The First Rule of Climate Club: A Conversation with Carrie Firestone

This is a machine-generated transcript. There will be errors. The audio file is the definitive record of the episode.

Lee Schneider:
Carrie, welcome to the show.

Carrie Firestone (00:40.255)
Thanks so much for having me.

Lee Schneider (00:42.454)
It's a pleasure. So what motivated you to tell a climate story for young audiences?

Carrie Firestone (00:50.945)
So I would say I've always been a climate activist. And my activism has taken different paths. I was a teacher. I was what you would consider a traditional activist. And so it was very natural for me to combine my activism with writing. And my books, I would say, are an extension of my community and activist work. So when I...

wrote the first book in the two book series, which is called Dress Coded. It's a very feminist, you know, young person power book about a group of students fighting their dress code. And so it was a two book deal. So as soon as I finished that one, I said to my editor, I really want to write a climate book. And I have to say it's...

It's a little tricky to write climate books and get them seen and published right now. I don't know why. It's very frustrating. So I was excited to have this two book deal and this opportunity to finally get the climate book and the climate story out to the world.

Lee Schneider (02:00.152)
So what are some of the special challenges and special delights of writing for this audience?

Carrie Firestone (02:08.349)
So my books, my middle grade books are pretty much read by I would say precocious fourth graders all the way up to ninth graders with the sweet spot being like fifth and sixth graders. So I would say the biggest challenge is what we call the gatekeepers. Actually getting the books into the hands of the kids who want to read them.

So you have, you it's not like adults who can just go to the bookstore, browse and buy a book. Sometimes kids can do that, but often kids are at the mercy of librarians, parents, teachers. So I think one of the challenges is just making sure the adults and the kids lives know about these books so they can say, hey, I think this would be a good book for you. And then I think another challenge is

Not sounding like an adult voice. I would say that's the biggest challenge. So one of the things I do to make sure I'm getting into the voice of the cast is I listen to people of the age of the protagonist. So I was lucky, my own kids were in middle school when I wrote.

these two books. So it was a perfect time to just be listening to kids from the front of a minivan, which is a great time to do it because they don't remember there's someone driving often so I can hear their, you know, their colloquialisms and their, their tone and, you know, just how young people talk right now, because I think a lot of kids are smart and they can tell if a book sounds off or if it sounds, you know, like it's not authentic. and then the other thing I do is

read my own journals. I have dozens of journals from, you know, starting at age nine all the way through college. So my own voice as a kid has helped me kind of craft the voice of young people, if that makes sense.

Lee Schneider (04:10.474)
It does. And that sounds like an amazing resource to have those journals going back to that time. I was struck by the authenticity of the dialogue and just the situations. We have an eighth grader and who's also going to come home. We're mentioning kids coming home to see if he does it quietly. But there were a lot of things that sounded so present to me, like

Carrie Firestone (04:29.738)
Thank you.

Lee Schneider (04:39.874)
concern about what others are thinking and You know, I made some notes here whether they think this one especially got me Whether they think in their new class there will be people they know That's a bit I you know, I hadn't thought about that until our own eighth grader started talking about that and of course the obsession about what other people are wearing and the the

Carrie Firestone (04:56.806)
yeah, that's a big one.

Lee Schneider (05:08.652)
just the way people think about you and the way you're forming your own personality. it's all so external in a way because it's dress coded. It's that idea of what you're wearing says so much about you. I wanted to go back to the idea of kind of writing for two audiences, right? Because the kids who are the readers need to feel it's authentic. But then there's the gatekeepers. How

Carrie Firestone (05:22.314)
Mm-hmm.

Lee Schneider (05:37.56)
Can you go into a little bit more detail about how you satisfy the needs of the gatekeepers without messing things up for the audience of the kids? If you know what I mean there.

Carrie Firestone (05:49.917)
I well, I was a teacher for many years, so I feel like I have that teacher's lens. And yet, I don't think I got it quite right in my first book, because when I read it back in dress coded, I feel like the gatekeepers were a little too caricatured. I did it for a reason. I did it for the young person readers, and they love it. But when I read my first draft of

Climate Club, I read very carefully for that issue. Like, are these adults in the book authentic? And really, I feel like I wrote Climate Club as kind of a fantasy book for teachers. Like, what kind of school, dress coded was a mess for teachers, they were all miserable, but when the administration changed for the companion book, I was like, what would...

excite and inspire teachers and librarians? What would make them feel like, wow, this is a school I'd love to get a chance to work and teach? I actually did want to write a book for gatekeepers because they're going to be reading this too, and they're going to be discussing this with young people probably. So I had this.

really cool curriculum and they get to do all kinds of fun things without anybody breathing down their necks and you know all the things teachers complain about now I wanted to remove from the book so they could have a little relief and you know aspirational I guess when they're reading if that if if that makes sense yeah

Lee Schneider (07:25.013)
It does. Yeah. Now, I want to bring up Judy Blume, who didn't write for parents, I don't think, or maybe. But Judy Blume writes with a really direct interest in what her readers, young people would think. And a lot of adults are, you know, when they read those books, they're a bit freaked out by what she's writing about. Another example would be

Carrie Firestone (07:29.15)
Yeah.

Lee Schneider (07:54.894)
a writer named Neil Shusterman who writes these very, I'd call them pretty brutal books about death and AI and families, but they really speak to the kids, even though they might be totally terrifying to the parents who might allow that kid to get the book or not. Now, to take the example of our kid again, he's read everything Neil Shusterman has written and I've

read as much as I can and I find it almost too hard to read. It's almost too brutal. I'm not prepared for those young protagonists to be going through that kind of rough stuff. But there are authors who clearly do that and the young audience loves it. So I don't know if I have a real question there. It's more like an observation of there's a big divergence with some writers who are super popular with kids, but

They're clearly not writing for the kids parents at all or the librarians, really.

Carrie Firestone (08:58.962)
Yeah, I mean, this this I have a lot of thoughts about this because as I actually just went home to my hometown library this summer where I discovered Judy Blume books when I was eight, probably seven. And I distinctly remember running out of Judy Blume books and having to go to the adult section, finding a Judy Blume book and at nine years old reading wifey, which

you know, is not a kid's book. And so I often use that memory when we're talking about these times because the book banning stuff is getting really concerning. And so the gatekeepers are really like shutting down the gates and you can't even have anything in a book, you know, that, that offends anybody or people are starting to be afraid to buy the book for their school library.

so, you know, but I remember reading Wifey and not understanding a lot of it and just kind of passing it by and not absorbing it and just moving on to the next book. It's not like it traumatized me for the rest of my life. But I think the books, like the books that are scary, the books that are disturbing and you kind of want to protect your kids from, from these stories are actually a safe way for kids to explore these very

you know, this range of emotions. So I'm a strong proponent of letting kids read what they feel like they're ready to read and then discussing it, you know, if they come running to you being like, I'm freaked out, then we have a conversation. But, you know, the opposite is just not letting our kids read anything. And it's getting really concerning out there because I have colleagues who can't get school visits now because of the content of their books.

and who's to say what's appropriate or not appropriate.

Lee Schneider (11:05.121)
Yeah, I latched onto and connected with the idea of these books give kids a chance to experience these emotions that we parents may be even afraid to get into or or we don't know how to broach it. But the beauty of a novel is it's taking place in the kid's head. So they have to construct the world. There's a lot of work that the kid has to do to make that world come alive.

Carrie Firestone (11:27.85)
Mm-hmm.

Lee Schneider (11:32.762)
And it's, daring and on the edge. And I read a lot of adult books when I was a kid. I like Nabokov and I like I was just rereading Steppenwolf, which I haven't read the Herman Hesse book, which I haven't read in probably 30 years or 40 years and amazed that I even followed it as a kid. But it must have. It was one of my favorite books at the time. So must have sparked something. So, this. No.

Carrie Firestone (11:59.167)
And I think that's it. sorry. think that's what sparking something is really the goal, right? Like if we're sparking something in kids that then forces them to think about something or feel it in a safe, you know, from in the privacy of their living room. I think there's something very powerful about that. but often I'll have parents complaining or, you know, parents in town.

saying, this book is disturbing. And now that my kids are in college, I really wanna say, seriously, do you have any idea what they're looking at right now? Probably. Even if they don't have a phone, they're looking at their kids. So books do the least of people's worries. I think books should be pushed on our kids because what they're seeing on these tiny computers is way more concerning.

Lee Schneider (12:38.431)
Right, well, yeah.

Lee Schneider (12:52.941)
I totally second that. What a great thought. It's so true that books are the least of our concerns because they provide context. There's a story. It's shocking sometimes, but it's all character driven or the book wouldn't work. No one would pick up a book that didn't have any characters worth following. So, yeah.

Carrie Firestone (13:16.32)
Exactly. And usually there's a resolution. I mean, at least with middle grade books, we can't really end with like a Game of Thrones red wedding or something. Usually with middle grade books, there may be something concerning or a trauma that happens because trauma happens to kids. But the community works through it together or a friend is there to help. it's guiding our kids to...

Okay, if there's a trauma, here's what the characters did. Let's see if you can kind of figure out how you would do that in your own life.

Lee Schneider (13:50.698)
Mm hmm. Yeah, let's talk a little bit about specifically addressing what works in a middle student, middle grade book, because I noticed short chapters. Just to take something very simple, you did short chapters and there's not a lot of time jumping around. mean, people remember things and there are let's call them flashbacks or something like that. But things proceed in a fairly linear way in most

books written for middle school students. Now, how deliberate were you about that? Did you have to stop yourself and say, I can't do this crazy elliptical thing that I would find in an adult novel. I have to keep this pretty linear. In other words, I guess the focused question would be, did you find it liberating or something that you had to work on and focus on?

Carrie Firestone (14:48.746)
I think, first of all, the short chapters, I think as a teacher and a parent, we have to acknowledge the fact that our kids' attention spans in general are just not the same as maybe when you and I were kids. Now you'll have the handful of kids who still love to read an 800 page book, but a lot of our kids are just, they're going to graphic novels, they're going to different...

formats and so I wanted to be able to appeal to those kids because I felt like the short chapters would appeal to kids with attention issues or you know reading issues but but the content would hopefully not lose kids who still like 800 page books. So that was that was deliberate because I noticed my own kids were starting to lose an interest in reading.

Lee Schneider (15:39.533)
Mm-hmm.

Carrie Firestone (15:46.247)
know, fourth and fifth grade, sixth grade, they all have their horse books and they're, you know, they're, they're because of Mr. Turrupt and their favorites, Harry Potter. But then middle school comes and they're pulled in so many directions socially. So I wanted to kind of pull them in a different social direction, you know, between the pages. So, and then I noticed my stepdad has a traumatic brain injury and he had said, Carrie, I,

I have to say I was able to get through the whole book when he read Dress Coded because there's a lot of white space in the shorter chapters and it's just easier for him to process. So I was like, okay, I think we're onto something here with the format. So no, I think it actually helped me. I liked the idea of breaking it up with podcasts, with letters, with tiny, you know, some chapters were just a paragraph.

Lee Schneider (16:18.656)
Hmm.

Carrie Firestone (16:44.318)
I felt like it helped me focus on the real meat of the story and not get caught up in flowery language that would then probably lose a lot of readers.

Lee Schneider (16:57.011)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. What doesn't get simplified, though, is character development. I don't think any kid or anyone would really read a book where the characters were so simplistic. You mentioned graphic novels. Now, sometimes characters in graphic novels are simplistic, but the illustrations are so rich, they're kind of picking up the slack there a bit. At least that's the way I think of it. But I would imagine

Carrie Firestone (17:24.221)
Absolutely.

Lee Schneider (17:25.857)
when you're conceiving of a book like this, it's as the work that you're doing is as deep as you would be doing for the most complex adult novel in the character realm. Because otherwise, I don't think any kid would read a cardboard character cut out book, except if they're reading, you know, Good Night Moon or something like that. But that that was a long time ago. Do you agree with that or do you have a different idea about how that would?

Carrie Firestone (17:55.773)
do, and I think with my characters and with this demographic, one of my biggest goals is to not have cardboard characters, but to not have tropes. Because to help kids who are going to middle school and seeing that popular kid or seeing that kid everybody stays away from or the kid that kind of disappears, to see them as a fully realized human being. Because...

and to show that the tropes in the book have layers. So for me, it's to surprise you by seeing, okay, this character seemed like a real whatever, but it looks like deep down there's something else.

Lee Schneider (18:44.613)
Mm hmm. That's interesting. Making the tropes deeper or complex or we're not permitted as a reader to just dismiss someone quickly. have to dig in a bit. I want to just.

Carrie Firestone (18:50.558)
Thank

Carrie Firestone (18:58.548)
Yeah, which I think young people struggle with because they come home and there's this kid and they don't like this kid for this reason and it's like, you know what? Let's take a minute. Let's think about this kid.

Lee Schneider (19:10.573)
Let's go broader for a moment and talk about activism and climate. So how do you see are the best ways to get climate messaging out to more people and particularly young people who may be in a position to do something?

Carrie Firestone (19:16.276)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Carrie Firestone (19:32.193)
So my entire life work, body of work has been community, at the community level. And I have seen some of the biggest, most significant changes I can affect happen at the very granular community level. And so in the First World of Climate Club, the kids come together, there's a festival, and they're all working on different climate issues, but the issues are very

local. So if I'm in a small town in Connecticut, a suburban town, which I am, I'm not going to be thinking about the polar bears or the wind, you know, wind on the ocean. And actually, you know, that's true because I am the chair of my clean energy commission in my suburban town. And we're not going to be thinking about those things. We're going to be thinking about how climate change affects our community. And so, and then how we're

contributing to climate change in our community. And let's start there because, you know, that's where we have the most power. And so we look at transportation, we look at composting, we look at, you know, the things that are happening in suburban Connecticut. And so one of the most effective campaigns I spearheaded was an anti-idling campaign. It was very simple. It's already the law.

you're not allowed to idle more than three minutes in Connecticut. It annoys people. It's low hanging fruit. It's pretty easy to address. And so as soon as we had magnets made for people's cars with little slogans about idling, people started becoming like the idling police and being like, I saw somebody sitting in their car idling on their phone. And it became kind of this community movement. And I think it made a real impact.

at the local level. So when I talk to kids and adults about how they can impact climate work, but also to me, it's just environmental stewardship. It's just basically balancing our earth, the damage we've done. Let's start in our backyards. Let's start with our soil. Let's start with the invasive.

Carrie Firestone (21:55.061)
that are outside strangling our trees. And once we do that, we're now touching the trees, we're touching the soil, we're identifying the actual species of plants we have in our town, which most people don't even know. And that connects us to the earth, and then it gets people more interested in continuing. What do we do to mitigate this? So I think it's also a tangible thing because climate change,

You know, I don't know about you, but when I talk about it with people, they don't, they really don't understand what it is. They think it's pollution. Even lawmakers I've talked to get confused. So they think it's just pollution. And so it's very abstract. It's very hard to wrap your head around, but we can wrap our head heads around, you know, the fact that we're wasting so much gasoline and money and energy and

in creating emissions by using these leaf blowers. We can take one tool, figure out how terrible it is for the environment, and then focus on that. And communities have made laws to get rid of leaf blowers, glass-powered leaf blowers. It's effective. it's kind of a long answer, but the gist is hyper-local work, getting passionate about it, and then sharing it with people on Facebook who might live in other communities. And then we start moving.

I think that's how the whole Doug Tallamy's homegrown national park movement has really taken shape. know, planting for pollinators and getting rid of invasives. It's really hitting a tipping point and I think it's because people can do it in their own yards.

Lee Schneider (23:41.055)
And it's, yeah, it's concrete. It's in front of you. Idling, you know, idling cars, good example. Leaf blowers, good example. Food waste. We can see the food that we're throwing out. So it's clear example. And the idea that this connects you with nature, I love that. It's a wonderful notion. I saw a graphic today. It had on one side of the graphic, it said, how many of these logos can you identify? Nike, McDonald's, blah, blah.

Carrie Firestone (23:45.472)
Mm-hmm.

Carrie Firestone (23:54.912)
Mm-hmm.

Lee Schneider (24:10.304)
On the other side, how many of these trees can you identify? Maple leaf, elm leaf. And the answer is none. You know, I don't know what those leaves are. And it really shows how disconnected we've become from our the natural world around us. And if we are disconnected from it, how can we care about it? It makes it harder to care about because it's something we don't we either take for granted or we don't know that well.

Carrie Firestone (24:13.973)
Yeah.

Carrie Firestone (24:34.592)
But I will say, it's a really quick learn. So this summer I did an internship with my Clean Energy Commission. We had 21 high school and college students. And it was basically one of those things where, okay, you couldn't find an internship, so it's the internship to get you an internship. And I was really laid back about it. And I was basically like meet once a week at the town park. The first week I had them take their shoes off and just stand in the grass.

And then we did a pop quiz. walked around and I pointed out like 20 plants and asked them to identify them. And we had only one person knew any of the plants pretty much. By the end of the summer, not only did they know all the plants, which ones were native, which ones were invasive, but they were all like ready to just go on a mission to address Oriental Bittersweet, which is this huge invasive plant in our town. So now we've started this initiative called Stop the Strangle.

And it's basically going around stopping bittersweet from strangling our trees and plants. But it's almost like once you learn, you get out there and you just can't stop. Like we went on a hike yesterday and little kids were stopping the strangle by cutting the bittersweet. So that internship really had an impact on how we see our surroundings. And then they went home and you know,

Lee Schneider (25:38.158)
You

Carrie Firestone (26:00.897)
talk to their parents about why don't we have more natives in our yards. so it's, they say nature heals, but I think we heal too when we are exposed to nature in very small doses. It doesn't take much.

Lee Schneider (26:15.63)
How does someone listening to this take the first step? They hear your experience. You've done a lot and you've seen a lot and you've organized a lot and you've written too. But say one of our listeners says, well, I don't know what to do first. How do I take the first step?

Carrie Firestone (26:36.656)
When I'm working with young people or adults who are asking that question, I always start with one thing, another thing, or both. So the first is what keeps you up at night? So if you're lying in bed at three o'clock in the morning, you start doom scrolling, you land on something that really stresses you out, what is it? Because that's a clue to where you should be putting your energy.

The opposite is what excites you. So maybe the thing that keeps you up at night is invasive plants, but the thing that excites you is gardening. Well, that's perfect, right? Because now you're gardening for pollinators. Maybe food waste is an issue. And I do more in our community than just climate stuff. I do a lot of food insecurity work and trying to do win-win things. So if we're going to be rescuing food, let's feed people with it.

now we're dealing with two issues at once. So if food insecurity is stressing you out as it is many people right now, and you can get on a website, there are apps where you can sign in and it's almost like Uber driving for food rescue. You can go find the food rescue places in your community, do once a week pickups and drop-offs and it's really easy, but that gets you into the...

the food waste slash food insecurity world. So I encourage people to, it's, a lot of people shut down because it's so overwhelming. But in Climate Club and in this book, the kids all have very different interests. One's into EVs, one's into composting, one's into fast fashion and fashion. So choose one thing that you actually lose sleep over or get excited about. Maybe it's fashion. And then,

learn how you can take that passion or anxiety and push it into the community a little bit. So my garage is currently full of clothes because people just know they drop stuff on my front step. It has to be washed. We sort it and it goes to people who need it. That's environmental stewardship. And it's also making sure people are clothed. So it doesn't have to be a big step.

Carrie Firestone (29:02.738)
It's a matter of just go out to your local land trust and start learning about invasive plants and start working, going to like a volunteer group of mitigation, know, plant mitigation volunteer hikes or something. But I think the biggest issue is people are overwhelmed. So like choose one thing, one day a month.

Maybe you're a researcher, so just start doing all the research you can about that topic. Start there. Just read everything you can, know everything you can, watch documentaries, listen, learn, and then say to yourself, all right, I feel like I'm an expert enough that I can go do something about this once a

Lee Schneider (29:48.131)
Hmm. And you mentioned also the characters in the book each have a concern. And this is, again, just coming back to that, one of the great things about books and characters that they give us models of behavior. We get to see how they work it out and how maybe they succeed sometimes and maybe they fail sometimes. But we get to kind of test drive their lives a little bit. And it can help people.

Carrie Firestone (29:53.984)
Mm-hmm.

Lee Schneider (30:15.34)
come up with a solution or at least a model of behavior.

Carrie Firestone (30:20.424)
Yeah, I actually used, so there's a festival in the book and it gets derailed because we haven't even gotten into the racism piece in this book, but there's a racist incident that happens. And I always like to have lots of roadblocks in the books because in my first book, they go to the board of ed, nobody does anything. They go to the superintendent, they don't hear back. Like this is normal life. Working in municipal government.

you're gonna try stuff that you're not gonna hear back, they're gonna look at you like you have three heads and then you get nowhere. So I wanna make sure my characters are resilient and they just try the next thing and they try the next thing. So ultimately they were like, all right, we're just gonna do it ourselves. And I wanna give young people the agency to be like, all right, just go do it yourself then, have your own festival. But I was inspired by my own characters.

and basically copied the festival from the book and had it in my own town in real life. And it was amazing. So yeah, we had a fast fashion fashion show and a band and little, you know, like all kinds of things that kind of mimic the book. So I think the characters work it out and show you that, you know, especially in the climate world, you're going to run into all kinds of

Lee Schneider (31:24.11)
That's great.

Carrie Firestone (31:46.376)
annoying people and annoying laws that say you can't do this, but there's always a way around it.

Lee Schneider (31:55.513)
That's a really good message to think about. I wanted to go wide angle. I'm asking everyone on this show, what is their view? How, what is the state today of writing and publishing? I realize a rather enormous question, but maybe deliberately enormous. So in your view, what's the state of writing and publishing today?

Carrie Firestone (32:21.226)
I'm gonna stick with middle grade. And there's a rumor going around that middle grade is dead. But I've been going to writing conferences and in this world long enough to have heard picture books are dead and then they come back. YA is dead, comes back, vampires are dead, then they come back. So I think at this moment, people are saying middle grade is dead. Books are never gonna be dead. I think it's just...

Times are a little bit stressful, as we know. I've heard paper is more expensive now. I've heard it's just people are being, are really struggling because it's like they want to write a queer climate story and they're getting, you know, pushback because they're never going be able to do school visits, you know? So it's just the state of the world is leading into fiction. Like it is every other domain.

However, I'm still working on books. You know, and I think now is a time when we need stories more than ever. I'm sure other people have said the same thing. I mean, I think some of the most powerful stories in human history have come during times of adversity. And maybe those stories are, maybe you're gonna take a little longer on your book. It's gonna, you're gonna have, you know, three more drafts than you would normally have, because you're not as

as, you know, eager to get it out because you've heard your genre or your age group is dead. It's okay. Like there's no time limit on writing books and stories. It's just whatever you're feeling, feel it, get it on the page. If it's not the time for it, then the time will come for it. And I just don't want people to feel discouraged about writing the stories. I want people to know that publishing

You know, and I've just been, I've been doing a lot of research now, so I haven't even really been paying attention to what's happening in real time. I'm just hearing rumors. But my research is history stuff. And the more I read history, the more I'm like, yeah, we need stories right now. We need them badly. And there are all kinds of ways to publish. know, that's the other thing. You don't have to be published by a famous fancy house to have your story read by

Carrie Firestone (34:50.154)
whoever is meant to read it at this moment. So, you know, I guess that's a rambling answer, but the gist of it is, I don't know what's true and what's not true, but if you have a story in you it feels like it needs to come out, give it time, give it justice.

Lee Schneider (35:09.934)
Wonderful. Can you share what you're working on now?

Carrie Firestone (35:16.126)
Yes, so I have two young adult books out that came out before Climate Club and Dress Coded. And now I'm going in a direction of history, my focus is social movements and how social movements evolved in the 1910s. And mostly they evolved starting in people's living rooms.

And I'm seeing that here, like a lot of the work we do and in all the stuff I'm involved in is happening in people's living rooms, in people's backyards, in the library meeting room. So I'm writing a book about a famous suffragist, socialist, labor activist named Inez Milholland, who even though she was probably one of the most famous people of her time, she's

Nobody knows her. And so I'm obsessed. I've been writing probably, it's been about eight years. And I'm still trying to figure out where, like where the angle is, what this is gonna look like because her life was so full of everything. It was so full of life and she died at a very early age and her story is so compelling and she knew everybody. so.

It's a good time for me to be doing this because sometimes I just hide from the world and I go into 1912 and I just stay there for weeks and what she and her friends are teaching me is keep going. know, whatever you're doing, if you're doing a social movement, if you're working on social justice stuff, they worked really hard and it feels like we need to take the baton from them because they're not here anymore. And they need us to do that.

It really is like she's speaking to me from, you know, in a very eerie and powerful way.

Lee Schneider (37:20.066)
Well said, moving. So where can readers find out more about you and your books?

Carrie Firestone (37:28.354)
so I have a website, Carrie Firestone books, I think I always forget my own website. and then, you know, my books are wherever books are sold and my email is on my website. if anybody is kind of stuck, I love talking to just having a conversation with somebody about like, you know, I heard the podcast and I'm, I'm really interested in climate work, but I'm still kind of stuck and here's what's happening in my community. email me.

We'll have a talk.

Lee Schneider (38:00.152)
Wonderful, that's a very generous and kind gesture. Well, thanks so much for coming on the show today. I really enjoyed our conversation.

Carrie Firestone (38:08.724)
Thanks so much, Lee. Great questions. I did too.