[00:00:00] Fuzz Martin: Hello, welcome to this week’s edition of Fifteen Minutes with Fuzz, 1 5 M W F, a show about positive things happening in and around Washington County. Wisconsin, USA. I’m your host, Fuzz Martin, and I do appreciate you joining me here today. This is season four, episode five. It’s the 120th overall episode of the show.
And if I was strict with my timing, that would be 1800 minutes of podcast or 30 full hours, but I’m not strict. Sometimes I go along. It’s my show. You can make your own show, Fifteen Minutes, on the dot. It’s not that easy, as Mark Twain said. To quote Mark Twain exactly, he said, I didn’t have time to produce a short podcast, so I produced a longer one instead.
He said that, back in like the 1800s. I have a return guest this week. Buck Blodgett of the Love Is Greater Than Hate Project returns. He was last on the show on the 35th episode, all the way back in season one. I will link to that in the show notes and at fuzzmartin. com if you would like to go back and listen to the backstory on the Love Is Greater Than Hate Project.
This week, Buck talks about some exciting new initiatives from the organization. He’ll And with that, here are 15 minutes, 15 more minutes, on the Love is Greater Than Hate Project, with Buck Blodgett, on 15 Minutes with Fuzz.
Buck, welcome back to 15 Minutes with Fuzz. It’s been a bit since the last time we spoke, you were one of my Season 1 guests, Season 1, Episode 35, and here we are now on Season 4, so it’s great to have you back.
[00:01:57] Buck Blodgett: Thanks for having me back, Fuzz. I can’t believe it’s been two years, but I guess it has.
[00:02:00] Fuzz Martin: Yeah, I couldn’t believe it either.
When I, when we started, emailing back and forth, I thought for sure it was, you know, Last year, and it, you know, time just kind of flies in this kind of post ish COVID world, so. For those who maybe haven’t listened to every single episode of Fifteen Minutes with Fuzz, but for those who have, I appreciate it.
Could you please give us a summary of what the Love is Greater Than Hate project is all about? How it got started and why and also the mission that your organization serves.
[00:02:31] Buck Blodgett: Sure. Our mission is, three pieces that all fit together. It’s ending interpersonal violence. That’s at the heart of it. And interpersonal violence is a little confusing for some people.
It’s basically domestic violence, sexual violence, bullying, human trafficking. Intimate partner violence, dating violence, one on one, the things people do to each other. So, ending interpersonal violence, promoting forgiveness, and presencing love. Great. That’s our mission. It got started, through tragedy.
Eleven years ago, we lost my daughter, Jessie in Hartford at age 19 to the unexpected and unpredicted violence of a friend, who was also 19 years old, who went to high school with Jessie. And something happened inside of me when that happened, and I don’t know if I can still explain it, but I had to do something.
Sure. And I’ve been trying to do something for 11 years, and it’s Jessie’s legacy, The Love Is Greater Than Hate Project.
[00:03:29] Fuzz Martin: And so, as a part of the project, is a, Part of this organization you give presentations to various organizations and help kind of with programming and I guess teaching I guess would be the the way to explain that?
[00:03:44] Buck Blodgett: I guess so yeah I think so, teaching forgiveness especially because we found out that something I experienced intuitively, powerfully, personally, has crystallized for me through research in the past 11 years, and really the last year or two, that forgiveness is the key to stopping the cycle, the generational cycle of abuse and trauma.
So that’s what I’m trying to teach anywhere and everywhere. We’re not a, a service organization, we’re a message organization. So yeah, we do live programming, in the prisons and in schools and on podcasts and wherever
[00:04:19] Fuzz Martin: people will listen. Absolutely. Since the last time that we spoke, uh, you’ve introduced a couple new programs to the Love is Greater Than Hate project.
And, your mission and your, I guess your organization is starting to expand a bit and get that message out into more places. So now one of the new programs that you have is a prison program, right? Can you explain what that is and how it got started?
[00:04:43] Buck Blodgett: I’ll try. I, I believe it’s already become the best thing we’ve ever done.
It’s a forgiveness class. It’s a 10 session, class, and we’re doing it in three state prisons and, the Adult Rehab Center at the Salvation Army in downtown Milwaukee. So four venues with about 20 guys in each class, each week for 10 weeks. The, the, there’s a few core themes and the main one is, again, that forgiveness stops the generational cycle of abuse.
And over 90 percent of the guys and the women in our state system, Fuzz, have experienced trauma and abuse themselves. That’s why they’re there. So we’re trying to interrupt that. We’re trying to get, another of our core themes is that the forgiving, forgiveness isn’t a one time thing. Like, I forgive you, boom, done.
Let’s not think about it, talk about it anymore. It’s a process. And the bigger the wound, or the trauma, or the hurt, the longer and deeper you have to go to, to complete the process. And these guys, most of them, have a lot of coping mechanisms and defense mechanisms to avoid or deny their anger and their pain.
So it comes out in, explosive and random ways sometimes. And where we’re starting with the class is to get at your real pain and your anger and to be able to, express it and heal it. And that’s where the forgiveness process begins.
[00:06:10] Fuzz Martin: How has that been received so far with the inmates that you’ve been, I guess, presenting to and teaching to?
[00:06:19] Buck Blodgett: Well, one program supervisor, Stacy at Red Granite, I was leaving class after session three or four, and she said, We’re at a hundred percent. And I said, oh, what do you mean? She said, we’re, we started with 18 guys and we have 18 guys every class so far. And that’s still true through session six. And we’re close to a hundred percent in all three prisons that we’re in.
I said, is that good? And Stacy said, she’s the program supervisor. She’s been there seven years, done hundreds of programs. She said, that never happens.
[00:06:51] Fuzz Martin: Awesome.
[00:06:51] Buck Blodgett: So she’s excited about the level of attendance and engagement. I went back to the rehab center downtown Milwaukee for lesson two. So we had one class, lesson one.
I show up, I go in the lobby, lesson two, guy comes running up to me, Dr. Blodgett, Dr. Blodgett, I called my mom. I’m like, you called your mom? He said, yeah. He said, My mom and I haven’t been close. I said, well, tell me. And his story, the short of it is that he’s been basically estranged from his mom since he was a kid.
Like they’ve had no relationship his entire life. This guy’s almost as old as me. He’s in his fifties now. And he called his mom after one class. And then, one more quick story.
[00:07:35] Fuzz Martin: Yeah,
[00:07:36] Buck Blodgett: absolutely. Also after lesson one, I show up at, Fox Lake Correctional for lesson two. And a guy tells me, he tells the group, we’re sitting in the circle of 20 guys, and he tells us, I got a new roommate the day we had lesson one last week.
And that night, he was snoring like crazy, driving me nuts, I couldn’t sleep, I was getting madder and madder, I started throwing things at him. At one point in the middle of the night, my new roommate said to me, this guy tells us in the group, if I had a gun, you’d be dead right now. And the guy tells us all in the group, as I laid there in the middle of the night after that, and we had just done lesson one that morning, it occurred to me, I gotta find a new way to deal with people.
I’ve gotta, I gotta change me. And he said, long story short, that guy and him are now good friends. That’s just a dumb story about snoring.
[00:08:34] Fuzz Martin: Yeah.
[00:08:35] Buck Blodgett: But look what just happened. We’ve got an inmate in the prison system for 20 years who in one class found a different approach. Sure. And made a friend instead of an enemy.
I have all kinds of stories like that. That’ll be the last one I tell, but that’s the power of forgiveness.
[00:08:50] Fuzz Martin: No, I, I think, and it, it goes to show what you’re trying to accomplish out of the class and what you’re, what you’re, your students are receiving from that. And so now you’re, you’re in three of the state prisons right now and then in the rehab facility in Milwaukee.
Are you looking to expand that then out? And, and also, If so, there’s only one Buck Blodgett, so how do you, how do you get that out to everyone? Oh,
[00:09:17] Buck Blodgett: you think like I do. Thank you. And this one’s getting older, too. I need help. I am looking to expand it. We have 35 state prisons, and we’re only one state in one country.
I’m looking to expand it. I don’t make the decisions for the Department of Corrections. But I think, you know, a message from Jessie, When I was invited to do that, our, our original and still core program in 2017 in a prison, next thing I knew I was in about 20 prisons and we presented to about 4, 000 inmates and, staff over the next three years and I’m hoping that happens.
With this forgiveness Class two, we’ll see we’re gonna need more facilitators. And I’m conspiring with somebody behind the scenes a little bit right now who is, who, who literally wrote the book on forgiveness. Like literally. He founded the International Forgiveness Institute and, and I’m hoping that.
We can train up a group of facilitators.
[00:10:18] Fuzz Martin: So, speaking of that kind of expansion, you’re also, the other new program is a new chapters program, right? So tell us about the chapters program and your vision for what that could become.
[00:10:30] Buck Blodgett: Yeah, you know, it’s, our project is, there’ve been a ton of great volunteers and, and board members, for the first year, but it’s largely been one guy and a project. Like I’ve been the only staff member for most of our decade one. We’re trying to transform ourselves in decade two and become a sustainable team.
We also, if this is really going to make the kind of difference, we. Want it to and need it to. And fulfill our vision. Our vision’s a little different than our mission. Our vision is the end of interpersonal violence by the end of this century. If we’re going to deliver on that one, we’re going to need people all over the planet.
So we have this idea for a chapters program. We’re prototyping it right now, and it’s going really great. The people in the prototype chapter seem to love it and be getting great value out of it. If you’re a chapter member in a future Love is Greater Than Hate chapters program, you will pledge, you’ll, you’ll basically adopt our mission.
[00:11:33] Fuzz Martin: Your
[00:11:33] Buck Blodgett: pledge will be. Ending interpersonal violence, promoting forgiveness, and presencing love in myself, my community, and my world. Now imagine if we’re successful, if we had little pods of people all over the state, all over the country. Maybe 20 years from now we have a hundred or a thousand chapters, Little pods of people working to presence, love, promote forgiveness, and end interpersonal violence in countries all over the planet.
That’s where we need to get, and that’s the purpose of the chapters program.
[00:12:08] Fuzz Martin: Sure, just to spread it everywhere and in small pockets and make big change by doing it in small areas, right?
[00:12:17] Buck Blodgett: Yes, transform culture globally by engaging people.
[00:12:22] Fuzz Martin: Everywhere. Well, I give you big kudos on that tremendous mission and the undertaking that’s involved in making that happen.
Where is your prototype chapter right now?
[00:12:34] Buck Blodgett: We’ve had, we’ve completed five weeks and we just decided to pause and start to build out and develop out a training program for chapter leaders and more structure like that and build up a library of content. We envision about 20 lessons. that can just be cycled through endlessly.
Sure. Sort of like AA has the 12 steps, and you know, there, there are people who’ve been in AA for 20, 30, 40 years, and they just keep doing the 12 steps over and over. Why? Because there’s endless, there’s, it’s a bottomless well of value for people who, you know, you know, are committed to growing into it.
[00:13:13] Fuzz Martin: Transitioning here to the Love is Greater Than Hate project. You’ve had a couple events, I know you just had a golf outing a few weeks ago. You also have an event coming up in September at the Shower Hearts Center. Can you tell us about that?
[00:13:25] Buck Blodgett: Sure. It’s a talent show. The name of it is the Butterfly Legacy Tales of Resilience.
There’s a connection with butterflies and my daughter’s death that began the morning after her murder at the bottom of my driveway. I had a weird experience with a butterfly and then I had a bunch of them and so did other people and so there’s this butterfly thing. I even have a butterfly on my arm except we’re on a podcast so I can’t show people.
So that’s why it’s called the Butterfly Legacies. The project is Jessiee’s legacy, but it’s not for her. It’s too late for her. It’s for everybody else who it’s not too late for. Tales of Resilience. We’re going to have seven programs at the Shower Arts Center. Okay, here’s what I should be saying. It’s at the Shower Arts Center.
It’s Thursday night, September 26th. There’s a cocktail meet and greet, happy hour at five, and then the show starts at 630. 6. 30, September 26th, the Shower Arts Center, open to the public, everyone’s invited. We’ll have seven performances, by six different people, and they will be victim survivor thrivers of domestic violence, sexual assault, human trafficking, interpersonal violence.
And they’re going to tell their stories through art, through music or dance or poetry, some kind of live performance. And we’re partnering with, the West Bend Music Academy, Jay, He’s an amazing guy who’s just taken this on and he’s, he’s providing professional musicians to help our people tell their story in music and, Jesslyn Jesslyn’s gonna train the people who want to share their story through dance. And so, we hope to pack the Schauer Arts Center, it’s a fundraiser for the project. You know, the, we need resources to do our work, we need money to build out chapters programs and prison programs and get new facilitators and stuff like that.
So we hope people come to the Schauer Arts Center on September 26th. There’s not going to be a dry eye in the house. It’s going to be powerful. It’s going to be tragic stories that are a little heartbreaking, but incredibly empowering because people have overcome their trauma and they’re making a difference in the world.
[00:15:33] Fuzz Martin: That sounds amazing. It sounds, like it will be a very moving event. And as a part of this, I also saw that there is the new Jessie Blodgett Music Scholarship. Can you tell us about that? I can.
[00:15:45] Buck Blodgett: Thank you. One of our partners is the Mr. Ballin Foundation. Mr. Ballin is like one of the top five YouTubers in the world who watched Jessie’s story on Dateline two years ago and came alongside us.
And they’ve been funding us and partnering with us, providing not only an annual grant, but tech training and. Online coaching, just all kinds of resources, and they’ve been out here three times and they’re coming again in September. And Lori, the executive director of the Mr. Ballin Foundation is going to present a grant for the Jessie Blodgett Music Scholarship Fund to end in her personal violence.
Jessie wouldn’t have wanted one really gifted university student to get a big grant from us to help with their scholarship. She would’ve wanted. A whole bunch of little scholarships for middle schoolers who are just finding out about band and orchestra and like she did. And so, we’re going to give out our first couple scholarships, the, the criteria for the winners will be, they show a natural talent for music.
They, have a need, their parents don’t get it, or their parents can’t afford lessons or an instrument, or their dad’s into sports like I was and not into the arts, whatever. So they have a talent, they have a need, and then they’re going to have to do a little brief little essay with two questions.
What is love is greater than hate? mean to you in middle school? And question two, how are you going to use music to change the world? So we’ll hand out our first two scholarships that night at the talent show.
[00:17:21] Fuzz Martin: Very good. And is that open to Hartford, students? Is that, is that where that’s?
[00:17:26] Buck Blodgett: It is. It’s, we, this is another program that long term we want to expand out beyond Washington County and the five county area and then maybe nationally one day.
But right now, we’re going to give out just two scholarships this year before we grow the endowment. And Jay at the West Bend Music Academy is going to help us find two worthy students from Hartford, where this all began.
[00:17:50] Fuzz Martin: Very good. Again, all of this is Amazing and so uplifting and positive to see this coming from, you know, its roots in a tragedy, but using that to bring positivity and help end violence and that I think it’s a extremely powerful and I, give you so much credit for what you’ve done and overcome and you’re, I guess, unending positivity on this, of, of that vision and, and making things go forward.
So, again, that event at the Schauer Art Center is Thursday, September 26th, right? Yes. If people want to attend, what’s, how do they, how do they do so?
[00:18:28] Buck Blodgett: They go to our website or our Facebook page, and they have to be a little patient because we’re just in the process of getting up the, the Facebook page and the page on our, website.
Right. Where there’ll be a link to register, but that should be happening any day now. So the website is ligth. org. That’s short for love is greater than hate. It’s not light. Watch it. Your device might autocorrect.
[00:18:54] Fuzz Martin: Yep.
[00:18:55] Buck Blodgett: It’s ligth. org. That’s Or we’re the Love’s Greater Than Hate Project on Facebook.
That’s where you can register.
[00:19:02] Fuzz Martin: And I, I know you have a newsletter on your website, so you can always sign up if you want to get signed up, get updates. You can sign up for the newsletter and I’m sure you guys will send out a link once the, Tickets and such are available as well.
[00:19:16] Buck Blodgett: Absolutely. You’re better at this than me, because you know our stuff.
That’s exactly what’s going to happen. Our next newsletter will have an announcement and a description of this event with a link to register.
[00:19:25] Fuzz Martin: Very good. If somebody wants to get involved with Love Is Greater Than Hate, or to have, you know, a presentation brought to their School, their prison, their organization, what’s the best way to reach out?
[00:19:40] Buck Blodgett: Same thing. Our website or Facebook website’s probably the best. We actually have a what you can do page.
[00:19:46] Fuzz Martin: Okay.
[00:19:46] Buck Blodgett: And there’s seven things that people can do, and one of those is volunteer. So you click on the volunteer option and boom, you see all your volunteer opportunities. And another is, on our events page, you’ll see links to contact us to let us know that you’d like me to come out and talk about love is greater than hate and this whole story and how to presence it and the power of forgiveness, so that we can start treating each other in the loving kind of way that humans were intended to, in my opinion.
[00:20:18] Fuzz Martin: Excellent. Thanks Buck, thank you so much for coming back on the show. Really appreciate it and look forward to seeing all that you do.
[00:20:24] Buck Blodgett: I think I said this two years ago, but that was two years ago. I’ll say it again. Jessie not only lost her life on July 15th, 2013, Fuzz, she also lost her voice. And you have just given it back to her for 15 minutes of Fuzz and Jessie.
And that means everything to her dad and I think to her, but especially to the work we’re trying to do so that people know. Thank you.
[00:20:46] Fuzz Martin: Yeah, you’re, you’re very welcome. And thank you for the kind words. Thank you again to Buck Blodgett, founder and executive director of the Love is Greater Than Hate Project for joining me on this week’s edition of Fifteen Minutes with Fuzz.
If you ever have an idea for the show, suggest the guest. You can email me. [email protected]. That is [email protected] or go to fuzz martin.com/guest. That is fuzz martin.com/guest. You could also text message me if you want. 2 6 2 2 9 9 FUZZ. New episodes come out on Tuesdays next week. I’m joined by Jay Tamez from the West Bend Music Academy.
You can listen to all the episodes of the shows on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or whatever app you like to listen to podcasts on. This podcast is basically on every platform. You can also listen at fuzzmartin. com. And with that, I will talk to you next Tuesday, right here on Fifteen Minutes with Fuzz.
