CB LIVE! Courage to Leap & Lead with Guest Mary C. Curtis, Episode 100, #2

Hello everybody, it's CB live with Courage to Leap and Lead, and this is a part 2, which, you know, I, I've never done before, but this is part 2 of an amazing interview with the infamous Mary C. Oh my God, I, you know, you know I like to talk. Right? And you get me started and I don't stop and I ask the 20 million questions. With this lady, I asked her one question. She talked for an hour. It was like— and my mouth was open. I'm like, yeah, okay, okay, trying to keep up with her. It was like watching the 2 Williams sisters play each other in tennis. Oh my God. So we never had a chance to talk about The things that she's done in her life that are courageous. And I know there's a whole list. So we're dedicating this part 2 to talking about Mary C. Courage. So let's get rolling. Mary, welcome back.

Thank you. I'll let you get a word in edgewise this time.

No, it's fine. I, I just learned so much. Mary C., please tell us about, in your life, what comes to mind when I ask you about courage, the situations that you have been in. And I know you've been all over the world. What are the top 3 situations you've been in that you feel has required tremendous courage on your behalf?

Wow, maybe we should have scheduled this for another time so I could think about this, because I know I'm going to come back and say, oh, I should have said this or that. But we've talked about it a little. I would say, you know, nobody in my family went away to college, and I always had a fascination, fascination with New York. And I went away to Fordham University, which My parents were okay because it was a Catholic school. It was Jesuit. So I guess they felt it wasn't a little bit— it wasn't heathen. Although they must not have known the Jesuits anyway. And I ended up meeting my husband there. So there's that. Oh my gosh, my uncle went there. Oh yeah. So that was, I think, different for me because it was living on my own and I had come from such a close-knit family situation with my, my siblings and my parents and all of that. So that was a little bit— I'm not sure about— I guess I would call it courage because it was going into the unknown. And I think paired with that, so you could do 1A, was choosing to be a journalist because—

Oh, wait, let's go back because I know, I know about Fordham University. So you left home and you went to basically an all-white university in the tri-state area by yourself?

Yes.

That's a gutsy move in itself.

Yes. And but, you know, even though I grew up in an all-Black neighborhood, I did go to high school at a pretty much all-white Catholic girls' school. And so I did have interactions with more folks, uh, more diverse folks in high school, and I did make friends.

And of course, Mary, it was a girls' school. Fordham was not a girls' school by any—

No, it wasn't a girls' school. And, uh, yeah, but you know, I I also did a lot of leadership roles. I joined one of the papers on campus. I had my own radio show at WFUV, which is a— it's not just a college radio station. That's a regular— it was a 50,000-watt station that went— it was a regular station. And, you know, we had the FCC and all of that, and it was all in the area. I had a show in which, um, I would talk to— I did interviews about more of the Black community, and I had different business people, artists, and things like that on. And so I did take a leadership role. So I was a little bit pretty well known in that way.

But, but going back, how did you have the confidence to do this? And I mean, how did you get from A to B to C? Not everybody walks into Fordham University and has a leadership role and has a radio station. You know, you, you're glossing over this like it was a piece of cake, right?

It wasn't a piece of cake. And I really, you know, you hit it and you know, you meet people from all over the world. You know, there were many international students. And yeah, I did join the Black Student Union, and there was some support there. And my best friend was a girl from Barbados, which was interesting. And so there was a certain amount of support, and even though it was far away, it wasn't far enough away that if I I could take a Greyhound bus back to Baltimore for a weekend or something like that. And so it wasn't like going across the country.

But still.

But it still was difficult. And then it's also living on your own in the dorm. And, you know, my first roommate, this white woman who was my roommate, was a little strange. That didn't last.

And So yeah, again, what— I've got to get to the bottom of this. What made you have the gumption to have a radio station? Why did you think—

Well, I mean, I— the radio station was there, but I became— I got on the staff of the radio station and started working. And, you know, I just wandered up there and, you know, started learning a few things in the radio station and would volunteer there. I think anytime you go to a place, you kind of find your tribe. I mean, I love journalism because journalists are my tribe. We get each other. So you kind of, you know how they say police cops, you hang with cops, you know. And so when you go to a university like that, you figure you find people who are the journalists. You find people in the journalism classes. You find people on the radio station. I found the woman in my dorm who is still a friend. She's a retired professor now and written a couple of books. She was white, but she also loved the theater, and we would go to the theater every chance we got. So you, you kind of find the people who are like people, and they're not— You know, they're not all in the same group. But you find your theater friends, you find your social friends, you find your journalism friends. And I think that's how you make your own space. You find the people you're comfortable with. And that is kind of what I did. You know, Sally was my theater friend, and as I said, we still are in contact. And You know, somebody else was a social friend. And journal— and some of the journalists that I became friends with, a couple of them, Ray Cormier, Malcolm Moran, we all ended up at the New York Times, you know. You find the people you're comfortable with whose values are similar to your own.

Mm-hmm.

And in the case of my husband, I found someone whose life values were similar to my own. And that was interesting, too, because actually he's older than I am. He had been in the service, and he came back to the university after serving like 3 years. And so when I met him, he had come back, and he was a little bit older. But he was such a gentle, smart person. that we became friends. We took a class together and we just hit it off. And in that case, it's somebody whose values— you just, you find that. I think you have to do that. And then you also have to be careful not to be led astray by people you meet who might be interesting people but might not have your best interests at heart and whose values are different from yours.

Mm-hmm.

Because you can get led astray by that. And you're young and you're impressionable. And you may like the cute guy, but he doesn't have your best interests at heart. Or you might, you know, the crowd that maybe does some different things that you might not be interested in. And, you know, it's almost a, a chance to get to know yourself and to realize you can't do something that you just don't feel comfortable doing. And I'm not a perfect person. So of course you make your mistakes.

Mm-hmm.

But you can't let that take you from your goal. And, you know, I also started to do internships at different publications when I was a student there. I worked— one of my classes consisted of going to the Associated Press and doing work there. So you kind of get to know, you get a little taste of what the professional is. And actually, the Associated Press hired me after graduation. That was great. I had an internship, and then they said, well, come work for us, which was my first job out of college. But it was great because I had started working there when I was a college student, sort of as a class. You know, one of my, one of my classes one semester was working at the Associated Press, and that's how I got my first Journalism job. So that was, was very fortuitous. And I think a part of it is just that being a journalist is just a perfect profession for me as someone who's curious. And I just realized that you just can't get taken off of your path, if you know what I mean.

Yeah.

I didn't anticipate getting married so young or any of that stuff. I mean, I was never a kind of person that said, I'm going to get married at 22 or whatever. I mean, it's like that wasn't exactly my path. That's another story.

Oh, okay. You know, you've said some very important things that relate to courage because here you were, a young woman coming from a Catholic background. a Black background, and you went into the big city, so to speak. And did you go to Fordham U at Fordham on Fordham Road?

Yes.

Yeah. Massive university. You know, you, you look around, you go, oh my God, beautiful Tudor buildings that are intimidating in themselves. And you go into a field Which does not have a lot, if any, Black female journalism journalists. And you just plot along, dot dot dot, like everything is going great and all these wonderful things happen to you. However, the three things that you said that I think people have to remember is that you surrounded yourself with values-based. People that had similar values to you, which really makes the road much easier to go down. And then the second thing is that you surrounded yourself with people who had your best interest at heart. Again, a fall-safe community where you knew if you didn't succeed, deep down inside, you had people that would pick you back up, right? Not that you relied on them, but that support system was there. And then finally, staying on your path. Even if you run into roadblocks, you stayed on your path, which is not the same as not growing. It means having a vision that allows you to grow. I think those 3 areas are so important in having courage to succeed.

Yeah. And I don't want to say it's easy because, okay, we're talking '70s, '80s, you know. There were some programs that made my profession open because they realized that I came the generation after the Kerner Report in '68 that said one reason there was unrest is because the journalism profession was so segregated, and you had white gatekeepers and white reporters, and they didn't know what was going on.

Mm-hmm.

So people in the generation older than me, like Dorothy Gilliam of the Washington Post, I mean, they're the real trailblazers. When she went to work at the Post, Washington was a segregated city. You know, she, she couldn't even sometimes get a cab to get to an assignment. Or if you read her book Trailblazer, she would go to cover something at a big apartment building, and they would want her to go in the back, and she would say, I'm a reporter to cover this. Or when she covered the civil rights movement in Oxford, Mississippi, or she would get there and there were no hotels where she could stay, and she went to the funeral— Black funeral home— and said, do you know of any homes I could stay? And they said, well, we have some rooms upstairs if you don't mind being in a place where there's bodies. And she said, well, they're not going to bother me. So these are some people who really had just the slings and arrows. Now, when I came along, it was a little better, but you still had people underestimating you. You also still had people when you would go into a place of work, your contemporaries would say, why did you get this? Or what? Because we know you did it because they need a Black person and not see you as the talented, smart person you were. And when they heard you came from West Baltimore, all of their stereotypes about you being just an ignorant Black person coming from the ghetto would come to fore. And even when I went back to work at the Baltimore Sun early in my career, some of the very people from Baltimore who were there would— I remember one white editor saying, you really escaped your surroundings. And I would say, don't say that. I didn't escape anything. All the morals and the knowledge I learned, I was formation of that. That is what formed me and gave me so much knowledge. Don't act as though somehow I am this smart person that rose above the whatever. But you did get that. And so you did have to fight that. And you really still had to prove yourself. As you know, as a Black person, when your parents said you have to work twice as hard to get half as far, and you kind of got sick of hearing it, but it was good advice. Because, I mean, even when I moved to Charlotte, North Carolina to become the assistant managing editor for features, I became a syndicated columnist. I was coming from the New York Times. My resume was top-notch. There were people right at that paper who had been competing for that job who were harrumphing because they would say, well, you know why she got it instead of me? And I would think, yeah, I got it because my resume is like solid gold. You have God knows what. I'm coming from the, you know, New York Times. But that's their default, is that you have to prove yourself. And so, yes, you always have support.

Yes.

But boy, as you know, there are going to be the people who are going to shrug and say, I should have had that, or, you know why this person had that. And you just have to be a person with integrity and do your work and do the best you can. But it's hard sometimes. And I so admire the people who came the generation after me, which is one reason I really love to mentor. I mentor. That's one of my favorite things. And when the people I've mentored, the Wendy Thomases and stuff, are forming their own journalism organizations and such, I could not be prouder. I see 'em on TV and I love it. And one of them got an award not too long ago. the National Press Club, and I was getting a different award, but she gave me a shout out. I couldn't have been more proud, is because they really are in a way better at speaking up and demanding their rights. I came of the generation where sometimes you put your head down and took it and just worked even harder. But I really admire that they are strong. And I hope that I have helped pave that Way, just in the same way as the Dorothy Gilliams paved that way for me. When I see Dorothy, I do like this, you know.

Yeah. But, you know, the point is that you're making is well taken. I mean, there were the elders that set the road for us, you know, the Shirley Chisholms of the world. Even in the, in the entertainment world, the Nikki Giovannis of the world. They got in— I can't remember the The Black woman that was on NBC that was fired because she had an afro.

Um, I remember Melba Tolliver was on NBC. Melba, yes.

Yes, Melba.

You know, yeah, they said it didn't look— yeah, it didn't look professional.

Exactly. But it— and it does not take away from the struggle that our generation had, even though there were trailblazers. And it does not take away from the struggle that the new generation will have. I think that the big difference is with the trailblazers in our generations, not towards the end, but in the beginning, we were so busy struggling to stay afloat that we did not have a chance to mentor all the people that you wanted to mentor. But I'll tell you what, when I look back, because I was one of the generation where you didn't have many Blacks in corporate America.

Mm-hmm.

And I ended up having to sue a couple of those companies on race discrimination. And it took an incredible toll on me as I aged, on my health. But I look back now and I see the younger generation And what I'm so proud of is not just that they were able to get in, not knowing me or anyone else that had the struggles, but they're banding together. We did not have that opportunity to really band together to support each other in the young sisterhood, right?

Yeah.

So, so I think that, you know, in what you're saying, it makes absolutely sense. And I love the generation before us that helped us and our generation cannot go unseen because we had a foot in theirs and we have a foot in the new.

Oh, yeah.

And that's an amazing struggle right then and there.

Yeah. No, and I'm on the board of my niece's organization, Women of Color Unite, which she's in the entertainment industry and she's a producer. She produced that documentary on colorism called Dark Girls. And she helps women get mentors in the industry, both in front of, behind the cameras. And I'm on the board. And she is the daughter of my late sister, my sister who's deceased, and honors her civil rights activism through that. And I'm always there for her as well. But yeah, I think that banding together is great. That's why when I went to the National Association of Black Journalists conference this year. I haven't been all the time, but particularly when I was starting out, it was good to go because you might be isolated in your own newsroom. But when you get together with other journalists of color and you see they're going through what you're going through in their newsroom where they might be the only one, so you get a chance to kind of share stories and say, no, I know I'm not crazy, right? It was great. I want to salute the Excellence, which was so cool. because I haven't— for my columns for Roll Call, I mean, for your listeners, I write a column at Roll Call. I've worked at many places, the New York Times, the Charlotte Observer, and now I write a column on the intersection of politics, culture, and race at Roll Call. And I host the Equal Time with Mary C. Curtis podcast. And then also I guest host on Slate, and you might see me on TV or radio. I'm doing— PBS Black Issues Forum, actually. I do them sometimes. But yeah, when I went this year, it was kind of cool because I'm, you know, still competing against the next generation. And I won. And it was the 6th time I was nominated and the 4th time I won. And so, yeah, that was kind of a nice kind of, yes, I'm a mentor and I'm teaching, but I'm right in there competing with you too. I love it.

I absolutely love it.

But it's, it's really good to see, and like you say, to see them banding together and to see, yeah, the support systems that are there. And, you know, we need it more than ever because, as I said, we live in this global community. And even sometimes still when you look on TV and see these panels and they're all white males, which is fine in one sense, but you want to have all the different perspectives.

Yeah.

And I do know, you know, I wrote this book covering politics in the age of Trump, and it's about 24 top political journalists talking about it. And it's very interesting to me because while many white male journalists, when Trump came on the scene, many didn't feel he could be elected and others didn't really take him that seriously. They thought of him more as sort of carnival barker TV personality. But Black and brown journalists heard the rhetoric and we could see the danger. We went to those rallies and saw him, you know, the violence and saying, you know, you should— I remember when the press are the enemy of the people. I remember when they would knock these protesters down or whatever. And particularly after 8 years of a Black president, the ground was very fertile for someone who could— was going to come with that divisive rhetoric.

Yes.

And so it's more important than ever to have these voices there because I look and I see that they were the ones, we were the ones, I would say, that really predicted all of this. And then when it happened, and many white journalists would say, well, we didn't see this coming. And we would say, well, kind of, yeah, we did.

Yeah.

But, you know, but when you talk about courage, some of the things that people might think that I had courage in, like, Doing a narrative on Confederate heritage groups and going to these Confederate meetings late at night and things like that. I don't know that it did take a certain amount of courage. One— Oh, yes, it did. Yes, it did. I had the example of my civil rights siblings who knew they could be arrested, didn't know what was going to go on. But also, I learned very quickly that people do want to tell you their stories. And so when I would go into these meetings, for the first 5 minutes, they might think, what is this Black woman doing here? But immediately they would come and then want to confide in me. And I have one of those faces. My husband, Kid, says, everybody comes up to you. You look like the most approachable person in the world. I say, yeah, this mug has been my— I certainly don't look like I'm going to do you harm, right?

Right.

And but I guess that would take a certain amount of— I mean, I do think having that notebook or being a journalist is my superpower. And it's also allowed me to— it's not just those kinds of spaces. When I hosted a podcast for Slate on the investigation into sexual abuse at the Southern Baptist Convention, I interviewed a reporter, but then I interviewed a survivor. And you go into something like that thinking you really want to respect that person. You don't want to be exploitative. You want them to be able to tell their story honestly and make them feel comfortable. And that's a really tightrope to walk.

Mm-hmm.

And that's a gift of being a journalist, that people trust you with their stories. But that's a big responsibility because you want to do right by them. And also because I, I'm a human being and I feel these stories. I, I feel that I'm empathetic. I feel, I feel them because you can't help but feel them. But that's a little bit of you too. It's, um, I try to be, as I've gotten older, more intentional about self-care because it, it is, it, it gets in you.

Yeah.

It's just a piece of you. And I lead an extremely extroverted life, but I am an introvert. And so I really need that recovery and contemplation. It's very important. And it's, it's taken me a while to come to that. But the realization of that has been a gift. And also a lot of the younger people have helped with that. The people who are going to say, you can get this from me. But, but at a certain point, You have to take care of you.

And how do you handle— speaking of courage, how do you handle it when you interview somebody and you have a totally, totally different perspective? So, for example, on abortion rights, how do you write something that's not accusatory, nonpartisan, however you want to call it? So that it tells their story the way they want to tell it.

I, you know, I teach workshops with the Op-Ed Project, and one of the things we say is when you, you, you show person with the opposing point of view, you treat them with empathy and respect, and you give them that they are moral and intelligent, right? You want to give that to them. Um, and also, I think, like, when you say abortion, as a Catholic, I can get that if you believe that life begins at conception, that you are going to believe that any attempt to stop that is going to be a grave sin and ending a life. Um, and so you try to give them that, and then you also try to present Challenging things. I'll give you an example. When I was covering the Tea Party, one of their events, I was sitting and having drinks with, with them. I was drinking ginger ale because, of course, I wanted to keep my head, right? And because I'm always, you know, with the notebook, you know, and if they don't want me to take notes, you know, run to the restroom and then write the notes down. But anyway, And they were talking about states' rights, states' rights, states' rights. And I said, okay, how about this? My husband is Caucasian, and according to all the laws, when the states did the laws, there were 17 states where I couldn't have married him until the federal government came in in the form of the Supreme Court. and threw that out. Okay, you're for states' rights, but what right does the state have to involve itself in the most intimate of relationships?

Mm-hmm.

And they thought about it. They were like, you have a point there. They have to give you some— just present them with scenarios. If the Civil War was all about states' rights, How come the South supported the Fugitive Slave Act that said if somebody escaped, an enslaved person, to a free state, if you believed in states' rights, shouldn't the state have the— that state, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, have the right to say, well, okay, they're here now? But no, the South wanted a law that said you've got to return it. So they didn't really believe in states' rights. only as it served them. Just point out some things, and you're not going to convince 100% of the people, but maybe a few of the people you talk to would say, hmm, you know, that really doesn't make a lot of sense. That isn't really consistent. You know, if you're, if you're against abortion and you believe that life is sacred till natural death, why are you so gung-ho on the death penalty?

Mm-hmm.

Okay, why are you so gung-ho on the death penalty? Did you ever consider that no rich person with a great lawyer ever gets the death penalty? It's only people who are poor, who have had horrible childhoods, have mental illness, have terrible representation. Is that really equal justice? So, you know, I like to kind of engage people Now, there's a limit to that. If I get an email and it's full of violence and threats, that person does not deserve my respect.

Gotcha.

Okay? And I'm not gonna engage them. Okay? If, if, and, and I get a few of those, particularly nowadays where I tell you, people sometimes feel they have permission to, from their leaders, to do and say whatever. And so, you know, you, at a certain point, there are limits. And the point is, is that person just there to damage you?

Mm-hmm.

You know, so, but, but I'm pretty good at, you know, my friend of mine who likes my writing said, you're all, you're kind of detached, she said, but lately, Mary, you've been getting angrier more and more. And I like that. Because, I mean, you see, you see somebody, you know, you see people disrespecting Ketanji Brown Jackson, who has more credentials than all of them put together, and they're just saying horrible things about her in front of her kids and her husband. And, and then you just get angry, you know. You say, I know why you're saying that, Ted Cruz, because you're thinking you went to Harvard with her, Ted Cruz. You know that she's— more accomplished than you, and you wish you were in that seat. We can see what you're doing. Yeah.

Well, I go back to— and I've had this discussion with my husband— the informality in which we discuss the president these days. You know, just simple things like Jimmy Fallon when Barack was president calling him the pres and doing all kinds of things like that. I'm like, When I was raised, it was Mr. President, or it was President such and such. It was never first name basis. It was never this clowning around. And I say to myself, are you being just an old fogey, starchy person? But to me—

No, no, you're right. You're right. I mean, when columnists used to call Barack Obama Barry, I was like, well, that's not his name. And if you're an educated person, you know that calling a Black person by a diminutive is insulting. Give him his due.

Yes, exactly.

Mary, tell us about— You know, no, you're right.

Another— thank you. Another point where you have displayed courage.

This is an odd one, but leaving the New York Times to come to the Charlotte Observer and moving to the South, which is a region where I'm not really from— Maryland kind of is the South, but not exactly— that was, I think, a little courageous because, I mean, the New York Times is the New York Times, and why would I do that? And, and we all discussed it as a family because they offered my husband and I jobs, the paper did. But, you know, it was a chance to discover a different region, one that was raised— being raised in prominence. You know, Charlotte was the hot new South city. Kind of just shaking up the career a bit. You know, sometimes, I mean, you could be at the New York Times forever. Also because it's such a big place that you can work on different jobs and in different sections and still be at the Times. That it's just, it's a place you can be safe at, you know.

Yes.

And it was a chance to— and I did not look for another job. 3 publications in the same week recruited me and The one I was least interested in was the Charlotte Observer, but it was a woman editor, and she asked me to critique all their feature sections, and I wrote this incredibly detailed critique of what needed to be done and new sections and all of this stuff. And she got back in touch with me and said, do you want to come down and do what you said you wanted to do?

Be careful of what you ask for.

Yeah, and but I— it was a good move in that sense. And even though I no longer work at the paper, Charlotte is my home base because I do like it. It's a great big city. It's a big city, but it's comfortable. It has the arts, sports, and I do work with the arts organizations. I love the arts, as I've Express, the ballet company, which is top-notch, Patricia McBride, so forth, and the Performing Arts Center, which the head of it is a Tony voter, a Broadway producer, so we get all the shows. And I do some work for them. I interview playwrights on stage, do after-show talkbacks, interview choreographers, host things. And so it's been really a I think it was a good move overall. And my office is in DC. With Roll Call, I can get there. I mean, it's— I live in an American Airlines hub, so I can get to New York and DC like that. But the initial move was a shot in the dark. I'd never lived in the so-called Deep South. And I would say that took a certain amount of courage because, yeah, and it was one of those ones, if I had waited a few years, I wouldn't have done it. But at that point, it was fine. And our son was middle school. So yeah, that, that worked out. But so yeah, I would say that, that, and then I think another point was, I'm a print person. I love print. I would work at papers for the rest of my life if I could. But the print industry started, you know, newspapers started to go down. And I realized that I was going to have to stretch myself. So I started to go multimedia, do radio, TV, things that I was not really familiar with as much. When I did my first radio report, I went to a younger radio journalist and said, what is the cheapest high-quality equipment I can get? And then I worked with that, and I worked with the producers in DC to help me produce it. When I was asked to be on TV because somebody said, you know, you have a following, come on TV and, you know, do some stuff, I would watch myself. I would critique myself, see what I was doing, try to get better. And here recently with the podcast space, which was new for me, And I love it. It's just a new— I always like things that are going to push me. Writing scripts, editing transcripts, you know, interviewing people. And you know, even if you prepare the interview, when you get in that interview, something's going to go off. So you're going to have to be prepared to go with it.

Right.

I think it's always courageous not to it in what it is you're doing. And I am just that kind of person that wants to go out into the unknown. And now I'm working on a couple of books. That's the next— I've contributed to quite a few, but now I want one of my own. That's the next frontier. You know, so yeah, I think that takes a lot. Some people I know who took buyouts and left, They just— it's, you know, they just gave up in a way. Not gave up, but they were like, okay, I've done what I'm doing and now I'm gonna— I just can't be that person.

Yeah, quote unquote relax.

And I think you and I are like each other in that way.

Oh yes, absolutely. Well, Mary, see, this has been incredible. I feel like I could talk to you for another Month or so and still not know everything.

Are you gonna come and visit me? I'm gonna put that on the tape just to make sure I get a yes from you. In the Deep South, huh? Well, no, North Carolina is a little different. It's a little different. It's North Carolina, girlfriend. We have a Black woman mayor in Charlotte, Vi Lyles. She's terrific. And it's like, you know, any other state. You know it. You live in Colorado, right?

I am. I am too.

And all— it's like any state. They all have the cities and then the rural areas. That's just like any other— all the states, wherever they are, you've got the, the Denvers, the whatever, and then you've got the Colorado Springs. It is— every, every place is like that. You got your cities and then, you know.

Well, I like how you did that because that's my style, right on camera to get you to commit.

That didn't go past me.

Well, I'll tell you what, we will come out and visit. Absolutely. And I would love for you to interview me about my book when it hits the bookshelves.

Okay, that I will do that. And, um, yeah, I always will love Denver because that's where 2008 was the Democratic Convention and Barack Obama was nominated for the first And I will always remember watching him, Mile High Stadium, the beautiful sky, give that speech when he accepted the nomination. That was quite a historic time.

Yeah.

And that was Denver.

We're outside of Denver, thank goodness, because Denver is going through its paces, shall we say.

Yeah.

So we are in the north near Fort Collins.

Okay. Yeah.

And I just, you know what I say to myself every day? What took you so long to get here?

Ha ha ha ha ha! Well, you're a New Yorker, so that's quite a bit.

Oh, you know what? I was a New Yorker physically, but not mentally.

Oh, really?

Yeah. So I had a house up in Catskill. Oh, wow! Yeah, it was just beautiful. It was on five and a half acres next. to wood protected land.

Oh, wow.

I lived there for about a year without a phone. There was no way anybody could reach me.

Oh, that's lovely. That sounds more and more like what I want out of life. I think it's— we have too many devices, I tell you.

Yeah, it was. And, you know, my mom said, I don't know who you came from.

Do you have any siblings?

No.

Okay. Well, it has been an honor and a pleasure, and all I can say is to be continued, and I hope I see you at Renaissance in the future.

I'm hoping to be there New Year's Eve.

Oh my goodness! At Charleston? Okay, I'm, I'm hoping— yeah, I'm not gonna do the Monterey. I did Monterey last year, but that was my birthday weekend. You know, my birthday's Sunday.

Happy birthday! I won't sing because that would not be a gift.

Me and Beyoncé, we're just alike, same birthday. It's true, true story.

Great.

I have— I don't, I don't have her millions or her island, but anyway. Um, and, uh, yes, but, uh, yeah, so I hope to see you in Charleston. That's a day.

Yes, I, I can't wait to, uh, go. And I have proposed a couple of names. So, and they've all been—

oh, good.

Yes.

So, and I want all your listeners to follow me on Twitter @mcurtisnc3. @mcurtisnc3.

As in Mary? MC?

No, no, no. Uh, M Curtis NC3, like North Carolina 3. @mcurtisnc3.

Okay.

And my Instagram is @marycp And my LinkedIn is Mary C. Curtis. So you can find me everywhere.

I think I'm connected to you on LinkedIn.

Yes.

But not on— you said NC3 is on—

Yeah, @mcurtisnc3. Yes, I'm a verified Twitter user.

And that's Twitter.

Yeah.

And Mary C. Curtis is which one?

Instagram is Mary C. Curtis.

Okay, you got it. I'm on all of them. Everybody, thank you so much for listening in. This has been fabulous, part 2 of interviewing Mary C. Curtis.

And thank you. Follow her.

She is the one to follow besides me.

Uh, yes.

To learn everything about politics and government and social justice.

Culture and race and all that stuff.

And the arts.

Public policy.

Yeah, absolutely. Audience, thank you so much. I'm so glad that you were here today, and I look forward to seeing you next week.

Thank you.

Bye now.

And send me a link when you get it, okay?

Absolutely.

Okay.