This interview originally aired on "In the Moment" on SDPB.
Minnesotan Anna Farro Henderson is a climate scientist, environmental policy advisor and writer. She's the author of "Core Samples: A Climate Scientist's Experiments in Politics and Motherhood."
Her book is a collection of essays digging into what science is, how it's done and how scientists can make their expertise heard in the political sphere.
Henderson shares stories of working with former U.S. Sen. Al Franken and former Minnesota Gov. Mark Dayton and of trying to find the lactation room in the White House.
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The following transcript was auto-generated and edited for clarity.
Anna Farro Henderson:
So I think the seeds that were planted that grew into being a scientist were actually the same seeds that grew into being an artist.
And so that observation, this close connection to the landscape, it's not just walking out into a landscape and being cool, but walking out into a landscape and picking up a rock and seeing what's under it or putting the rock in my mouth — not as a little kid but even now maybe because it changes the color.
It's like looking at the plants and ripping a leaf and smelling it. Just this deep interest.
I grew up in Providence, Rhode Island, but we spent two years traveling by land and then I went to kindergarten in rural Asia and the landscape was dramatic and it was also very foreign. And I was carrying everything of mine on my back. And so this connection to landscape felt really palpable.
We were in areas with earthquakes. There was an earthquake once when I was on the roof of the place we were staying in.
And it felt like I was really connected to the land in a way that was important.
I was curious, and I asked questions. And like you say, being a scientist is really kind of as simple as that. It's seeing things and asking questions, and then what do you do with it? And when I got out of high school, I was not really that into school or I didn't have this image of myself as a scholar.
I wasn't that excited about going to college. I got a job, and I went to Italy to a place that had just had earthquakes. So again, I was in this dramatic landscape and I could see this huge effect on people. And I felt like to understand other people, I had to actually understand the landscapes that we live on. I'm going to go to college, I want to study this and I'm going to study geology.
Lori Walsh:
Throughout your 20s, you're going to go on these expeditions where you face your own mortality a lot, whether it's on the ice and contemplating how dangerous it is to just be part of this ongoing collection of data, but that you might not make it out because of how tenuous everything is. Also being in a lake and deciding to stay when lightning is approaching.
There's a closeness to mortality. And I love this part where you say you're trying to live up to the landscape and hoping that what you know in this moment, this truth, that I will remember it, that it won't fade like the patterns on a rock from the ocean when it dries.
That when I am down from the mountain, I will still know what I knew up high.
And that is so relatable for even anyone who's been on a vacation, and you're just like, who will I be when I come home?
Will I step back into these old patterns, or will I remember this humanity now? What is it about fieldwork that brings that out for you again and again? And does it bring it out for other scientists too?
Anna Farro Henderson:
I think that the fieldwork in geology and in other areas of science where people go in the field a lot, it's really kind of the hook. So I was interested in geology, I knew that, but then the reason I stayed I think was for these experiences of going out generally to remote places. I used to go to lakes in Minnesota in the winter and we're going out to the middle of them and spending hours. So it might not be remote, but it's interacting with the landscape in this kind of intense way.
I think I just felt more alive outside. There was an eight-week period where I did fieldwork with my now husband as my field assistant, and we were going to lakes in the Rocky Mountains and I didn't want to come inside. We were camping out. Once we got north of Yellowstone, there weren't mosquitoes and we didn't even set up a tent. We're just sleeping outside, working outside all day. And I felt really present.
Lori Walsh:
You're going to leave it behind though. As a mother, you're going to move into public policy. And part of the reason is because as a mom you decide that you have to answer for your kids at some point. You know that the planet is warming. You know that these decisions have to be made and you say, "I need to put on a suit and go see how the sausage is made."
Tell us about stepping into politics and policy as a research scientist.
Anna Farro Henderson:
I knew nothing about politics when I got there. I had gotten the fellowship that placed me in Congress and that I could interview representatives in the House or Senate from any state, any political party, and work on any issues.
I was really excited to work on clean energy and climate issues because my science had really focused on understanding past periods of climate warming and what the impact was on water resources and on our forest and grassland ecosystems.
And so when I got to politics, I was used to running at full speed and politics is really fast, but it's like I'm running in and then just lost. I didn't even know really what counts as a suit for a woman, and I didn't really know how to wear heels. I felt like a little bit behind.
I was 32. I was six months pregnant when I went to work for Senator Al Franken. And I was just figuring out some of these very basic things about being in this new setting.
And within about a week, I was like, I was made to be here. And I had no idea that I would feel that way. I hadn't realized how technical policy is. Science is not the loudest voice that informs policy, which was a huge surprise to me. Maybe it shouldn't have been, but it was a huge surprise to me. But it is part of everything. And so being able to come in and not that I knew everything, I didn't know pretty much anything, but I knew how to learn about those details.
And I felt really confident when people were lobbying me or coming in with bills that I could assess and know what kind of questions to ask.
So it was really exciting to apply my science and to have it be useful. Even though it sounds stressful because I had a toddler at home, I was pregnant with my second child, and then I had the child and took some time off and came back and I'm pumping milk during the day.
But it was so fun that I wasn't just on an arbitrary timeline. In research, things happen over years. It takes so long to do the work from when you have an idea to actualizing it and getting data and analyzing it.
In politics, it's like there's a vote in five minutes. What are we doing? What can you find out right now? Or like, oh, we just got a call. The senator has time on the floor tonight at 6 p.m. He's going to give a speech. Okay, let's finalize that speech.
And that was really satisfying to have non-arbitrary deadlines. And the work that I was doing was going into things that were happening and I could see them happening. Watching a senator read off a piece of paper what you've written for them to ask a cabinet member or an expert is really exciting.
Lori Walsh:
And you come up with the Congressional lactation diary because they don't really know what to do with you. It just seems like we should by now, right? There should be a little bit better system by now.
How difficult it was to just figure out how to pump milk in the congressional offices?
Anna Farro Henderson:
When I first got there and I was asking around, and it's like nobody knows and they're kind of embarrassed that you're bringing it up. I was the only mom in the DC office at the time. There was one other parent I think in the office at the time. So this wasn't a topic that people were thinking about, though they were very excited to have me there. They were really welcoming.
The first day everybody was showing me their family leave policies, even though it didn't apply to me because I was on a fellowship. And so I couldn't figure out how this was going to work. And I went to the nurse's office and they were so nice and were like, "We have these rooms here that you can use." But then there were all these complications. I got invited to the White House a couple of weeks after coming back from maternity leave to go to an event for women working on clean energy.
And I emailed ahead and said, "I need access to a place where I can pump milk." And then when I got there, they weren't set up at all and it took a really long time. And it was like this young man who had the key to the lactation room and we got lost in the building. And I'm following him around thinking, what am I doing? Why is this the way it is?
Lori Walsh:
He doesn't understand that there's a sense of urgency here because he has no lived experience about what it means to need to get to that room.
Anna Farro Henderson:
Yeah, no urgency, no anything.
At the same time, for anybody listening, the U.S. Senate has public rooms in the nurse's office that anyone can walk in and ask to use to pump milk. You don't have to work there. You can be a constituent and want to go and talk to your representative and there is a place for you to pump milk. So that was really beautiful.
And then the other thing that happened is at first it felt like I was the only mom in this building. There were these marble floors. And I was like, oh my God, my water's going to break on these marble floors and everyone's going to slip.
But as I was there longer, through word of mouth, I found out about these groups. There was like a bicameral group and there was a senate group of moms and people that I knew from both parties were moms. It wasn't advertised and there weren't signs up saying, "Come to the lactating moms luncheon."
Lori Walsh:
Obviously, people in South Dakota are well aware of Sen. Al Franken's leaving political power during the Me Too movement. And I think most people are aware of Gov. Mark Dayton's health problems when he collapsed at the State of the State address. You have a right-hand seat to some of those really dramatic moments in Minnesota state political history.
But also there are these just tender everyday things where you're eating M&M's or you're watching Mark Dayton eat M&M's and talking about how he wants to listen to people, how he just really enjoys, he enjoys a town hall. That's a great scene where he says, "I really enjoy it," and you're like, "I did not enjoy that."
That was all about carrying it off and protestors and who's going to speak and when, and you're walking on a wire. And he's like, "That was fun."
What did you learn about some of these leaders that you were supporting? I mean, I found it encouraging that they want to listen to constituents. They are men of the people in many ways.
Anna Farro Henderson:
So when I worked for Gov. Mark Dayton, he at the time had a nickname that was the "Buffer Bully." He had put out a new regulation on farmers that required 50-foot buffers between row crop agriculture and public waterways.
And there was very little stakeholder process. Usually, a law like that would have a lot of buildup and conversation and negotiation. And what happened was he read a headline about how bad the water quality was in lakes in Minnesota and was very concerned.
He is not an environmental governor. That was not part of his platform. It wasn't a big part of other things he had done. And he just said, "This has to happen."
And everybody was mad from all sides and nobody had been included in the law. They're mad because it's just coming at them. Everybody lacked confidence really that we could do it. And it's amazing because Minnesota's done it and it's like a non-issue now.
And if you drive through, you see these buffers and it's happening and it was implemented. But people are really angry at Dayton. He's a little bit of a maverick, and I think that's one of the things that people love about him is that you know he's not doing things to be popular. He never tries to be cool. He's doing what he thinks is really important.
And so he used his political power to push through this new regulation, but then people were angry and he wanted to hear them. He used to go to events with thousands of people and give out his cell phone number and say, "I'm your governor. You want to call me? Call me. This is my phone number." And sometimes he would answer those calls or somebody would leave a voicemail and then we would follow up with them and talk to them.
So he really was serious about being accessible, that people had a right to access him. And so people were really, really angry about the buffer law and his response to that was that we've got to go out and talk to everybody. We've got to hear everybody's voices. We've got to find out what they're doing.
The first thing I did working for him was a big water summit in Morris, Minnesota, which is in the central western part of Minnesota. And it was okay. It was a good event, but I'd only been there three months and we put everybody on stage who was on the inside. They were connected to major stakeholders. They were nice. They were safe people to put on a stage.
And I had this conversation with Gov. Dayton where I said, "If we're going to go out and do more of these events, I think we want people to relate to who's on stage more."
And he was like, "Yeah." And I was like, "Well, to do that, we're going to need to put people on stage who come from a wider background. And by wider background, it's like their political leanings, their opinions about politics, their racial or ethnic background, their lived experience."
And he was like, "Yeah, let's do it." No hesitation. And so just that he wasn't afraid of people being angry or not liking him or saying bad things about him.
He really wanted to be with people and hear them. And even we had a lot of protesters at these town halls that we did for all different reasons, from medical waste to oil pipelines. And he wasn't upset at all.
We were doing an event and a bunch of students, high school students, took over the stage and he was like, "Anna, give them the microphone." And so I give them the microphone and he just steps off the stage and he's like, "This is fine."
And so we're sitting down on the floor and they're up on the stage and they can't figure out how to make the microphone work. And I was like, "Well, that's funny. Let them figure it out." And he's like, "Anna, go help them turn the microphone on." So I go up and I turn the microphone on and he just is like, "Yeah, everybody, please be respectful. They have something to say." And they said their thing.
And then he was like, "Okay, should we continue the meeting? Or if you're not going to get off the stage, then we can end the meeting now." There's that idea of not holding onto outcomes as a way to be happy. And it's really hard when you've spent a lot of time putting events together, and there were so many people, there were local teams that helped with all of these local events, and it felt like to not have an event finish would be tragic to me. But to him, it was like, we came and we'll see what happens. Nothing has to happen here. We're all here for the process.
Lori Walsh:
Which is thematic in your life, the science collection outcomes, the policy, and then you move into writing and taking a break from all of it.
And if there's not a better description of writing where you spend a whole lot of time and you really have no idea what the outcome is going to be and very little control over it. It's writing.
How did you come to surrender to that and embrace it?
I love this idea of having a cover story instead of a backup job or, what do you call that, a backup plan. You call it a cover story. I'm a writer, but my cover story is I'm a journalist.
So I'm going to use that. I will cite you every time, but I'm going to use that.
Anna Farro Henderson:
So I had been writing and I identified as a writer starting at age 10, and it didn't get a great response in my home. So I had that sense of this might make people uncomfortable. And then when I was in my Ph.D. studying climate science, my Ph.D. advisor once was like, "Well, Anna, what do you think you want to do for a career?" And I said, "Well, I really love this and I think I want to be a research scientist, but the world is big and I might be interested in other things."
I was 100% planning on being an academic. I had no other plan, but I was just trying to give a thoughtful answer. He had this very boyish face, really smiley, and it's like all the smiles went out of him.
And he turned to me and was like, "I'm investing in you by training you, and the expectation is that you're going to be an academic."
Lori Walsh:
Wow.
Anna Farro Henderson:
Yeah. And I remember people were doing internships with oil companies and you could make a lot of money in the summer. And he was like, "Oh, that sounds kind of dangerous. You got to stay focused." So I really had that sense of anything you're doing that isn't science feels like a zero-sum game and you're taking away from it.
So to not talk about it. And the first time I published something, and it was in a literary journal, I was nine months pregnant. I was working for Sen. Franken. I had only been in the office for a couple of months, and I was about to go into labor any day. I was so huge.
And this piece got accepted, and I'm looking through the Senate ethics to figure out, am I allowed to do this?
I had submitted it before I worked there, and I just decided to publish under a pen name. So talk about a cover story.
I was publishing under a pen name for about a decade until I made the decision that if I really wanted to write the things I wanted to write, I needed more time and I was going to need to take that time.
Lori Walsh:
If all of our scientists and all of our policymakers feel the hesitation to tell a story that is baked into how they do their jobs, think of the stories that we're missing.
Anna Farro Henderson:
People talk about science often as something outside them, something that other people do or experts or it's not relatable. It's something from the outside, instead of seeing it as something that belongs to them or that they're a participant in.
And I think it's because it can be hard to relate to because we just really show the outcomes. We strip out everything messy, and you just have these sterile, isolated facts, and it can be hard to relate to
Lori Walsh:
What's next for you?
It's such a beautiful book. My prediction is that it will be important, and then it will have a really long life. It will be like "Braiding Sweetgrass" where it comes back again and again and people will continue to discover it and have a beautiful, nice, slow build to being something amazing. That's my prediction for this book.
Anna Farro Henderson:
Thank you, Lori. I'll take that as a blessing. Some wind behind its wings.
Lori Walsh:
It just has that essential nature to it. And the writing, of course, is so well done and beautiful and thoughtful.
But what's next for you as a writer?
Anna Farro Henderson:
Well, I'm going on a book tour, and I'm doing traditional book tour things like going to bookstores and some universities and colleges. But I also wrote a grant to do a rural book tour with the goal of bringing art access to rural communities. And so for that, I designed interactive art projects. One of them is a community bookmaking project with bookplates, and everybody will be invited to write a seven-word memoir on the bookplate and put it into this book. And the bookplate denotes ownership.
So then every page of the book is like, this book belongs to you, and it's another person, another person. So we're all creating this book together.
I'm really excited to go out and talk to people. I'm going back to some of these places where I went with the governor and part of the controversial buffer bill, and I'm really excited to go back in a really, really different position for a different kind of conversation. So that's my near-term thing. I'm really excited to see what people do in these art projects.
