What Does Our Fox Say?

Fox Gardner is our new Program Coordinator for the Center. In an effort to feed multiple birds with one scone, I thought I would get to know them, interview style, and share our conversation with you all about our hopes and visions for the Center. 

Wendy: Can we start off with you sharing something about yourself and why you wanted to be here? 

Fox: Sure, well, I moved to Ithaca and this area in particular because I really was seeking out community. I was moving from an area that isn't a very inclusive or diverse area in New York. It's beautiful. It's right along the Erie Canal, but I really wasn't finding any connection or community in that area and felt like I needed the change. 

Wendy: How long have you been in this area?

Fox: I have been here since April, so nine months.

Wendy: So, since you have been here for nine months, what are some of the key findings you have discovered about Cortland or Ithaca? 

Fox: Ithaca, yeah, I've found lots of little tucked away hiking spots that are very well maintained and absolutely incredible. I've just been enjoying the landscape and enjoying birding. 

Wendy: Are you part of Audubon? 

Fox: Yes, I worked for Audubon, actually, for a little while. 

Wendy: Do you want to talk about your past experience, and how you see that fitting into your work here at the Center?

Fox: Yeah, so my past experiences are mostly education positions with nature centers. Which you'd think would be sort of one track, but the approach I take is very exploratory, and interpretive. So, I would have lesson plans and goals for my students, but I would more or less let them choose the topics they wanted to explore during our time outdoors because I believe that fostering that love and connection first is what leads to stewardship later in life. You can't just jump right into “You should care about this for this reason, and that reason, now you're a steward.” You have to foster that desire to care before you can foster caring itself.

Wendy: Is there a connection between trying to foster a good stewardship of the Earth and being trying to foster people to be good allies?

Fox: Yes, there absolutely is. I mean, I'm an ecologist by training, but I was raised with more traditional ecological knowledge. So, seeing humans as outside of the ecosystem is very foreign to me. We're part of the ecosystem, even sitting here in this building as buses drive by. And I think that fostering that caring that I was talking about is what's going to heal the community. We're individualist as a society right now, and I believe if we can foster more of that interconnection, we can do a lot of moving forward as humans. 

Wendy: So, when are you running to be the president? 

Fox: I have no interest in politics. My interest in politics is at a level where I can maintain my mental health and still know what's going on in the world.

Wendy: That's probably very healthy, right now, especially. You recently were talking about your interest in hiking and activities that you would like to see happen at the center. I know that you shared another idea with me recently from your time in Rochester. Did you want to share that one?

Fox: Sure! I'm coming from the Rochester area where there is a drag bar, Roar, that has dedicated drag Bingo nights. It's an event I always really enjoyed, especially because it's typically a little earlier in the evening, and I could be home by like 10 or 11. Bingo is just good, wholesome, fun, even when you've got a drag queen, making some jokes. I just think it's a really great way for people who maybe don't want to necessarily go to a drag show to be able to experience drag. And also, I love Bingo. I get competitive, even though it's a luck game.

Wendy: All right. How big are the Bingo cards? Are they big enough to take into all the accounts that are going to happen in 2026?  

Fox: Yeah, it's crazy!  

Wendy: Um, so what else? What other activities besides that, because I feel like there's other ones? 

Fox: Yeah, absolutely. So I would love to include people who maybe are not themselves members of the LGBTQ+ community, but love someone who is or want to be able to understand a little better. I think programs like birding walks or maybe music jam nights, things like that, will bring people together with a common interest and take differences out of the equation a little bit. Everyone loves seeing a great blue heron, you know? 

Wendy: That’s interesting to me too, because the two things that I had mentioned that I had wanted to do when I first came here were hiking and a music/art open mic type thing. 

Fox: I think we should do it. 

Wendy: But I also think as long as there's other people that are interested.

Fox:  Oh yeah

Wendy: Otherwise, we're just gonna like, do our own. I also feel like music is a great thing to bring people together. Some people use it as a tool in the opposite direction, where it's competitive, somewhat an elitist thing. I wouldn't want that. I would want it to be open . I even thought about kazoo jam. 

Fox: Oh, that'd be fun. Yeah, I envision, even if you can just clap, come on in and keep the beat for us.

Wendy: Or if you even just want to hang out and listen, just yeah.

Fox: Or a sound bath!

Wendy: Yeah, we talked about that! I am still new too, and I want to build up my relationships and eventually get a parenting group together. 

Fox: Yes, I think that would be great. 

Wendy: Do you know Karen Fuller? She works at the Q Center in Syracuse and is a Certified Family Peer Advocate that specializes in parenting of Q kids - trans kids and or queer kids. She’s great. I would love to get her involved in some way. As we get more acclimated, we can look to widen some of the groups we have.

Fox: Yeah, we welcome everybody here and I want to remove the asterisks of “but mostly queer people.” If we say we welcome everybody, I want to mean it. So, my vision for the center is for it to be a resource for the queer community — to hold programming for the queer community and for queer education. At the same time, I would love to widely host events that focus more on just bringing people together and not necessarily just focusing on the queer community, but the community at large and getting people together to enjoy a common thing like birds or music or movies.