TOM BLISS:

Hi, Sophia. It's so great to meet you.

SOPHIA JON:

You too, Tom.

TOM BLISS:

I enjoyed watching all of your materials and reading all your materials. To start, can you please tell me your name and spell it?

SOPHIA JON:

The Sophia name? Jack was asking me,

SOPHIA JON:

"What name do you want to use?" Well, my legal name is Jon Winegarner, I accommodate people by, well, Sophia Jon. Whatever they call me, they're right. My aspirational name is Sophia Margeaux, but it's getting harder and harder to live that way, as the anti-transgender agenda

SOPHIA JON:

just gets harsher and harsher. Which name did you want spelled Sophia?

TOM BLISS:

Which name do you want spelled? This is for our viewers and for your oral history for the future.

SOPHIA JON:

Yeah. Gosh, I don't know I'm kind of torn that way.

TOM BLISS:

You can do both names if you want.

SOPHIA JON:

Yeah, the odd thing is -- I think I related to you that I started having ecstatic epileptic seizures and they so changed my sense of orientation in the world, including orientation to my own identity, to where it's just like,

SOPHIA JON:

I'm going by Jon Winegarner because that's basically how I live. I don't present in public, otherwise. I was gonna say that that would be taking my life in my hands around here being about that way. So Jon J-O-N. Winegarner, W-I-N-E-G A-R-N-E-R.

TOM BLISS:

Okay. Thank you, Jon. Would you like me to call you

TOM BLISS:

Jon or Sophia?

SOPHIA JON:

Either way -- Jon works at this point. Yeah, I guess, because if I'm presenting as my biological male self, then I'm Jon, but otherwise I'm presenting in femme then I'm Sophia, but presently I'm presenting as Jon, so yeah.

TOM BLISS:

Okay. It's totally up to you.

TOM BLISS:

And since you brought up your epilepsy before we get into the interview, and I'll be going through your childhood fairly chronologically, let's talk about your epilepsy since you brought it up. I'll let you know, my uncle, back in 1945 was institutionalized with an epilepsy diagnosis. They didn't really know how to treat it back then, and he was there for 40 years,

SOPHIA JON:

40 years.

TOM BLISS:

Yeah. Why don't you tell me about the onset of your epilepsy and what that's been like?

SOPHIA JON:

The onset, as far as what I can recognize, my first seizure was January 11th, 2019. But prior to that, in my life, there was some indication that I might have

SOPHIA JON:

some susceptibility that way. In 1987, I worked for the forest service and I was driving a truck down a mountain road and the sun was shining through the pine trees, such as was creating this flicker light shadow on the road. I was like, man, this is messing with me. Next thing I know, I'm driving off the road. I blanked out.

SOPHIA JON:

To me, that was an epileptic effect right there. That flickering light effect, epileptics are sensitive to. But for real, it was January 11th, 2019 when I had a seizure In the process of going to bed that night, I didn't know what it was. It just felt this weird kind of

SOPHIA JON:

pressure or something in my right hemisphere. I'm like, am I having a stroke? But I didn't have all the classic stroke symptoms. It passed after, I don't know, a few seconds I went to bed and I woke up the next morning and I'm making breakfast in my kitchen and I turned around and get something out of the cupboard and I didn't know where I was. It's like, what? I'm lost in my own kitchen?

SOPHIA JON:

That passed within a couple seconds. I ate breakfast. And then I walked to this store and I got down to this grand view of the mountain range and the landscape, and suddenly I was lost again. It freaked me out. I was just like, what the hell? I don't know where I am. There's some houses here, maybe I can go ask them. Who am I and where -- Well, it turns out that was a cluster seizure

SOPHIA JON:

three or more in 24 hours, and that kicked it off for sure, as far as, oh, you're having epileptic seizures. Interestingly enough, I'm laughing. It's like, what's that about? And researching, said, oh, this ecstatic epileptic seizures. I eventually had a CAT scan done. The doctor's looking at my CAT scan and my brain, said,

SOPHIA JON:

"How old are you?" And I'm like 67. And she's like, "Wow, you have a really youthful, healthy brain. There's nothing here that indicate you would've -- There's no plaques or anything that way." So it's kind of like, okay, misfiring in the brain. Was just to determine that I didn't have a brain tumor or something causing the seizures. I said, I gotta live with that, I guess,

SOPHIA JON:

but I haven't seen an epileptologist. I called the one in Idaho, down in Boise. The receptionist is like, are you having seizures? Like, well, this is what happened. Well, apparently only wants to see people that having the grand mal, what's now called tonic chronic seizures. But that's only 20% of epilepsy from what I researched. The epilepsy, those seizures continue to occur.

SOPHIA JON:

It could be months between -- The next one was I was driving to Salmon to see a dermatologist, and I remember Salmon's a town down river hours' drive to the north and I remember getting to town, and the next thing, I'm 20 miles past town and have no recollection of, "How did I get here?"

SOPHIA JON:

There's that kind of amnesic effect with the seizures, and that's when it really cemented it, oh wow, this is what's going on. Ecstatic epileptic seizures with amnesic episodes. So, if I'm in conversation with somebody I'll just blank out. And the person's like "What, Jon?"

SOPHIA JON:

I'm awake, eyes are open, conscious.

SOPHIA JON:

But I'm not responding. So there's that part of it too then kind of freaks people out.

TOM BLISS:

How has it been adjusting to having this condition?

SOPHIA JON:

It's pretty challenging. I love the ecstasy part. I mean, I'm kind of amused --

SOPHIA JON:

Your last name is Bliss, because that's the one word I would use for when I'm in the ecstatic state, after the seizure. It's actually called Geschwinds Syndrome, where the ecstatic effect lasts for days afterwards. Usually, most people with ecstatic epilepsy, they only experience it during the seizure, but it's like, oh, I just blank out. But I come back to it

SOPHIA JON:

and I'm all like happy [inaudible]. There's that effect to it. People are like, "You're a whole different person now, Jon." It's like, yeah, I'm all happy and smiling until I encounter something awful. Usually people behaving badly and then I just break down, sobbing and weeping.

TOM BLISS:

Is that related to the epileptic seizures?

SOPHIA JON:

Yeah, it's called emotional dysregulation because the amygdala gets tapped, and the amygdala is our part of the brain that is the source of our emotional regulation and expression. When that gets tapped in my seizures,

SOPHIA JON:

then I have that dysregulated emotional affect. It also affects what's called the default mode network that we operate within our brain. Basically, the default mode network holds the predictive models we have of reality based on our life experience.

SOPHIA JON:

When that goes offline, there's input error, and the salience is just like all off, skewed. It's just like the salience isn't there anymore, as far as continuity of perception of reality. I'm left in this kind of born again, bliss state where everything's just wondrous and awesome, until, as I say, I encounter -- Usually, it's humans behaving badly.

SOPHIA JON:

Yeah. Those extremes and managing those extremes and all the while sort of in this state of consciousness pretty far removed from my baseline or anybody else's for that matter. Kind of challenging because it leaves me feeling even more alone and apart from everybody else that I can't explain it.

SOPHIA JON:

It's just all wonders and awesome.

TOM BLISS:

Jon, let's take that opportunity to talk about your childhood, which you've talked about being a bit lonely. You were born in North Dakota and moved when you were two. Have you ever been back to North Dakota?

SOPHIA JON:

Yeah, we took a family vacation there

SOPHIA JON:

in 1970, but I will say --

TOM BLISS:

Jon, I'm just gonna interrupt you for a second. Sorry. I didn't tell you this beforehand. If you could repeat the question so that they can cut me out and we'll just have you saying we went to North Dakota so that we can get a full clip. Okay. Thank you.

SOPHIA JON:

The one time I went back to my town of birth in Heninger, North Dakota --

SOPHIA JON:

tucked down in the Southwest corner of the state -- was a family vacation in 1970, but I will say I returned there again. Oh gosh. What year would that have been? Like maybe 20 years ago? I was visiting my last lover who'd moved to Billings, Montana. It was like, well, that's just like

SOPHIA JON:

a day's drive from Heninger. My last lover, she was bisexual, so she engaged Sophia Margeaux and Jon on intimate levels. I was traveling as Sophia Margeaux, and I went back to Heninger as Sophia Margeaux and looked up the church members that remembered my dad,

SOPHIA JON:

an elderly couple, and visited with them for a bit. But I identified myself as my younger sister, Helen, who was also born in Heninger. After I visited with them, I found a room at a motel, stayed overnight and then visited around town, heading North Dakota there the next day

SOPHIA JON:

and thought I'd stay another night. I went to register for another night at the motel and the receptionist says, oh no, we're all full up. I was like, really? She said, yeah, the railroad crews are gonna come in tonight and occupy all the rooms. I kind of had a feeling she was bullshitting me that she recognized that I was

SOPHIA JON:

a trans woman and not a woman at all, because nobody's fooled, no matter what I'm dressed like, as far as my presentation, doesn't fool anybody other than it's a man in women's clothes. I got that response, I was walking in the city park and there was some high school kids hanging out on a picnic bench

SOPHIA JON:

and they saw me walking by and I passed them. I didn't pass them close at all, but after I passed them, a rock impacted me coming from behind. [Inaudible} impact me, it hit the ground beside me. I was like, honestly, man, I go back to the town of my birth and they throw rock at me and denying me [inaudible] to be expected, I guess.

TOM BLISS:

That's a very powerful story of visiting your hometown, where you were born, as Sophia. I'm sad for the transphobia in Idaho and in North Dakota. But I think the empowerment you give yourself is just so inspiring. You moved to Illinois in 1955 and you stayed there until you were seven. Do you have memories of Illinois?

SOPHIA JON:

Yeah, that's my earliest memories, living in Moline, Illinois, on the Mississippi river there. Particularly vivid was a brick street and how the cars would go up and down the street with that buzzing noise, tires on the bricks. At that time, American Elms lined the street

SOPHIA JON:

and they went up and created this great kind of cathedral arch over there. I just remember just being in wonder that tree cathedral arch, with the whole length of the street. Actually, the family vacation where we went back to North Dakota, we then came back through Moline and the Dutch Elm disease had wiped out all those Elm trees. There was none of that beautiful

SOPHIA JON:

tree lined street anymore. It's kind of sad. But so I do have those memories. My other most powerful memory was the first day of kindergarten, when my older sister, Mary, walked me to school and to the classroom and said, "Here's your class now, Jon." She wanted to leave me and I just freaked out because I didn't know who these people were

SOPHIA JON:

and what they were gonna do with me. I think I never got in the classroom the first day. I was just so upset. I think I walked home crying because my mom was at home with the four younger siblings and she couldn't come and get me. That, to me, indicated that I was dealing with some heavy social anxiety issues

SOPHIA JON:

that said [inaudible] all these people. I had like selective mutism in childhood where I only spoke to family or close family friends, people that I knew and trusted that way. That was a challenge to start out life that way. It's just

SOPHIA JON:

so socially inhibited.

TOM BLISS:

You had a big family. What was your family like? What were your parents like?

SOPHIA JON:

My parents, my dad was a United Church of Christ congregational minister and my mom was a nurse. They were both in the helping, healing professions, that way.

SOPHIA JON:

They grew up in Illinois, themselves. My dad served in the Navy. I like this. My dad served in the Navy in World War II, in the Pacific on Liberty ships, which hauled men and material across the Pacific. Meanwhile, my mom was working at the B24 liberator bomber plant,

SOPHIA JON:

the Riverdale plant building bombers in Ypsilanti, Michigan. Then after the war went to university of Michigan in Ann Arbor and got her nursing degree. My dad got his Divinity degree at Chicago theological seminary, which is a congregational seminary. There is that about them,

SOPHIA JON:

my dad on Liberty ships and my mom building liberator bombers. Anybody's like, why are you wearing women's clothes? It's like this is what Liberty looks like.

TOM BLISS:

Were you interested in wearing girls clothes or doing girl activities as a child?

SOPHIA JON:

As a child, in a family of eight born in 10 years' time,

SOPHIA JON:

what's interesting is there were two older sisters born first and then my older brother and myself next and then two younger sisters next and then two younger brothers next. So was it like this even kind of symmetry that -- Then I come along and say, I'm gonna bust up this symmetry,

SOPHIA JON:

throw it all off. And yeah, I didn't have any sense that way of gender or sexual identity that way in childhood. It wasn't until I got into adolescence that I had some interest that way.

TOM BLISS:

At seven

TOM BLISS:

you moved to Ohio and what sparked that move?

SOPHIA JON:

My dad took a church in Cleveland, left the church in Moline. Ministers always moving around that way.

TOM BLISS:

And so what happened in adolescence? How did your awareness of gender grow? You talked about your other taunting,

TOM BLISS:

what are some early stories from that period?

SOPHIA JON:

Yeah, in childhood, my older brother, he was not nice to me. Only in recent years I've asked him, "What the hell was that all about, Phil?" He made well because I was a baby then you came along like, seriously, My mom was having babies every 15 months for 10 years,

SOPHIA JON:

four after me. He apologized, but nonetheless, it was difficult to be this shy, withdrawn kid and then being bullied at home. At some point, my dad got so fed up with my brother's antagonism towards me

SOPHIA JON:

that he beat the crap out of my older brother. I must have blocked that up, but my other sibling said, "Yeah, you don't remember that?" It was probably just too awful for me to want to remember. Not beat the crap, but just like, "Just stop it, Phil, goddamn. Don't pick on Jon every damn day for any damn thing at all." I think that did sort of

SOPHIA JON:

level that up.

TOM BLISS:

What was it that he called you?

SOPHIA JON:

Soft boy. My older brother, one of his taunts was they call me a soft boy or somehow infer that I was a soft boy in the way that I wasn't into sports and rough and tumble play like most boys that way. Again,

SOPHIA JON:

just because I was just a shy, retiring kid that just wanted to be left alone, and my brother wouldn't leave me alone.

TOM BLISS:

Your dad was a minister. What role did religion play in your childhood?

SOPHIA JON:

I think it was pretty formative and not so much maybe religion,

SOPHIA JON:

but the ethic of Jesus that was the highest regard we can have and the best way we can be in life is to love one another, regardless. There was that instilled in me, but I only became familiar with the scripture because I was a preacher's kid

SOPHIA JON:

going to Sunday school every Sunday that way. But in adulthood, in 1994 here, when a bunch of conservative Christians got on the general election ballot, in November of '94, it was an initiative that basically would've denied queer people any kind of civil rights. I said,

SOPHIA JON:

seriously, where do they get this? I read the gospel, all four of 'em, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, front and back, for the first time. I didn't find anywhere where Jesus called for that kind of behavior from anybody on any account. I wrote letters to the editor that way, citing scripture challenging the whole of what was called Proposition 1.

SOPHIA JON:

That set off a firestorm here that I was challenging people's Christian faith. It's like, oh, I just want you to be true to it. The truth of the message, just love one another. Why would that be so difficult? Well, for some people it was, enough so they wanted to pass a law against the likes of queer people, so there'd be

SOPHIA JON:

no protection in employment, no protection in public accommodations, no protections anywhere. It was based on a law passed in Colorado the year before. In 1995, after that proposition in Idaho got defeated, the Supreme court considered the Colorado law

SOPHIA JON:

and said, "No. This is unconstitutional. It violates the equal protection clause of the first 14th amendment." But yeah, well that makes sense. In childhood religion, Yeah, it was a whole lot of us, was my mom getting us all already, my dad was already at church every Sunday morning. My mom getting us all dressed and in this station wagon and tearing off the church because we were usually late.

SOPHIA JON:

You can imagine, eight kids. Good Lord.

TOM BLISS:

You had an early experience or perception of income inequality that you shared about two different churches where your father worked in Cleveland.

SOPHIA JON:

Yeah, my father had served two churches in Cleveland. The first one

SOPHIA JON:

had a pretty wealthy congregation in this grand temple-like church. I mean with classic Greek white columns in the front. But at some point, my dad got fired from that position and eventually found an inner city church in Cleveland where we

SOPHIA JON:

got introduced to the other side of the economic equation and saw what a real impact class in America has on those less privileged. That's where I saw my dad doing the real hard work that Jesus calls us to,

SOPHIA JON:

tending to the needy and the broken and the hurt and the wanting that way. Yeah.

TOM BLISS:

You went to school and got a bachelor's in cultural anthropology, and minors as well. Can you tell me about where you went to school and what provoked your major interest?

SOPHIA JON:

Well, my higher education history is kind of interesting

SOPHIA JON:

because I graduated from high school in 1971, this kid without any kind of sense of direction or what to do with myself that way. My parents arranged with dad's sister who was married to a Presbyterian minister, at the time lived in Clarksville, Arkansas where the small Presbyterian college [inaudible]

SOPHIA JON:

was located. They wrote out an application for myself to go to college of the Ozarks, and I was gonna stay at my aunt and uncle. They said, "Well, here's what's gonna happen with you now, Jon." Okay. Just kind of helping me along,

SOPHIA JON:

give me some kind of direction, get 'em outta that. I was 20 at that time. Starting freshman year in college at 20 years of age and living with my aunt and uncle a few blocks from the college and it was a Christian school. We had chapel and had to do that kind of routine too. It was helpful for me in that I really started to become social then

SOPHIA JON:

as far as interacting with the other students and finding people that I could relate to that way, particularly an art student from Connecticut who had artsy parents But that college [inaudible] specialized in a program for dyslexics, which there weren't many programs for dyslexic people in 1973. And this

SOPHIA JON:

arts student, what was his name? God, I can't remember his name. Anyway, he and I started hanging out because kind of recognized simpatico that way. My first sort of real friend in life kind of thing. At the end of that school year, I'm back in Cleveland and my dad had arranged

SOPHIA JON:

a summer job for me at the Republic steel mills in Cleveland, because somebody at the church was employed there and had connections. Again, "He's gonna come home and he is gonna do this." He's like, okay. I'm gonna work at the Republic steel mills, which itself was an experience just because that's a heavy industry. Everything is measured in time.

SOPHIA JON:

I worked on the railroads and moved the it was 20 ton orange hot ingots sitting on massive ceramic blocks set on railroad wheels that pulled around from the furnaces to the mills and moved material that way.

SOPHIA JON:

That was an eye opener as far as into the heart of the beast, so to speak.

TOM BLISS:

We have a lot of ground to cover, so I might speed you along a little bit here and there. How did you get an interest in cultural anthropology? Because I know it plays a big part in your life.

SOPHIA JON:

Well, the first class I took in cultural anthropology was gender. How is gender defined across culture and through time and how variable it is? Because anthropologists understand gender is a social construct with its own code of prescribed and proscribed behaviors and presentations, et cetera, et cetera, that way.

SOPHIA JON:

I took that class like, wow, because at that point, I was 25, I think, because that first year of college of Ozarks, they had five years out here working for the forest service, and then went back to Cleveland to finish school

SOPHIA JON:

at Cleveland state university. So yeah, I was 25. I thought, well, here's how I could feel better about myself because gender was defined, not within my one culture, but across cultures in all manner of apparitions or appearances or whatever that way.

SOPHIA JON:

I was drawn into anthropology that way, cultural anthropology, as first an interest in how cultures. How cultures frame reality basically.

TOM BLISS:

Yeah. You went to graduate school in San Francisco. What brought you to San Francisco? Can you tell me about that experience?

SOPHIA JON:

Well, I graduated with my cultural anthropology degree in December '81,

SOPHIA JON:

but I worked as an archeologist for a few years, but I wasn't into digging the dead. I was interested in living cultures. I got considered, well, what can I do to move out of an archeology business? I was drawn to counseling psychology

SOPHIA JON:

at a school called California Institute of Integral Studies in the Haight Ashbury district of San Francisco. Applied there and got accepted. My bravest move in my life at that point was my folks had a 1969 Volkswagen camper van, said, "Take this and go west, young man,"

SOPHIA JON:

so I did. Drove it out to San Francisco and found myself a little hovel of an apartment, tucked in the back of a ground floor garage and went to school for a semester, but it was really expensive.

SOPHIA JON:

Even San Francisco was expensive at that time. It was a thousand bucks minimum in 1985, 86

SOPHIA JON:

to get into the most minimal efficiency apartment. The first semester I lived in that little apartment and then the ownership changed that way and the new landlord wanted me out, but I didn't have the money enough

SOPHIA JON:

to get into a new apartment, so I ended up living in my camper van down by the beach, Ocean Drive, something like that, the last road street highway in San Francisco before the beach and the ocean, which was lined with all a matter of RV's homeless people living in and to get out of San Francisco. I applied to the forest service

SOPHIA JON:

because I always wanted to get back out here having been up here from '74 to '77, '78. I got hired back in '87, came back out here in '87, happy to leave San Francisco because I don't do cities that well. I grew up in Cleveland. It was always this kind of overwhelming to me, the commotion, the noise,

SOPHIA JON:

the crowding. No, am I on this autistic spectrum somehow? Most people don't seem to have a problem with cities that way. Why do I? So I came back out here and summer of '87 and worked

TOM BLISS:

You worked and you made enough money to -- Can you tell me about -- I was thinking about Challis.

SOPHIA JON:

Yeah, that was right in the time when the climate was changing and fires were becoming astonishingly big. Even then not near as big as they are now, but I ended up on fire crews and made pretty good money that way, particularly in 1988 when I was in Yellowstone park, when it was burning up and then back here when it was all burning up. I had enough money

SOPHIA JON:

to buy a foreclosure piece of property in town here that a friend of mine in Challis had looked at, but the bank didn't like his financing. I went to the realtor and the realtor acted as mediator in the bank. We went back and forth and settled on a price of 19,500 cash for what the old timers in town said, "Well, that's the biggest nicest place in town." It's like, yeah, score.

SOPHIA JON:

Which to me is just kind of an astonishing story because the year before I was homeless in San Francisco, 16 months later, I'm paying cash for the biggest nicest place in town here. Because I had that money and other guys, well I'm gonna buy a truck. It's like, I'm gonna buy a home so I'm never homeless again. It was an awful, awful experience. I had a camper van to live in,

SOPHIA JON:

I wasn't living in a doorway somewhere like so many were in San Francisco and still are really.

TOM BLISS:

Tell me about Challis.

SOPHIA JON:

Challis is a Town about a people in the Salmon River valley. We have mountains all around us. Salmon River flows through.

SOPHIA JON:

It's surrounded by ranches and then the national forest where the ranchers graze their cattle in the summer months. Pretty far removed from anywhere else. It's an hour's drive to any town next. Two hours to Sun Valley, which is the closest big city of more than 10,000.

SOPHIA JON:

Conservative politics, and getting ever more so. When I came here, there was still old timers of my parents' generation. They lived through the depression in the second world war and they didn't have the attitude the conservatives have now that somehow the federal government is the enemy

SOPHIA JON:

because they saw what good the Civilian Conservation Corps did here working in the forest and brought money and people and that into the community. With so many of the men having the experience in the military, in World War II, they kind of opened up their mind to, so there was that. Government wasn't the enemy and they had an openness of mind and a generosity of spirit that way

SOPHIA JON:

that those old timers have all passed. I mourned the loss, because it's rightwing nut people moving in. When I bought my house, I thought, well, I recognize it's conservative here, but it can't get any worse. It's got a lot worse, especially in recent years because Idaho hose on the map, if you're rightwing nut conservative,

SOPHIA JON:

Idaho is a place you want be. Just sickens me.

TOM BLISS:

Yeah. I read the mayor of Challis was a Q Anon conspiracy supporter.

SOPHIA JON:

Yeah. Trumpeterian. I call him Trumpeterian because it's a religion. It really is. It's a cult, it's a religion.

TOM BLISS:

Hopefully, we'll have time to get into some politics and I love your views on subjects.

TOM BLISS:

As far as Challis, so much nature. I wanna get some of your nature stories. Can you tell me first about your relationship with nature?

SOPHIA JON:

I think my relationship with nature, that's one place I can go and find some level of peace and solace.

SOPHIA JON:

Nature receives without judgment only because it's indifferent to human existence, honestly. I mean, this environment you go out in and you're not prepared to deal, it'll kill you. There's that, and just a general beauty of it, especially in this landscape with the mountains and the rivers and the forest and all that.

SOPHIA JON:

Basically, my Sophia Margeaux identity arose out of, I guess what would be called cross dressing that started in adolescence. But It's not socially acceptable, much of anywhere still for men to go about in women's clothes, but out in nature, it's not an issue.

SOPHIA JON:

That's one way I express my Sophia Margeaux persona presence, grand landscape, that way.

TOM BLISS:

You had encounters with bears, mountain lions, a wolf pack. When I first heard your story, I just envisioned you as this mountain woman, like,

TOM BLISS:

survival of the jungle kind of -- Can you tell me some of the memorable encounters you've had and how that happened and were you dressed as Sophia Margeaux?

SOPHIA JON:

Yeah. Yeah. The mountain lion encounter, the particularly startling one was I'd been down the river playing and was walking back to my car through the Cottonwood forest

SOPHIA JON:

along the river, following deer trails. At one point, the deer trail went down into a flood plain channel. I was admiring the late golden sun shining through some cattails to my right when I had this sense, look to your left. I looked to my left and I looked down and there was a mountain lion, like right there,

SOPHIA JON:

hunkered down, we had a lock. We locked eyes and my head jerked back in recognition and his head jerked back. It was like, hey, and I quick looked away and thought, I'll pretend like I didn't see it, and maybe it'll pretend like I'm not here. Some kind of strange mind game. I never broke stride because you don't run, you don't run from predators because that triggers their predator response. But I remember

SOPHIA JON:

walking away, and at the time, I had this -- It was a backpack that I'd gotten at the thrift store here. It was a Barbie backpack -- in a heart-shaped sort of window in the back of the pack was this image of a Barbie. I said, I hike this up, cover the back of my neck because cougars, their habit is to jump on the back of their prey and, and bite through the neck and paralyze 'em.

SOPHIA JON:

I covered the back of my neck. I could feel my ears like peeling back to -- You hear the pounding padding pause behind you. Well, I never did, but that was a fright, to be that close and look into a cat face. It was as big as mine. It was like, okay. So there was that incident, close encounter with a Cougar. There was an occasion with a bear where I had walked

SOPHIA JON:

like 15 miles in an afternoon and was down on a beach along the middle fork of the salmon river. I was starting to boil water for dinner. I look up in the high bank, there's a bear looking straight at me and then starts down that high bank headed straight for me looking straight at me. I was like, ah, man, I know what this is, one of those camp bears that has a habit of

SOPHIA JON:

chasing people off their camp and then raid their food stores. This is not gonna happen because I just walked 15 miles and I'm not gonna give you an ounce of my food. I started throwing rocks at it, trying to drive it away and drove it away somewhat three times. They kept turning around and coming back. By that time, was down on the beach with me, it was like, holy hell, am I to have a hand to hand combat with this animal

SOPHIA JON:

all the while I'm in this Calico print skirt. I grab a big old stick because I got a club. I would club it and I just ran straight at it. Just carrying out like a banshee. It's like, boy, I sure hope it turns and runs because I don't know what's gonna happen. Fortunately, it did, but what an adrenaline rush. I did not camp there that night.

SOPHIA JON:

I had [inaudible] with a bear like that around. That was an incident with the bear. Then the wolf pack was another hike out of town. The wolves got reintroduced in this area in 1994, 95 and pretty quickly there were wolf packs all around. I'm hiking,

SOPHIA JON:

I get outta this trail and the dust in the trail is entirely covered with wolf tracks, but they all were headed down the trails like, well, wow, that's cool. Sorry I missed them. I get up to the high middles at the heading of the trail. I'm hanging out, taking a break before I turn around and walk back down as the sun's getting low. I get up from the log I'm sitting on at the edge of the middle and walking back towards the trail

SOPHIA JON:

and a wolf howls from back in the woods, just behind from where I was sitting. It's like, huh, did they follow me back up here? I continue down the trail and the wolf howls a few more times and then I don't hear it for a while and then I hear it again, and now it's closer. It's like, okay, now it's following me. At some point I knew there were some rocks where I could

SOPHIA JON:

go into and kind of hide and take some cover and maybe watch the wolves go by. I waited and waited and it's like, ah, the sun's getting low. I gotta go. I came outta the rocks and headed back down to the trail. And just as I got down the trail, I heard this, in the Creek bottom, something moving, broke a twig or something. I looked down and see the tailing of a wolf disappearing into the brush, just below me. It's like,

SOPHIA JON:

well, they're already here. Just to see, I howled and the whole pack was actually on both sides of me, and they all started howling. They howled and they howled and they howled until I was out of earshot and back to my truck. I just felt like they were honoring my presence with that chorus of howling.

SOPHIA JON:

I walked away, never bothered me with all these people like, oh, wolves, we're all gonna die. It's like, you know what? I had a wolf pack, follow me up and back and surround me and here I am. But, now, you can't tell people, oh, the devil predator.

TOM BLISS:

How were you dressed for the wolf pack visitation?

SOPHIA JON:

I don't remember what I was wearing exactly,

SOPHIA JON:

but I was in femme, that way, because I always hike in femme because that's the only place I can go where people don't bother me. A funny story, a good friend of mine who worked for the forest service also and was born and raised here, is gay, he and I used to take hikes in the winter

SOPHIA JON:

because in the summer he would be back in the wilderness working, but in the winter we'd go hiking and he liked to get naked. You could find places where the sun was shining on rock walls, enough to warm 'em up, and you're in a little micro climate. The funny story, at one point, he's like, "Take your clothes off." It's like Rick, I'm out here wearing clothes that I can't wear anywhere else, and you're asking me to take 'em off.

SOPHIA JON:

It ain't gonna happen. Recently, in the summer months, I've realized, being out in nature naked is kind of awesome, just to feel the air all over your body, that way.

TOM BLISS:

Did any strangers ever stumble across you?

SOPHIA JON:

Oh yeah. Once in a while,

SOPHIA JON:

they might gimme a look, but they never threatened me or anything that way, which I appreciate because there's no dress code out there. Are you kidding me? There's no dress code in the US constitution or bill of rights either, but there's certainly none out there in the wilds.

TOM BLISS:

I love these stories, absolutely. They're so evocative and I can see them.

TOM BLISS:

How did you become the Salmon River siren?

SOPHIA JON:

I became the Salmon River siren because I like to play along the river. At one point, I had a boogie board. I would float on that boogie board down the river till I found a nice wave that I might ride, play in.

SOPHIA JON:

People float the Salmon River, because it's a big white waters, rafting river, that way. But on this occasion I was on the riverbank as Sophia Margeaux and these three guys in a canoe come along. Three guys in a canoe, it was low in the waters, [inaudible] three minute, top. That's an overloaded canoe. I looked down channels,

SOPHIA JON:

see there's a huge cotton tree falling out of the bank of the river and clear across the channel they were in, and they're like all looking at me like, oh a visage, and I'm looking at them. I look at that tree. It's like, don't look at me, look at that tree. You're gonna run right into it. They're called strainers, and people die in those because you get jammed up in the branches of those trees that are laying in the river and the water pressures such

SOPHIA JON:

that you're just stuck there. If you're underwater, it would take massive winches to pull you out, that kind of water pressure. I watched these guys float that canoe and they ran right into that tree, but it was huge enough. They scrambled out onto the tree, but there was all this water being sucked under the tree, because it was half submerged laying across the channel that way. When they got outta the canoe, the canoe rolled

SOPHIA JON:

and got sucked under the tree and stuck there and their life jackets, what they didn't have on them, just floated away with everything else that was in their canoe. I'm watching that and think, wow, it's like the sirens of titan causing mariners to wreck. I just said, "Well, now I'm a presence along the river,"

SOPHIA JON:

because other boaters have seen me that way. The siren of Titan, careful. Now don't get too entrenched by the visage on the bank because there's hazards ahead.

TOM BLISS:

Tell me about Sophia Margeaux. When did she appear? Who is she?

SOPHIA JON:

Sophia Margeaux is the name I took after I got fired from my job as librarian.

SOPHIA JON:

1994, the conservative Christians got that ballot initiative Proposition 1 that would've denied civil rights to queer people. I wrote a letter to the editor. The first in January of 1994, I knew this was gonna be on the ballot. Even though they were still collecting signatures to get it on the ballot,

SOPHIA JON:

I knew the social politics of the state I lived in. It's like, oh, they're gonna do this aren't they? I wrote a letter to the editor in January that year. Just expressing my pain with the fact that people felt this was a necessary piece of legislation to have people vote on. But that was two weeks after I'd gone to

SOPHIA JON:

a New Year's Eve party at a friend's house. As my femme self at that time, not identifying as Sophia Margeaux at that point, but there were friends of the friends that were just passing the accordances of mine that were at that party. They didn't like what they saw, my presence in femme. The host of the party, they were members of the church where

SOPHIA JON:

I was the chair of the council. I was the chairman of the church council at that point. But these people that were just like passing accordances, they took such great offense, my presence that way. They went to city council and complained that the librarian wore women's clothes, so certainly no child could be safe in the library.

SOPHIA JON:

What was a city council gonna do about it? Two weeks later, I'm writing this letter because I knew Prop 1 was gonna be on the ballot. City council deferred. So we don't hire and fire library staff. That's the library board. The next library board meeting, they're just like, "Hey, what's this you wearing women's clothes." Well, not at work. I hope you don't think that's what happened. I was

SOPHIA JON:

at a New Year's Eve party, a private party with friends and acquaintances. I said, if you think you're gonna fire me for that, you have a lawsuit coming. So they chilled on that. But later that year, because as a librarian, I wanted the library to be like a community center. I was also on the arts council board at that time,

SOPHIA JON:

when I was librarian. I had an interest in film and I set up to get formed an independent film sent up here from a movie theater in Boise and was showing them at the state park headquarters in town here that had a little auditorium with a projector and a screen, and started what I called a Films for the Fearless series. I had that going on

SOPHIA JON:

with the library and the arts council. Also, there artists made book exhibit that was being circulated to libraries in Idaho, out of Boise State University, books made by artists, in just all manner of forms, like that's a book, okay. I presented the brochure for the exhibit to the library board and said, "Let's do this."

SOPHIA JON:

It's available to the libraries that way. They agreed. They might not have looked very closely because there was one piece there that was an AIDS piece and it was titled 'A Won't Be for Apple Anymore.' There was basically two pieces of like transparent cellophane mylar or whatever The sandwich between them apparently used condom, I don't know what else, but it was the apparently used condom

SOPHIA JON:

sandwiched between those pieces of clear plastic. That piece ended up getting hung in the front window of the library. Anyway, people saw that it was like, oh my God, here, it is proof that Jon is using the library to promote the gay agenda. Then I wrote letters to the editor that fall, as election began approach,

SOPHIA JON:

challenging the theology behind the notion that Christianity holds queer people is not worthy of regard. It's like seriously. That's when I read the gospel myself to inform myself. But those letters really just set off people that way and started a pretty ugly campaign against me in the library where they just agitated the library board to get him out of here.

SOPHIA JON:

The library board president would come to me, he says, "Wouldn't you wanna live somewhere else like Boise?" It's like, "Are you asking me to leave town? My house is paid for, is yours?" Ultimately, I ended up being put on probationary status after that evil Proposition 1 failed to pass by less than 1% of the vote in November.

SOPHIA JON:

I made some note, my weekly library column that December 6th was a worldwide AIDS day. The weekly paper came out on December 6th that year, I thought this is appropriate. Just to note that the library someplace you could learn about AIDS just because it was a critical public health issue.

SOPHIA JON:

If there was any proof needed more than that, that I was using the library to promote the gay agenda into whatever that was, people seemed to know, I didn't know. I got put on probationary status for that notation in my weekly library column. Then later in the month of December, this woman who had taken some training from all my, I believe it was the evil Planned Parenthood

SOPHIA JON:

to help kids talk about sexuality. She said, "Can we use the meeting room in the library?" I said, "That sounds like a good idea. Let me pass it by the board." Well, before I could pass it by the board, she made an announcement in the paper where she was gonna do this at the library at this time. The library board saw that, and just like

SOPHIA JON:

what an act of insubordination. I mean, I didn't have a chance to get to you guys to explain what was going on before she posted that, it wasn't an act of insubordination. It was just miscommunication. But anyway, that got me fired from the job because I say they thought it was an act of insubordination. It's like, no, I'm trying to use the library to its fullest potential as a place where people can meet and talk

SOPHIA JON:

and consider one thing or another anymore. The library just has programs for children, preschool children, no less, there are no adult programs of any kind like that I used to have going at the library.

TOM BLISS:

We do have a lot of ground to cover, so if you can speed up, be concise, that would be great. You just were fired from the library.

TOM BLISS:

It was a public firing, and as I understand it, Sophia emerged afterwards. Can you tell me how Sophia emerged?

SOPHIA JON:

Yeah. The name Sophia comes from the old Testament book of Proverbs, the wisdom of Solomon. In English, it reads wisdom. Sophia is Greek for wisdom.

SOPHIA JON:

On the Greek original, it reads Sophia and it starts out, she's like out in the streets ranting and raving it and challenging people at the gates, like snap out of her, wake up, I'm calling people to their fullest human potential base in the first three or four chapters of Proverbs. I felt like that's what I was doing, writing those letters to the editor that really set people off

SOPHIA JON:

before I got fired that way. I thought, you know what, I'm going to take the name Sophia and plus the actress Sophia Loren. I was like, now there is a beautiful woman, so it was a nod to Sophia Loren as well, but mostly it was lifted from the book of Proverbs in the old Testament. Then in 1994 there was a French film

SOPHIA JON:

Queen Margot. Queen Margot was -- when was that? 1500 where were the Huguenots being persecuted? Anyway, Queen Margot of France was Catholic. She was arranged to marry Henry of Navarre, who was Protestant, in the hope that they would in the slaughter of the Protestants,

SOPHIA JON:

but she was resistant to the marriage. But agreed if that was gonna, in the persecution of the Huguenots, and it did. Six days after their marriage, the St. Bartholomew's massacre occurred and she sheltered some Protestants in her chambers. When the guards came, "You got some protestants here?" She's like, "No, no, no." She did not have to put herself out that way

SOPHIA JON:

to protect these guys. I just thought, as an act of selflessness, I'll take Margot as my name, Sophia Margeaux, and also as a nod to Margaux Hemingway, Sun Valley being just two hours from here is where Ernest Hemingway lived and committed suicide.

SOPHIA JON:

Well, Margaux Hemingway also committed suicide. She was six foot tall, just an inch or so shorter than myself. It's like, well, here's a tall woman. I mean, women can be tall too. I can be a tall woman. The Sophia Margeaux name evolved out of those references

TOM BLISS:

This side of you, of course,

TOM BLISS:

existed for a while, but you only just named her. Can you tell me about introducing your romantic relationships to this side of you, to this Sophia before she was named?

SOPHIA JON:

Yeah, my Intimate relationships have all been with women. At the time, before all

SOPHIA JON:

the trans kind of labeling occurred, I just saw myself as a crossdresser. This is something I do for aesthetic enjoyment. Once I start with a woman and it seems to get serious, I say, "You need to know this about me so if it's an issue you can leave now, before it gets any deeper and harder and heavier." Surprisingly, most women said, "Okay."

SOPHIA JON:

I was involved with a couple of bisexual women that were happy to engage Sophia Margeaux, and we'd go out partying at nightclubs and play like that as two women. Otherwise, yeah. Women, they helped me with my sense of fashion styling and makeup.

SOPHIA JON:

My female lovers trained me up, "If you're gonna do this, do it well, and this is how." There was that aspect of my relationships that way.

TOM BLISS:

Yeah. Back in the day, cross dressers had one reputation in our society and in public media,

TOM BLISS:

and that's been reclaimed as transgender and being on the trans spectrum. How has that progression been for you?

SOPHIA JON:

As much as I think I would like to live as a woman, I have four sisters and they'll say you can't claim

SOPHIA JON:

to be a woman because you feel like a woman, if you've never been a woman, how would you know how women feel? It's like, okay, well, I'm listening. Never mind. So I don't push that so much as just I'm bigendered, and then explain you know what gender is? It's a social construct. As such, the rules are flexible across time and culture and

SOPHIA JON:

I'm disregarding, making my own show that way.

TOM BLISS:

Does your whole family know, can you tell me about when you first started telling your family?

SOPHIA JON:

Yeah, it was an article in the Cleveland Plain Dealer that was profiling crossdressers and

SOPHIA JON:

their group meetings. I took that occasion to come out to my parents. What was I? 25 or so then. See this article, did you read this article? Well, That's me. They were like, okay. I think my dad, he didn't really struggle with it, but other than

SOPHIA JON:

to get his head wrapped around. My mom, mothers will love their children regardless, pretty much. In her youth, she was a fashionable dresser. I was still living at home at that point, and I would dress to go out night clubbing. My folks would be downstairs watching the 10 o'clock news.

SOPHIA JON:

I'm headed out, and my mom is like, oh, come on, let me see what you're wearing tonight. That kind of experience with them. But as far I often think, well, I prefer to live as a woman, but I wouldn't be living as a woman. I'd be living socially recognized as a man in women's clothes. Just because you can't be

SOPHIA JON:

over six feet tall and look like I do and fool anybody, no matter if the clothes, the wigs, the makeup or anything. I wouldn't be having the experience of living as a woman, be something much different and more difficult, I'm sure. That's why just like, okay, well, wherever I can. I'll express Sophia Margeaux that way. That's when it became among close friends at parties or just out

SOPHIA JON:

on the landscape in the wilderness.

TOM BLISS:

I imagine shopping for clothes. I know you go to stores a lot. How is it introducing that side of you to people, to strangers?

SOPHIA JON:

Yeah, my friend Rick that I referenced earlier, he noted to me, at one point, because he grew up here.

SOPHIA JON:

He knew the ladies that work in the local thrift store here and they were aware of what I was doing. Rick said, "Every time you go on the thrift store, The Hub, it's called here [inaudible] what's he gonna buy now? After he told me that, I just like, I got enough clothes. It made me so self-conscious about going in the thrift store here and just

SOPHIA JON:

further cementing my reputation as a weirdo because I'm in the thrift store buying women's clothes. Yeah. Not that stopping doing that, help that on any account.

TOM BLISS:

You have a story about Rick and his niece's wedding.

SOPHIA JON:

Oh yeah. That was like 20 years ago.

SOPHIA JON:

Rick and I were running down to Boise, the state capital. It's about five hour drive from here, and going to party for a weekend. I'd be as Sophia Margeaux the whole weekend. One summer, about 20 years ago, one of his nieces was getting married. Naturally, I was Rick's closest friend at that time.

SOPHIA JON:

Rick mentioned to his mom that Sophia would like to attend the wedding. His mom was like, oh no, we can't have Sophia there. He'll ruin it for everybody. He's like, really, like I have some kind of DC Marvel comic superpower, the capacity to ruin it for everybody just by showing up. It's like, yeah, but that wasn't the first time

SOPHIA JON:

or the last time I've heard that "You show up, you'll ruin it for everybody," kinda attitudes. Like where does that come from? Am I that noxious of presence that's such. He was gonna go to the wedding and I just took a hike appropriately enough to a nearby bridal falls to check that out while he was at the wedding. Then after the ceremony was over, he was going to come, pick me up,

SOPHIA JON:

and we were gonna proceed down to Boise. Well, he came back to pick me up after the wedding ceremony and said, "My niece, Erin, wants you there." It's like, okay, I'm all kind of sweaty from my hiking because it's all these like conservative rancher type people, it's like, ah, even if she wants me there, I'm not sure, but I proceeded. We pull in and the bride is like, come on.

SOPHIA JON:

She and a couple of her attendants and I went into one of the cabins they rented in this locale in the mountain lake. Got out of my hiking clothes and into an appropriate summer dress, zipped me up and came out of the cabin and the bride's like got the wedding photo -- Get over here and took a picture, Sophia Margeaux and the bride. I know

SOPHIA JON:

that image is in their wedding album. I danced the night away in the reception afterwards with a lot of them getting looks like what's that about? I kind of do my best to ignore those kind of looks, because I know what that's about. It's a, you're a wrong person. That's what those looks are about.

TOM BLISS:

Thank God for support where you can find it, what is the queer community like in Idaho?

SOPHIA JON:

It's very much concentrated in Boise, the state capital. There's something of a community in Pocatello, it's about three and a half hour drive from here.

SOPHIA JON:

They actually have a Charlie's gay bar with every weekend, there's drag shows. Idaho State University is in Pocatello, and I don't know about university Idaho, way up in Moscow, about what that scene like, but In Kuster county here, as far as I know, actually I think there are other queer folk other than me now,

SOPHIA JON:

because there's a new kid working at the library and I'm sure he's gay just from appearance was like normal, normal kids don't dress like that around here, with the inflected voice. It's like how interesting because the librarian now is a kind of a fundamentalist Christian type woman who wears Prairie skirts, and she hired this kid, but she's always really sweet to me.

SOPHIA JON:

Everybody at the library staff understands that when I go in there, there's a history between me and that library. But as a queer community, if you're not in Boise or maybe Pocatello, tell there's none to plug into.

TOM BLISS:

How did you inspire Rick to come out?

SOPHIA JON:

Oh, I inspired Rick to come out by my example of being out that way.

SOPHIA JON:

He was 20 something. Anyway, when he came out to his parents, he came back to me afterwards. His dad has his issues with, and mom was like, 'oh, okay' kind of attitude. But afterwards he said, "You inspired me that way, Jon, your courage.

TOM BLISS:

Sophia won an award in 1999. Can you tell me about that and about volunteering?

SOPHIA JON:

Yeah, in 1999, I was back in Cleveland because my mom was diagnosed with terminal cancer in December, 1997.

SOPHIA JON:

And then was out of the hospital, at home with hospice in March of '98. Because I was the only one of the siblings not married with children, I was free to go back to Cleveland and attend my mom on her deathbed, March, April, May. She died in June. I came back out here,

SOPHIA JON:

but my dad was now alone for the first time in 50 years. I had my own issues with my mom died, so I went back to Cleveland after summering out here in '98. I went back to Cleveland in the late fall, in '98, to sit in with my dad for that winter. I picked up a job and fell back into my pattern

SOPHIA JON:

of going out as Sophia Margeaux, night clubbing on the weekends. But I wanted to meet some people, get out that way and engage. Cleveland public theater seemed like a good place to volunteer because they had kind off beat different sort of productions. One production that they did was

SOPHIA JON:

the Cleveland performance art festival, which was an international thing where performance art artists from all over the world came for a week-long festival. Most of the performances at the theater there, my frustration was as a volunteer, they were weekend shows. I was like, I didn't wanna have to volunteer at the theater and then drive back home and change into my Sophia Margeaux clothes

SOPHIA JON:

to go night clubbing. So I asked the volunteer coordinator at the theater about can I just -- Explained my Sophia Margeaux activity. He said, oh no, that was another occasion. Well, you'll ruin it for everybody. Okay. I guess I won't. But when the performance art festival came along, I thought, well, here's an occasion, because I had taken a performance art class college,

SOPHIA JON:

I knew what the concept was. I passed by the volunteer coordinator, "With the performance artists I can show up, right?" And like, "No, no, that would detract from the artists and the performances themselves." She's like, oh, what the hell? I'm not gonna volunteer that night, first night of the festival, I'm just gonna show up as Sophia Margeaux and pay admission,

SOPHIA JON:

which I did. And it turns out that director of that performance art festival, he and I had crossed paths because he did the critique of our final performances in that performance art class that I took, 20 years earlier or something. I'm talking to him and said it was a situation. He's like, just come on.

SOPHIA JON:

You don't even have to pay the $10 cover charge. What I didn't realize that night was that one of the artists wanted to crown a Miss Cleveland performance art festival, because it was the last year of the 27-year run of this Cleveland performance art festival. She wanted to crown a Miss Cleveland performance art festival. That's why everybody, when they came in, they got a numbered name tape that they were wearing.

SOPHIA JON:

Unbeknownst to us was that the judges could identify number. My number came up along with some artsy cisgendered looking women. It turned out I was the winner and I was just dressed in my kind of I'm going to nightclub. I didn't know I was gonna show up and get crowned a miss anything. The performance before that

SOPHIA JON:

there were doughy white bread rolls making some comment on doughy white bread culture that had been thrown around, there were still some on the stage. When I was crowned with the tiara and the slash and the big, huge bouquet of red, white, and blue flowers, and I'm fake crying, "I'm so happy." I'm walking across the stage and encountering these doughy white bread rolls still on the stage. I was stepping on them and

SOPHIA JON:

the crowd loved it. For the rest of the week in that festival, I was hanging out with the performance artist as a celebrity of sorts, local celebrity. It was just like one of those you thought I was gonna show up and ruin it for everybody, look at this. Like the wedding of Rick's niece,

SOPHIA JON:

this is like a can't stop me. Can't keep me down that way.

TOM BLISS:

Okay. 2006 you ran for state legislator in Idaho. You also were voted in as the democratic party chair. Can you tell me about your relationship to local politics, and especially

TOM BLISS:

the Republican community?

SOPHIA JON:

Yeah. Well, I ran for state legislature because I was sick of there not being any democratic candidate to vote for on any of our state legislative district, which are two reps and one Senator for each district. Year after year, nobody but Republicans running. It was like, what the hell?

SOPHIA JON:

It was simple enough to file, and I was in, but I knew I couldn't win. The legislative district is huge, like the size of half of New England and I didn't have any kind of money to pursue a genuine campaign that way. I caught it as a win just to have a Democrat on the ballot.

SOPHIA JON:

I didn't really campaign, I came up with like 27.5% of the vote, which, if a Democrat worked real hard, they might get 30 some percent of the vote, but It's so overwhelmingly Republican here, it's just like. It's getting worse that way. Then, was it 2008?

SOPHIA JON:

That was 2006. 2008, the county caucus came up for the presidential caucus, we had Obama and there was nobody to even conduct the county caucus to consider like, was it Obama, Jon Edwards? I don't know who else Well, I can do that. I can conduct a caucus. I might have social anxiety, but in a situation like that,

SOPHIA JON:

where it's kind of scripted where I have a role and you have a role and we all play a role and we can manage it, I could manage it. I stepped in and I conducted the caucus in 2008, 2012 and 2016. Then because of COVID in 2020, we didn't have a caucus. What's interesting is the singer/songwriter, Carol King

SOPHIA JON:

has property in the county here and she would caucus with us, which I thought, oh, that's totally cool, man. We're caucusing with Carol King in Challis. That's how I ended up by the county chair, because I just stepped and said, let's make this happen. I guess there's a spirit in me that way let's make this happen, pick up the torch and run with it.

SOPHIA JON:

That's how I got into politics. I was tempted to file again this year, because it's whether the three legislative seats in the district, there were nine Republicans and one constitutional party candidate, and that's it. That's the choice we have, is back to that again. It's like, and they're all right wing nuts. The state rep

SOPHIA JON:

we have now is a John Burke Society member. Like, what? John Burke society, they're still around like communists are an issue? Who knew. It's just pretty discouraging. But I do what I can.

TOM BLISS:

Yeah. I mean, you had this experience, getting fired publicly from the library, and you still have

TOM BLISS:

the respect of your community in many ways.

SOPHIA JON:

Oh yeah.

TOM BLISS:

Can you talk about, did you have to forgive people? Like what was that process like for you?

SOPHIA JON:

It was pretty hard after I got fired. I was pretty hurt because it was a year long. It was basically pretty much nearly a yearlong battle. That same week I got fired from the library, I got dismissed from my position as chair of the church council

SOPHIA JON:

because it asked the church council to consider because this proposition one that was just so anti queer was on the ballot in the Union Church of Christ, which this church that I was attending here in town is, and then my father was a pastor in, declared in 1987 that queer people were gonna be clergy and members in the denominational churches of the United church of Christ.

SOPHIA JON:

They had a program where each church could do a study and discernment process called open and affirming to establish themselves as on board with that agenda.

SOPHIA JON:

I brought it up to the church council to consider, as a way for the church to take a stand against proposition one. Oh, it got ugly.

SOPHIA JON:

The people going on about, well, we won't want people to think we're faggot lovers. There is an older woman whose son was queer, unbeknownst to those rest of those people. I knew. The meeting was so ugly. She ended up crying and they turned to me and said, "Now, look have you done? You upset Margaret." Me?

SOPHIA JON:

So that same week I got fired, I got dismissed from the church council chair. There was a lot to work through as far as forgiving people. Yeah. I mean, I was just, "I'm gonna burn this fucking town down," but I'm not gonna do that. It's not in me that way. I worked through it to the point where it's just like, that's so now in the past, what are you gonna do?

SOPHIA JON:

Those people are dead and gone or in the process of.

TOM BLISS:

Do you have anything to share about forgiveness for our viewers?

SOPHIA JON:

I think lot of my process of forgiveness was going back to my parents

SOPHIA JON:

and bringing up the eight of us and instilled in us whatever anybody, grief or whatever trouble they give you, try to understand and consider the source and not take it personally. They're likely making trouble for you out of some trouble within your own person. Do not take that on yourself. I think that was foundational

SOPHIA JON:

in that process of getting past all that hurt, through that library, firing and dismissal from the church council chair. Now I just see those people like whatever. Yesterday, actually, I was in the grocery store. I hadn't seen this guy in years. He was the husband of the pair, the couple that went to the city council complained that because I wore women's clothes children weren't safe in the library and he was,

SOPHIA JON:

he was talking to another Challis resident. I should have known who she was. I knew he was talking about how his wife had just died of a brain tumor. I saw him and I just like, I didn't feel anything but condolences. Even though he and she were the ones that kicked off

SOPHIA JON:

the campaign against me in the library by that city council appearance, I didn't say anything. I just looked at him, he looked at me as like, I'm sure we were both like "you, yeah, you." But otherwise I go in the courthouse for democratic party chair business, and the ladies are all just, oh, hi Jon, I go to City hall, go to the newspaper office. People know me,

SOPHIA JON:

treat me respectfully by my first name. It's just like, wow. The best revenge is a life well lived.

TOM BLISS:

You just were honored with a 35-year artist retrospective show.

SOPHIA JON:

Oh yeah, yeah. That was March of 2017 at a retrospective show because the arts council here

SOPHIA JON:

has a gallery where they show artists work, and finally got around to recognizing this guy does his art. It's like, yeah, I got stacks of this stuff around, hundreds and hundreds of images. I feel like I'm gonna be one of those guys that dies and they come, it's like, oh my God, did you know this volume of artwork? But somebody on the arts council board knew

SOPHIA JON:

that I had all this work and said, "Let's give Jon a show." I was given a show. It's 135 images or something, 150. I dunno. It was a bunch of images, covered the walls and then put up free standing panels and covered those too with artwork. Then I started doing collage images after the breakup of

SOPHIA JON:

the love of my life in 1983, we were both students at the Cleveland state university where I got my anthropology degree and she was an art history major. I thought we were set up to get married and she ultimately declined and exited from my life and just crushed me and broke my heart. I turned to make art as a way of healing.

SOPHIA JON:

I'd always had some talent that way. In third grade, I had an all school watercolor paint where people like, whoa, how did you come up with that? Then in junior high, had an all-city student art show where at a block print, it was shown all city, like all Cleveland Students. [Inaudible] teacher says you got an eye.

SOPHIA JON:

[Inaudible] and help heal myself, and started doing collage work, because like collage work, you got a board, you got an old magazine, you got purses and a glue stick, you can make art. I had tried painting on canvas, but canvas and paint, that's pretty expensive. You're not selling. That's why I managed to have just hundreds and hundreds of images because

SOPHIA JON:

a friend of mine would share her old W magazines, which is portfolio size magazine, high fashion and high society magazine, and I'd use that images. Cut 'em into strips. Well, you do something like this. I don't know which way that goes. I call 'em recombinanting images where I just cut these images that I thought

SOPHIA JON:

what's the most interesting aesthetic and appealing part of this image? Find that and then cut it into smaller and smaller strips and then do that with two or three images and then start mixing those strips together. What I call that recombinanting images, dynamic surfaces to play on depth and movement, line, form, color, texture, the basics that way.

TOM BLISS:

Beautiful. Yeah. We're nearing the end, but I have some last questions. But first I wanna see if there's anything that I did not touch on that you think is important for your story.

SOPHIA JON:

You yeah, I guess we'll probably hang [Inaudible], but offhand? No.

TOM BLISS:

Great. Okay. These last four questions, your answers are meant to be kind of short and pippy.

TOM BLISS:

Pippy is the word our interviewer Betsy uses and I'm copying her script for the first time because I like how she does it. These are the same four questions that we ask every single person we interview. Number one, if you could tell your 15 year old self anything, what would it be?

SOPHIA JON:

[Inaudible] recall my 15 year old self.

SOPHIA JON:

Since adolescence, I've struggled with suicidal ideation, a lot of trans people do just because like it was an impossible situation to be in, get me out of here. At 15 I was struggling pretty desperately that way. Even then I think I told myself,

SOPHIA JON:

"Jon consider this that it's not that you lack the courage to commit suicide, but that you have the courage enough to hang in there and continue to move forward regardless," which I have. Here I am. But yeah, if anything, it's like just hang in there, keep moving forward and don't take all that shit personally, honestly, that's their stuff.

TOM BLISS:

Thank you. Question two. Do you think there is a queer superpower and if so, what would it be?

SOPHIA JON:

Beyond ruining it for everybody? Gosh, I don't know. I think being queer puts you in what's an anthropology called liminal status,

SOPHIA JON:

where you sort of like outside or out of bounds or in between, and that actually frees you in a way to see through facades that other people are living behind or within the context of that way. So yeah. It's like, well there's that super power. To me it's like, I know that straight perspective, but there's this other one

SOPHIA JON:

that is out of bounds in a way, but freeing from the cultural bounds of this is gender and this is how it is allowed, so I think that way.

TOM BLISS:

Definitely. Why is it important to you to tell your story?

SOPHIA JON:

I think particularly it was important

SOPHIA JON:

for me to have my story told because I wasn't seeing anything about older trans people that live in a rural setting. I keep seeing these stories about privileged young people whose parents spared no expense. It's like, yeah, if I had have brought that issue up in my childhood, my parents like we got eight kids to deal with here.

SOPHIA JON:

We can't deal with you and your particulars. I was searching around like where does anybody find any story about a trans or queer people living in a rural setting? Almost nowhere. There is a group in Tennessee calls itself, Country Queers, that's doing much what you guys are doing.

SOPHIA JON:

I think they even have a two spirit that now lives in Denver, that's also in your archive. I saw them what the hell? And if anything, having read the book Spirit and the Flesh, about the two spirit phenomena, that's how I identify, but it's not my culture, so I can't appropriate in the sense of my leadership doesn't function within the queer community.

SOPHIA JON:

Much as in the broader community, even though I'm a queer person with county democratic party chair, arts council board member, church council chair. [Inaudible] that way, just stepping up, picking up the torch and carrying it because that's how I was raised.

TOM BLISS:

Okay. Here's the last question:

SOPHIA JON:

OUTWORDS is the first national project ... Oh, and I wanted to say about your last answer: You are the story you were looking for, it sounds like.

SOPHIA JON:

Yeah.

TOM BLISS:

OUTWORDS is the first national project to capture and share our history through in-depth oral history interviews. What is the importance of a project like OUTWORDS? If you could please use OUTWORDS in your answer.

SOPHIA JON:

I think OUTWORDS is important in the way that it raises visibility of the diversity, even within the queer culture, as far as how many different ways other than same sex relationships, a person can be queer that way. I just think, to have an archive where you can just, well, here's somebody and maybe somebody who's struggling that doesn't have a reference that way,

SOPHIA JON:

or even a community can go to your website, OUTWORDS, and here are all these people living in all these varied, multi whatever life, here, there and everywhere, that see now, get some rural queer people in there said yes, because I'm sure there's plenty of rural queer people out there in America. That's like,

SOPHIA JON:

"I'm so lonely. I'm the only one." It's like, no, you might be only one in your community, but there are others of us that way in small isolated communities making the best of it. So good work that way.

TOM BLISS:

Good work to you. Thank you so much for sharing your history with the world. Jon Sophia - really just salute you

TOM BLISS:

and the work you do and the way you are.

SOPHIA JON:

Appreciate that. Thank you.