Many thanks to Super Suz for the opportunity to talk about Camp Envy.

Check out their podcasts at Into The Fire and Burner Podcast. 

Transcript

Narrator:
The opinions expressed on the following audio program are solely those of the host and the guests. Burner Podcast is an independently produced, not-for-profit show and is not associated with the Burning Man organization or its subsidiaries. The views expressed are not representative of the entire Burning Man community and are presented here for entertainment purposes only. In short, it's just a podcast.

Introduction

Overview of the podcast setup and guest introduction.

Super Suz:
Super Suz here with Into the Fire Burner Podcast and it is July 22nd, 2020. Thanks for listening and I'm coming to you from my camper van in Northern California, 35 minutes north of Fort Bragg in the Mendocino National Forest on one side and the beautiful Pacific Ocean on the other side. I'm right on a cliff overlooking the ocean camping at the beach. And so I'm not going to give you a big spiel, a big intro.

I have a great guest for you today. You'll be listening to Professor Pickle from Camp Envy, and it's about an hour long, roughly speaking. And yeah, an hour is a long time for a lot of people, but that's okay because, guess what? You are the person who decides how long this podcast should be. You can download or stream this podcast. My favorite place to go listen to my podcast is at the SoundCloud. Burner Podcast channel where you can look up Burner Podcast and see a playlist of all of my podcasts on that channel and they're all downloadable on SoundCloud and you can go ahead and listen to them as mp3s at your own leisure and play them for as long as you want. If you only have 15 minutes because you're driving to work and you get there in 15 minutes, well you just stop the podcast and then on the way home you can listen to another 15 minutes and so on and so on until the podcast is over for you or you feel like you've listened enough to that guest of the show. It's up to you to decide how long you listen to it and that sort of thing. But what's great is you have roughly an hour of Professor Pickle for you to clean the entire house from top to bottom if you wanted to listen to the whole thing at the same time. It's all up to you. And you can find more podcasts at burnerpodcast.com and intothefirebm.com. You can check out past podcasts right there. So there's plenty to listen to all year long, and more to come. 

But again, my name is Super Suz. I'm the host of the show. And you'll be listening to Professor Pickle, my guest. And we're going to explore Camp Envy, which is the largest theme camp not on the playa. And as the burner community shifts to a socially distanced online experience this year, we're all now in Camp Envy. And since 2009, Camp Envy has been welcoming home burners online. Burners weren't able to attend the annual gathering at Black Rock City. Camp Envy was there at the chat room for the live cam. For a long time, the live cam was housed at a place called Ustream, I believe the website used to be called. And there was this fantastic chat space where you can chat next to the live stream at Black Rock City. And through that chat room, burners would connect annually so they would attend the annual virtual gathering of the Black Rock City live stream and Camp Envy is populated by veteran Burners from a variety of theme camps to folks just curious about the Burner culture who've never even been to Burning Man and are seeking ways to connect. And it's a global network of Camp Envy members forming positive connections online, participating in burn events on and off the playa, supporting burners in need, helping theme camps build art projects, and radically expressing themselves during the Burning Man webcast. You can use #BMwebcast for more information.

So this is a moment of meaningful transition for our burner community this year in 2020 as we virtually burn in place and Camp Envy is here to help you along the journey and your virtual experience. So visit CampEnvy.org to learn more. And let's get started with Professor Pickle. And I want to thank you for listening to Into the Fire BM. Thank you for listening to my podcast and tell all your friends, download the whole thing, listen to it for as long as you want. Here you go.

Origins of Camp Envy

Professor Pickle explains the beginnings of Camp Envy as a virtual camp for those unable to attend Burning Man.

[audio fades in]

Professor Pickle: 

…so, I'm a lighting designer, electrician, kind of like a polymath, I do all sorts of stuff… technical director…

Super Suz: 

Okay, technical director and also a very big part of Camp Envy. That's why we're talking to you. We'll talk about all kinds of stuff, but primarily about Camp Envy and people are probably, many have heard about it, especially if you're at home and during burn week at Black Rock City Week, I'm talking about, and you're watching the live cam, and you're like, what is all this chat going on alongside? (at least back in the day) Who are these people?

Professor Pickle:
Who is Camp Envy? Well, we're trying to figure that out ourselves. Camp Envy are, at the root, people who are unable to go to the playa during burn week and participate directly in that community.

We don't see it as a festival. It's a community of other people, like-minded individuals or creative individuals that want to collaborate and gather and connect with just the human nature of the event. So I'm really excited about that every year. Camp Envy is made up of anyone who can't go, and so you've got people from theme camps that for one reason or another aren't able to go through either disability, through logistics, due to economic restraints. You know, there's lots of reasons why people can't go out to the desert. Some people can't hang with all the dust or the heat or whatever. If it was at Baker Beach, it might be a different story. I don't know. But, you know, for one reason or another, we're not able to go. For me personally, I wasn't able to go for a number of years. Well, I put restrictions on that. I was an instructor and as an instructor, school always starts just before Labor Day. As a result, I can't go because I'd be teaching class. I'm like two weeks into class, and I can't take a couple of weeks off, you know, just after starting classes and go off and go “whee!” and play. But as time went on...

Super Suz:
You can't have a family reunion every year, you mean, right?

Professor Pickle:

Yeah, right, exactly. Now, let me preface this. I mean, the word “can't” is a choice, okay? I could choose to leave my job and go to the playa and participate. Okay, that's a choice. And I've chosen to “adult” to a certain degree. And I've made those choices since 1996.

Webcast and Technology

Discussion about early webcast technology, Ustream, and community connections.

Professor Pickle:
And so one of the large events of Camp Envy is a gathering around a unified source of connection, which is a webcast. So webcast was something that was initiated around 2000.

Super Suz:
And this is the Burning Man webcast?

Professor Pickle:
This is the Burning Man webcast, and initially it had started... I'm sorry, I didn't mean to step on you.

Super Suz:

That's okay, keep going.

Professor Pickle:

So the webcast... People would start to make home movies while on Playa, once they make it out to the Black Rock Desert, and they share these things in theaters and home movies, that kind of stuff. And as the information superhighway started to take hold in the mid-90s, people were really excited about trying to find ways to connect the Internet, trying to connect the outside or the default world with what's happening with the burner universe.

Super Suz:

So if I may interject, like the cable, the public cable TV channels, remember those?

Professor Pickle:
Oh, yeah, I love those.

Super Suz:

Yeah, there's a several channel, like shows on them that had a lot of burner content in it. But anyway, like that kind of thing was going on around the same time, I think, as the internet is moving into our world, the cable TV channel’s still there. And for a lot of people, they learned about Burning Man from that kind of content.

Professor Pickle:

Yeah, there was a company called Popcast that, I don't think they're around anymore, but they broadcast the main burn, but they also did a fire opera. It was a Pepe Ozan project. And so, after showing a couple of those things back in, I would say in 2003, 2004, there was a gentleman named HyperJohn who had created a type of webcast through his ability to take camera content, which is a remarkable and no easy feat, to be able to broadcast live video content from Black Rock City to be able to send it to Gerlach and then beam it to Reno in order to go out to the rest of the world.

Super Suz:

That's before the towers were put out, I believe.

Professor Pickle:

Yeah, exactly. So you'd have to, well, they would, they would erect these, uh, these, you know, 40 to 80 foot tall, uh, trust towers in which you would have an antenna to broadcast. In some instances you'd put the cameras actually up on the broadcast tower and it wasn't so much a, uh, a, a situation where you're just passively watching everybody have fun. Okay. One of the prerequisites to watching this kind of a podcast, if you're the camera operator, is you need to obviously respect the privacy of the people who you're broadcasting. And so we wanna make sure you obscure it or do a wide angle enough so you don't recognize anybody because everybody deserves privacy.

Super Suz:

Were you a part of that too? Were you part of the tech of that?

Professor Pickle:

No, no, not until 2013. That was my first burn.

Super Suz:

So, from the very beginning, privacy, immediacy, participation.

Professor Pickle:

And of course, consent, expressed consent, that if you're going to be on a camera, you need to expressly consent to being visible and recognizable. Because some people, when they go to the playa, just like the same kind of basic respect kind of things, that kind of got parlayed into video. And Camp Envy, you'd always have people who can't go for one reason or another, if you had a lottery and you just couldn't get your lottery ticket to get to the playa, half your theme camp can't get there, and so you have direct ticket sales.

Super Suz:

Camp Envy blossomed in that year.

Professor Pickle:

There were quite a few. Actually, what's kind of funny is around 2008, 2009, when the economic crash happened here in the United States, for our international listeners, I'm sure it happened everywhere, too. But there were an abundance of people who came to Camp Envy. And in 2009, one of the unique features was that, rather than in previous years, it was a one-way window. So you would just simply see whatever was being seen. And there was no way to connect with other people. There may have been some IRC chat rooms, where, you know, people can kind of type in if you were, you know, computer savvy and connect that way. But that wasn't something that was publicly available at the time. So in 2000...

Super Suz: 

We take it for granted that all of this kind of stuff that we use is available, but it hasn't been for that long, really.

Professor Pickle:
Yeah. Yeah. It's had some baby steps along the way, some growing pains, too.

Super Suz:
Yeah. So what year was this again, where you had IRC? This is like AOL chat rooms, is that what we're talking about?

Professor Pickle:

Right, right, right. That's pre-2009, and 2009 was a very formative year for us, because the broadcast was then shifted from a standalone QuickTime webpage on the Burning Man Project website, that it was instead sent to a place called Ustream, Ustream.com, and they don't exist anymore. They were bought up by another company.

Super Suz:
And they were like, what the heck? This is some good stuff on Ustream.

Professor Pickle:

Yeah. And the thing that really, that really helped to pull it together was the fact that, side by side, it was a split screen.

Super Suz:
You have a chat.

Professor Pickle:
You have a chat room and the video. Which was amazing, because we could have, our Playa names were either, you know, self-created or because, if we're not on Playa, we kind of give each other names to a degree. But our avatar names or our pseudonyms, were our playa names.

Community and Participation

How Camp Envy fosters global participation and collaboration.

Super Suz:

So, and so for that playa week, you would be in Ustream and connecting with your friends that you have met up with every year.

Professor Pickle:
A lot of people don't think about that. They think that, okay, so you kind of dial in, you check it out, because back in the days you could actually dial-in, to get onto the internet. But just as much time [as people on playa would spend at Burning Man, people in Camp Envy would experience as well.] the webcam would run 24/7 all week long. There would be people in the chat room at 4 in the morning having a conversation about making bacon-tini’s and other recipes and things like that. Just talking about the ways of the world and what the weather is like in England, Australia or Japan.

Super Suz:
And Envy all the people on the playa while they're watching Camp Envy. That's where that comes from.

Professor Pickle:

Yeah. Yeah. Wishing that we could be there on the playa. We're envious to a degree. And so the word was coined actually in the chat room. And that's where we kind of came up with that idea. A fellow named SDmedia went to get the domain campenvy.com. And so we had a website presence in which we had a downstairs chat room. So, if there were too many trolls, as it were, I mean, we're all familiar with what trolls are online.

Super Suz:

That's people who come for fun, come and interrupt the communication

Professor Pickle:

Attention seekers.

Super Suz:

Yeah.

Professor Pickle:
So we developed a downstairs area, or SDmedia developed it, and we were able to have, kind of like, a quiet, slower paced, chat that was actually more meaningful where we could develop family relationships online and encourage other people to burn locally. And so we had our own little regional network of burners who had to go to work in the morning. And so they were up all night watching the webcast, and then they had to groggily drag their feet to work. And I'm sure on their lunch break, of course, “only on their lunch break” where they log into their work computers and check out the webcast.

Super Suz:

Some people are thinking, why would you do that? Spend hours on a chat room on the internet? Well, back in the day when that was the thing, that was the thing. This is pre-Facebook, pre-social media, pre-YouTube, in fact. I don't know if YouTube was around or just starting, maybe.

Regional Connections

Stories of Camp Envy members participating in local regional events and collaborations.

Professor Pickle:

It was about starting. But for me personally, it was a catalyst for action. It wasn't just something that was a passive activity. It actually encouraged me to seek other ways to contribute to the burner community. And that's when I was invited to be a part of Cirque Berserk, which some of you in the Red Nose District may remember the days of having circus performers breathing fire and silk performers.

Super Suz:
Now, the Red Nose District, tell us more about that to start out.

Professor Pickle:
Red Nose District, a group of performers, stilt walkers, jugglers, clowns, other sort of entertainers.

Super Suz:
Was it a theme camp on the playa?

Professor Pickle:
Yeah, it was a large theme village, as it were. There were lots of people from all over the world who would collaborate and share their skills and talents. They had a tent, a large tent that could seat 400 people and would put on shows. They would put a call out on Playa to anybody, you know, does anybody have any stage lighting that we could use to put on the show, you know, to light it up. And my friend Dan Reed helped to do that, of Dan Reed Lighting Design, which is awesome. And he helped to illuminate this magical phenomenon, which blossomed into something that was brought back to Los Angeles, which is where I'm from. And in LA in 2008, that was something that was brought the summer of 2008, the circus of Cirque Berserk got their start.

Super Suz:
So they started out on the playa as a troupe, and then those who could make it back to L.A. from wherever they came from, from that village, were able to assemble and make a production in Los Angeles.

Professor Pickle:

In Los Angeles, and Athena Demos was the regional contact in Los Angeles to create the Los Angeles League of Arts. Through the Los Angeles League of Arts, we connected with other people. I participated in the Bequinox, the event that happens midway between burns out near Joshua Tree.

Super Suz:
That's a pretty good one, I've heard, the Mojave Joshua Tree.

Professor Pickle:
It's amazing. Yeah. Beautiful piece of land.

Super Suz:
We'll talk about that, because it still goes on, doesn't it?

Professor Pickle:
Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Absolutely, and Los Angeles Decompression Party that was at the Los Angeles State Historic Park for a number of years.

Super Suz:
It must have been dreamy, just having a burner kind of culture and experience and expression in Los Angeles.

Professor Pickle:
It was idyllic. It was fantastic. You've had these swag globe lights everywhere between the tents. Other sort of burner vendors showcasing some of the arts that they've created to share with the “normies” or the community of Los Angeles. They would come and get curious and learn more about the burner ethos in the process.

Super Suz:
A lot of regionals invite the local community personally. Like, they send out some kind of invitation to the very close-by locals or wherever they're at. I've seen that before that they do that in Gerlach, I believe. They even say, “Hey, residents of Gerlach!”. I think they have a bus that takes them out to Black Rock for free, to check out what's going on on the playa kind of thing. So, yeah, that must have been wonderful for the community. I mean, if that showed up in my neighborhood, I would be thrilled.

Professor Pickle:

Right. Participating in something like that in 2009 was really fundamental to my participation with Camp Envy. I wanted it to find a way to reach other people and to help let people know about this weird thing that happens in the desert, but also show people about other cool things that are happening locally. If they step away from their day-to-day drudgery to find ways to express themselves radically, to embrace some of the other ten principles of radically expressing.

Super Suz:
Did you find a lot of the Camp Envy regulars, Camp Envy campers, end up going to their local regional and report back on that experience? Have you ever?

Professor Pickle:
Yeah, absolutely.

Super Suz:
Let's hear about that.

Professor Pickle:
Well, up in the Bay Area, we had Phoenix and Figgy, a couple members of Camp Envy, participating in the San Francisco pre-compression and decompression events up there. We had Gumby Roffo from Australia come and visit for Bequinox and other sort of events. We had SDmedia, of course, down in San Diego working with Youtopia and broadcasting locally at the Los Angeles Decompression Party. Closet Burner, who has a YouTube channel, long-time Camp Envy participant, sent [video] “Postcards to the Playa”. So, you know, for people that are out on the Playa who would have a chance to see a broadcast, he would actually create videos to send to people to be actually seen on the Playa. A lot of people have the idea that what happens on the playa, stays there, that the “outside world” or the “default world” has no business connecting with it, but we feel just the opposite. That is, it's a way for everyone to collaborate, whether it means to take images from the webcast and transform them into beautiful art and post them in a virtual art gallery. If there are ways that we could help Burners Without Borders or other sort of programs that other Burners have got going on, we've got funding because we don't have tickets to the playa. We've got ways and resources to help out other Burners on their art car projects. People are working on their theme camps, we have burners that can connect locally or regionally to work on those projects, whether it be in Texas or Arizona or here in California. We've got lots of things that are going on where people can connect. Back in the day, we had people working on the 747. We had Mars Rover Art Car Projects, the Black Rock Observatory. Those were all projects that...

Super Suz:
That sounds wonderful!

Professor Pickle:

People from Camp Envy helped to participate to put together and share with the community, helped to develop funding and fundraising to bring these things up off the ground. And yeah, so there's lots of opportunities where we can help each other out.

Super Suz:

So it is a community effort. That's definitely true for Camp Envy.

Professor Pickle:

Yeah. Absolutely. And we're still growing. We're still trying to figure things out. We are one of these things that kind of doesn't exist until it exists. 

Virtual Experiences

Ideas for VR, AR, and virtual playa experiences.

Super Suz:

Right, it doesn’t exist until it exists. Well there's a lot of that going on this year with this virtual burn that's happening to our pandemic. 

Professor Pickle:
Now everybody's in Camp Envy and so we've kind of have an existential crisis here. It's like “well what do we do now?” So, we've got some ideas. Last year, I was camping with Camp Tsunami, and they’re a really great group of people out there. Jet Burns, Scott Kelly, Pat Rapp, and Widget. (Hey, everybody!!!) A lot of great folks who want to have something to participate in, whether it's creating a virtual playa…

Super Suz:
What have you got up your sleeve? What are you thinking about doing?

Professor Pickle:

Well, there's a couple of different things that we got in the works. What we did at the LA decompression is we created a virtual playa experience, where it was a small tent, people were invited to put on some goggles and a dust mask, and inside the tent, there's a couple of rocks in there and a bunch of playa dust that was imported, actually, from across state, a couple of PBR cans around the corner and then we'd stick in a leaf blower in there for a few minutes and simulate whiteout situation.

Super Suz:

You have like the playa dust inside the tent?

Professor Pickle:

Oh, yeah.

Super Suz:

That's funny.

Professor Pickle:

Oh, yeah. A friend, Carl…

Super Suz:

There's a certain smell to ply of dust, you know.

Professor Pickle:

You know, it's funny that you mention that. I'm from a family of potters, ceramists. And so, I'm very familiar with that clay, especially when it gets wet. The aromatics are released, and all of a sudden, that smell of clay is so visceral. And it reminds me of home, which is kind of funny. Home right now is in our hearts, and some of us may have little samples of playa. But this is kind of an interesting thing.

Super Suz:

People are out there uncorking their little bottle of playa dust and taking a snort.

Professor Pickle:

Rubbing and dabbing a little behind their ear. It's an interesting phenomenon. So, I don't know, we might do some virtual robotic knife throwing experiences, because you want to have something that's dangerous, but it's also interactive. So who knows? We'll see. We've got some tricks up our sleeve. But yeah, there's other burners in Camp Envy that are with other theme camps, and they do things with those guys, and we just kind of collaborate across the spectrum, which is a marvelous experience.

Super Suz:

I'm looking forward to what Camp Envy can do. So let's just mention that just recently there's been a post on the Burning Man website, again, a second post to follow up with the first, which is all about the multiverse for 2020. In other words, the idea that there was going to be potentially a ticketed environment or platform or something. So after all was said and done on roundtables throughout the headquarters office, the decision was, it actually happened just as I predicted, which was that they're not a tech office. They don't have tech support. They don't want people calling up any kind of Burning Man number. Poor Molly at the front desk would be terribly inundated with, “I don't know how to work this headset, this VR headset”. “I just bought one and I don't know how to use it.” So they, instead of coming up with a platform that they would call it theirs, and somehow contract with somebody. They have heard the call that many, many different platforms want to do something, including, I was just looking at the Minecraft people. Minecrafters are setting up some kind of a black rock playa somewhere.

Professor Pickle:

Yeah, and Burn2 and Second Life.

Super Suz:

Right, and Burn2 I'm familiar with. I'm the regional contact for Burn2.

Professor Pickle: Yeah, Mia Wallace is a member of Camp Envy, too.

Super Suz:

In fact, we've had some Camp Envy camps before at our week-long burn. So in a way, not only have they gone to the virtual regional, I should say, and we've had Camp Envy people come in and make beautiful Camp Envy camps virtually.

Professor Pickle:

Guitar Dan Nevada had been doing that for years and I am just really impressed by his work.

Super Suz:

Yeah, so what was I saying, anyway? I was just telling you about this.

Professor Pickle:

Oh, the multiverse.

Super Suz:

Yeah, the article talking about these five different platforms. I think there's five. But the thing that's going to really happen is anyone and everyone is going to go guerrilla. And all over the world, people are going to do their own thing, whether they're going to come up with something to do with their friends, their camp, and they're going to do it almost privately together as a group like someone's backyard or a ranch or something, carefully and safely.

Professor Pickle:

Wow! It's finally happened. It's amazing.

Super Suz:

You're going to have people like yourself saying, we're going to take hours somehow virtually, and we're going to invite others to join in somehow virtually. And it may not be in those five platforms or it might, it might, but it pretty much can be anything. The sky's the limit. The technology is the limit.

Professor Pickle:

I agree. And I think a lot of people, because you've got so many things happening, it's good to have a guidepost or a compass rose to look at.

Super Suz:

We need a guidebook. We need a who, where, when…

Professor Pickle:

Who, what, when, where, a lighthouse…

Super Suz:

the book that you get at the gate. I keep saying that to everybody. I can at HQ whenever I get a chance, because I want the FOMO. I want to be able to go, Oh my God, there's 20 things to do. And one of them, maybe there's 200 because it's all over the world today. I can do 200 different things in 200 different places.

Professor Pickle:

And it doesn't have to be just one week a year.

Super Suz:

But I kind of want the FOMO for that week. I want to be able to say, wow, there's a lot going on. And then people are like, well, I don't know how to handle a VR headset. I don't have a Vibe or an Oculus. The thing that's great is we are currently experimenting with our technology that we are comfortable with, such as our Zooms, and our Google Hangouts, and Skyping, and our phone, just FaceTiming our friends and stuff.

Right. And so we choose our own adventure based on our proficiency and comfortability with the technology.

Take that platform that you're comfortable with. And it may even be saying to your burner community close by, let's do a bike ride. There's been some regionals that have done this already. It was a drive by art, you would go to these certain places that you would be given the address for, and then you would visit each of these places that had a kind of an art installation of some kind but that you can still go and look at the art and maybe other stuff that was happening. I don't know but it was kind of…

Professor Pickle:

That sounds like a lot of fun I'd want to be a part of that, for sure.

Super Suz:

Then there's burners with bikes that go out and do bike rides together. So there's like those kinds of things you can do.

Professor Pickle:

And I really like things that are just like pushing the edge of technology, bringing in virtual or augmented reality into the world.

What do you think you'd like to try?

Oh, shoot. You know, here's the thing. I like sensory stimulation and I love sounds. I love hearing the sound of the “ooch, ooch, ooch”, background noise of the Playa experience. Because if you've not been out there and been surrounded by all the art cars on Burn Night to see just how vast and how wide, just the amount, the sea of humanity and the creativity is just really overwhelming. But the sound itself is such a unique phenomenon. And years ago, a group of people or a single person had recorded different areas on Playa, different sounds, either drum circles or people talking or people playing music or other sort of ways of interacting.

Super Suz:
I could use that.

Professor Pickle:

So the different, different villages were recorded and you could actually kind of map out where you were based on how you heard it.

Super Suz:
Really? I like to invite that guy...

Professor Pickle:

…and so for people who may be sight challenged, that would be a wonderful way to kind of immerse yourself through hearing what's going on on different levels.

Super Suz:

Yeah. So invite the guy to set up the, some kind of internet, some kind of play space online where you click a button and you hear the sounds of the playa.

Professor Pickle:

Yeah. Or virtually you should use your app and a set of headphones and walk in a park, you know, so you could, you could set it up, take it with you, set up a park. And as you physically walk through these environments, you could hear those sounds of those areas of what it was like a year ago or a couple years ago, you know.

Super Suz:

Or you and your backyard family party, you know, crank up the playa sounds.

Professor Pickle:

Exactly.

Super Suz:

You see your popsicle stick burn in the backyard.

Professor Pickle:

Oh boy. You know, here in Los Angeles, we really embraced the pyrotechnics from our last 4th of July.

Super Suz:

Oh yeah?

Professor Pickle:

And the entire city erupted.

Super Suz:

Oh yeah, that's right. I saw that. Okay, so let's just set this up for those who don't know. So since you live in LA, there is a July 4th that just happened and in LA, the mayor, I think it was, decided that they were not going to have any fireworks because of the COVID concerns.

Professor Pickle:

No big formal shows, no professional shows.

Super Suz:

And that's a big deal for LA, the third largest city in the world, I believe.

Professor Pickle:

Everybody expressed themselves radically and they found some pyrotechnics.

Super Suz:

Now, did you guys know ahead of time that this was happening so that you can go out? I heard that people were making their own fireworks.

Professor Pickle:

Well, you know, idle hands. You've got people in quarantine for two months. What else are people going to do? Well, if you travel other parts of the United States, it's fairly easy to get fireworks. I mean, there's 24-hour emporiums of fireworks in Texas and Florida.

Super Suz:

What do you do? Do you take the ones that are legal and then strap them all together and take five and then somehow make a rocket out of them?

Professor Pickle:

Well, that sounds like a great idea.

Super Suz:

Because the helicopter footage of July 4th, there were some big sprays.

Professor Pickle:

Oh, if you get a chance to see the video footage from KTLA, they interspersed the music of Vangelis for a Blade Runner [homage]. But yeah, so there's lots of different ways that we could express ourselves and get out and safely. I've been hunkered down. I've been hunkered down for the past 16, 17 weeks.

Super Suz:

How are you doing with that?

Professor Pickle:

Um, It's not easy. I've become a farmer. I learned to grow!

Super Suz:

Really?

Professor Pickle:

I got these seeds. Oh my gosh, Chrysande from SF, I gotta tell you about Chrysande. She's amazing.

Super Suz:

Are they tomatoes or weed?

Professor Pickle:

Yeah, well, tomatoes, tomatoes. It's vegetables is what it is. So I got these heirloom tomatoes and they're starting to flourish now. She specialized in creating these wonderful varieties of old heirloom tomatoes. And she's actually in the Bay Area and is with a group that helps to distribute these older varieties of heirloom tomatoes to other people.

Super Suz:
What a great BRC week playa gift.

Professor Pickle:

Absolutely.

Super Suz:
I like tomato. The flavor is so much different than a homegrown tomato. Have you noticed that already? How much flavor comes out of those tomatoes in the backyard?

Professor Pickle:

Oh, huge difference, huge difference. And absolutely, as a Camp Envy member, she also helps to create something for the temple, and has done so for a couple of years, where she would create these strings of bells with people's names on them of people who've passed or other remembrances for those that have gone on. And that's to be strung up in the temple to be burned on Sunday. And then, Motorbike Matt, as one of his gifts, is to... He would offer himself the ability to have Camp Envy members from across the world who aren't on Playa to send messages to the temple through him and he would find one way or another to take that message and place it in the temple for people to be burned on Sunday. It was amazing.

Super Suz:
We should mention who Motorbike Matt is. Motorbike Matt is the emcee, I guess we'll call it, the lead of the webcam, live cam that happens at Black Rock City. So he and a crew of, I think, four or five, three to five guys.

Professor Pickle:
Yeah, Motorbike Matt, not Motorboat Mike, just to be clear. I worked with him in 2013 when we brought the Mars Rover Art Car to the playa.

Super Suz:
He's so scientific, isn't he? He's very brainy.

Professor Pickle:

Yeah! It was great. Well, he actually is a rocket scientist. That's right. He did work for NASA. Well, he's also got a team of other wonderful camera operators and hosts that help to manage the webcast. There's a whole team of people responsible for getting that thing off the ground. I mean, literally, you have to get a 40 foot or 80 foot boom to get the webcam up to the tower. And last year, I was actually on Playa, so I missed a lot of the webcast, but I'd heard that they went up in an airplane and did a broadcast from an aircraft live, which is pretty cool.

Super Suz:

Isn't that amazing? So they got some frequency reception up there, I don't know if it's radio or what, but that's amazing.

Professor Pickle:

And lots of interviews of artists on the playa.

Super Suz:

Like Deep Playa live as well, somehow. I think maybe it was on the science rover thing. I think that's what they were using, if not...

Professor Pickle:

Yeah, the rover was out there back when the Black Rock Observatory was out in Deep Playa. It was actually moved out to like 4:30 and G last year, so that even though there's a trade off with a little bit more light in the city, with the 21-inch Dobsonian reflector telescope, we were still able to see a tremendous amount of the cosmos and share that with the communities. And that's one of the ways that I helped to participate on Playa is by helping to run the telescopes, which was a real blast. And gosh, I had a great time with those guys.

Super Suz:
Playa magic, that these things can come out to the desert where there's nothing and share these passions. We all share our passions with each other. And it's not easy. It's a lot of work.

Community Challenges

Addressing inclusivity, trolls, and safe spaces online.

Professor Pickle:

It is a lot of work, but it also shows how many people, I mean, it's a finite number of people who could actually go to the Nevada desert. And it's an infinite number who can participate this year online. And whether you go to campenvy.org or you go to the Burning Man website, there's lots of different things going on.

Super Suz:
Well, I kind of disagree on that being infinite. Although we could say it could be if we count the number of ways that you can participate being infinite. But as far as online, you're limited by the fact that you need to have internet access.

Professor Pickle:

You need internet access.

Super Suz:
The Sahara or something in the middle of lots of places in the USA that don't have internet access.

Professor Pickle:

Not yet, but Starlink and other companies are working on that.

Super Suz:
Is that right? So we're trying to get it all over somehow with a satellite type of...

Professor Pickle:

Yeah, to kind of democratize information. So you're not beholden to the restrictions of whatever government strictures there are.

Super Suz:
Tell us more about Starlink. So that's a good start. It's something to do with democratizing.

Professor Pickle:

Well, I don't want to get into commodification.

Super Suz:
Oh, it's a company? It's not an organization.

Professor Pickle:

It's a company that's actually being developed by a burner. So, you know, if you look it up, if you're curious.

Super Suz:
Oh that one. That's right.

Professor Pickle:

And you might be surprised who the burner was, you know, as well. But, you know, he put a car in space not too long ago.

Super Suz:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. OK.

Professor Pickle:

Yeah, it's kind of funny.

Super Suz:
I get you. So yeah, you're limited by the internet. And you're limited by access and privilege to that. There's being able to read, literacy, and all that other stuff.

Professor Pickle:

You bring up a really good point with privilege and access. A lot of us don't have safe spaces. A lot of us are experiencing evictions. When you're not working, you can't pay the bills, and if people are kicking you out to the streets, it's making it a very difficult situation. And now more than ever, we really need each other and resources and networks to help our fellow man, because if our governments aren't gonna be taking care of us, we gotta take care of each other, because this is who we are.

Super Suz:
Yeah, you have to take care of each other. Do you have any ideas on that that can take it to a level of understanding beyond, like, we need to help each other? How do you see that happening in the near future? Do you have any?

Professor Pickle:

Oh, gosh. You know, if you find one person, just like exponential growth as it were, you find one person who's got a good idea, they'll connect you to another person. You'll find a bunch of other people that are like-minded, that you can glom onto. As far as your community resources are concerned.

Super Suz:
Yeah, communal efforts.

Professor Pickle:

Yeah, communal efforts. I mean, look for the people who are protesting for human rights. That's a good start, you know, for people who are vocalizing the need for equality, for people who are expressing the need to take care of basic human services, you know. That's where I would start with. It's kind of like if you think of “Maslow's Hierarchy of Need”, many of us slip down from the very top of self-actualization all the way down to just needing food and water and shelter.

Super Suz:

When you go down to that level, it’s harder…

Professor Pickle: 

It's harder to burn and celebrate and go “whee”, but this is, you know, this is kind of the base of who we are. We need, just like Hug Nation, we all need to help each other out.

Super Suz:

The survival time versus play time, you know? A lot of the burn for many is our play time, our adult play time to explore and express and challenge ourselves in whatever we want to do to make a challenge. But it's hard to do that when you’re at that point.

Professor Pickle: 

Yeah, it's a good exercise to ask yourself, “What does it mean to be a burner?” I don't know. I mean, I know my experience, but my experience is different than somebody else's experience because I'm looking to do something different with it than somebody else might be. I'm interested in participating and doing.

Super Suz:

It’s a different experience for everybody.

Professor Pickle:
Yeah, some people just want to kick back in their own theme camp and just kind of do their own thing. Others actually would like to create a newspaper, would like to get into satire, would like to do a playa fashion makeover, you know, give out free snow cones.

Super Suz:
Or try a chance for role play or try a snippet of something that they would think would be exciting and challenging for them.

Professor Pickle: 

But it's an opportunity to also share the gifts of you, that you are the gift that when you're showing people how compassionate you can be, when you can share some of the talents or skills, or if you can help somebody out either financially or otherwise, loan, borrow, whatever, help people out. I mean, goodness gracious, this is the time where we need humanity to be at its best when we're challenged the most.

Super Suz:
Well, we have some skill sets we've learned as burners, and communal effort is one of them. And that's going to serve us really well, I think.

Professor Pickle:
Communal effort, yep, one of the 10 principles for sure.

Super Suz:
I think doing everything ourselves, like the whole self-sufficiency, do it yourself, by yourself, is not the same thing, I think, as self-sufficiency. I think that's about...

Professor Pickle:
Right, but we also have a civic responsibility to create an environment or community that is sustainable.

Super Suz:
Right.

Professor Pickle:
So support local artists, support as many people that you're able to do at whatever level you can.

Super Suz:
Okay.

Professor Pickle:
We do have, Camp Envy has a Facebook group.

Super Suz:
Let's talk about how you get connected to Camp Envy. Somebody wants to, they like the idea. They want to get involved. What do they do? How do they do it? What do you do outside of the week of Black Rock? Do you guys have Decom, Precom and that kind of thing?

Professor Pickle:
Like I was saying earlier, Camp Envy doesn't exist until it exists. And we do have some informal things that happen from time to time on the Facebook group page, sometimes people announce randomly…

Super Suz:
Like a happy hour thing…

Professor Pickle:
Yeah, like a little burn barrel conversation you want to get people together just kind of throw that out there and if you want to be a part of it you can do that there's another place you can go to PlugDJ where you can be a virtual avatar and watching select YouTube videos that may have some relevance to Burning Man or whatever. If you want to get your certain theme or groove on…

Camp Envy Today

Modern platforms (Slack, Discord) and future directions for Camp Envy.

Super Suz:
You have a Discord channel.

Professor Pickle:
Yeah. There's all sorts of stuff that you can do. I would advise, depending on the timeline that you're going to be releasing this podcast, visit campenvy.org and we'll have a menu of places that you can go, see, and do. I'm sure others will as well.

Super Suz:
Yeah, so you Camp Envyers need to start coming up with your own content, it's not like one dude is supposed to be doing it, the website owner. Camp Envy people can come up with their own stuff and post it on Kindling or the Facebook group and come up with their ideas to have others participate especially for the week of burn, I mean BRCvr.

Professor Pickle:
So yeah, if you create art, even if you don't identify with being an artist, it's an opportunity for you to make and express yourself in ways that you may not ordinarily do that, and share the gift of you. And yeah, I think it's a good opportunity for everybody to shine with that burning desire to share and connect that we all have inside each other.

Super Suz:
Now, having a virtual community, just from my experience, it's not easy and it does take a community to do it. Just like any other camp, you come and meet up for that week only and that's what it's designed for.

Professor Pickle:
It's a very unique dynamic in that participants in Camp Envy, some of them, you've got a mixture of individuals. You've got tourists and you've got pilgrims. So you've got these tourists and you've got pilgrims. They're there for different reasons. Some of them just wanna see the spectacle. Some want to develop a sense of community and continue the connections with each other. And obviously, those are the richer connections. But the idea is to bring people deeper into the connection, as it were and find other ways where we can find a safe space to express ourselves and a safe space where we can work on community projects together to create divergent spaces. That's one of the things that really gets me excited is helping to develop a space that you don't expect.

Super Suz:
Yeah, the safety idea. How do you handle trolls? Do you have like a ranger ship of some kind or what is that?

Professor Pickle:
You know, that's a really good question. We have an excellent ranger on duty, a few of them. One of them in particular, my favorite, is Ranger Nerdgasm. And so she helps to shut down the trolls when they do happen.

Super Suz:
Does she ranger them or just like, you're out?

Professor Pickle:
Well, here's the thing, you ignore the trolls. You try to ignore the trolls. And if someone is stepping over the line, they're either going to get a warning because some people are just trying to test the limits of what they can get away with. And, if they just don't get the point, then they get the boot. We hate to do that within a circumstance.

Super Suz:
That’s really hard because as burners, we want to be inclusive.

Professor Pickle:
Right, and we want to welcome people in. We want to say, “okay, I understand you're probably having a bad day. Have some water, sit down, come out of the sun, get some shade.”

Super Suz:
Assholes get to go to Burning Man too, you know, and they don't get kicked out.

Professor Pickle:
Yeah, exactly, exactly.

Super Suz:
It's really hard in a virtual place because at Burn 2, we're constantly struggling with, okay, does this asshat get to stay and be the asshat they want to be and express themselves that way if that's what they want? Or is it if they cross that line of harassment or, you know, certain things we're just not going to tolerate, like, racial or any kind of slurs, that sort of thing.

Professor Pickle:
As within any community, the difference between a chat room with Camp Envy and reading the YouTube comments of any video. People can say whatever they want to say. They can be as deviant as they want to be and get their happy feeling in that moment.

Super Suz:
People can do that at Burning Man. People can get more snarky than they are at their own regular, because it's the place to feel safe to be the snark, snark ass.

Professor Pickle:
Right. Right. Well, you know, there's, there's a difference between someone, you know, who's just saying F your burn and, you know, someone who's just actively transgressing to hurt somebody's feelings and, in a community chat room, we don't have any space for that kind of attitude or behavior. Oftentimes, they get the point.

Super Suz:
There’s some. but it's a smaller range than at BlackRock.

Professor Pickle:
Yeah. And again, we just don't feed the trolls.

Super Suz:
You can walk down the street or you can say, you know, do you mind hanging out at another camp? That sort of thing. Or call a ranger over to ranger their asses. So, I mean, there's lots of ways that we can't handle virtually.

Professor Pickle:
And if somebody's at a party and you just don't like what they're doing at the party, you go to a different party. Yeah. You know, I mean, you go where you feel safe. And so, and we've created several different spaces in order to have that connection and a safe space as it were which is one of the reasons why early on in 2009 we had that downstairs space, because some people only wanted to go to that first level, but they didn't want to dig deeper to the next level.

Super Suz:
Did you have to be invited to the downstairs? Is that how it works? You had to get an invitation?

Professor Pickle:
No, no. It's very democratic. Anybody can go in. But the thing is, is that it depends on the level of participation that they want to engage in. And so, just like layers of an onion, you know, we've got many web pages that you can dive into.

Super Suz:
Oh, so they had to find that downstairs room.

Professor Pickle:

It's a challenge, but it's worth it, you know.

Super Suz:
Keeps trolls out. I like that. Now, with Zoom and that kind of a platform, I don't think you can mute. Like, you're in a Zoom, you're one of the boxes, but you're not the facilitator. You can't, like, mute those boxes. Like, I don't like that guy in the top right corner. He's being a dick. I want to take him out, and I don't want to deal with him. So you can't, like, get up and leave the camp or tell the dick to go and, you know, go to the next, go across the street, you know, or you're being a dick. We're calling a ranger over here. You can't do all that and you can't mute the dick either. You can and Burn2. You can mute an avatar so that you do not hear or see it. So that means you're erasing that person's image from your viewer, which is great because everyone can self, kind of not police, but self regulate what they're looking at, what they're dealing with. Now, I don't know if some of the chat platforms have that feature. And who knows what's going to be happening with the different authorized platforms that are going to be part of Virtual Rock City. But I'd like to have people who develop these platforms to have that feature where each individual can mute others. Why didn't Zoom not make that? What the hell? Why is that not a feature?

Professor Pickle:
In my experience with Zoom, it's a little tough when you've got a room of 20 students. Not everybody has the talking stick to say what they've got to say. But there are other ways of doing it. Periscope, for instance, is another platform in which you can have a single person get into a conversation. They can actually have people call in, so you can have the voice connection that way. And then they also have a chat wall in which you can express yourself that way as well. So it's similar to the original idea of Ustream, where you had the video wall in the chat room, but you could actually have the next level, which is people calling in and engaging with you audibly, which is a really cool thing.

Super Suz:
That’s nice, until it’s not…

Professor Pickle:
That's the thing, when people were only restricted to doing chat, sometimes you had to think about what you really wanted to say, and then you took the time to actually type it out.

Super Suz:
Right.

Professor Pickle:
So it engages you to think a little bit more and probably react a little differently.

Super Suz:
Yeah.

Super Suz:
Then if you were to do it on a video, plus you can go back and look at people's words and just really have more thoughtful responses to that. But at least that's been my opinion. I'm sure there are others that don't share that, but that's just how I use the platform.

Professor Pickle:
Yeah. That's one of the features.

Professor Pickle:
And then, of course, IRC is just text only. And, it can be a little wonky and a little clunky for some users who may not like the graphic user interface, it's kind of barren. So you kind of have to kind of find your way around that kind of a world. But again, there's so many different ways that you can connect and express, and there's not gonna be a single outlet for expression. If not a single person goes to campenvy.org, that means that they're having a better time, and that's great.

Super Suz:
Yeah, because they've got choices.

Professor Pickle:
They're doing their thing, and that's what we want. That's the whole point. You know, we were kind of like a clearinghouse of misfit toys.

Super Suz:
Maybe Camp Envy needs to be out there with the other places, like you did with Burn 2, for example, or a little bit of both. But I think Camp Envy is a place to go. So it is a destination camp out there virtually this year.

Professor Pickle:
I think it's been very successful in serving as the home for the past 10 years of Burners Without Playa. If it needs to continue to serve as a safe haven or a lighthouse beacon to point the way, we'll provide that service.

Closing Remarks

Shoutouts, gratitude, and final reflections from Professor Pickle.

 Super Suz:
Sounds great. I think that's some good content so far. What do you think?

Professor Pickle:
I think we're good. I just want to throw out a couple of shout outs to a couple of really great Camp Envyers.

Super Suz:
Tell me why you're shouting out. What is it about them that you appreciate?
Well, I appreciate the fact that they help to develop what it is. Over the years, each of them have brought their skills and talents, whether it be just listening, for instance. Let's hear your list.

Professor Pickle:
All right. Well, obviously we want to talk about Ranger Nerdgasm, an excellent ranger and artist and welder. Pat Rapp works out in New York, one of the camp mamas for Camp Tsunami. Scott Kelly, excellent ranger, working with Camp Tsunami as well. Lynn Fisk helped to develop the Chapel of Chimes last year on Playa, really great person. John and Bonnie, they were developing an American Dream boat, detailing the experience of their parents coming from Vietnam during the war to the U.S. for the promise of a better future and taking that risk. And so they wanted to build an art car in honor of that on these boats, these boats that you'd see with the little eyes in the front. It was really beautiful, but it was an art car that we were going to be building this year, but the project had to be put on hold because of the virus.

Of course, Mia Wallace and others over at Burn II. I'm really proud of those guys and Guitar Dan Nevada for developing an amazing presence online virtually where you can actually see and experience a burn as it would in real life.

Super Suz:
Did you go visit Burn II when he had his camp out?

Professor Pickle:
I did. I did. That was really awesome. The cool thing is they have rangers there. You follow the same kind of community expectations that you would as you would be on Playa. You know, you don't want to trash somebody's camp and that kind of stuff.

Super Suz:
We have major ranger training and we do like a day long, you know, do the same ranger training as any other regional.

Professor Pickle:
Absolutely. Squishelle up with the Vancouver Burners. I really, really appreciate their presence. Of course, Motorbike Matt, Ron John, Hyper John Graham, Camera Girl, all helping to develop the current network infrastructure for the webcast. Danger Bunnie, she helped to really, she was our camp mama, our first camp mama over at 2009 when Camp Envy started, along with Figgy. Figgy helped to grant gifted tickets to burners in Camp Envy to actually go to the playa. If you just, for one way or another, couldn't do it, he was able to make it happen. And I'm so grateful for him. SDmedia for making great websites. Phoenix De Lamarre, helping to do some amazing writing. She's an excellent author. Wrote about her experiences on Playa and in Camp Envy. Closet Burner, who likes to burn from the closet because he has a real job during the day, but he burns in the closet at night.

Super Suz:
I love the name Closet Burner, that's great.

Professor Pickle:
Yeah, yeah. We had a group of members of Camp Envy gather on Playa, people who have never met before in person, actually gathered for the very first time in person on Playa to create the first Camp Envy theme camp. And we were placed on the Esplanade, it was called the Closet, so we did Playa fashion makeovers and other sort of body paint, body art kind of stuff. But it was the first time that anybody had ever met in person the previous two years. They had an online presence in chat rooms only, but they were able to collaborate and trusted each other enough to actually get together, get their stuff together and collaborate together on Playa, and it was just amazing. So that happened for a couple of years, and I was really amazed that they were able to even pull it off. Janet was the big camp mama on that with Cookie and others. Of course, people who are in Camp Envy may be aware of our Slack channel.

Super Suz:
Yeah, how many people do you have in Camp Envy?

Professor Pickle:
We've got over 1,000 members.

Super Suz:
Okay, yeah.

Professor Pickle:
But again, it doesn't exist until it exists, and so some of the members camp out on the Slack channel or on Discord.

Super Suz:
Can I ask you about Discord and the Slack?

Professor Pickle:
Yeah.

Super Suz:
So for those who don't know about it, like myself, not too familiar, how do you use Discord and Slack?

Professor Pickle:
Personally, I use it as just a chat medium. You can upload photos...

Super Suz:
Can you see other camps using it throughout the year as a way to communicate with each other, like...

Professor Pickle:
Well, currently they're an indie corporation, and they allow for us to use it as an informal workspace. And we can create spaces for us, but as far as other camps using it as a platform, I personally haven't seen anybody else use Slack, but I'm sure they have.

Super Suz:
Actually, I have. One of the Temple builds was using Slack for volunteers using the scheduling that's in there somehow for volunteer, like the leads would have slots, they'd put in requests for volunteers to do certain things and then the volunteers wouldn't.

Professor Pickle:
And one of our Camp Envy members was one of those volunteers, Sera Storm. She was out helping to document the building of the Galactica, you know, one of the largest, most complicated temples on Playa a couple years ago.

Super Suz:
You're so proud of your camp envy, your campers, I just love that.

Professor Pickle:
Oh my, I can't talk enough about these guys.

Super Suz:
Because what's cool is you get to know them. You really do with this chat thing, get to know people, don't you?

Professor Pickle:
They're family, they're family. And they gather 24-7. I mean, they have, through the Slack channel, we're in those workspaces. They check in almost every day, seeing how everybody's doing.

Super Suz:
So there's regulars that do use Slack, is the main one, is that right?

Professor Pickle:
For now, for now. I mean, you know, we used to use Flow Dock and other sort of services.

Super Suz:
Discord I heard, is that right?

Professor Pickle:
Right, right.

Super Suz:
So, talk about Discord for those who don't know what it is.

Professor Pickle:
Well, as far as I think, it was a gamer thing. I think it was a gamer thing, so you can kind of share, you know, show people what you're, it's kind of like an early Twitch, as I imagine where you would share what statistics you were doing, game tips, cheats, hacks, other sort of things. But I use it very simply as just a chat forum to talk to other people and share photos if need be. But, I honestly  don't use it that often. I use Slack more frequently.

Super Suz:
I guess Discord's used during the burn week, is that...

Professor Pickle:
We give people lots of different choices, and in some cases, the formats, or the platforms, rather, have different cultures of community, and so they may have different flavors. You got some people who just might not be getting along on Slack, they might be going over to Discord, or vice versa. Not everybody is “kumbaya” over a campfire, who comes to Camp Envy, because we're coming from such dissimilar, disparate local environments that we're kind of gathering everyone together under one roof. And we have opportunities for them to play, but we don't tell people how to play. We just say, here's where some of your choices are that we think you're going to really dig.

Super Suz:
It's kind of nice if you have these two places to go and camp here and be in camp here because if there's someone bugging you in one, you can move over to the other.

Professor Pickle:
Exactly, exactly. And that's what we encourage. We encourage people to find their safe spaces and have a great time while they're doing it. So Burnersince96 and CatwomanY2K are working on the website.

Super Suz:
Let's go over the website. It's campenvy.org.

Professor Pickle:
Campenvy.org. There's no expectations as in life. And you can kind of pick and choose your level of participation. And the beautiful thing about all of this is that you're gonna find your place. You're gonna find things that resonate with you. You're gonna find things that don't as much. But we're here to offer up the choices and the playgrounds where you can say, hey, I'm a burner, this is how I connect. I may have never been to the playa, but that doesn't mean I haven't been up at four o'clock in the morning with my loud music going on and pissing off my neighbors and lighting my couch on fire just like you turkeys did. There's all sorts of different ways.

Super Suz:
Hopefully in the backyard.

Professor Pickle:
Hopefully in the backyard. Yeah, depending on your air quality management district. Yeah, may not be advised. Don't try this at home.

Super Suz:
Not in the living room…

Professor Pickle:
Right, right. But we gotta try to make it fun. I'm coming out of a really deep, deep depression for obvious reasons, and I'm really glad that you called me up and wanted to share what Camp Envy was with the rest of the planet, and it makes me feel good. You've kind of stoked my fire personally, and I thank you for that. I'm very, very grateful. For all that “Into the Fire” does, all of your interviews are fantastic and will certainly be featured on our website as a to-do thing to connect others.

Super Suz:
I'm not very good at my PR. I would love to have someone help me with PR. I have a page. I put it up on the page. I put it in a few places, but I really, I mean, there's so many places I could post it. I need to get rolling with that. Yeah, thank you for that.

Professor Pickle:
I tell you, the good things, the best things are through word of mouth, and we're certainly going to be spreading the good word about you.

Super Suz:
Thank you. And likewise, likewise, Camp Envy is awesome for so many reasons. But we are at the end of this show.

Professor Pickle:
Thank you for the opportunity to be heard and be understood.

Super Suz:
You have a great voice. I'm thinking about the new Kindling website and how there's a lot of radio out there. Burner Radio, the regionals and everything, and podcasts as well. So I'm trying to figure out how do we podcasters and broadcasters post our content on Kindling. So I'm working with them.

Professor Pickle:
Well, good luck with that.

Super Suz:
But I got to get going. I'm going to go on a hike at six.

Professor Pickle:
Right on. Right on. Well, bring your mask and make sure you wash your hands for 20 seconds.

Super Suz:
OK. 20 seconds. That's so hard. More of a 10-second kind of gal.

Professor Pickle:
I understand, but it's a good 10 seconds.

Super Suz:
Yeah, it is. That's right. I use a lot of soap.

Professor Pickle:
OK, all right. Well, I wish all of you the best and hope to see you in Camp Envy!!!

END