Lesbians have helped define and, in turn, have been empowered by Mountain Pride Media since its founding in 1996. More than half of its founding members were women, including the following leaders in our community: Paula Baker; Liz Campbell, first Board Treasurer; Margrit Dutta, second Board Treasurer; Joy Griffith, second Board Secretary; Nat Harrison; Lanny Jones; Deb Lashman; Rachel Lurie; Kathy Sawyer, first Board Secretary, later Vice President; and Thelma Stoudt. Other women who have subsequently participated as a member of the MPM Board of Directors include: Judy Beaulac; Cele Burnett; Cheryl Carmi, second Board Vice President; Donna Freeman; Sarah Harrington; Pam Kinniburgh; Carrie Rampp, third Board Vice President; and Rekha Rosha. The leadership of the Lesbian community in developing and sustaining Mountain Pride Media is evidenced in that a higher percentage of women than men have filled officerships on our Board over the years.

And prior to the founding of Mountain Pride Media, the following women were among the members of the Out in the Mountains Collective and Board of Directors: Cherie Goldstein, Co-Chair of the Board; Ellen Heatherington; Deb Lashman; Birdie MacLennan; Elizabeth Mae; Sage Russell, Kathy Sawyer, Secretary of the Board; Miki Thomas; Linda Wheeler; and Suzi Wizowaty.

Women helped develop and sustain Out in the Mountains and Mountain Pride Media as providers of valuable services to the Lesbian community in Vermont, and we are committed to maintaining the relevance of these services to women.

While each of these women has made (and many continue to make) substantive contributions to the growth and development of Mountain Pride Media, it is undoubtedly the women who have served as Editor of Out in the Mountains who have had the greater visibility in the community. As Editor, each of these women has also had enormous influence in determining what topics are covered by Out in the Mountains and from what perspective that coverage is presented.

Out in the Mountain’s second Editor was Deb Lashman, whose commitment to sustaining this community resource was so strong that she twice returned to stints in the Editor’s chair when a paucity of volunteer support threatened to close down the paper. Deb Lashman undeniably stands out as one of the single most significant volunteers in the history of Out in the Mountains.

Today Barbara Dozetos is approaching her second anniversary as Editor-in-Chief of Out in the Mountains. Barbara brought a background in journalism to the paper, and has worked tirelessly with the Mountain Pride Media Board of Directors to improve the professionalism and quality of the publication. And working along side Barbara is Stephanie Siebert, who joined us as Art Director just this past spring.

We understand that perhaps even more relevant than how many women participate and in what roles is how we have incorporated an understanding of the issues and identity politics that are important to the women of our community into the policies and practices of Mountain Pride Media.

Until 1997 the editorship of Out in the Mountains was a fully volunteer position. While only modest stipends were provided thereafter, in 2000 the Board of Directors of Mountain Pride Media made it a priority to raise the monthly payment to the Editor to $2,000. We began the year providing a monthly stipend of just $575, but each month, through enormous dedication on the part of the Board to raising the advertising revenue generated by the paper, the compensation rose ever higher. By the June edition Mountain Pride Media was able to make its first $2,000 payment to the Editor of Out in the Mountains. This higher level has been sustained in the months following.

Coincident with this raise in compensation, the Board assumed all advertising sales and management responsibilities which had previously fallen to the Editor. This huge component of the job was removed during the same timeframe in which the compensation grew, providing a livable wage compensating 32 hours of work a week.

This represents dramatic growth in the compensation of this position, and as we address the long-term support (and future continued expansion) of this higher compensation, we are also mindful of our obligation and determination to provide other employee benefits vital to working people. It is our goal to remove the yoke of volunteerism from the few paid positions at Mountain Pride Media so that each paid employee can fully devote their energies to pursuit of our Mission Statement through their committed work.

We are also proud to note that the offensive salary differential that plagues many women in business, even in Vermont, is unknown to us at Mountain Pride Media, and will remain apart from our practices. In evidence of this fact, just this past spring we brought on a new Art Director, and hired a women to fill a position previously held by a man. We provide the same compensation to this woman that we provided to the man who preceded her, as we are paying to have the same job done. Gender has not been and will not be a factor in the determination of the compensation of any paid employee of Mountain Pride Media.

The MPM Board provides very flexible working conditions for its staff, allowing staff to fulfill other life obligations without anxiety. The Editor and Art Director set their own schedules. Through the creative leveraging of services offered by the phone company, the portability of some of our equipment, and thoughtful pursuit of appropriate software licensing arrangements, we have made it possible for each of them to work at the office or from home - mornings, afternoons, or evenings - whenever and wherever they feel they can be most productive.

Mountain Pride Media was recently contacted by Drs. Harper and Koning of Dartmouth Medical College, requesting assistance in facilitating a study of the incidence of breast cancer among Lesbians. Our role in the project is to help provide access to Lesbians in northern New England who may be asked by the study organizers (through a blind mailing undertaken by volunteers working for Mountain Pride Media) to provide anonymous feedback regarding their own health experiences. Drs. Harper and Koning’s staff has indicated that without our participation and the responsible access to Lesbians in Vermont that we can provide, this study could not be undertaken. The Board of Directors of Mountain Pride Media fully supports this research, and feels it is important that we put our data base and our own volunteer resources to work in support of this study.

Mountain Pride Media has as its mission the support and development of the glbtq community in Vermont, and continues to direct its resources to the support and development of the women’s community. Here are a few examples of how our services support Lesbians in Vermont:

Out in the Mountains proved to be a very important organizing tool for the Vermont Coalition for Lesbian and Gay Rights. The Coalition, which has been so vital to the development of glbtq community in Vermont, subsequently gave birth to the Vermont Freedom to Marry Task Force. Susan Murray and Beth Robinson, the plaintiff’s attorneys in Baker v. Vermont, the landmark Vermont Supreme Court case that paved the way for the institution of Civil Union for same sex couples in Vermont, kept our community up-to-date on the court action and the implications of that action in our lives through a regular column in OITM.

Susan and Beth aren’t the only women columnists who have prodded, educated, and intrigued us over the past 14 years. Esther Rothblum’s "Dyke Psyche," Christine Leslie’s "Faith Matters," and Crow Cohen’s "Crow’s Caws" represent just a recent sampling of the provocative and informative perspectives presented in the pages of Out in the Mountains. Mountain Pride Media is very proud to be providing this forum for these and other women activists in which to raise issues of importance to our community.

Need to connect with other women in Vermont and surrounding areas? Whether it’s with BAD GRRRLS (Brattleboro Area Dykes), CRONES (for women over 40) in Milton, womens’ social groups Fried Green Tomatoes and WOW of Elmore and Worcester, respectively, HOWL (Huntington Open Women’s Land), Golden Threads’ offices in Richford, the Umbrella Women’s Center in St. Johnsbury, Women Centered in Montpelier, the Burlington Women’s Council in Burlington, WISE (Women’s Information Service) or the Amelia Earhart Underground Flying Society of Lebanon, New Hampshire, ALMA (Active Lesbians of the Monadnock Area) out of Keene, New Hampshire, or other social and support groups for Lesbians, you can find contact information in Out in the Mountain’s Source. Out in the Mountains also provides each of these organizations the opportunity to post information free of charge on their upcoming activities in our Community Compass, which has been designed to both keep our readers informed of social and other community activities and to help each of these organizations attract new participants.

And a quick pass through the masthead of a recent edition of the paper makes it clear that a contingent of bright, talented women are leading the way in the current production of Out in the Mountains. In addition to the Editor-in-Chief and Art Director, women serve as Associate Editor, Copy Editor, Photo Editor, and managers of The Source, The Calendar, and The Classifieds. All of these women, singly and in concert, are empowered to make decisions that influence the content, tone, and presentation of this publication.

Following the recent huge commitment Mountain Pride Media made to revamping and revitalizing our web site, now at www.mountainpridemedia.org, the service most frequently accessed on our web site is online viewing of Out in the Mountains. All of the strengths of that publication that provide relevance to the women’s community are preserved in its translation into cyberspace.

We have also been able to utilize the strengths of the internet to help visitors to our site make connections to women-centered organizations throughout Vermont and around the nation. www.mountainpridemedia.org provides links to scores of organizations, including Valuable Families, United Lesbians of African Heritage, NLPAC, Lesbian.org, Lesbian History Project, Janice Perry a.k.a. Gal, Isle of Lesbos, If the Sun Were Queer, FeMiNa Lesbians, Daughters of Bilitis, Asheville Lesbian Resource, and Amazon Online.

Many women in our community regularly post to VTPRIDEnet, Mountain Pride Media’s listserv. The dialogue and connections made through this service have been profound, whether in support of our community’s political activism (most notably when organizing for Vermont’s response to last summer’s statehouse visit by the Reverend Fred Phelps and his followers was achieved efficiently and effective - and almost exclusively - over VTPRIDEnet), or in sharing community information, education, and enlightenment. Social connections are important in our community, too, and VTPRIDEnet was, for example, able to help facilitate the recent formation of a Lesbian parents’ group, which had its very first gathering in May. VTPRIDEnet is a service we are very proud of at Mountain Pride Media, and one that serves Vermont’s women’s community well.

VTPRIDEannounce differs from VTPRIDEnet only in that it is not interactive. Announcements of community activities and information about news events are transmitted to our nearly 600 subscribers to this service on a regular basis. Significantly, the Vermont Freedom to Marry Task Force was able to rely on VTPRIDEannounce to help include more Vermonters, men and women, in the struggle to secure civil rights for lesbian and gay couples during the statewide debate on Civil Unions. Mountain Pride Media has been able to provide support to the Task Force and dozens of other glbtq organizations around the state through this service.

Mountain Pride Media needs the support of all elements of the glbtq community to thrive while meeting its goals of inclusiveness in purpose and representation. This year Mountain Pride Media is working with grant support from the Astraea Foundation to better educate Lesbians in Vermont about the services provided to the Lesbian community by Mountain Pride Media.

The Astraea Foundation has provided matching funds for a challenge grant through which all contributions from women made to Mountain Pride Media throughout the balance of the year 2000 will be matched on a 2:1 basis. For every dollar donated by a woman to Mountain Pride Media, an additional two dollars will be donated from the fund established by the Astraea Foundation and two Vermont women who through their significant donations have demonstrated their personal commitment to the support of Mountain Pride Media and its services.

Please make your own contribution today:

• Help us upgrade our computer equipment and capabilities, so work is easier and more efficiently performed. Better equipment also provides greater flexibility to our staff in working off-site or in being effective while on assignment around the state.

• Invest in our plans to make community meetings accessible on-line.

• Invest in regional coverage from around Vermont for Out in the Mountains and www.mountainpridemedia.org.

• Invest in the improvement in the print quality of OITM, which will require later-generation image scanning devises and the electronic transmission of proofs to the outside print shop.

• Help us support livable wage standards for our paid staff, and grow in financial strength to be able to provide health insurance, dental care coverage, and other benefits of consequence to today’s workforce.

• Help us increase the compensation paid to our Web Editor and Designer, so that this position is also properly compensated.

• Help us support the infrastructure improvements that we believe are critical to sustaining our commitment to a livable wage

• Invest in a fund committed to the provision of appropriate office space for MPM into the future.

• Help us secure better cameras with which to record the happenings in our community.

• Help us continue as the source of Lesbian information, and ultimately history, in Vermont.