SHOW NOTES, LINKS, CREDITS & TRANSCRIPT

The We Are Chaffee: Looking Upstream podcast is a collaboration with the Chaffee County Departments of Public Health and Housing, and is supported by the Colorado Public Health & Environment: Office of Health Disparities.

 

Along with being distributed on popular podcast listening platforms (e.g. Spotify, Apple), Looking Upstream is broadcast weekly at 1 p.m. on Tuesdays, on KHEN 106.9 community radio in Salida, Colo., and can be listened to on-demand via khen.org. 

 

Thordis Simonsen 

Website: museumofauthenticity.org

 

We Are Chaffee

Website: wearechaffee.org

Instagram: instagram.com/wearechaffeepod 

Facebook: facebook.com/wearechaffee

Instagram: instagram.com/wearechaffee

 

CREDITS

Looking Upstream Host, Producer & Photographer: Adam Williams

Looking Upstream Engineer & Producer: Jon Pray

We Are Chaffee Community Advocacy Coordinator: Lisa Martin

We Are Chaffee Graphic and Web Design: Heather Gorby

Director of Chaffee County Public Health and Environment: Andrea Carlstrom

​

TRANSCRIPT

Note: Transcripts are produced using a transcription service.

Although it is largely accurate, minor errors inevitably exist.

 

[Intro music, guitar instrumental]

​

Adam Williams (00:17): Welcome to We Are Chaffee's Looking Upstream: a conversational podcast of humanness, community, and wellbeing rooted in Chaffee County, Colorado. I'm Adam Williams. Today, I'm talking with Thordis Simsonsen. I think it's difficult to adequately describe or encapsulate Thordis in a few introductory thoughts here, but I'm going to give it a go.

​

(00:36): She is many things. She has done and is doing many things. By my estimation, Thordis is bold and creative and compassionate. She's thoughtful and resilient, persistent, she's courageous, and she has many stories to tell because of all of that. Thordis is the founding director and curator of the Museum of Authenticity in Salida. She's a painter, a photographer, writer, and speaker. She's a book author. She's, well, as I said, many things. And no matter how many descriptors I list here, I feel it's somehow not enough.

​

(01:11): In this conversation, we're going to scratch the surface of some inspiring experiences and stories. If nothing else, I think that might spark your curiosity to know more, and then maybe you'll even go visit the Museum of Authenticity and have your own direct experience with her.

​

(01:27): Among other things, Thordis and I talk about how she came to leave a career as a teacher, first of biology, and then of cultural anthropology. She went to live in a small Greek village. She had a grant for a project there, one in which she would interview villagers and document life as a photographer. Nevermind that she did not know Greek.

​

(01:48): That experience ultimately would lead to her selling her Ford Pinto station wagon and buying a house in that Greek village with the proceeds: $2,000. And nevermind buy a house, we're actually talking about a stonewalled structure with dirt floor, no roof, and it had been used to stable sheep. She would spend 10 years rebuilding that structure by hand into a house for herself and ultimately participating in what would be a 40-year relationship with that village.

​

(02:17): Thordis did learn Greek along the way, and she became the stone mason that she needed to become to rebuild that house. That she leaped into this 40-year adventure with no prior experience for that work, that's essential to who Thordis is, and the inspiring way in which she lives her life. Of course, this is not the only story from Thordis's life that we're going to talk about, but there's so much here that I chose to introduce you to her by way of putting a spotlight on that one incredible piece.

​

(02:44): So there's much more ahead, including details about the exciting limited edition re-release of her book, You May Plow Here. The Looking Upstream Podcast is supported by Chaffee County Public Health and the Chaffee Housing Authority. It's available on all podcast players, and the show also airs at 1:00 PM Tuesdays at KHEN 106.9 FM Community Radio in Salida. And look for the monthly We Are Chaffee column in the Chaffee County Times and the Mountain Mail.

​

(03:10): Show notes, including links and a full transcript of this and all Looking Upstream conversations are available at wearechaffee.org. You can support the podcast by following and engaging with the We Are Chaffee Pod account on Instagram, and We Are Chaffee on Instagram and Facebook. Enthusiastic ratings and reviews on Apple and Spotify are also helpful, and they're greatly appreciated. Now, here we go with Thordis Simsonsen.

​

[Transition music, guitar instrumental]

​

(03:46): Hello, Thordis. I am so happy to have you sitting here with me. Thank you for joining me on Looking Upstream.

​

Thordis Simonsen (03:51): Hey, Adam. It's great to be here.

​

Adam Williams (03:53): You are living such a rich and fascinating and full life. So many stories, and I'm so excited to talk with you. And we don't have time to lose here. I want to jump right in.

​

(04:03): And there's a really big one that I think people are going to be fascinated and inspired by. Let's start there. It's the House in Greece. Let's talk about that. I'll let you just take it away and tell the story how you want, when you bought it, why you bought it?

​

Thordis Simonsen (04:18): All right. First of all, let me thank you for saying I am having a rich and interesting life, because a lot of people, myself included, start out saying I've had, and the fact is I'm still having it, and I'm so thankful for that, so-

​

Adam Williams (04:33): I agree.

​

Thordis Simonsen (04:33): ... thank you.

​

Adam Williams (04:33): It's a conscious choice.

​

Thordis Simonsen (04:35): Pardon me?

​

Adam Williams (04:35): It's a conscious choice. Yeah. I say it that way because I realize it's not done. You're in the midst of it.

​

Thordis Simonsen (04:40): Right. Yeah. Even at 79. Yeah. The house in Greece, people love to hear about that. In 1984, after living in a village in Greece for two years, I decided I wanted to have a home of my own to go back to. I loved my life in the village, and we can talk about why.

​

(05:01): But I searched for what I call, in quotes, the appropriate house, and ended up purchasing a roofless house. It had been abandoned for many decades. It was used to stable sheep. So I was 40 years old in 1984 when I made the purchase. I spent long seasons each summer restoring the house, stone by stone, by hand. I did all the stone work. I loved the project because it gave me an opportunity to discover the depths of my ingenuity, and in doing so, learn things about myself that I didn't previously know.

​

(05:55): And I'll give you an example. I cut a hole in the wall to put a window over what was my kitchen sink, and probably most listeners know how much we appreciate a window view when we're washing dishes. And so I cut this hole in a wall, it's a couple feet thick, and I needed three identically arched pieces of rebar. And I'm thinking, "How can I bend three pieces of rebar?"

​

(06:31): Typically, if it were one piece, I'd stick a rebar rod in a hole in a brick wall and bend it, or bend it in the crux of a tree. A plumber taught me how he can bend pipe. And my house sits on the edge of a ravine, and across the ravine, I noticed in my neighbor's yard a steel drum, and I go, "Oh, that's handy. I'll bend the rebars on the steel drum."

​

(07:03): So that's not a typical part of people's experience, and I love the opportunity to think creatively like that because it's the sort of thing, an experience we don't have in school. It's not something we are tested on. It's not something that we learn about ourselves.

​

Adam Williams (07:29): So much learning happens, I think, in the doing, and in experiencing life, right? It's not in the classrooms. That just gets us our start, and then the rest of life is about problem-solving.

​

Thordis Simonsen (07:39): Pretty much. Yeah.

​

Adam Williams (07:40): So let's back up a moment, and I want to know what took you to Greece? Why did you go there in the first place? And then what all ultimately led you to say, "Wow, I think I want to have a property here. I want to keep coming back here"?

​

Thordis Simonsen (07:55): Yeah. I went to Greece for the first time in 1974, when I was 30. I'd been teaching biology for a number of years, and I decided that I'd like to teach a class in cultural anthropology. I thought it would be interesting to go work horizontally rather than go into more depth of biochemistry or whatever.

​

(08:22): And so I came to Colorado after five years of teaching, and I was hired at Kent Denver School to teach biology, and I asked the headmaster if I could teach a class in cultural anthropology. I had never studied any anthropology, let alone cultural anthropology, but I realize now that it was one of the earlier things that I did without credentials. I taught the class without ever going to school. Rather than go to school, I got the idea that I wanted to live in a village somewhere for the experience of village life to draw upon in my teaching.

​

(09:07): So I had met a woman who lived in a village in Greece, and I wrote to her and asked her if she could find a room for me to rent, and I did that in the summer of '74. My first trip to Greece, I spent a number of weeks. Then I came back and I taught the cultural anthropology. And after a number of years and after my first book, which I'd like to talk about, I decided that I would like to go to Greece for an indefinite time, and rather than be a visitor, be the honored guest, that I'd like to be a participant.

​

(09:48): So I went to Greece. In 1982, I left the classroom, and have not been in a formal teaching situation since then. I left the classroom, I stayed in the village for two years. I had a small grant to document the village in photographs and narratives.

​

(10:10): I tell this story on myself. Two things about that. One is that I forgot to carry a one, and so I ended up getting a grant for $4,000 instead of five. That was proof you work before you submit it for a grant. And the second thing is that I received the grant to interview villagers and presumably translate the interviews and edit them.

​

(10:38): And the foundation that gave me the grant, the Ella Lyman Cabot Trust, in Massachusetts, gave me this grant without ever even asking me whether I spoke Greek-

​

Adam Williams (10:50): That's a big question.

​

Thordis Simonsen (10:50): ... let alone could read it or translate it. So I had the grant and had a wonderful time participating in village life.

​

(11:01): The upshot of this, what turned into a two-year experience, 1982 to '84, leading up to the house purchase, was that I wrote my second book, Dancing Girl: Themes and Improvisations in a Greek village Setting. And the book is comprised of stories villagers told me, stories I tell about the village, gossip I overheard about the American girl, that would be me. Stories about the house, stories about gender roles and all kinds of things.

​

(11:40): And that book is still available. It came out in 1991, and I published it myself with some photographs, and it seems like it's a timeless book. It's very poetic.

​

Adam Williams (11:56): That touches on-

​

Thordis Simonsen (11:57): Very poetic.

​

Adam Williams (11:57): ... some questions that I actually already have, which is how were you received in this small village? And by small, I don't know how many people we're talking about. But how were you received not only because you were an American, you were from the outside, but maybe as a woman who was there alone and undertaking this, I think, significant project to rebuild these sheep stables into a living home?

​

Thordis Simonsen (12:21): Mixed bag. And I will say I had a neighbor woman who pointed her finger and shaked it at me because I was doing men's work. I rented a house for $35 a month while I was working on my own house, and she came by one day when I had a saw in my hand, a hand saw, I was cutting down a window and replacing some framing in the window of the house I rented, because it leaked so badly, and, "Men's work," she said. "Men's work."

​

(12:57): So probably she was threatened by the fact gender roles were pretty established in the village at that time, and women made soap, cooked. Women did everything, really, even sometimes plow. On the other hand, Lambi, who delivered a load of something or other to my house, and I rode up to the house with him in his big dump truck. And I turned to him and I said, "Oh, Lambi. I have to get all these materials down the 600 meters to my house." And I said, "It's not work for a woman." And Lambi said to me, "Oh. The work's the same, the pay's the same. [Greek 00:13:51]. And you have taste."

​

(13:55): So the men applauded me. The women also embraced my presence, I have to say, especially at the beginning when I was more visible around the village with my camera on recorder. They would vie for my company at their dining tables, and of course always serve me at least twice the normal serving that other members of the family would be served at a meal. So my favorite quote, quoting myself, is this: "The women, and in fact the villagers in Alika, embraced my presence ultimately."

​

(14:45): Well, first let me back up. So I broke all the rules. I was a woman doing men's work. I am a spiritual person, but I'm not affiliated with a church, let alone Greek orthodoxy. I'm a woman who's not married and don't have children. And they would say, "Oh. Why don't you marry?" That's a whole 'nother story. "Who will take care of you when you get old?" So they noticed, you know? So why did the villagers embrace me? They embraced me because we all have feelings that need to be expressed and a spirit that wants to be set free.

​

(15:25): So on that note, that you've asked, Adam, about reception, strangers being embraced, the presence of strangers being embraced. If you don't mind, I'd like to make a segue and back up to my first book-

​

Adam Williams (15:42): Sure.

​

Thordis Simonsen (15:43): ... You May Plow Here: The Narrative of Sarah Brooks. The book came out in 1986 after I spent 10 years interviewing a woman named Sarah Brooks. This project began the same summer I went to Greece for the first time, so that summer of 1974 was hugely pivotable for me.

​

(16:13): So Sarah Brooks worked in the domestic service. She cleaned for my parents, my grandparents, my aunt and uncle. Ever since I was four years old, this was in Cleveland, Cleveland area. Sarah Brooks had migrated from Alabama four years prior to the time she began working in our household.

​

(16:36): When I sat down to have lunch with her on my way to Greece for the first time in 1974, I said, "Oh. I'm going to Greece to experience rural life." Something like that. I wish I knew the exact words. She started telling me about her life in the country in Alabama where she was born in 1911 and raised on a 53-and-one-third-acre farm her father owned. We're talking about an African-American woman. We're talking about a family-owned farm, not a subsistence farm. It was a subsistence farm, but not a sharecropping situation. A story that is not unique, but has not been told enough.

​

(17:35): So Sarah Brooks had been in my household. This was '74, and she began working there in '48. And all those years, she had an inside view of me. She knew-

​

Adam Williams (17:35): Wow, yeah.

​

Thordis Simonsen (17:48): ... me intimately, but I did not know her. I knew she loved her mother and her father and her stepmother; I knew that she loved to go to fishing in the branches, she called them, little streams; and I knew she went to church. And that's about it. I'd never been to her house. She came to our house once a week.

​

(18:12): So when I first heard her story, I said, "Oh my goodness. I don't have any blank tapes. May I run to the store and get some blank tapes and come back and record these stories for the students in the anthropology class that I'm going to start teaching in the fall?" She said yes. So I came back, and she spoke for about an hour. I think I might've asked her one question the whole time.

​

(18:40): I played the tape for my students. Now, Sarah Brooks came from the storytelling tradition, and this woman engaged a remote student audience that would hear her stories months down the road with a plum. She's a brilliant storyteller. So I listened to the tape, and I go, "Oh my gosh. We need to hear more from this woman." So I asked her if we could make a book.

​

(19:08): I had never in my life thought for a second about making a book. Like the house in Greece, I had never in my life thought about restoring a house in Greece by hand, by myself, over 10 years. Which is to say, in retrospect, I've become a great fan of doing things because we have the passion to do it and we have the persistence to do it. Not because we have a degree and not because necessarily we even have the experience to do it. We can always ask.

​

(19:54): I had grown up with a dad who was a hobbyist photographer, and I used to go into his dark room when he was printing, and so I had gotten into black and white photography by the time I had sat down with Sarah Brooks. And I had been exposed, I had stumbled across Dorothea Lange's book, The American Exodus, which included text that her husband provided for the book of her photographs. If you know Dorothea Lange, very famous-

​

Adam Williams (20:30): I do, I do.

​

Thordis Simonsen (20:30): Yeah. Depression, dust bowl-era photographer. In fact, when I got a degree in a master's in teaching at Johns Hopkins, and the head of the department came in one day with the Museum of Modern Art Monograph of Dorothea Lange photographs, and I said right then, if I could ever create moving, engaging photographs such as hers, I would like to be a photographer.

​

(20:57): So I was interested in photography as an activity, as an occupation, if you will. So I thought, "Whoa, I can go to Alabama and make photographs of the vestiges of the mule farming way of life that Sarah Brooks is telling me about." And I thought that would be the substance of the book, the main focus of the book, and that it would be accompanied by quotes and texts from Sarah Brooks.

​

(21:28): The situation flipped as I spent time with her, and I interviewed her over 10 years. Eventually, Norton published the book, and I'd like to get into the present for a moment. Norton published the book, and then Simon & Schuster picked up the trade paperback rights, and then it went back to Norton. And the trajectory of this book, which was praised by newspapers all across the country back in 1986 when it came up, it lost its momentum.

​

(22:02): So a year and a half ago, I managed to acquire the rights for the book back from Norton. And right now, I am on cloud nine, because a life, well, a dream of mine since 1986 when the book came out, without any photographs, after that was my initial intent to have a book that featured photographs, I finally had the opportunity to put together a beautiful book with 33 duotone photographs of the vestiges of mule farming I made in Alabama on four trips during the 1970s.

​

(22:43): And that book is now available. It was shipped to me here in Salida a week ago tomorrow. I'm presenting a reading and discussion at the library in Salida. My website is museumofauthenticity.org. We published the book in conjunction with the museum.

​

Adam Williams (23:06): You've given me a lot to go back to, to dig into. Some of it touches on things I knew I wanted to ask you. I almost don't even know where to begin again, because again, your life does have so many threads. We can pull on any one, start to unravel, and spend hours there. This house in Greece, I think you ended up having for 40 years. That relationship with the village for 40 years, I think that's fascinating.

​

(23:28): There is a connection for me in you going to Alabama to do this work. I love that you connected it to Dorothea Lange. I wonder if you feel like in some sense, you got to have that experience for yourself and do something similar to what she did in being able to document life that others, most of us, have no idea happened, or is happening? Do you feel connected as a photographer and a storyteller in that way to the influence that Dorothea Lange had on you?

​

Thordis Simonsen (23:57): I don't know if connected is the word I would choose, but I would certainly say influence, that it was an influence along my way. And just like I'm a visual artist and I paint, and at one point, I was working in oil pastel, and there's an image I can think of right away where the sky was reminiscent of a Van Gogh sky. I didn't intend to mimic him, but I certainly own that I was exposed to Van Gogh when I was a kid. And being exposed to Dorothea Lange, I know that was an influence in my work.

​

(24:44): And I'd like to tie together something we were talking about before about relationships with the villagers, for example. And I went to Alabama the year after my first trip to Greece. One of the things that stunned me was the way the rural people in Alabama, as well as the rural people in Greece, did receive me. So there's a picture in the new edition of You May Plow Here, a photograph of me making a photograph of one of the Alabama women. I am dressed in a striped polo shirt, white painter pants, and top-sider shoes. And if that doesn't tell a story, here is a privileged, preppy, white girl interacting in the Black community.

​

(25:49): And those folks, just like the villagers, they embraced my presence. So I would ask myself why? There was a line that I read a long time ago in a book listeners may or may not remember, because it was a bit ago. It was Blue Highways by William Least Heat-Moon. And he wrote in that book something to the effect that when we're in a world different from ours like that, we aren't evaluated for our past or our future, even. People see us for who we are at that moment and how we're relating to them.

​

(26:37): And I came to the village in Greece with interest. I returned to the village many, many times, and it's the same way for Alabama. In the 1970s, I went there four different times to make photographs. I would take photographs back to the people I had photographed the previous season.

​

(27:02): Sarah Brooks' mother, stepmother, and her father were very receptive to me, and I learned that her birthday, Sarah Brooks' stepmother's birthday, was going to be when I was there. I took her a birthday cake. Turns out it was the second birthday cake she'd ever have. But sincere relationship-building interest.

 

Adam Williams (27:30): I think curiosity, sincerity, humility-

​

Thordis Simonsen (27:30): Humility.

​

Adam Williams (27:34): ... goes a long way when we walk among other cultures, whether that's in this country or it's around the world. Thordis, you and I have so much in common. Creatively, our interests, our influences. You mentioned William Least Heat-Moon and Dorothea Lange. I have both of those books that you mentioned on my shelves.

​

Thordis Simonsen (27:54): Cool.

​

Adam Williams (27:54): Met William Least Heat-Moon, and said, "I want to do a road trip like you did." He said, "Go do it." And I got a fellowship similar to what took you to Greece and got to do that. You and I truly could talk for hours and hours on so many things. I love that you're tapping into so much that has meaning to me here.

​

(28:11): And I think there can be inspiration for others. And one of those key points of inspiration in my mind is what it takes to leap into these sorts of experiences, adventures, whatever word you want to use, and that it sounds like you use something like trusting intuition to be willing to do it, rather than some sort of overthought, overanalyzed approach.

​

(28:35): And I want to get your thoughts on whatever you consider that urge, be it intuition, or a spiritual calling, or however you look at it, to leap when these opportunities present themselves?

​

Thordis Simonsen (28:48): Leap. I like to say I leap before I look.

​

Adam Williams (28:55): Has that always gone well? Have you ever had a landing that you're like, "Oh. Well, okay. That wasn't the one. Let me try something else"?

​

Thordis Simonsen (29:02): No. I've been fortunate in that way. So I remember somebody once said that I was searching, and I go, "No, I have never searched." My situation is, well, we were talking the other day, and I'll bring that up as a segue into this, but I was saying that some kids at an early age decide they're going to be a doctor or a lawyer or a farmer, whatever, and end up doing it, and have very fulfilled, happy lives doing what their original thought was, if you will, or origin of themselves as an adult. I didn't have that. Oh, yeah. I feel like I almost came into the world without a conscious idea of what my life would be like down the road.

​

(30:09): There's a Jungian psychologist who tells a story, as I understand it, that's told in the Talmud, that during our gestation, that the story of our lives are imprinted in our being somehow, and that at birth that is erased, and we spend the rest of our lives rediscovering what was written. And if anything, that's how I feel my life has evolved.

​

(30:41): So let's just take the book, You May Plow Here, which I love to talk about. I got the idea after talking with Sarah Brooks that I'd like to make a book with her story. I asked her if she would do it. This was not part of a preconceived plan. I did not have a preconceived plan ever to become a stone mason, let alone a stone mason in a village in Greece.

​

(31:12): So what has happened to me as I look back is that an idea has presented itself, and I just never ask, "Can I do it?" I don't ask that. I know I will, and I do. I've been fortunate in being able to do that for a bunch of reasons. I'm single, I've had the freedom to move around, if you will, to say yes to things.

​

(31:45): In addition to that, one of the most significant messages that I ever was given in my life was, as a child, my sister would come home with As on her report card, and I would come home with Bs, as in boy. My mother would say, "Don't worry. You can do other things."

​

(32:06): And my third book, Dances in Two Worlds: A Writer-Artist's Backstory, which came out 12 years ago, I won the Colorado Book Award with that book in creative nonfiction, it's 20 personal essays and 50 paintings of my own work that were made during the same 20-year period. And I bring it up just to say there's an essay in the book, Dances in Two Worlds, titled Other Things. And the story begins with my mother telling me I can do other things, and then I riff off that and tell about how that's influenced my life. My mother gave me permission to do.

​

(32:55): I just feel like, in a way, it's been a blessing in a disguise, because maybe I've done an awful lot, and of course, there are trade-offs. You know? I don't have a family. I'm not in a committed primary relationship, not traveling the world as some people might. I get involved with something, and then end up working on it for 10 years. The interviews with Sarah Brooks, that was a 10-year project. The restoration of the house in Greece was a 10-year project.

​

(33:32): Then I purchased the museum property here in Salida, the Museum of Authenticity, 10 years ago, right about 10 years ago today, just about, and it was seven and a half years in remodeling that building to open the Small Museum of Art and Culture in Salida. So I don't think I have another 10-year project in me. I'm pushing 80 now.