Australia, to Queensland specifically, where a 12 year old, young person named Rosie Whiteman was, in her yard. She was cleaning out her guinea pigs cage. Guinea pig, a black and white guinea pig named Maxie Bon. Maxie Bon, a popular ice cream sandwich in Australia. This is all on CCTV, by the way. That's why we know so much about exactly what happened in this moment. Rosie's out there cleaning the cage. She turns her eye away from Maxie Bond, who's just, like, chilling in the grass for a minute and is working on the cage, and then looks back and realizes that a giant snake has grabbed Maxie Bond, the guinea pig. And this is where 12 year old Rosie Whiteman just goes into God mode. She reaches down and grabs the snake by the tail and just starts spinning around like a dervish with like a fully extended snake with maxi bond like in its clutches. Like some kind of like crazy centrifuge situation. What I love about the CCTV footage is you can see in Rosie's 12 year old face, this is the last thing she wants to be doing, but also she wants to save Maxie Bond. Like she's kind of like crying, but also looking very tough as she's doing this incredible thing and apparently screaming really loudly, which we don't pick up on the tape because her parents come running out there like in their pajamas. Because it's Saturday morning, everyone was kind of sleeping in. Her dad, like, grabs the snake and separates Maxie Bond from the snake and like, throws the snake and like, everyone takes a minute, they go back in the house. They check on Maxie Bond. Maxie bond is apparently completely fine.
Elena Passarello: Whoa. Really?
Luke Burbank: Yeah. Is getting all kinds of amazing treats and cuddles right now. According to Rosie, Rosie learned that she has, you know, like, some internal kind of toughness and fortitude. Like, how would you ever know you could do that until you were in the moment of it happening?
Elena Passarello: She's like one of those moms that lifts the car.
Luke Burbank: Precisely. And this is the part two that I like, because I don't know if this is an Australian thing or. What? But they also checked on the snake.
Elena Passarello: Oh, how's the snake?
Luke Burbank: The snake's fine. They went. The snake ended up in the neighbor's yard. And this is like, a very Australian way to put it. Her dad named Luke, by the way. Solid name. Luke said he had thrown the snake into a neighbor's garden before going to remove it. Later, he found the snake. Quote. I'll spare you the accent wrapped up in a bamboo tree. It was in perfectly good nick. Oh, so even the snake made it out of this situation. Everything turned out okay down there in Queensland. And that's the best news that I heard all week. You. All right, let's get our first guest on over. She is the host and creator of what I think might be one of the best podcast going in America right now. It's called Articles of Interest, and it's sensibly, it's about clothing, but it really ends up kind of exploring all this other fascinating stuff like, what do orange jumpsuits really say about the way that we incarcerate people? Or, what's the history of pockets? And why is it that they still can't really make that, like, high tech closet that Alicia Silverstone's character Cher uses in the movie clueless? The New Yorker calls Avery truffle men relentlessly delightful, and we completely agree. Here's our interview with Avery, recorded at the Holt Center for the Performing Arts in Eugene, Oregon. Avery, welcome to the program.
Avery Trufelman: Thank you for having me. This is so exciting.
Luke Burbank: I have been a fan of your work for a long, long time and particularly love this show. Articles of interest. You said in one of the episodes that when you were younger, you didn't really understand fashion or like fashion shows, you know, runway shows, which I don't know if anybody does.
Avery Trufelman: Yeah, exactly. You see someone going down a runway wearing, like, you know, a fuzzy or. And you just like what? Why? What is that? There's no context for it. It was never anything that resonated with me. I don't know, I don't know of many, like children or young people who love a garment that lives on a runway entirely out of context. We like things that are worn by our favorite musicians, or in movies or things that have a story behind them. And I realized you have to do a lot more background research to sort of get to the place where you can, like you see a garment in the abstract.
Luke Burbank: What changed for you? Was it going to like a museum? I think you said.
Avery Trufelman: Yeah, yeah, I went to a museum exhibit because that's the other thing, right? I feel like runway shows and fashion is there are all these hang ups that we have about our bodies and our age, and just the way that good looking people are supposed to look. And I think I think it distracts from the actual pleasure of clothing. So I love seeing fashion in museums because it gets rid of a lot of those hang ups. And I saw an exhibit when I was 16 years old at the DeYoung Museum in San Francisco about the work of Vivienne Westwood, and I'd never heard of her before. And that's when I was like, oh my God, she designed punk, and punk was like designed by a designer. It was sold in a fancy shop, and it was like, I just couldn't that was mind blowing. Was like, this is what fashion designers do. Like they gave us this, this language, everything. Like the reason I can wear this like See-through shirt right now. And it's considered like okay is in part because of punk and what she made. And it's like trickling down through the years and it impacts us all. That's like so cool. And that was one person.
Luke Burbank: Yeah. I feel like even the term fashion to describe your podcast is a little bit misleading, because I think the show is really about is the way that the things that we tend to wear are the result of a ton of, like downstream. That's been just going on forever.
Avery Trufelman: Well, when you think about it, so much of fashion is determined by cloth material technology, sourcing, labor. I mean, the actual reasons that we wear what we wear and why we like what we like are so rooted in, like our economics, our environment. It's fascinating. It's an amazing lens to see the world. And it's a huge industry, you know, like I always get such a kick out of like walking down a street and looking at all the commercial shops and be like, wow, most of these places sell clothes. Like that is what most of commerce is for people. And so when we dismiss it or like, say we don't care about it, it's like, that's a lot to not care about.
Luke Burbank: This is live Wire from PR and we are talking to podcaster Avery Truffle Men. When we return, she is going to break down the great pocket disparity in America. And and what can be done about it that's coming up right after this short break. Welcome back to Live Wire from PR. I'm Luke Burbank here with Elena Passaro. We are listening back to a conversation we recorded with podcaster Avery Truffle Men. We recorded this live at the Holt Center for the Performing Arts in Eugene, Oregon. Let's jump right into maybe your biggest banger. If you were Bon Jovi, this would be your livin on a prayer. Pockets. Where did they come from? Why don't we let women have them? What is going on with pockets?
Avery Trufelman: Pockets? I mean, how much time do you have? I feel like all night. Okay. So let me just say that gender is a construct. Pocket disparity is real. Like, no matter what. Like. And it's really fascinating because I have a friend who. It's true. I have a friend who's like, oh, I keep losing my phone. I'm so dumb. And I'm like, let me see your pockets. What's going on with your pockets? And they just like, they don't fit anything. It is wild that we still have this. And the interesting thing is, like, women used to have pockets, women used to have really big pockets, especially when we had big poofy dresses. And there are all these stories about, you know, women like putting like pieces of cake to save for later and like, like little sewing kits and things like that. And then this is like, really, really, really, really, really. Long story short, after the French Revolution, like big voluminous dresses were not as in style. It was cool to be sort of like sleek and sort of like, poverty chic, like when you see, like Jane Austen movies or like Bridgerton and they're wearing these, like, form fitting little shift things, they're trying to look very, Roman or Greek, and they're looking very simple. And then they're like, oh, there's no room for a pocket in here. And so they carried these little pouches. And the fascinating thing is it was seen as very liberating because it's like, well, I don't I don't I don't carry around cake for later. Like I don't carry on a sewing kit. I'm out like I'm partying. I'm having fun. Which I think is really fascinating because it reminds me of, you know, long nails that don't let you do much with your hands, or high heels that don't let you walk very far. These things that are actually limiting, but they are liberating in some ways, because it is such a luxury to not do anything and to look like you don't have to do anything. And so that was the that was the big debate. Yeah.
Luke Burbank: There were like pocket lists and ante pocket.
Avery Trufelman: That was their name. And apparently the media was like pumping it out. They were like, oh, no pockets or an antique pocket, just which is the interesting thing about fashion, right? I think in our minds, we imagine that fashion gets dictated from on high, that, you know, someone's like, green is green is out, like purple is in. But that's not what happens. We all experience fashion all the time in our own lives. And it's that feeling when you look at your closet and you're like, I don't know what to wear. I don't have anything to wear. That's fashion working on you, because that means you've changed. Your circumstances have changed, your body has changed, something has changed, and now you need new clothes.
Luke Burbank: You also had an incredible episode about ballet shoes, pointe shoes specifically, and just the process of of breaking in a ballet shoe. How unbelievably painful it is for the dancers and how somebody spent a bunch of time inventing a more durable, less painful ballet shoe, and the ballet community turned their back on it initially. Yeah, they won't use it.
Avery Trufelman: They won't use it. They're like, this goes against everything. And to me, I was like, whoa, like, what is up with that? Like what? But there's so many lessons in there about, I don't know, the ways that we cling to tradition. And, you know, fashion is not just what we wear in like, casual society. It's also like, that is a fashion in this. Industry like for a ballet dancer, they're like, this is what we do. It's not logical. It doesn't make any sense. It's like, this is our tradition. And I cannot tell you how many people reached out to me. And they're like, oh, we do the same thing in skateboarding. We do the same thing in, you know, like name, whatever. They're like. This doesn't make any sense. Like, I don't know why we like, wear this stuff, but we we do. It's never quite yoked with practicality. There's always like some tradition, some social element. It's really fascinating.
Luke Burbank: But something I didn't know until I listened to that episode was that the idea of the ballet shoe is a sort of extension of the dancer and an elongation of them, which then gets to the issue of dancers of color. And the fact that that a pink ballet shoe may not, work for that. And so then you have someone hand painting everyone's shoes so that it matches their body style.
Avery Trufelman: At the Dance Theater of Harlem for decades, they used makeup, and they painted their shoes to make it match their, their skin. Point came about because it was supposed to look like a a woman was, like, floating, you know, she was supposed to be some sort of otherworldly being. And so it wasn't supposed to look like she was wearing like this, this shoe, this, like stilt. It was supposed to be a part of her. So, yeah. Dance Theater of Harlem painted all their shoes to match. I mean, they were a little fanatic about it. Was like, it matches their skin tone perfectly. It's an amazing effect. It's so beautiful. And mass produced pointe shoes haven't been available in colors other than pink until 2017. That's why that feels.
Luke Burbank: Late in the.
Avery Trufelman: Game. It's a little late in the game. It's kind of amazing.
Luke Burbank: Okay. From foot prison to prison. Prison? Yes. You have an episode in there. Thank you. Thank you very much. Professional broadcaster checking in. You did a collaboration with the phenomenal podcast Ear Hustle about, about what, you know, inmates wear in prison and how that's changed over the years. And it also involves a guy named Bob Barker that I didn't expect. Not the.
Avery Trufelman: Nicest.
Luke Burbank: Version of Rest in Power. But, but a different Bob Barker, who makes all of the prison outfits. What what's sort of the story of of why it is that inmates dress the way that they do or are forced to dress the way they do?
Avery Trufelman: Well, the fascinating thing is that I, you know, I have watched movies. I know that, like, people who are in jail have to wear a uniform, but it actually isn't, like, necessary. And in fact, there were many decades in America where, people who were incarcerated didn't wear uniforms.
Luke Burbank: And like, in San Quentin, right?
Avery Trufelman: Yeah. In San Quentin in the, in the 80s, like we talked to a guy who was there on the inside, and he was like, yeah, you used to be able to, like, wear whatever you want, the dry cleaning in the prison and you could like. And it was. And he talked about how powerful it was to be able to like, dress up, you know, to like, be, be himself and express himself. And so it's all really, really arbitrary. I mean, once you start noticing it and you're like, man, the uniforms are all so different institution to institution. And it's because a lot of them come from this one catalog called the Bob Barker Catalog. And you can order it, you can get the catalog, you can look at it online, you can flip through it. And that shows you everything that you could order if you were supplying a prison. So they're like orange jumpsuits, blue jumpsuits, separates. They still sell the stripes. I mean, it's.
Luke Burbank: The.
Avery Trufelman: Places that.
Luke Burbank: That's what, you know, you're at an old school prison. Yeah.
Avery Trufelman: Oh, wow. The the the clothing suppliers that have catalogs would shock you. I'm working on an episode about, priestly vestments, and you can actually get a catalog for priest vestments, and they use actual male models, like, you know, posing like priests. And they're like. And they're like, posing next to, coffins with their, like, matching vestments and and the. But that's not even the funniest part. The funniest part is you're like, oh, that's like a beautiful garment. Oh, my God, it's $5,000. It's like so expensive. But yeah, the we all wear clothes. Fashion matters.
Camille Dungy: Like these places buy catalogs.
Luke Burbank: You say in one of your episodes that you feel like your personal opinion. And just as for you not telling everyone how to live, but that clothing is an investment. Do you feel comfortable giving us your best guess at the net worth of your closet?
Avery Trufelman: Oh my God.
Luke Burbank: Let me rephrase that. So I'm going to give you slightly an out. Do you think if you were to add that up you would be kind of shocked actually at what you've invested?
Avery Trufelman: No, although that's the thing I feel like the way that I put it is I ever since doing all this, like once you once I started researching clothes and being like, oh my God, they're all such special little snowflakes. Like, I love them whenever I buy something, my salient feeling is like, oh, now I have this pet to take care of because that is kind of how I feel about my clothes. I'm like, well, you got to get them cleaned and you got to get them repaired. I mean, I keep my stuff for like a long time. Yeah, I invest in my clothes, but I also invest like time in them. And I think the collective value of my closet. Yeah. I'm not like, giving a lot of things away. So I think it would be very upsetting for me to look at the collective cost of my closet. No, it's not upsetting. I'm proud. Clothing matters. Yeah, yeah. There you go. Yeah. Thanks.
Elena Passarello: Have you ever met anybody or talked to anybody on the podcast who has successfully done this Charlie Brown strategy, where you wear the same thing every day? I think Steve Jobs did it, too. But let's stick with Charlie Brown. We have you have you in real life, encountered somebody who has successfully employed that, that four of the same shirt, four of the same pants. And I just wear that every day.
Avery Trufelman: The thing is, Steve Jobs is sure it was easy, Mickey. It's like a very nice designer brand. And that's why he looks so good all the time. And they're like, see, this man didn't even care. It's like, no, he. Yeah, he cared. He didn't like he just like, pretended not to care.
Luke Burbank: But your point, Avery, is that it takes a certain amount of attention to be so seemingly kind of blasé about it.
Avery Trufelman: Okay. The thing that I say is that clothing is the mediator between our internal world and our external world. It's not just like, hey, this is who I am, it's also how the world sees you. It's also about what the weather is. It's also like what's happening in the zeitgeist. So I don't think anything can just like, stay forever. I know people who, like, have uniforms that are in periods, but I don't know. We all, we all change and changes. Change is good. I mean, I feel like the closest I can imagine is like people who have like a really good sense of personal style, like Patti Smith style has not changed in like decades. But she's not wearing the same, you know, clothes. She just like, knows herself really well and has like, established this look. But I think the uniform, it's just so easy to get bored with the uniform.
Elena Passarello: I'm just not real.
Avery Trufelman: Yeah. I don't think it, like, lives in the world. Yeah.
Luke Burbank: I think that's a really interesting idea that you present of the clothing being this kind of membrane. Yeah. Between us and the outside world, every truffle in the podcast is articles of interest. Thanks so much for coming on. Love you for your amazing. That was Avery truffle man right here on Live Wire. Make sure to go check out the latest episodes of her incredible podcast Articles of Interest. This is Live Wire. Of course. Each week we like to ask our listeners a question related to Avery's conversation about clothes and fashion. We asked, what is an article of clothing you can't seem to let go of? Alan has been collecting up those responses. What are you seeing?
Elena Passarello: Well, here's what I think is the ultimate classic answer from Brett. Brett says, I have never let go of my old concert t shirts because they're a snapshot in time, and that is 7,000% true.
Luke Burbank: That's at the core of all of this, I think. Right?
Elena Passarello: Yeah, I think it's just that's just like the classic thing to keep other than like, you know, like a, a motorcycle jacket that will never.
Luke Burbank: See the back of a motorcycle. Yeah.
Elena Passarello: I yeah.
Luke Burbank: I have a t shirt that says the Golden Gopher, which was a bar in LA that I loved, but I think even more than the bar, I just loved being 26. And when I see that t shirt that's now just got all kinds of holes and deterioration, I think. Yeah, but but that reminds me of a time when I, you know, everything was potential in my life. Well, what are some of the articles of, let's just say, interest to some of the Livewire listeners?
Elena Passarello: How about this one from Mindy? All the crazy business casual clothes I used to wear to the clubs in the early 2000s. It was a crazy time to be a millennial. Now, instead of bar hopping, I wear them to work. Do you remember this, Mr. Burbank? You used to put on, like, a pair of, like, kind of dressy black pants and like a fitted, like, cornflower button up short sleeve shirt. That's what you would wear with your chunky dress shoes.
Luke Burbank: Yes, I do. That's what the very tail end of me ever being found in the club, as they say, was probably that era of the club's existing. I'm going on a trip coming up, and there is a rumor, because it's somebody's birthday, that we may have to visit the club, and I'm already dreading it.
Elena Passarello: What do you wear now? I don't even know.
Luke Burbank: Business. Something business casual, I don't know. I'm going to go dig through my closet. What's something else that one of our listeners just can't seem to get rid of?
Elena Passarello: Amy says never getting rid of anything from my Y2K era. Every mini skirt, every baby out because it's now considered vintage. I will sell them one day. The fact that this fashion is coming back is some kind of indicator that I need to be set on an ice floe, because when it happened, I did not subscribe. I was old enough to be like, you know what? I'm going to stay in my skirts that have like one hem and, you know, keep my midriff covered because I am 27.
Luke Burbank: The thing that I'm trying to achieve, probably unsuccessfully on the subject of fashion, is I'm trying to imagine a photo 20 years later of me in the outfit. And can you tell what exact era it was? And if you can't, that is kind of a win.
Elena Passarello: Yeah.
Luke Burbank: What's something else that our listeners just refused to part with?
Elena Passarello: Here's one from Mason. Mason says I have a denim button up shirt that I have owned for literal decades. It's so starched it doesn't move. It could stand up on its own, but I can't let it go. Denim never really goes out of style, right? And that, I think, is true. Like, I wish I had more articles of clothing that would just last for 600 years, and you could just Charlie Brown your way through the rest of your life.
Luke Burbank: Thanks to everybody who sent in their responses to our listener question. We've got another one for next week's show coming up in just a moment. In the meantime, let's welcome our next guest over. She's the author of four collections of poetry and two collections of essays, and has been a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, as well as a Guggenheim Fellow and the winner of the American Book Award. Booklist calls her latest book, soil the Story of a Black Mother's Garden a significant, beautiful, meditative, and wholly down to earth memoir. This is Camille Dungy, who joined us on stage at the Patricia Research Center for the Arts in Beaverton, Oregon. Camille, you've got fans here. Yeah. Hi. I have to say, Camille, I found this book so engrossing and so illuminating. You in the beginning of the book. You're talking about going to Fort Collins, Colorado, where you're going to be hired as a professor, your husband also professor, and you're looking around, maybe for real estate. And there's all this, cottonwood blowing around. And you describe it in the book as a white mess. With that. Also describe the general demographics of Fort Collins, Colorado. Yes. Was that intentional?
Camille Dungy: That was intentional. I am a poet, you know, so I like that sort of double entendre.
Luke Burbank: I was picking up what you were putting down.
Camille Dungy: Mhmm.
Luke Burbank: I mean, I know you have family history in Fort Collins and you're from Colorado originally, but like, what was the sort of Fort Collins that you and your family found yourself coming to in 2013?
Camille Dungy: Right. I like to describe the general whiteness of Fort Collins as, my husband is a big cyclist, and when he goes out on a ride, every time someone says hi, Ray, like he's completely covered in all of his gear, but they know it's the big black guy. That's right. Right. It's that's how white this place is. Because everyone's a cyclist in Fort Collins, but not everyone's, right.
Luke Burbank: You you write in the book about, you know, you buy this home and you are sort of looking around the yard, which is a lot of hardscape and stuff like that. And you embark on something called like a Prairie project. First off, what what was that, exactly?
Camille Dungy: The Prairie Project was this desire to reclaim the landscape and rewild it. And so it was just all sod and rock and just like a couple straggly junipers and there was nothing of variety. It was a really monochromatic landscape. And so I wanted in this space to plant more native plants, to allow more low water plants and to allow this kind of wildness and also honestly, brownness for considerable parts of the year into this space that had just been monochromatic green.
Luke Burbank: But this also is within an HOA, right? I want you to know, Celina, can you honor this? I wrote into the script, pause for groans. Yeah. Hundred percent. Camille, I'm curious though. What what were the rules of this HOA Around the Prairie project and what you wanted to do?
Camille Dungy: Right. There used to be a woman in our neighborhood who would walk around the houses and measure how tall people had let their grass grow.
Luke Burbank: Oh, man.
Camille Dungy: So, right when I was like, let's just let the sunflowers stay up all year and, throw in some could be weeds. Could be plants. You choose. That was not really necessarily going to fly. Luckily for me, the town has for grass and I just started small. I started with a small little plot, and I kept going, and growing, and figured that the community would catch up to me because I was right.
Luke Burbank: Yeah. And they did. Right?
Camille Dungy: They did.
Luke Burbank: What's the current.
Camille Dungy: They did.
Luke Burbank: Around.
Camille Dungy: That? The HOA has dropped their rules about requiring standardized landscaping. Yeah. And the town of Fort Collins now actively incentivizes the, placement of their escaping and low water plants and native gardening. And so, in fact, I'm like a little bit bummed because they now have this rebate program that if you do it, you get money. But I'm mostly done now and I haven't I didn't get to capitalize on that.
Luke Burbank: In, in the book, you you mentioned something that I had really not thought about, which is the kind of impact you think of World War, sort of World War One and World War Two on this very homogeneous idea of like an American yard.
Camille Dungy: So much of what happens, especially if you're using pesticides and herbicides, is it was just leftover stuff from, from munitions and, armaments and things. And we just had to figure out a way to use these chemical weapons in non combative or not combative against humans, uses. And so, this excess of materials got turned into this American industry of this perfect, highly chemically altered landscapes. And I just didn't want to participate in that kind of warfare.
Luke Burbank: Yeah, this is live wire radio. We are coming to you this week from the Patricia Research Center for the Arts here in Beaverton, Oregon. We're talking to Camille T Dungy. Her book is Soil The Story of a Black Mother's Garden. Now, if I understand right, your parents were doing something along these lines in California when you were a kid.
Camille Dungy: I grew up in Southern California in the 1970s, and there's a story I tell in the book about the community board coming to my house and telling my parents that they had to do something about their yard. Wow. And my father's response was, well, aren't you concerned about the ecology? We are very worried about the ecology. So we think we're just going to leave it as it is, which at that time was just dirt and, invasive weeds, because they were they were making decisions that, you know, you can't move into a landscape and immediately alter things correctly. And so they were waiting to see the light patterns and figure out what the soil was and how to create a low water garden. And it wasn't going to be an overnight fix.
Luke Burbank: Did they ultimately prevail in getting to create their their yard?
Camille Dungy: They had a beautiful yard in that home, and it had a lot of native plants and, fruit trees and things flowering all the time. And it was one I mean, I think maybe that's part of why it seemed possible to me to do this in Colorado was that I grew up as one of the only black people in my town of Irvine with, like, also this weird yard that that stood out and looked different than most of the things that were around. And so when we landed in Fort Collins, it seemed like the thing to do.
Luke Burbank: This book covers so much stuff. It covers your and your family's experience during the pandemic. It talks about the killing of black citizens in this country by the police, and it talks about gardening. But it's not just about gardening, it's about gardening. As a black person in America, and obviously you can only speak to your particular experience. But I'm curious how you think it's different for you as a black person in America gardening than, say, one of your white neighbors doing the same kind of thing?
Camille Dungy: Well, for me, when somebody looks at my yard and thinks, oh goodness, she's letting that go, and what's that going to do to our property values and, and etc. when then I walk out and I'm a black person and that is an added sense of cultural tension, because there's already very frequently an idea that when the black people move into your neighborhood, your property values are going to go down. And so by taking this chance to create a very different kind of landscape outside my home, within a cultural landscape that has that level of intolerance, it's there's a lot more friction and tension for me.
Luke Burbank: Can you read a little bit from the book here? It's a section where you're talking about a few things, but but one of them is your daughter Carly is working on a, a project that you're kind of going to go behind and edit for her. By the way, how lucky to have like a decorated and talented writer as a parent.
Camille Dungy: She doesn't think at that point.
Luke Burbank: You have to, but you have a school project. But you mentioned very clearly in the book that you're not writing it for her, but you're just like taking a look at it. But could you, could you read a little bit from that part?
Camille Dungy: A 2008 revision of the Oxford Junior Dictionary, a reference book aimed at children ages 7 to 9, removed 50 words, including minnow, mussel, ferret, wren, bloom, sycamore, heron, beaver, lark, magpie, bluebell, buttercup, carnation, clover, crocus, dandelion, lavender, pansy, tulip, violet and blackberry. So much earth grown language. Language helps us shape our imagination, helps us shape perspective. Language helps us reach toward empathy and understanding. Language helps us learn about history, our place in the now, and the possibilities for our future. A future where there may in fact be fewer sycamores, fewer varieties of buttercup, fewer mussels, fewer herons, fewer of what pollinates and thrives on clover, fewer beavers, fewer magpies, fewer blooms, or perhaps none at all how dangerous these omissions could be for the development of the scope of children's imaginations and their connections to the living planet. The lexicographers defense made a kind of sense. The dictionary contained only about 10,000 words. Language changes. The words children need to navigate. The world also changed. New words demanded attention. The lexicographers explained. Blog broadband celebrity, compulsory vandalism, voicemail, chat room, biodegradable endangered cautionary tale and the already essentially extinct capital B BlackBerry. The words that replaced Earth grown language connected children to commerce, urban living, the human centered indoor world where many of us spend so much time. Farewell to the days of blooms and bluebells. If I limit my language the way I articulate my perceptions of the world, the certain ways of being become impossible. If I freeze the dooryard hollyhocks in the moment before they grew unruly, I erased the vision of their whipping frenzy in the wind, the way they fling their seeds far from the pots, the way they dance along with the rhythms of the breeze.
Unidentified: Camille Dungy reading from her book soil.
Luke Burbank: Here on Live Wire, I know that it's important to you to write about being a mother, which is something that I've heard you say can sometimes be left out of books about nature. Maybe they're so keyed in on the natural world that the life of the person writing and their family structure and things like that are not brought into the book. Why is it important to you?
Camille Dungy: Well, I think that that factor of so much canonical environmental literature that just removes everybody. It's just like one dude alone on a mountain, like it doesn't track for many of us. We have people in our lives. We have partners and children and elders and jobs. And like, we don't just get to go trekking through the woods by herself for hours and hours and hours without, like, if I try to do that, I have to have snacks, you know? So I just wanted to write that reality that reflected my own life, but also reflected, I think, the reality of so many of us. And if we don't have that connection in the literature, we read the the empathy, the care, the sort of why we're looking at the world at all, which is to feel responsible to and for it that starts to disappear. And so I wanted to build a true story.
Luke Burbank: You say in this book that you're of the opinion every politically engaged person should have a garden. Why do you say that?
Camille Dungy: Because you do need a place to stop and recharge. But also, honestly, gardens are incorrigible. Like they just they, like, go through these cycles and you're like, didn't I already weed you? And that's kind of what being a politically active person.
Luke Burbank: Feels like also. Yeah. So I feel like there are some things coming back that we thought we needed at that point. Well, Camille, this is an incredible book. I hope everybody gets a chance to read it. It's soil The story of a Black Mother's Garden. Camille Dungy, thank you so much for coming on life.
Avery Trufelman: Thank you so.
Unidentified: Much. Good to see you all.
Luke Burbank: That was Camille Dungey right here on Live Wire. Her latest book, Soil The Story of a Black Mother's Garden, is available right now. I'm Luke Burbank here with Elaina Passarelli. We have got to take a quick break, but don't go anywhere. When we come back, we're going to hear some music from internet sensation Olive Klug. Welcome back to Live Wire from PR. I'm Luke Burbank here with Elaina Passarelli. All right. We are going to get to our musical guest in just a moment. But before that, a preview of next week's show. We're going to be talking to Ken Jennings, who you probably know as the host of jeopardy! Ken is also a writer, and he has a book out called 100 Places to See After You Die A Travel Guide to the afterlife. Speaking of writers, we're also going to talk to the writer Erica Barry about wolves, the ones that live in nature. And then, honestly, maybe more critically, the ones that live in our minds. And we're also going to hear some music from incredible international rock n roll band making movies. And we are going to be looking to get your response to our listener question. Alana, what are we asking the Live Wire listeners for next week's show?
Elena Passarello: We would like you to please describe your ideal afterlife. Oh, I don't know why I made a Dracula noise.
Luke Burbank: It's Dracula could be there. Maybe he knows.
Elena Passarello: Or at least Count Chocula.
Luke Burbank: Sure, Bela Lugosi might be there. You never know. All right, if you have thoughts on an ideal afterlife that you would like to share with us, go ahead and reach out on social media over there on Facebook or whatever they call Twitter. Now, you can find us at Live Wire radio. Okay, let's get to our musical guest this week. They've got a sound that is reminiscent of the golden age of American folk music, but with a uniquely modern lyrical sensibility. How modern? Well, they've gotten millions of views on TikTok, many of them from me. Their debut album, Don't You Dare Make Me Jaded, was recently released. Here is Olive Klug, who joined us on stage at the Holt Center for the Performing Arts in Eugene, Oregon. Olive, welcome to Live Wire. Thanks for being here.
Olive Klug: Thank you so much for having me. I'm really excited to be here.
Luke Burbank: What song are we going to hear?
Olive Klug: So I've had a special request, actually, from Laura, who works at Live Wire to play a song that's not on my album because it is a bit more of a jaded, so at.
Luke Burbank: Times it would never fit on. Don't you dare make me jaded.
Olive Klug: Yeah, this is just a single. It's not on the album, but it's called Song About America. And, I wrote it when I was on a solo tour through the United States, and that was when the drag ban was happening in Tennessee. And it was also when just a lot of, talk was going on about banning gender affirming care. In a lot of states that I was driving through and, I was also at the same time getting reached out to by different companies to be like, oh, be in our pride campaign for like, you know, GoDaddy, which is my website host, which I was just like, this is just really intense cognitive dissonance that I'm experiencing right now of like, you know, there's this world where we're really accepted when it's corporations asking us to promote their stuff and then, you know, not actually seen as human by politicians. And so, yeah, I don't typically write overtly political music. And so I'm actually a little nervous to play this song today because I'm like, this isn't normally what I do, but if I get a special request, I've got to fulfill it. All right. Yeah.
Luke Burbank: This is Olive Klug. Here on Live Wire.
[Olive Klug plays Song About America]
Luke Burbank: That was Olive Klug right here on Live Wire. Their album Don't You Dare Make Me Jaded is out now. That is going to do it for this week's episode of the show. A very big thanks to our guests Avery Truffle men Camille Dungey and Olive Klug.
Elena Passarello: Laura Hadden is our executive producer, and Heather De Michele is our executive director. And our producer and editor is Melanie Sevcenko. Eban Hoffer and Molly Pettit are our technical directors at our house sound is by D. Neil Blake. Tre Hester is our assistant editor. Our marketing and production manager is Karen Pan. Rosa Garcia is our operations associate, Jackie Ibarra is our production fellow, and Becky Phillips is our intern. Our house band is Ethan Fox Tucker, Sam Tucker, Ayal Alves, and A Walker Spring who also composes our music. This episode was mixed by Molly Pettit and Tre Hester.
Luke Burbank: Additional funding provided by the James F and Marion L Miller Foundation. Live wire was created by Robyn Tenenbaum and Kate Sokoloff. This week, we would like to thank members Carol Gabrielli and Vicki Wright in our of Portland, Oregon. For more information about our show or how you can listen to our podcast. Head on over to Live Wire radio.org. I'm Luke Burbank for Elena Passarello and the whole live wire team. Thank you for listening and we will see you next week.
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