Clark, Stella. Interview August 9, 2023.

Visintainer: All right.

Clark: Okay.

Visintainer: All right. Thank you, Stella. This is Sean Visintainer, head of Special Collections at California State University San Marcos. Today I'm interviewing Dr. Stella Clark for our University Archives oral history collection. The date is August 9th, 2023, and this recording is happening on Zoom. Dr. Clark, thank you so much for interviewing with us today.

Clark: I'm happy to be here answering your questions and having a chat with you.

Visintainer: Yes. So we're really happy that you could join me for this interview as well. And so I wanted to start off talking about your childhood. And I understand you're originally from Mexico?

Clark: I am.

Visintainer: Where from, where in Mexico are you from?

Clark: Well, I was born someplace else, but I should say that I was brought up in Mexico City. 00:01:00So, it's actually a big city. From the time that I was born, I was taken there. So it's not, you know, I mean it's--I didn't really change my life that much. Because actually Mexico City was a lot more advanced than where I went to live here in the United States. Because it was a city of five million. And I went to live in a town that had maybe twenty thousand? So, my dad was a college professor and he moved the whole family in the fifties. And I came along with the family. And my first experience in the United States was when I was in the eighth grade, in East Lansing, Michigan. So, it was quite a culture shock for me. Not because of Mexico to the US but because of the big city to the small town. 00:02:00And then we ended up living in Mississippi for most of, most of my high school years and my college years. So I ended, I started with the Midwest and then ended up in the South. And that is the deep south, Oxford, Mississippi. That's where I went to high school. And I went to college there.

Visintainer: Okay.

Clark: So that was a big culture shock, not because of the US thing, but because I came from the Midwest where I was getting kind of adjusted to US life in a small town to the big, to a smaller town in the south. And there was segregation at the time. So, of course I went to the white high school. Just because of the way I look. They never, they didn't think in the South, you're either black or you're white. At least at the time. 00:03:00They didn't go into any refinements of, you know, mestizo or mixed race or anything like that. So I ended up going to a white high school, and then I went to Ole Miss, the University of Mississippi. That's where I got my first degree. And then I ended up again in the Midwest, ‘cause I went to the University of Kansas for my graduate studies. And that's where another culture shock, because going from the deep South to the real--to the corn belt, you know? That was very conservative very, kind of a dull place to be, except that Lawrence, Kansas was a wonderful, wonderful town. And I got my degrees from the University of Kansas, both degrees, the MA and the PhD. 00:04:00And I met my husband there. And that was another culture shock because he's Cuban. And he was, you know, brought up very Cuban, even though he had lived in the US quite a bit. And so, we got married in 1967, so we just celebrated our fifty-sixth anniversary.

Visintainer: Congratulations.

Clark: Thank you. Yeah. We--our wedding date was August fifth, so we just celebrated it by doing nothing. (laughter)

Visintainer: That's how we just celebrated ours as well.

Clark: Oh, congratulations to you. (Visintainer laughs)

Visintainer: Thank you.

Clark: So anyway, it was a, it was a very pleasant time at the University of Kansas. And then my whole--my dream was always to come to California. So, when I was--I started looking for a job. I applied to a lot of 00:05:00places in California and I sent like five hundred letters, something like that. And then my first job, full-time faculty job was at Cal State San Bernardino. And I ended up staying there for nineteen years. So that was a whole early career, was at Cal State San Bernardino. Do you have any questions so far?

Visintainer: I do. I actually wanted to circle back to Mexico.

Clark: Okay.

Visintainer: What neighborhood in Mexico City where you from?

Clark: Colonia Roma.

Visintainer: Okay. Okay.

Clark: Have you seen the movie?

Visintainer: Yeah. Yeah. I saw Roma. And I've been there myself. It's a beautiful area.

Clark: I lived there. I lived about five blocks from where that movie was shot.

Visintainer: Okay. And that movie took place, when was that movie? It was the sixties, or?

Clark: That was in the seventies.

Visintainer: In the seventies.

Clark: He 00:06:00(director Alfonso Cuarón) had to change a lot of things. He even had to do the (building) facades, but there are a lot of places that are the same as they were when I was a kid there in that neighborhood. And it was, it was a good place to live. My mother owned two townhouses there in Roma. So that's where I spent most of my childhood. But then she sold the houses when we moved to the US, for $5,000 each. And now, I think that would be in the millions.

Visintainer: Yeah. Probably.

Clark: It's a desirable neighborhood.

Visintainer: Yes. Yeah. Definitely. What were--so why did your parents decide to emigrate?

Clark: Well, my dad was a college professor, and college professors don't work out in 00:07:00Mexico very well ‘cause they have to have other careers. They don't pay that much at the university, so they have to have a second career that, like a day job, you know? And so, and my dad was German. That's a long history. I don't, I don't even want to get into that because it's really complicated and interesting. But so he, you know, he married my mother and they decided that they, he wanted to get his PhD in Texas. At the University of Texas. So he went, came to the US to get his PhD and left the family behind. But he started taking us one by one. First he took my mom, then my little brother who was very young. And the whole time we were staying with relatives, so. Anyway, so we ended up finally the whole family in the US 00:08:00in 1956. The whole family in Lansing, Michigan. But we came piecemeal. So it was, you know, staying with aunts and uncles. And living in different areas where I was sort of the, I wasn't really in my, with my family. So we were kind of aimless. Because, you know, since I was with so many different relatives, but my dad had a purpose. And so, he said, when he brought the whole family, he was gonna create a goal for us. And we all ended up studying, you know, higher, getting higher degrees. Having careers. And so, because of my dad. He also made my mother get a PhD. So, 00:09:00we all got degrees at the University of Mississippi first.

Visintainer: Okay. And what were your parents' PhDs in?

Clark: My mom was in Spanish, like me, and my dad was in economics. He actually turned out to be a pretty well-known professor in the, in Latin American economics. And he was very productive, being a good German. He wrote a lot of books. And he ended up at the University of West Florida. That was his last job. So at the time, professors were not used to staying in one place. They were used to going from job to job to improve their status. And so, he was an assistant professor at Michigan State, and then Mississippi hired him as a full professor. 00:10:00So he jumped a rank, so to speak. And then you know, I always miss Mexico. Even now I miss Mexico. I don't go back very much. But to me, that's just home, you know, or something. I never could get, could develop a love like I have in my heart for Mexico, for any other places where I've lived.

Visintainer: What is—

Clark: Yes?

Visintainer: Oh, I'm sorry to interrupt. What is it that you, what is it that you miss or that has that, that fills that place in your heart when you think of Mexico?

Clark: It's hard to describe because when I get together with relatives from down there, I'm immediately at home. You know, it's as if I had never left. And I grew up with a cousin who was my age, and I just hated to leave her so much. She, we were best friends 00:11:00and I always wanted to see her. And I wasn't always able to go back there. And so, you know, I really missed her so much. And just the family relations, the--also Mexico City was so urbane. I always felt like I was kind of in the sticks in the towns that we lived in, in the US. And I would go to Mexico and my cousin was all, you know, she has this hairdo, and I'd say, “What is that?” I've never seen anything like it. Because it was a big city.

So you live, it was kind of like being in New York, you know, like a New Yorker living in New York. So, I miss that aspect of it. But I just, I didn't even like Mexican things, you know like Mexican, so-called Mexican food. I never really liked it that much, but as soon as I 00:12:00moved to the US I just, I was missing tortillas. We had to get tortillas--in Michigan, we had to get tortillas in the can.

Visintainer: Okay.

Clark: And there was no place to go eat anything that was typical. And in my middle school, nobody! Nobody, but nobody spoke Spanish. Not even high school Spanish or anything. So nobody tried to help me out as I was developing. So I was getting used to living there. And I remember that this, the gym class made us, they made us take a shower. And I did not wanna take my clothes off in front of people I did know. Even though they were young girls, but they were strangers. So I did not wanna take my clothes off. So I went to the teacher, tried in my best bad English, 00:13:00tried to explain to her that I didn't wanna take my clothes off in front of my classmates. And she said, “That's too bad. You gotta take a shower. So, you can't just be in gym and then be all sweaty and go back to class.” So I would leave my, my bra and my panties on, and then I would have to go the rest of the day with wet underwear. So, that was just a really bad year for me. (laughs)

Visintainer: Yeah.

Clark: And I told my mom, and she finally, you know, I didn't wanna tell my mom I was embarrassed. Finally, she went to talk to the teacher, but she said, “No, no, she has to adjust to the,” you know, it's that mentality that, “No, no, no, she has to adjust.” You know, “Everybody's the same here.” So I had wet underwear the whole year. And in Michigan, that's not pleasant when it's winter.

Visintainer: No, that sounds 00:14:00like it would be tough.

Clark: Anyway, so that was, and I made friends in Michigan, but I don't know, it wasn't the same. It wasn't my cousins. It wasn't my, you know, I wasn't in the same school as my brother and sister, so that was a bad year for me. And then when we moved to Mississippi everything changed. It was, because Mississippi, believe it or not, the the ethos is more like Mexico (laughs) Because of the stratification, the social stratification. That you were kind of more with middle class people or whatever. And so, I don't know. I hate to say it, because it sounds, you know, I don't wanna admit to anything like that. So anyway, but Oxford was a small town, but it was very friendly, 00:15:00and it was very, they were very welcoming to us. So, everything changed. And that's when I finally started to adjust to living in the US. The people were real characters. Our English teacher in the high school was married to Faulkner's, William Faulkner's best friend. So she was, she was such a character. She would say, “Don't let the lighting bug bite you because you'll never get rid of it.” (laughter) So anyway, so it was, it was a different world. And I finally got used to living there, and I started to miss Mexico a little bit less and less every year.

Visintainer: You mentioned that you were learning English when you came to the US if I understood correctly. 00:16:00 So—

Clark: Yes. I knew a lot of English already, because I had English from the time I was in kindergarten until the eighth grade when I came to the US. So—

Visintainer: So you were learning English and kind of in class, I assume, as well as being immersed in the English language. I was curious about your Spanish-language skills. Did you speak Spanish in the home?

Clark: Of course. And I never forgot Spanish because I'm a reader, and I just always wanted to keep reading. We--my mother and I went to the library at Michigan State, and we checked out, you know, they had a big collection in Spanish of course. And so I checked out these Argentinian novels, and Colombian novels and everything. So I was always reading something that kept my skills up. I didn't do it on purpose, but 00:17:00I really wanted to stay, keep my Spanish so that when I went back to Mexico, people wouldn't make fun of me. Because they, you know, they said your English, your Spanish starts to get very what they call pocho. Which is, it has a lot of English influence. And I didn't wanna be called pocha. So I kept my Spanish skills as long as I could.

And then I majored in French at Ole Miss. I was gonna major in math, but a woman professor who taught third semester calculus said to me, “I know why you're here. You're just looking for a husband.” And she just persecuted me in the class. So I said, “No, who needs this? I don't wanna be in this world.” 00:18:00So I switched to French, and I majored in French. And, and then that's another story, because when I went to--when I applied at KU for graduate school, I was supposed to go in the French department to get my PhD in French. But the department had split that year. It was a romance language department, and it split from Spanish and Portuguese into Spanish and Portuguese and French and Italian. So, they said, “Okay, you go here.” And all of a sudden you had to take all these Spanish classes. And I thought, well, I wonder why, but I'll, I'll take them. And I had taken more classes. They, I got a letter that says, you have to take more Spanish classes. And when I, when I was at Ole Miss, so I took more Spanish classes and I kept taking Spanish lit 00:19:00of different fields. And when I got there and I went to the advisor, he was the chair of the Spanish and Portuguese department, and he said, “You're gonna be teaching Spanish I as a TA (teacher’s assistant), and then you're gonna take these three Spanish classes.” (laughs) So I said, “Well, okay.” (laughter) I didn't, I was twenty you know, what did I know? So, I started taking Spanish classes. And it's a good thing because at the time, French was beginning to decline in demand, and I could never get used to speaking French either. I didn't like to, to say, oh. (laughs) I couldn't, you know, I just couldn't get used to the, the accent. So, I just stayed in Spanish. And that's what since you ask about my skills, they came in handy because I had 00:20:00read a lot of the works already as a kid, and I liked the people in the Spanish department. And that's where I stayed.

Visintainer: Yeah, thank you. And I was, I was curious as to, because you went, you ended up, you know, getting your PhD in Spanish, how you kept those skills up being in an environment where outside of your home you didn't necessarily have the opportunity (Visintainer and Clark speaking over each other). Yes.

Clark: I met the Cuban when I was my third year of graduate school. And he was in high school. So, his parents were my classmates. And so he was, you know my parents had a fit because he was nineteen. And when we got married, he turned twenty the next day. (laughs) And my parents thought he was gonna, he was too young. He was gonna, you know, leave me after a while. And I, but I thought, “Well, who cares? 00:21:00I'm gonna go for it.” And so, we spoke Spanish at home, and his parents spoke Spanish at, at home. So it was, I got into that other culture. And in fact, I got, I didn't have a Spanish accent when I was in college or with--when I was in high school. But I got, got the Spanish accent after living with Jose for all those years.

Because we--and he doesn't have any accent. But anyway, so he came when he was fourteen, and so he had been in the US for five years. So anyway, that's how I ended up staying in the Spanish field. And kind of rediscovering my country through the academic degree. Because I specialize in Mexican literature. I met all these 00:22:00Mexican scholars. And I was in a totally different environment when I got back than I was when I left. I didn't, I only had one aunt who was kind of an academic, but everybody else, you know, they were home. They stayed at home and they didn't, typical Mexican wife role. But I did have an aunt, who had the best collection of Mexican literature that I've ever seen anywhere. And I was trying to get her to leave it to me, but it didn't work out. So. Anyway anything about graduate school, or?

Visintainer: Yeah I was, well I was curious when you moved, just to circle back a little bit, when you moved to Lansing. And you moved there, and then you went down south to Mississippi, and you talked about the 00:23:00culture shock. I was wondering if you could talk a little bit more about the culture shock. What you found as you were just starting to adjust to the Midwest. And then you moved to the South, what you found was shocking and the differences in those places.

Clark: Well, the school, first of all, most of the schools I went to had all girls. And of course, the school in Michigan was a mixed, you know, boys and girls. And there were things happening. This is the time in the fifties that when education in the US totally did a change, a pivot, you know. Because I read a book called The Lonely Crowd. And it explains what happened in the US in the fifties, that the school systems started to do things very differently than before. For example, instead of having a desk that flipped--that had a lid, 00:24:00so you could keep all your stuff hidden, and private. It started to have these chairs with a, just a paddle where you could write on, and all your stuff was in view for the rest of the world.

And they started to put your stuff on the bulletin board, your work on the bulletin board. And that was very alien to me. I had gone to these schools where everything was very regimented, the nuns and the--even I went to a school that was not Catholic. And it did have boys and girls, but it was very regimented. And you had to obey the teacher. You had to, when the teacher came in the room, you stood up. And when you went--were gonna go out, you had to get in single file. And everything was very regimented. And we wore uniforms. Whereas here in the school in Michigan, no uniforms. The classrooms 00:25:00were all like people sitting around tables. What was that? (laughs) Like the Socratic method, all of a sudden. (laughs) And people sitting around these open tables.

And so the kid--the boys would put their feet up on the table, and the teacher didn't say anything. We had a science teacher who brought apples to the class. You know, eating in class? Wow. So things like that. And then just kind of a lack of structure at the time in the, in the school when I was used to all that. But at the same time, this kind of a Nazi-- no, I take that back. The gym teacher who says, “No, you will not, you will take a shower.” She wouldn't even let me 00:26:00like, go early and take a quick shower by myself. You know, she didn't wanna make any accommodations. So, I couldn't understand that. I understood authority cause of the nuns, but I don't know. I just--my mom never really followed the conventions. She was always a free spirit. So, in that way, we never had all the regimented things that you find in Mexico. Like my aunt died. Her sister died very young, and she would refuse to wear black. So, all her relatives criticized her. And then all my cousins were saying, “How come you're not wearing black?” So that was something that, you know, I was used to. But in the US there were some other things that some rigidity that I couldn't understand. 00:27:00Anyway, I was thirteen, you know, so that's not a good age to change cultures.

Visintainer: Yeah.

Clark: And I was kind of, I was a kind of, well-developed thirteen, so the boys were starting to pay attention. But the boys in Mexico were eighteen, for example. You know, people are used to difference in age. And the boys in Michigan were thirteen and they were shorter than I was. And just little boys. So that was also kind of sad because I was beginning to develop, you know, interest in the opposite sex. Plus the schools, you know, they were clannish. So of course, I was not a popular person because I didn't, I didn't speak the language. And I don't, I'm not talking about English, I'm talking about the teenage language, you know. I didn't have a group that I could hang out with. So I was kind of a 00:28:00nerd because I liked math. Then people didn't know where to put me cause I was too nerdish. And then at the same time, I was kind of sophisticated. I was more adult than they were. So it was a difficult time, to find a place there.

Visintainer: When do you feel you found your place?

Clark: Where?

Visintainer: Where, yeah. Where? When?

Clark: Kind of in Oxford. Because the girls were really friendly to me. Even the popular girls liked me. And they did the did the best they could to include me in all their activities and all the things that they were doing. And I found a friend there. We're still friends. We still write each other. We used to visit each other, but she was, she was a professor at USC (University of Southern California) and then she moved. She was--her father was a professor also. 00:29:00And this girl was, you know, she was kind of my intellectual equal in a way. She read a lot. She introduced me to a lot of English writers, cause her father was an English professor. And we used to kind of joke, with kind of sophisticated weight. I was--I really thought it was funny that I wish I had some stuff that I wrote when I was that age, because I think we were pretty witty at the time.

And so that made me feel good. And she used to buy all these novels at the drugstore, and she would take off the front covers so her mother wouldn't know that they were X-rated (laughs). So, you know, I mean it was a fun time to be with somebody who was my age and was really into that stuff. And so she moved to Massachusetts, unfortunately. So that 00:30:00hit me in the head, because I don't fly anymore. And I don't think she's flying very much either. We're both--I'm gonna be eighty next month, and she's gonna be eighty in December, so we're getting there. So—

Visintainer: But you've kept in touch.

Clark: Yeah. Yeah. And that was great because she ended up at USC. She started out in Illinois, and then went to Texas, and she ended up at USC. So when she--her husband was at San Diego State, so she was living in La Jolla for a while. And we had to see each other a lot. So we still do a Zoom conversation once in a while. So that was, she contributed a lot to that. And then I have another friend that I stay in touch with who lives in Alabama. 00:31:00But we still stay in touch and they're Democrats (laughs). And then I had another friend who passed away two years ago. So, those three friends were great, and we were close. And so I didn't feel lonely anymore. I didn't date anybody until I was almost a freshman in college. I just wasn't attractive to guys, to the--I wasn't a southern bell. So I wasn't appealing to guys because I didn't just go and bat my eyelashes at anybody. I didn't know how to flirt at the time.

Visintainer: Well and you needed you needed to find your group.

Clark: Right.

Visintainer: Yeah. So then you, you go to Lawrence (Kansas) after you graduated?

Clark: Yes. Just, you know, my dad told me--asked me when I was a senior in high school, 00:32:00“Where is it that you wanna get your PhD?” (Laughs) He didn't even ask me, “Are you gonna get a PhD?” No. He says, “Where is it that you're going for your PhD?” So I, I'm one of those people who takes the first offer I get. I didn't take the first offer for marriage that I got, but I did take the first offer for graduate school. I took the first offer for the first job, for my first job. And then, the Cal State San Marcos job was kind of a first offer in the sense that it was new place. So anyway, I just I applied to places and I liked the--as I said, I was in French, so I applied at the University of Kansas because they had a good French department. So I got, it really appealed to me that, to study French at KU. And then I ended up 00:33:00studying Spanish. So.

Visintainer: And so you came to KU and then you met Jose. And, so how did you meet Jose?

Clark: Well, his parents were my classmates.

Visintainer: That's right.

Clark: And there was a party--this is a weird story too. There was a party, some Venezuelans, they--KU has an amazing number of programs with Latin America. I mean, just, you wouldn't believe it. And they had a program, with a Ford Foundation program to bring Venezuelan engineers to Kansas. So, my mother-in-law was the secretary to this project. And they invited her to a big party. And so her husband, who was also my classmate, and he was kind of a, had a roving eye. He had a crush on my 00:34:00roommate. So, he invited both of us so he could get to dance with my roommate. And then he went to Jose and said, “Hey, you know, I'm really interested in this girl. Would you mind dancing with the roommate?” (laughs) Who was me, “So that I can dance with Judy.” And so, he came and asked me to dance. And so, I thought, “Oh, how great.” Cause he was very good looking. And we just hit it off and we danced all night at that party. And at five in the morning his parents invited me to go have cognac in their--at their apartment. So, you know, we just started to see each other. But he was nineteen, and he looked like he was younger. So I thought, I'm really robbing the cradle big time, so I better stop this. So, I asked him 00:35:00point blank, how old are you? Because by this time, we had seen each other a couple of times, and he said, nineteen. And I thought, whew, you know, he's not underage (laughs). And also, you know, this is okay, we're having fun. No big deal.

But we realized, you know, it was a lot more serious than we thought. So, we met--that was the Thanksgiving weekend of 1966. And we got married in (19)67 in August the next year. So, we didn't have a very long courtship. And what really speared that forward was that he was living with his parents in this duplex. And his grandmother was getting out of Cuba. You know, they were, they were Cuban refugees 00:36:00from the Castro regime. So, grandma was getting out and she had to share his bedroom, Jose's bedroom. So, I said, well, we couldn't live together. The department was very conservative, and I would've lost my assistantship if we had moved in together. It sounds hard to believe that people think in those terms now, but they were very, very conservative. So, I thought I didn't wanna jeopardize my studies. And so, we said, “Well, what do we do? We break up or we get married, you know, either one.” And so, he was just starting his freshman year anyway, so I said, “Well, I think we ought to break up because this is not--it's not viable.” I was living in this little apartment and, anyway I was 00:37:00making $240 a month, and I wasn't gonna marry somebody who didn't have any income. And his parents were students also. Cause when you got out of Cuba, no matter how much money you have, you have to get out with the clothes on your back. And his mother was a journalist, but she had, who came from a wealthy family, but she had to go work in a donut shop in Miami when they first came, got out of Cuba.

So we didn't have any money, none of us. So I said, “Well, you know I don't know if we should get married. This is too serious. It's too soon.” And then, so then he gives me his grandmother's wedding band, and he says, “I'm serious. I really wanna marry you.” So we decided, okay, let's go ahead. And we got married and he got a job working in the language lab. And 00:38:00in the--at the library. (laughs) So we were living on like, with $350 a month. But we were living okay, you know? We discovered, yeah, we can make it go. And my parents came around and they really liked him, and they ended up just loving him to death, you know? So that was, that was a good thing. Even though a lot of people talked to us and said, “Don't do it. It's too soon.” Including the guy who married us was his speech professor. And he said, “Well, I'm not gonna marry you guys until I talk to you quite a bit.” So we had to go to his house many times. So he would give us--he was a Methodist minister, as well as being a professor on campus. And he talked to us a lot. And finally he says, “Yeah, I think you're gonna do okay.” 00:39:00And so, he married us. We had a very plain, very simple wedding in his parents' duplex. We invited friends who were also graduate students. They brought food. It was kind of a potluck. And here we are, fifty-six years later.

Visintainer: It was a good start then.

Clark: Yeah. That's been, to me, that's been the best part of my life is, you know, having Jose next to me for fifty-six years. Most of our lives. Anyway, so that was KU. I got my PhD in Spanish in ‘71. Like everybody else, I had to apply to a million places for a job. And I had, San Bernardino sounded really good to me because it was in California. I had my best friend, my best friend 00:40:00at KU was teaching there already. She had gotten her PhD at Ohio State, and she'd gotten hired at San Bernardino. We could have been done the same time, but I just, I wasn't in any hurry because Jose was not, wasn't graduating until ‘71. Oh, sorry. (laughs)

Visintainer: No, you're fine.

Clark: Tell me if I'm giving you too much information.

Visintainer: No, no, no. It's really interesting. I'm happy you're sharing and thank you for sharing. So, Jose was graduating in 1971, so you had some time to kind of figure out your next steps.

Clark: Yes. We didn't know what he was gonna do. So, he applied to graduate schools and he got accepted at UC Irvine. So we were happily planning for that. 00:41:00at And of course, I had to stay in San Bernardino cause I've never been a good driver. So, he was gonna drive to Irvine to go to graduate school there. But he thought the drive was a little bit too long. And we weren't used to commuting and all that California life. So he applied at the library at Cal State San Bernardino. They had a temporary job, and it was perfect. He just loved it. So, he started working there. And that was ironic because there were a lot of jobs that I didn't take because--that I didn't pursue, because they were always asking me, “What's your husband gonna do? What's he gonna work at?” And so they would turn off because he didn't, he was--didn't have a job yet. And I was also childbearing age, and a lot of people didn't wanna hire you. I won't mention 00:42:00a couple of universities that I got approached by. And according to my professors, I had a really good chance to get--go there. But they were worried about Jose. So ironically, he started working where I worked. And then he got another job since that was only, that was temporary. The funds for that dried up. And so, the University of Redlands hired him. The library there. And he loved it. But I said, “No, you better get your degree because you can't be, just be a clerk all the time.” So he started going to USC and very slowly, and finally I said, “No, you just quit whatever you're doing and finish your degree, because that's the only way you're gonna have a career out of being a librarian.” And 00:43:00at sure enough, it worked out so well because he's loved that career. And it's kept us on an even keel, always. Because my career sometimes was high pressure ‘cause I did some administrative work along the way. And so he, it was always good to have him in this job that he loved. And that wasn't super high pressure until he got in the county. And then that turned out to be very high pressure because he was--he became a supervisor. And that's, you know, anytime you go into administration, that's it for you because you start leaving the job that you love and doing a job that pays better, but gives you a little more prestige. But-- (laughs).

Visintainer: Yep. It's very true. Well, as 00:44:00at a librarian, I'm very happy that Jose was able to find his avocation in our vocation.

Clark: I know. And it's, you know, librarian is such an interesting, has such an interesting opportunity to do all kinds of different things. So that he's found that, and he's always worked with women really well, you know, because so many women are in the library. And I work with men really well. So, we compliment each other because we're not jealous people who think, “Oh, you're gonna be with this person.” You know, I just always hung out with guys in my profession. And he's always gotten along with women and met--made really good friends in both areas.

Visintainer: Yeah. And to circle back a little bit to coming to CSU San Bernardino, you mentioned 00:45:00at that you had wanted to go to California, and I was curious as to what was the draw for California as opposed to other parts of the United States?

Clark: Well, California has always had really good press, maybe until now that the states are so divided. But it always, it was always like paradise, if you wanna go to paradise in the US, go to California. And they show you all these orange groves and this beautiful weather and the ocean. And it was just, it just has a good ethos, you know? So I always really wanted to go to California. My parents ended up in Florida. I never had any desire to go to Florida, and for any, every reason in the world. But somehow California just seemed like this paradise. And also, you know, LA. Wow. San Francisco. (laughs) My dad lived in San Francisco many years, and he was always talking about San 00:46:00at Francisco being such a great place. And then LA with Hollywood and, you know, just sounded like--plus the proximity to Mexico. You know, I always kept thinking, “Well, if I'm in California, I can always cross the border.” You know, I always felt kind of uneasy when I felt--when I lived really far from the border. Which is ironic because now I never get down there (laughs) you know, just. But I did find some relatives who live in Tijuana, so that's been great. You know, they come to visit. And, it's really good to keep track of my family that way.

Visintainer: Yeah.

Clark: I found them on Facebook of all places (laughs).

Visintainer: So Facebook has some, has some good things about it.

Clark: Yeah. (laughs)

Visintainer: You can connect people. So you came to, so what was the decision to leave CSU San Bernardino 00:47:00at and come to San Marcos?

Clark: Well, when I was about three or four years before I left there, I discovered that I'd like to be an administrator. Because the Dean of Humanities left, and he asked me if I would be his replacement. So even though it was a really hard job, because he didn't look after any budgets. I mean, he was just so, he was a wild, loose, kind of a loose cannon. And I had to go, and as one colleague told me, I had to go shovel a lot of cages at the zoo when I took over that job. But I loved that job. So, it was an interim job. I had it for two years, and then I, when I applied for the permanent job, I didn't get it. 00:48:00at So, I thought, “Well I, but I wanna do this.” So I started applying different places for dean's jobs. And I got, I did pretty well in the market, but it just wasn't appealing to me to go for several reasons. I had been in San Bernardino for nineteen years. I was used to the good weather. And so this, the Cal State San Marcos thing came up and he said, “You know, you start the, a program from scratch. Start the department from scratch.” And so I talked to people about it, and they, I said, “What do you do?” And says, “Oh, you can hire the kind of people that you want. You can go after the kind of faculty that you want. You can create the kind of curriculum that you want that you find is good. You can do a lot of stuff. It's, it's a huge opportunity.” So, I applied 00:49:00at for it, and sure enough, I got the job. So it was--I moved kind of laterally because I had tenure there. I was a full professor. But I had no idea of all the horrendous amount of work that you have to do when you start a program. And, I probably wouldn't do it again. And my dad had done that in Florida, and he said, “Oh, be careful, because it's so much work.”

And I just, you know, I just went in there thinking, “Well, how bad can it be?” And it was pretty bad (laughs) because I had to work year-round. And it was one thing after the other. I'll give you an example. Marion Ried (Dean of the University Library) came up to 00:50:00at me and she was in charge of some funds that were assigned to the university. I don't know why they put her in charge of that. But anyway, she says, “You know, there's $150,000 earmarked for a language lab, and if you don't spend it,” this is in April when she talked to me, “If you don't spend it by the end of June, Bill Stacy's gonna take it.” He was the (university) president. “He's gonna just take it and spend it on something else because it’s gonna become available to the whole campus.” And I said, “We can't have a language department without a language lab. No way.” So, I had to go buy a language lab, and I had from April to end of June to do that. Well, how do you do that?

Visintainer: Yeah, where did you begin?

Clark: Yeah. I was lucky enough that the San Bernardino campus had redone its language lab, and they had 00:51:00formed a committee and they had, you know, interviewed different lab companies. And they had decided what kind of lab they wanted. And they already had the infrastructure though. And I had to start from zero. So I went to talk to the guy who ran that lab. Fortunately, he was somebody that I had supervised, and he just loved me. So he gave me all kinds of information and all kinds of help about what some of the pitfalls would be. And I picked that lab that, it was a Norwegian company, something like that. Norwegian, I think Norwegian. And I had to come up with a sole-source justification in just a little bit of time, because there was another company that was saying, “Why didn't you pick us? Why didn't you buy our lab?” And then I was lucky because I got two faculty 00:52:00who came, and they were very versed on the--they came from UC Irvine, and they had learned how the lab can be used as a teaching tool. And it was, you know, they had done workshops and they had done all kinds of stuff. And that's one of the reasons that I picked them to come be our next faculty. Because they had learned so much about what a language lab does other than just be an aide. Electronic aid, you know, technology aid. And it was a married couple. They both came together. And so she was the, she was doing all the all the software kind of stuff, and he was doing all the hardware kind of stuff. So, I was lucky that 00:53:00way that I--but I also see that as part of a, you know, being hired with experience.

Because if I had been hired out of graduate school, I wouldn't have been able to do anything like that. And so, because I came with having chaired the department, having been a dean, and when you're Dean of Humanities, you deal with a lot of equipment. Because I had the arts under my supervision. And I had to deal with lots of interesting types of equipment. So it worked out. But it was a very tough two years. I was in, at one point, I was in like thirty-five hiring committees.

Visintainer: Wow!

Clark: And one of those committees was for literature, the literature department, which was called English at the time. We had eight hundred applicants for one position.

Visintainer: Wow.

Clark: So, you had to 00:54:00learn how to, you know, how to process stuff very quickly. And so, and also I had learned how to deal with administrators, higher administrators, to negotiate for things. So I was a little bit more informed as to how to deal with things. Because a lot of the faculty don't, they don't deal with anybody. They just go on, they do their great teaching and they do their research, but they don't they're not used to wheeling and dealing, for example. And so I learned very quickly that the first best, the people who got the best things, were wheelers and dealers in the faculty. I learned from some of my colleagues very well 00:55:00because you don't just get things by saying, “Yes, I accept the job. I'll be there this day. When do I start working?” You have to say, you know, “What, how much office space am I gonna get (laughs)? How much--what is gonna be my budget for traveling and for hiring? And how many faculty am I gonna have in five years? When you had to start that kind of thing. And in a way, I was not that good when I first came, but I learned very quickly. Very, very quickly you learned that. So that's what brought me to San Marcos wasn't the weather like a lot of people (laughs). It was the opportunity of starting a new department. And that was really interesting. But ironically, my ideal colleague--I was able to hire this guy. 00:56:00He was just wonderful. But he hated California. He couldn't, he couldn't live away from his mom. And so he left after two years. But I did get some of the other faculty that I think are ideal and wonderful. They're still here.

Visintainer: That's good. So what was your vision when you started the department?

Clark: Well, I wanted to, I wanted to have a major that would give the students the opportunity to go in different directions and to get lots of skills without having to, you know, because a lot of the majors are very academic. And I love the--I love that, but it doesn't give them many tools like to be teachers or to be like, go to work in business. And so 00:57:00I wanted to major that would be, that would help students be very versatile. And they could go in lots of different fields. And I think I accomplished that. Our major was, there were only two of us working on the major at the beginning, and it got accepted by the chancellor's office on the first meeting, you know. Because we came up with this modular plan, and also just wanted to hire a lot of faculty that I would love to work with. That was my vision as the harmonious department, because if people don't get along--and I came from a lot of programs where people didn't get along at all.

Visintainer: That's really interesting. Cause yeah., cause there's a lot of at times disharmony in academia.

Clark: Oh yeah!

Visintainer: And in some ways, you know, for a good reason because there's a lot of debate 00:58:00and thought that has to go into things. But—

Clark: I mean, a department is made up of a whole bunch of prima donnas.

Visintainer: Yeah. (laughs) So how did you go about building harmony in a department, in your department?

Clark: I don't know. I can't tell you exactly. You just have a feel for people. And I was, I just use my instincts a lot. And so I try to get people to apply that I knew were very easy to work with, that love to work with you, that no matter what you ask of them, they would do it. But the guy who came with me, the first guy, we went too far because he never said no to anybody. And at some point he burned out. But he was good to work with. I mean, he was good to be here the first two years. Unfortunately, 00:59:00he passed away not too long ago. But, anyway he--so I just, I just had a feeling that people who were my friends, besides being my colleagues. And I knew a lot of people, you know. I had--they applied a lot of people from different areas applied here because I went, I worked a long time for grading the Advanced Placement (AP) exam. So, I had a huge network because those, you meet people every year, and you get to know each other. And so that's what it was, just, you know--and then what my big goal was always to help people thrive. And not put any obstacles in their development. And one of my professors at KU said, 01:00:00because I, my dissertation was kind of weird. And then I said, “You know, I'm surprised that, that you approved it, because I know that it is very unconventional approach to literature.” And he said, “Look, to me, your dissertation is your beginning work. If I'm gonna consider that your master work, then you're in trouble. Because this is what's gonna kick you into the field and into the academic world.” And I did have a professor who didn't wanna approve it, and these guys kind of rallied. And they said, “We couldn't, you couldn't take it out of the building to read it.” And so, he refused to go to read it in the building.

Visintainer: What, so what--what was weird about your dissertation?

Clark: Well, it was 01:01:00a very like a very close reading of some works. Very, very close. I was using a method that was kind of controversial at the time. It was called the--what is it called? My head is not working anymore. But anyway, you, if you read a work very closely, you analyze, you know like even stylistic patterns in something. You can kind of make conclusions that are much broader about the work then you can if you approach it from the outside and just look at the--look at it from a bird's eye view. Like if you read something and you say, the plot is this and the blah, blah, blah. But if you’re really close, read closely and about all the language used in it and everything. And some people at the time didn't like that method.

It was an, it was a method 01:02:00followed by some English writers, American writers. It was an American thing. But I applied it to Mexican literature. So, a lot of people thought that was, it was stupid that it didn't lead you anywhere. And this writer that I went--that I wrote on, had been written on by a lot of people. And so this guy who didn't wanna pass me said, “Where's the, where's the biography of this writer? Where's the list of the his works? You don't learn anything about the guy.” I said, “No, no, no. I don't wanna learn about the guy. I wanna learn about the worlds he's creating in his works. You know, what kind of world is he creating with the use of this language?” And so it was--you know, some people thought it was too weird 01:03:00or maybe it didn't go far enough out. You know, it was not a universal thing. But it was, I was kind of following a method by an anthropologist (Claude) Lévi-Strauss, you know. Have you heard of Lévi-Strauss?

Visintainer: I have not.

Clark: Anyway, he studied people by patterns of--I'm losing my train of thought here. He studied people by the patterns in their culture, not coming from you know, the outside and saying, “Oh, they do this, they eat at this time.” But it's following very, very specific things that they did. Anyway. So it worked for me and, and I learned a lot about analyzing literature. And so that helped me in my teaching. So, 01:04:00whereas this guy, the professor who didn't wanna pass me, pass my dissertation. Well he--I had a course from him and he ordered ten books. It was gonna, it was Romanticism in Spain, okay. Romanticism in literature in Spain. And he started with the eighteenth century before Romanticism. And he gave us so much stuff about the eighteenth century, he never got to Romanticism. So I returned all the books without reading them because he never got to the subject. And so that's, I wanted to avoid that at all costs. I said, “I wanna read the works, I wanna see what the work is itself, and I don't care if the author was, you know, if he was gay, if he was an idiot, I don't care. I wanna see what he left behind.” So it was very close text reading, textual reading. And some people didn't appreciate that. 01:05:00So. But it served me well. Lemme tell you, I use that method throughout my career and it really helped.

Visintainer: Yeah.

Clark: And I'm still reading like that. I don't read as much anymore, but I'm still kind of, “Oh look, this word he uses here.” Anyway, any more questions?

Visintainer: Yeah. Could we circle back to the kind of the founding of the department?

Clark: Yes.

Visintainer: And I was just curious, what do you think was your, like your biggest challenge in those early years in founding the department, and coming on board at CSUSM?

Clark: Oh, I don't wanna say.

Visintainer: (Laughs) Well, you don't have, you don't have to answer if you don't want to.

Clark: No, no. Because, because this campus developed very--I came from a very organized campus. And most people didn’t wanna realize that this was a CSU campus. 01:06:00They thought they were gonna create something from scratch that was brand new. And there are all these people who came from these different backgrounds, like faculty who came from liberal stu--liberal arts colleges, from big research universities. And I said, “This is a Cal State, people. We, that doesn't mean we have to look down on anybody, but it's, we have to be real about who the students are gonna be, and then what they need to learn.” So, ‘cause I've always been kind of an elitist in my, in my own mind, but not when it comes to educating students. I think, you know, you really need to consider the fact that people come from backgrounds that maybe aren't, they're not up to here academically, but they're very bright people. So just look at them, 01:07:00look at their interests, look at their--what they wanna learn. And I always love the Cal States because people pay for their own education. People pay for their, you know, they’re often the first person in their family to go to college. They work forty hours a week to go to college. They have children, they have other interests. They have jobs, they have parents. If you come from a Latino family, you know, you have to take care of your parents. They have husbands who don't want them to study. There's machismo there. You know, a big, big obstacle for Latina women. Anyway, just look at the students that we get, and don't look down on them. Look at what the possibilities are with these people because they're, they wanna learn. 01:08:00They're here because they want to be, not because, you know like when my last class at KU was on Friday, it would meet Monday, Wednesdays and Fridays at four o'clock in the afternoon.

And sometimes on a Friday, I wouldn't have anybody showing up. Even though they knew that it counted, that I took off for absences. They just didn't care, you know, because they were gonna go into daddy's business, or they were gonna go into their uncle’s (business), you know, these people who they just weren't interested. And so, I said, that's what I love about the Cal State, is it has such a mission of, like now it's right in line with us because of the upward mobility. Because I was lucky that I didn't have to think about 01:09:00that, ‘cause I had parents who were educated. I always had books in my house. I always had. But these people who are, they've never seen a book in their house. They don't even get a magazine. And all of a sudden they have to, they have all these things thrown at them, but they wanna learn. So, I always had a lot of respect for the Cal State system for that reason. And a lot of my colleagues just, it makes me sad that they think the students are not up to par, blah, blah, blah. But it's, I've always loved the state universities because they want to educate the masses. And I love, I love for the masses to learn! And I like to be in the trenches. So that was why I didn't wanna leave the system. At the 01:10:00same time, you know, I yearned for these people who, like my friend, the USC friend, she’s taught--she's had years when she taught five or six student graduate students. And that's her whole teaching load. Where my advisor who had a chair at KU and he could just go. He went through South America traveling one year and left us in his house, to house sit for them. And, just visiting different universities and different libraries and doing research all over the place for his book. And he didn't have to teach a single class in two years. So I yearn for that, but at the same time, I like the idea of seeing people. And I still have 01:11:00people who, you know, look me up.

Visintainer: That's impact.

Clark: My students have retired already. Some of my students, my first students from San Bernardino. Yeah this one woman, she tracked me down here, and every year she and her husband come to visit us for when they come on vacation. And she's a retired teacher already. So it's, you know, it's very sad how some people don't care. Once the students leave, that's it.

Visintainer: Yeah. I think there's definitely an ethos that comes from--that comes from being at a teaching university and embracing it and—

Clark: Right.

Visintainer: Great things that it can do for social mobility and upward mobility. And I appreciated you mentioning and talking about our students. And that kind of had 01:12:00me spur a question that I wanted to ask you. And was, what do you think was the big takeaway that you've learned from our students over the years?

Clark: That they want, they want to learn and that they want to prosper. And very often their circumstances do not allow them to prosper, and do not allow them to learn. Many, many people I had to--I had a husband one time coming from a student who was in a couple of my classes, and he said, “I wanna come and sit in your classes cause I wanna watch my wife and make sure she doesn't talk to any guys.” I said, “No, you're not welcome there, because you're not a student and you're there for the wrong reasons.” So, I was worried that she was gonna get the brunt of that, but she eventually left that guy. But he would sabotage her learning. And 01:13:00I think, you know, and she kept going. She kept going. And I had another one here on this campus who, she was regularly beaten by her husband because she wasn't--she didn't have the food cooked when she, you know, she was in class and she didn't have the meal prepared. And so she's--but she went ahead and got her master's degree somehow. And I think the students are very resilient and they work very hard to make it. They don't, of course there are a lot of deadbeats too, but that doesn't--they're everywhere. But the majority of the students, I mean, I ask in class, I never had to work as a waitress or anything like that, you know. And I asked in my class one time, “What, how many of you're working?” And I would say, 01:14:00I would calculate like eighty percent raised their hands. And I said, “How many of you work more than twenty hours a week?” And most of them raise their hands again. Whereas, you know, I got to work in the language lab, I got--but that was for my extras. You know, my dad said, “If you want this and that, if you wanna buy records or if you wanna buy this.” But we didn't have to go to work. And we had a home that supported doing homework. And my mom wasn't around completely. But anyway. It was good. I had a good upbringing in that sense, and I wanted the students to get help that way. So I did a few things that weren't, didn't mean very much but for example, when I went to Mexico 01:15:00City you can buy books. Like you can buy literature in the newsstands for like fifty cents a book or something. So, I would buy if I knew I was gonna use the book in my class, if you order it from, well now Amazon, but if you order it from a bookstore, they'd have to pay like ten dollars for that book.

And I would buy all these books for fifty cents and then bring them back and say, “If you can't afford the books, come and see me.” So, they would come, sometimes very ashamed. But I said, “Don't be, don't be embarrassed. Just, you know, just come and see me.” And I’d say, “Okay, you can use this book. Use it in the class. If you really like it and you wanna keep it for your library, you can keep it. If you don't wanna keep it, just give it back to me.” And they would always keep it, because 01:16:00they were building a library. That was so cool. And then all my books, when my mother died, all her books came to me. And there were duplicates of a lot of stuff I had. So I took them to the office and I said to the graduate students, “Take anything you want.” And now we're, fortunately we get to leave things to the campus. We're fortunate that we're--we decided to leave our estate to the campus. Because we want to, we want students to prosper in any way they can. And sometimes it's just a question of a thousand dollars that's gonna put them over the edge. I wish we had millions, but we don't. So.

Visintainer: Well that's, that's wonderful to be able to leave something to foster student success in the future.

Clark: Yeah. Because I have a family, but they can look 01:17:00after themselves, they've had good opportunities. And, we don't have kids. So we're not responsible for anybody in particular. So, I don't wanna make, I don't wanna tire you because I've been talking so much about myself (laughs).

Visintainer: No, no, you're fine. Well, we can, we can certainly look towards wrapping things up. I've enjoyed talking with you. I did wanna--I did want to ask you kind of a wrap up question. Is that, is there anything that you wish I would've asked you that I didn't?

Clark: Not really. I think, I can just go ahead and talk forever about all this. It's an eighty-year-old life, so eighty years of being on this earth, that's a long time. And so there’s things that I don't remember at all. And the things that I remember so vividly, and when I went to see Roma (2018 film), I just 01:18:00cried throughout the whole movie. Bought it on Netflix, but I just--I cried and cried, and cried the whole movie. Because he captures that neighborhood so well. And he, there's a documentary that where he explains how he captured that neighborhood. And he was really meticulous about every single thing, like those little soldiers at parade every morning. I mean, there were details like that, that I've never seen in a movie before. And also because Mexico City always looks like a, this gray place with dirt, dirt streets and everything. And here's this guy who is just--captures the neighborhood that I grew up in. I mean, what are the chances? Because most people show you 01:19:00the tourist view of Mexico City. And so that's what, that's what I miss. It's like the daily noises, and the daily routines, and the kind of house that it is and the maid. Very sad because we did have a couple of maids, like the--like this girl, they would come and knock on your door and say they were there from Oaxaca and did you have any, did you have any work for them? And my mother took, did take a couple of people like that. We didn't have any money at the time, but anyway, she did take a couple of these girls. And they didn't even speak Spanish, these poor girls. So that just--that really got me, that movie. And so I always tell people, if you wanna get to know me, watch that movie. But I don't, I'm not the maid. I'm the, I'm the person 01:20:00from the señora, you know? Because the grandma didn't even know her name. And then I kept thinking, I didn't know any of these girl's names. I didn't know where they came from. And when she has a baby, and they take her to the hospital, says, “What's her name?” And she doesn't even know her name. Because there's, it's another world that I never got to know. And I used to think, “Oh, Oaxaca, that has to be the scum of the earth.” And, and I fell in love with Oaxaca the first time I went there. It kind of shows you that you don't, you never appreciate your own world until you're out of it.

Visintainer: Yeah I, you know, as somebody who did not grow up in Roma but I saw the movie, I thought it was an amazing, just an amazing creation of space. And I didn't know if it was you know, how particularly accurate 01:21:00it was or not. So, it's nice to hear that it really spoke to you on an emotional and memory level.

Clark: Yeah. There, this little scene, there's a scene when the guy leaves her (Cleodegaria "Cleo" Gutiérrez, main character of Roma), she says she's pregnant and the guy leaves her, and she's sitting on the steps of this movie theater. And there are all these noises because people go outside of the movie theater, they're selling a lot of stuff. Little toys and everything. And she's just surrounded by all these noises and she's just sitting there in her loneliness, you know? And here's the interesting cultural thing is that nobody goes to the movies on Sundays, except the maids and their boyfriends and, you know, the domestic help. That's when they go to the movies, and they go see Mexican movies. The middle class goes to see the American movies first run, 01:22:00you know. And they go during the week or on the week--on Saturday, but not on Sunday afternoon, belongs to the servants. So it's an upstairs/downstairs world that most people don't realize. And, so it's kind of hard to also to explain that to people that, you may not have anything in common who is from Mexico. There are people from Mexico that I have absolutely nothing in common with. Cause they were brought up--we had a cleaning lady, and she would not, she invited us to her house on her birthday. She would not sit down with us to eat, even though it was her birthday. And I knew. I understood it. And I, we didn't insist on anything, because she would not sit down with us to eat. 01:23:00So that's--it's a different world that is very hard to explain to people. And, so that's another challenge for me that I live in two worlds in my head. I've got one foot here and one foot there and they never come together.

Visintainer: And I think that that's probably an experience for folks that move from country to country or even within countries.

Clark: Exiles. Yeah. People who have grown up somewhere else. And, who was I talking to about that the other day? It was very interesting because we were saying because I--oh, I have a lot of, most of my friends are really from someplace else (laughs). Even though, not on purpose, they're faculty on campus. But, I was looking 01:24:00at my, one of my Zumba classes. There was nobody born in the US in that Zumba class. I don't know. I kept seeing, maybe there was one person. But there was a woman from Colombia, there was a woman from Japan, another one from Puerto Rico. Well, Puerto Rico's US, but they have another culture. And so it was just so strange that we're exiles and we do have a common denominator, but that never reaches you the most in the deepest way. You always have, you always have this farness.

Visintainer: And I, yes. I wanted to share that I lived in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas-

Clark: Oh, you did?

Visintainer: And, yeah. And when I was there, you know, I had somebody tell me what they thought of the Valley, and I thought it was really 01:25:00interesting in that that he said, “It's a liminal place. It's a place that's not quite Texas, it's not quite Mexico.” It exists in its own way and with its own rules and its own identity. And that causes, in some ways, for folks that live in the Rio Grande Valley, that sense of displacement when they’re in other places because they don't feel quite--and I'm speaking in generalities but, you know, there's a feeling of not quite being Texas, not quite being the US, not quite being Mexico all wrapped into its own place and culture. That was really interesting. And, and I really—

Clark: Yeah, I really wanna visit with you sometime and hear more about you, so.

Visintainer: Yeah. Well, we can get together and chat, but this is not about me, and I just went on a tangent. I apologize. (laughs)

Clark: I know, I know. No. No, but it's good. It's good. So well, thank you for the interview and I hope I didn't leave anything major out. But if I did, give me a call or send me an email 01:26:00because, you know how I'm always willing to talk about myself. (laughs)

Visintainer: Sure, sure. Well I really appreciate you chatting with me today, Stella. And I'm gonna pause recording and then, and then we can wrap up with anything else.

Clark: Okay.