Good morning. Thank you for joining me today. Could you state your name, please?

My name is Janet Brown.

Janet Brown. Thank you for joining me today, Miss Janet Brown. Could you share a little bit about yourself? Did you grow up in Milwaukee?

No, I grew up in Racine Racing. Yeah. And I used to sneak up here when I was younger. And the first bus that I ever rode in Milwaukee was the 19. Wow. I started coming here when there was the interns east downtown girl, it was a club. Oh, and I used to go to the palace and stuff like that.

Yeah.

So I really loved Milwaukee back in the days, you know, to me, Milwaukee was. It was only two places. Well, three places in the world. Milwaukee, Mississippi, and Racine. I was young, you know, I never knew about other places.

Yeah.

And.

How was it growing up in Racine? Like?

It was spectacular.

Oh, was it?

It was great. It was always something to do good. We had carnivals and wasn't under this scared to go to the parades because of all the mass craziness. That's what I call it, you know.

Tell me a little bit about your personal interests and activities and things like that.

I'm an active person. I hate sitting still. I rise at 430 in the morning. I end my day at 839 o'clock at night. There's not enough for. There's not enough information for seniors, you know, out there. There's not enough transportation to take us anywhere, you know. Yeah, we fight to keep our independence, but we still need help to keep our independence, especially when I moved back here in 2010.

So I've gotten old here, you want to say, you know, I'm part of the woodwork now. And even being an iris, you know, a client of iris, they can only tell me so much, okay. And to me, it don't be enough. You know, to me, they just tell me enough to, like, say, put the butter on the bread and that's it.

For context, what is Iris?

It is my long term care. What are you gonna call it? The group that does my long term care is part of the human resource building. What it was, I don't know, in I life and stuff like that.

Okay.

So it's just they can never tell you where you can go to get a fee waived for the y or they can never tell you how to get to the y. There's really nothing for us black older people, you know, if you're not in the church or if you don't have a car, you have nothing.

Wow.

You have nothing. You're just sitting bored, and that's my biggest fear? Being alone. Nothing. No one. You know, I refuse to move in senior buildings.

Yeah.

Because the senior building is the first step to the nursing home. And then after the nursing home, there's nothing. So I choose to fight and stand and keep walking and keep talking and keep semi taking care of myself the best way I can.

Yeah.

You know, and some of us have so much pride to where we scared to ask for help. Cause number one, we've been shot down so many times, we just tuck and go in. And when you say we seniors, seniors, seniors, you know, I got girlfriends. I mean, the only thing that they do is church. And back home, you know, some of them got kids that gonna come and get them. They don't got time. There was a lady that I met this summer, Miss Roberta, and she was going blind. And she was out on that bus by herself.

She'd be out trying to make it on her own by herself. She didn't know how to deal with being blind. Her pride was getting in the way, you know?