[00:00:02]
Fiona Heckscher: Hello? Recording?...Okay, ideally that’s recording. Yeah, I’m going to trust that the little thing that says that it’s recording means that it’s recording.
Ruth Frisch Dealy: And I wonder what happened...Did you ever meet the other student- what was her name- Beth?
FH: I never met her, but I’ve listened to the transcripts.
RFD: Yeah, because she was really unhappy at Brown. I was always wondering what would happen to her. I was more interested in, like, where she was from- she was from the Midwest and her parents had really low expectations of her. That was really interesting because like her brother came here and they kind of sent her where the boy went. I was much more interested in like, “What about you? When are you going to be a radical?” I was just curious about what happened. But you didn’t...?
FH: No, I was very enthusiastic about coming here.
RFD: Yeah.
FH: Um, yeah, the conversation around sexism in the last two interviews was very...
[00:01:06]
RFD: Yeah, I was just about to say, sexism was her issue. I was like....yeah. But anyhow...
FH: I thought it was so interesting that you said your first taste of community organizing was after you had become a teacher, was getting those kids into RISD was what you referred to as your first...
RFD: Yeah, yeah.
FH: ...act of community organizing. But clearly you were involved in politics much earlier so do you remember what your first political act was?
RFD: Well, my father had been a nuclear physicist and he had been in Los Alamos and helped invent the bomb and he worked for Oppenheimer and he was very- he was a rabbi’s son- so he was very against using the bomb, very pro-disarmament, so my first awareness of politics was having FBI agents coming to the house when I was little and you know questioning my father about...it was just like the McCarthy era, about communism and trying to get him to rat out other people and just coming home from school and seeing these guys you in trench coats sitting in our living room and you know...That was my first awareness of it.
[00:02:10]
FH: Did your parents talk to you about it?
RFD: Yeah, my father kind of...He was Texan so he was- and he was a very spoiled rabbi’s son so he’d talk to me in sort of a big-ass macho way about, you know helping out...but nothing- we just were aware of these physicists- they were all Jewish physicists and they’d come out of Austria and they were- so they really thought the Nazis were going to get the bomb or else they never would have- it was like, “What the hell have we done?” because they were really against war so it was really a huge political discussion in our household with all the expatriates so it was kind of always in the air, sort of the nexus of politics.
[00:03:01]
FH: And did you always feel ownership of that or when did you being to identify yourself with it?
RFD: I always felt Jewish and I mean like it always made- and it was a not- and I refused to go to private school. I don’t know why they had signed me up for [] schools like Buckingham and I dropped out immediately. I was in the first grade and I refused to go so I went to public school. I was the only Jew in Boston public school at the time and since my father was a rebellious rabbi’s son I didn’t know anything about Judaism I just sort of made it up and then damn if this girl Beth Weinberg didn’t come who knew all about Judaism and like practiced it and sort of made me look terrible and her brother was a physicist who came to study under my father so but, I’m just saying I always had this outsider status which I considered glamorous and theatrical and far from being, you know what I mean, like, and I played it and I was sort of outed as someone who didn’t know what the hell I was talking about so that was one of my first social experiences with being- in other words, I enjoyed being the status of outsider and I think that’s true of all artists. They pretend they don’t like it but it’s such a nice positioning, just a little bit Goth and you can get older sand just say “no, I don’t brush my teeth or nothing, I’m an artist.” You know what I mean? You can kind of use that.
[00:04:38]
FH: Do you think it affects your art that you have this status as an outsider?
RFD: No, but I think I can play it like, in terms of sales like a very straight lawyer or a very bored dentist can say, “I can buy a little into that lifestyle” and since I’m genuinely broken down by my lack of domestic skills I can really play it pretty long, you know...But I actually think it’s a very cynical sales- it’s involuntary but it’s real, you know what I’m saying? People really feel that they want to buy in, people who think they’re too sophisticated for religion which I secretly am not- like the real sincere part of myself when I’m alone in my studio is that your do see beyond the trees and it is like a religious experience when it hits and people really miss that in their lives and the kind of people you deal with with money never really get that anymore so art becomes a really good substitution for religion for people who won’t allow themselves straight up religion. That’s just how my- so I seldom [], I think because of that kind of a restlessness with too prescribed a life.
FH: You just touched briefly on your father’s religious leanings. Could you just...
RFD: Yeah, he came form like 36 generations of rabbis allegedly, which is before time so it’s probably not quite right. It’s probably more like 14 generations and they were- they were kind of immigrant rabbis and they were sent from- they ran away from Lithuania to London and they were transported to the first synagogue in Jamaica and then there’s one in St. johns and then came up through North Carolina and then finally made it to New York City and when all the Jews came into the Lower East Side in New York City the German Jews really minded all the poor Russian Jews there’s always pecking order there so they sent him to Galveston to welcome the poorer- to make a diaspora- to make all the Jews not come into New York City, to get them to come into different parts of America so they sent him to Galveston, Texas to greet- his grandfather greeted- each immigrant on the docks, it was very political- got him a job, a house. So that’s sort of the beginning of what family real politics were. You had to- and as he kept doing that he became more and more radical and he really became against the death penalty which is my- like if I had one wish, you know what I mean- because he could see how people who were really alienated...so his radical politics came out of actual experience so that got kind of passed down to me and I’ve had the same experience. Every experience I’ve had had radicalized me more and not in añ not in a self-conscious kind of way it’s kind of involuntary, like first I get sad, like really sad, deeply sad and I can’t really imagine like I really care about the Providence public schools and just out of sheer racism they’re just closing this middle school Bishop? both my kids went to because the white neighbors don’t like it bringing down the property value basically and I just went to all the hearings and people just felt really comfortable being really racist you know and it was really saddening and then as your get sadder your get... then you feel more radical. Like if I had a wish I’d close all the private schools period. I’d start on that end, not the end of building the public schools I’d close down all the private schools and then the people with the time and money would have to send their kids to these schools but I’m just saying I think that the results of sorrow- either end- and depression bring more radicalism. I don’t see much of a choice.
[00:09:26]
FH: You mentioned your astrophysicist siblings
RFD: Yeah my sister in law’s an astrophysicist and my brother-in-law’s a nuclear physicist and I think they’re pretty ethical they are very ethical and they’re pretty political. I mean my brother gets signs into the Chicago public schools and all that but I think they feel different than I do because they move in different circles so they have a sense of entitlement and sadly enough I really think it helps them gets stuff done. Do you know what I mean? I think they are probably able to accomplish more than I am simply because they don’t walk the walk or live the life and they’re not racist or classist or anything like that. They just have a very protected environment they live in: they ski in aspen and it actually helps them get network better get more done, so far from being a disadvantage it’s probably better to be a radical who doesn’t live in the hills you know what I’m saying so they actually accomplish quite a bit.
FH: How many blood brothers and sisters do you have?
RFD: Just one brother and his wife’s like a Christian scientist, daughter of a very rich cattle baron and neither family wanted- like his family didn’t want- her family didn’t want her marrying a Jew they were like very purest of Christian scientists
And my husband’s family was half really poor Irish catholic family that made it big-he made it to Yale- and his father was a numbers runner for the old candidate you know Joseph and Dorchester and he married a really fancy WASP from Whitensville and he was very ambitious for the family, you know, social class and status so when my husband married me they like burned his baby pictures, wouldn’t talk to him for ten years and stuff too so being Jewish even though our family didn’t take it very by the book it was in our marriages it was really contentious to both families. I don’t think he ever met his father-in-law- just met him- once and my parents never met her parents and my parents never met James my husband’s parents. Never met his mother she died before he was born and met his father once...So religion was a big... for people who didn’t practice religion it was really a junta, you know, to have it be such a big issue.
FH: That’s really interesting, the distinction between practicing and identity.
[00:12:35]
RFD: Yeah they really- that’s just exactly right, the identity...
FH: Were you politically active when you were at RISD?
RFD: Yeah, very, ‘cause it was the Vietnam War so it just sucked. So we had this kind of network where we helped people get out of the draft by getting them psychological- so we knew this psychiatrist in Boston that we ran people through so we actually worked out of Brown, Reverend Dan Evelser’s office, we went up there, and then I made myself editor of the RISD paper, which didn’t really exist... I mean there was just no- and I just said I’m the editor and the administration of RISD was having trouble because when LBJ came he was really wonderful about civil liberties strangely enough and he really wanted to enforce like diversity and RISD never had any diversity whatsoever the Metcalf’s were an all white male family and we really fought to get minority kids into RISD and it drove RISD wild and the administration actually hired this guy [] to censor the paper which was totally weird so we had strikes and shut down- why, we didn’t shut down the school because we were just too literal minded, so we shut down the museum, because that actually seemed- which is odd because the guy who ran the museum Danny Robins was kind of a leftwing Jew at the time but the metaphor we just needed a building that was open to the public so we just kind of chose the wrong building. Even at my graduation we planted hypothetical bombs under each seat and announced to the parents that there’s bombs under each seats so they scattered because it was the bombing at Fang Harbor. But it was kind of more random-ass RISD way of doing things but the actual things we accomplished: we got a dean of minority students, we got a certain set amount of scholarship, and we made RISD go out into the community, at Olneyville, you know, teaching things.
FH: Something I find amazing about your political activity is that it really bridges the gap between national and local, that you work very much on both levels. Could you talk a little about that tension? Has that ever been a conflict...?
[00:15:10]
RFD: Not really I’m just such a literal minded small-town person. I’m not very brave about travel or being alone so I was like, what can I do. And it’s odd because I’m really committed but I’m also really a domestic so really- my idea of a good time is Diagnosis Murder or something. I’m not really adventurous so I figured like if I did one thing well and small it could be more of a prototype so I get my ideas nationally and then try to bring it and stay on it like I think that most people do things for too short. :ike Olneyville was 10 years, AS220 I stayed 13 years, trying to get a downtown arts studio, I try to stay with one thing for a real period of time like raising a kid or something and I think too it’s hard locally, people- you know that thing like, “Vanity vanity all is vanity.” I really think that people’s vanities and pecking order really get in the way and so that a lot of organizations have a things going on they just don’t have the connective tissue of people who are willing to do shit for no money no credit, to connect up- to create outlets to plug in opportunities kind of so I have really seen myself as someone who’s willing to go around and get the hardware in place which isn’t very creative so if you’re a creative person like Bert krenka who has a vision it’s the stuff you have to do to line up people’s that’s really boring but I don’t mind being bored, really, never did, I don’t mind that at all so a lot of the times things are already in place that could move faster or move better or something like that if someone would do the really boring daily shit for ten years and I always think I’m willing to do that and that’s a very local knowledge that you have why things aren’t working well because you know it well enough to know what could connect up better. It’s like working on the same car if you’re a car mechanic. I think you’d know it well enough to know that maybe the wiring to the ignition isn’t up to snuff where you could run it through a machine to test it and not know that, you know what I mean, so it’s kind of...so I’m sort of willing to do- I don’t like being the head of- need to be the head of something. I’d probably like it but I never do it so- I don’t need that so that makes me very good at being wallfl- because I can observe just things that need tweaking and stuff like that.
[00:18:15]
FH: Do you think it’s different in Providence than, for example, in Worcester where you daughter is now?
RFD: No, I think Providence and Worcester are probably a lot alike but I think Providence and Cambridge where I came from are very different and like I hate Cambridge, like I hate it, like I couldn’t wait to leave. I had the worst claustrophobia I’ve ever had, you know...
FH: I grew up in Cambridge, too. I know what you mean.
RFD: Did you? That’s weird. Where did you grow up?
[00:18:37]
FH: Um, I was in Cambridge for a little while when I was very young and then I moved to Somerville, actually, which was better.
RFD:...better. Yeah, Somerville’s a lot better, yeah. It’s changing though. Like I grew up in North Cambridge which when you first grew up there was okay, it was like funky and now it’s like...It’s just unbelievable. It’s like a giant butcher block with a fern on it. You know what I mean? And I just found it claustrophobic that my parents were always so self...cleaned up, kind of. I don’t know. I just couldn’t take it, you know, so...So, I think it’s probably more like...I like broke-down palaces, you know, so I like Providence.
[00:19:29]
FH: All of your stories have this incredible...I’ll say chutzpah- my mother’s word- um, behind them, just you know, going to grad school and just setting up your studio or walking in and saying I’m head of a paper that doesn’t exist, really. Where does that come from in your history- that incredible self-confidence, and walking into the mayor’s office?
[00:19:51]
[00:22:29]
RFD: [19:51-22:29 deleted] And painting’s usually kind of blue collar, you do it every day no matter what. It’s really like digging ditches and people kind of glamorize, but every once in a while it’s like bingo, it’s like you get to toss yourself off a cliff painting, you get to go way beyond, you get set up in a way that the whole is way bigger than the sum of its parts, you just get to plunge, and that’s so exciting and a lot of- when I went to RISD like with- almost everyone who goes to RISD is totally talented, it’s disgusting how talented naturally, you know? I mean, they get to choose from a pool and whatever and by the time someone wants to be at art school, the average kid that goes to RISD is like- you just can’t believe how much natural talent- but the amount of people that want to jump off a cliff to nowhere is like maybe 3% of the class and so when you go back to a reunion or something like twenty years later... I go back to Brown reunions with my husband and they’re still doing whatever. It’s true at Brown, they’re all divorced, they’re married to someone else. At RISD they stay married to each other, I don’t know why, for like forever because of the concept of being true to the given, kind of, but the average RISD student’s not a painter anymore- like out of my class of 18 there’ll be like two painters and you can say because you’re unable to make a living but it’s not really that. That kind of risk-taking isn’t really part of American society- emotional risk taking- so I figure I was really lucky that way, you know....And she’s not mean, I don’t mean to make her sound mean, it’s just actual and organic. It’s like if you serve somebody sardines, it’s just not what they really wanted, you know what I’m saying, so it makes you really bold. I mean, that’s kind of a heavy answer, but it’s the...I think I owe you the truth...So people don’t seem very intimidating to me, you know.
[00:24:33]
FH: I have a note here that says, “risk comma family support”, so I guess we’ve covered that one (laughter). Um, what about community support? Did you, when you were at RISD or when you were teach-
RFD: Oh, yeah, I’ve always had that, I don’t know why. I’ve been so blessed with that at grammar school like even preschool I’ve always had like I had these Irish catholic teachers who thought I was really funny or strange and they were totally loving and I never really had any that didn’t give me support. I have no idea why. If you knew the amount of people who were kind to me, like out of nowhere and it still kind of goes on. Like I used to go- at RISD- James is cut off from his family and my family is really generous that way and paid for him to go to Brown and you’re talking about academic salaries that are- but still, we didn’t have a lot of money. We were already married and we were like teenagers, it was like we eloped to New Hampshire. Our landlord hired us to do stuff that we weren’t good at doing and suddenly our rent was like no- it was like $100 a month and it just didn’t make sense and there was this guy Gordy Allen at RISD who was head of the student activities’ office and he used to just like hand me this envelope and he would be like, “Here, Ruth,” and it would be like cash. I don’t know where he got it, whether it was his cash or the SAO money and I never really questioned- I always had that in my life that kindness out of nowhere and I still have that and I don’t know…Like we had old cars and the place DeAnn’s Automotive on Hope St where we would take our cars. When we had a breakdown Bob Senior drove our kids to school- like that doesn’t happen in Cambridge you know. You car place doesn’t- like Click and Clack don’t time off, even though I went to Cambridge High with them, to drive your kids to school but it has always been like that in our lives. It’s really nice and I’ve always had that, I’ve always had that the teacher who took me aside and went the extra mile with me. And I didn’t show very much talent very early because I wasn’t raised to be an artist so I wasn’t good at RISD- I was like a C- student you know and I always had the teacher who would say keep your head- keep looking forward, you’re going to get there, slow and steady and I’ve never had anything but encouragement from the outside. Some of my more cynical friends think it just seems like that compared to my mother, like I’m looking at it saying “ooh, it’s diamonds” but it does feel like that to me, genuinely.
[00:27:33]
FH: When you talk about painting, about getting excited about painting, you talk about it moving from being “oh, my next assignment” to it being “my next painting” to being “my next stroke.” Did encouragement from your teachers play a big part in that or was it mostly internally motivated for you.
[00:27:50]
RFD: They were always encouraging but it was always internal for me. It was like rock moving. It has a logic and life of its own and if you’re humble enough to just- Most people don’t submit to real education, to knowing there’s something bigger than themselves. It feels so big. It’s just so nice, you just kind of submit to it. So it’s not the kind of education where you get a hold of something like grrr, get your major, get a hold of it. It’s more like letting it go and letting it roll over you. Its just a great feeling and the best teachers will just tell you how big it is and how in awe of it you can be and show you that from their life. Like my favorite teacher, Roger Hammond was a pretty heavy drinker and he’s come up once a month and say, “Less is more,” and then he’d come up the next month and say, “Well, maybe more is more” and the next month, “Well, maybe less is less” and it would go on for like two years but you know what he meant, he was just saying that it’s all, you know, it’s all just like feeling or form and trying to guess what it is or maybe he was just drunk it’s hard to say but what I’m trying to say is just the sense of awe of it. That’s pretty magnificent think to examine you know. I sit in the studio from 9-5. Let’s say I’m doing a self portrait- you just look in a mirror from 9-5 and maybe I’ll make 5 strokes in a day you know and it’s just like a discipline and the teachers who taught you to submit to the discipline taught you well. It’s sort of a very bony way to look at- it’s not very juicy. It’s not very MTV.
[00:29:52]
FH: When you were at RISD did you have connections with Brown? I know you have a fairly unfavorable view of Brown- did that develop when you were a student or later?
RFD: Yeah, well, I had a very unfavorable view of Brown during the 60’s ‘cause they were a very rightwing school. Lyman Copatrick was head of the CIA and became the head of the political science department so they were actively rightwing so that was real. And RISD wasn’t a whole lot better- it’s not like I had a real positive view of RISD. They were just racist small town mayflower descendents with...but I had some great experiences at brown, I took Faulkner with Hyatt Wagner and it was just the most amazing course. And there was a bunch of Unitarian ministers that I worked for so I had really positive- Father Hemmingway, I worked for him in South Providence near Oxford St it was like called Church House and it was part of a church and it was like a pre-and-after dayschool center and I worked there for free for 8 years because a grant didn’t come through. So those were like all through Brown and so I had a very positive view of the chaplain end of Brown.
FH: And of the students?
[00:31:21]
RFD: Hardly any interaction at all. My husband was just like a depressed pot smoking Irishman who went and smoked dope and looked at pictures of Cournika day in and say out so he had like hardly any friends when he was at brown and he’s really nice, too. He’s really not a social person at all which is of course why he’s a social worker but um so the few people we know from Brown were always like me making him know people so it wasn’t that natural so he mostly spent time down at RISD…But I think if he had been more social I would definitely have had more friends there...He’d say one word every 3 months. I used to think he was a genius because he’s never talk and then he said, “No, it’s just because I could never think of anything to say.” He’s a really nice guy. So I think he was an English major and he had some real, he had the greatest Shakespeare teacher, this guy Andy Sabel, so I had really positive- I mean, I always loved pure education like for no reason but just to know stuff so like if he had books to read I always read his- so I feel like I took a lot of courses there, you know.
[00:32:47]
FH: You’ve compared both painting and political issues to having kids.
RFD: Yeah.
FH: Could you talk a little bit about your relationship with ...your daughter?
[00:33:03]
RFD: Well, it’s just like so astonishing how really caring about something, how constant it is. It’s just like every minute, it’s not optional, you know what I mean and I think that most people don’t think of politics that way and having kids at least you have the advantage of having the organic feeling- I really think there is such thing as a maternal instinct and I had my kids late because I wanted to be sure I wouldn’t be like my mother so I had one at 35 and one at 41 and they’re very fulltime-type children. They were allowed to be- it was a very leftwing upbringing- they were allowed to be very rude and bossy and loud and…but they’re really kind people. They’re really nice people as it turns out. But the constancy of the discipline of being a parent- like people don’t talk about it. They talk about all this idea of firmness and all that and it’s really not it’s more this idea of being present, being quietly present, it’s more like a Zen principle and I think politics require that too so I’m never surprised that Teddy Kennedy is a good parent to Patrick…[seven seconds removed] because like the discipline of what he does it really similar to that. Much more similar than say marriage energy which had much more different temperatures like heats and colds mixed up in it so like Teddy Kennedy could be a bad husband- was, you know what I’m saying, but could be a good daddy because it’s the ownership, it’s taking responsibility and I think if like if I could point out one problem with modernism in art or politics or its that lack of taking ultimately responsibility for what you believe, for who you are like for example- just to bring it to Brown- I don’t think that Ruth Simmons is a good college president not because of how she is internally to Brown but because of how she is to the community, like not available, elitist, and I’m not surprised she’s being recruited by Harvard because her sense of that bubble, not taking responsibility for the big view. That’s what I have against academia- it’s like to want to compartmentalize it. And a good parents can probably see the horizon too and a good parents probably wants their child to be free of them eventually and wants that separation even though it’s really painful it’s not natural- it’s like patting your head and rubbing your stomach. You don’t have a kid, nurture him, and say, “I want you to go away from me” but a good parent know that that’s what that kid should do and I think in politics it’s a lot like that- letting go of your control at a certain point so the great leader like Martin Luther King and stuff they tended to be religious because that gave them that elevation of letting go because it’s not in their hand so Martin Luther King would be a true believer where Jesse Jackson isn’t and it’s not that Jesse Jackson is stupid or anything it’s because he doesn’t really have the gift of belief. He wants it to be Jesse Jackson’s press conference not the ideas’ press conference and that always limits how good the content is. Whether it’s religion or art something has to be bigger than you all the time.
[00:37:04]
FH: You mentioned the push towards science in your family.
RFD: Oh, huge, yeah.
FH: Did that affect the way you thought about the world?
[00:37:13]
RFD: Oh yeah, they were really determined. They were evangelistical almost about that. They really believed that science would take away God, explain it all and my father was part of really every major new- so we went and lived in Denmark for a year and he studied under Neils Boehr. He really did pi meson scattering when no one else did and he went to Geneva and we lived there because he worked at the International…So they really saw themselves as explaining the world and my mother... She’s 87 but when she’s upset she reads Darwin, like The Voyage of the Beagle in the bathtub because it’s like her Bible. They really see that as brave new world and the leaving of darkness behind and my mother’s completely adamant about birth control in a huge global population- that’s her obsession- and my brother just helped discover the top quark, which is the heaviest-, you know, so they are at the forefront. And my mother actually discovered at what stage of fatness you’re fertile, at what proportion of muscle to fat so if you were evil like Pakistan tried to get the thing the India would to starve people in Pakistan just enough so they wouldn’t be fertile. It would be like global genocide that way. So all their work has global consequences probably much more real than any consequence I’ll ever do having a painting which is ironic because I think they’re much more careless- I mean they would invent a bomb and afterward be like “whoops”- I mean how close were the Germans, really to getting an atomic bomb at all. I don’t know. But then my father had to work his entire life for nuclear nonproliferation but he was like 25 when he sat in the desert and watched the bomb go off and he was like, “Jesus Christ, what did we just do.” That’s young. So I think knowing how dramatic science is- they certainly both knew that, the drama of science- it’s hard to say. They’re huge things to hold onto and I don’t know if they have the sophistication to know where to go with those things.
[00:40:00]
FH: What do you hope from you art since you chose it as the alternative to the presented path of science?
[00:40:08]
RFD: Yeah, just dialogue with people about…I want to engage people sort of in a dialogue about what is and what isn’t and that’s pretty subtle shit, unfortunately, so it probably really had no political ramifications whatever. It’s probably ultimately a quiet nothingness, you know what I mean. It’s probably some Zen principle in the end, you know. For an activist, it’s probably the stillest moment there is.
FH: And do you find that people engage with you when they come to buy your paintings or are they looking for something to hang on their wall?
RFD: They do! It always stuns me how much people- I’m always stunned by how much, even the average person delivering pizza to our house, even- probably more so people who are less inhibited, afraid to say the wrong thing. I’m always amazed how sophisticated people are about looking at art, in the real sense of- how many issues they’re willing to address, it’s just blows my mind because I don’t paint it with them in mind but I’m always startled by how much feedback I actually get I’ve been really lucky that way, too but I don’t paint it for anyone else. I don’t even really paint it for myself really. I paint it for itself. I think it’s really there and just someone has to tell about it being there and be a witness and I’m really surprised when someone else comes up and says oh yeah, I saw that too, more like that.
[00:41:54]
FH: That sounds incredible. Back onto politics, a line that interested me from the last interview, was, “I don’t think politics has ever been so gloriously successful.” You were referring to the first time- the first task was the most satisfying. Could you talk about your experiences with community organizing since then and why you don’t feel as satisfied? Or maybe you do and you were just feeling down that day.
RFD: I think it was just the impact of doing it for the first time, what it felt like to be able to watch things change and I’m sure I’ve changed thing since then but I’ve never had such a sense of newness, of watching things come about. So I think that’s more based on my awareness and now I think I kind of take it for granted. Or maybe now I don’t even hang around for the consequences, I just move on. I think that was a comment on the newness of the experience.
FH: Which can be intoxicating!
RFD: Thank god, there’s got to be some payback. [laughter]
[00:43:10]
FH: I mean, do you still find satisfaction from it? You’re very involved and you mention that you don’t stick around for the consequences sometimes...
RFD: Yeah, I do, it’s much more cosmic now. I get like a chore- a to-do list. I had to take away the emotions surrounding it because they took too much time out of doing anything so now I just do it. Before I paid myself with the emotions but now I’ve decided that this is what I want to do and I have this much time to do it and the payment took too long to get all involved so I just do it and move on.
[00:44:05]
FH: Do you think that affects the work?
RFD: I wish it did, but it doesn’t. it’s not “Oh, it’s not as good if Ruth isn’t happy.” No, it’s not it’s just as good. In fact it’s probably slightly cleaner and better, clearer for you the people you leave it with.
FH: One thing I found incredible in both interviews was that you talked about race, class, gender, ability and disability with your blindness, which is an extraordinary range. Is there any one issue you feel particular ownership of? I know the sexism was coming from the past interviewer that was her push but is there one that you feel closest to or most passionate...
[00:44:55]
RFD: No I really think it’s all that I give of people making up others to be better than or worse than so it doesn’t matter what you call other classifications so no one really... Racism does make me vomit extra special but I think that’s because with this president people feel so free.
FH: Yeah…yeah…
RFD: You know what I mean? I mean, I think Cornell West is an asshole but I think he was like totally right about New Orleans so I think it’s good that dialogue take place. Maybe it takes assholes to say stuff. I think race has got really bad. People really feel empowered to be racist in a way that hasn’t been around in a really long time...and I don’t think class is that much of an issue with this president- though it quietly underlines the ill-education of- but it’s not presented to the public as class.
FH: You talked a little bit about a disappointment in the 60’s with all the movements around these issues. What would a successful movement look like to you?
RFD: I think that gay rights is probably the most successful movement which is like really the one you didn’t expect to be but I think its had the most success at going from underground to mainstream. You go from Stonewall to the Premier of Ireland saying she’s going to honor gay unions. I mean- of Ireland! That’s frickin’ amazing. Two days ago, she said she was going to- I mean, growing up with the Catholic Church in power you just don’t expect that and I think that of all the revolution I’ve watched it’s the one that’s surprised me the mots, that’s coming out the most radical, that’s making change the most.
[00:47:08]
FH: Where do you think that success comes from?
RFD: Economics. I hate to say it. I think money changes everything. I think there’s an economic mandate to having immigrants get paid X for picking crops or whatever and I don’t think that economics is really a big issue with gay rights. So I think being freed of economics made it move faster. Whereas like birth control, a lot of those things are economic. And it’s one of the few things that doesn’t have an economy attached to it that I can think of. Maybe Abercrombie and Fitch- no seriously, I can’t think of any reason why there’s economic- and I think that being freed of that really helped it moved faster.
[00:48:06]
FH: Wow, that’s something I never thought about. That’s really interesting.
RFD: Because it has been amazing from my childhood to this.
FH: Especially for such a small minority that been so marginalized throughout history...
RFD: throughout history- to come this far, is kind of amazing. Again RI, Patrick Kennedy has been publicly bisexual and [] ran through governor and she’s pretty gay and Rhoda Perry our representative is gay and Mayor Cicilline is gay and this is a small Catholic state. It’s pretty amazing.
FH: Have you been involved in that movement at all, or just watched it from-
[00:48:54]
RFD: I did, I did a lot of AIDS stuff, but that’s not this and I think within the movement, the movement was 5 people for themselves so I think that’s probably why I wasn’t- I mean I’ve always been supportive but I’ve never had a role to play except I organized Artists against AIDS which was one of the first- with shows at the RISD museum. We have annual tours and the money goes to AIDS Care Ocean State and I think that’s still ongoing so just to get the arts community to give money to the AIDS community directly and that’s really worked really well. It’s kind of a natural fit, I don’t know why. But I’ve never been kind of needed in gay rights. I think the first gay rights parade downtown I went with my daughter Molly in a stroller ‘cause they needed mothers. They needed people to look like mothers, so I was just like, “Ooh, I’m a mother,” because they needed people to show it was like family values or something but otherwise I haven’t been needed at all. RI Gay Pride and Options I know the guy who ran it just resigned after years of running it but it was so successful, so intelligent the way they’re approached everything so- really frontal, just a really tight organization.
FH: Do you feel that you go where you’re needed that your movements pick you?
[00:50:32]
RFD: Yeah, I get the phone call. By now that’s how it works with me. I’m initiated, and here’s enough ongoing.
FH: That’s very interesting.
50:51
RFD: We’re pretty lucky in politicians, like a guy like Jack Reed. He’s like so deep about certain things like immigration. And his old girlfriend Serena Connley was head of this institute that really helped people immigrate from Liberia to the Providence community and stuff. The sensitivity in this community about immigrants is really remarkable, is really very beautiful. So certain things RI had the advantage that you don’t even need to work in it because it’s being done so brilliantly, just like the gay rights thing- it’s just done so well here and like…
FH: I guess I just want to ask is there anything about Providcnce and RI specifically- you were sort of going there in the last question that contributes to your art or your life?
[00:51:47]
RFD: Yeah, it’s got soul. I love RI. I’m in love with it. We left for a couple of years and moved to Seattle which is lthe opposite because my husband went to graduate school and our old landlord, the one who used to hire us to do nothing said, “You’ll be back, the bride is too beautiful,” and I was like “What the hell is he talking about,” because downtown looks like a truck ran over it and I just couldn’t wait to get back to it. I just love it, I’m in love with it-
FH: What about it?
[00:52:20]
RFD: It’s just got heart, RI, oh boy. Like where we get our gas, at Pauli’s he always calls our girls like, “Look at those little shit, they’re such cute little shits.” It’s so not Cambridge and if- one of the girls was walking down the street with a pretty bad boy who was like Jihan who’s really adorable, who’s kind of a drug dealer and I know his mother and he’s just so dashing, and Pauli the gas station guy was driving his truck and gets out of the truck and goes, “You get away from him, you little shit,” because it’s just that kind of town. It’s really an interactive town. There’s a lot of intimacy. It just makes politics so much more- and she’s like, “Oh my god, I was walking with Jihan and I know I shouldn’t have. Pauli came along and broke it up,” and I’m like, “Yeah!” because like somebody’s going to. People will take on things they usually wouldn’t. In another town they’d just walk away.
FH: That’s fantastic…I’m dying on batteries so I have to stop.
RFD: Okay, good,
FH: And you have to go I’m sure but..,,
[00:53:38]