I'd always been interested in nature from, you know, a young boy and also in geography I used to spend hours looking at maps and when I came to think about university at the age of 17-18 and of course in the UK system you have to you have to actually determine before you go to university what you're going to study and for many years I've been interested in birdwatching and I thought well it'd be great to do a degree in zoology and take up on ethology as a as a career but I came to realize there were very few posts in ornithology and then in any case my interest in plants grew and so I applied to university to study botany and geography a combined degree so I went to the University of Southampton in 1967 spent three years there half the time on my geography course was learning about landforms, glacial processes, river processes etc but the other half was a full botany degree and it wasn't really until I got into my final year and I'd become friendly with one of the staff and I'd taken a couple of courses he was a geneticist who'd worked on peanuts and he'd worked in Africa and he'd then done his PhD at North Carolina State in Raleigh and anyway he stopped me in the corridor one day and he said Mike you might be interested in this and it was it was a pamphlet about a new one-year MSc course in plant genetic resources that was being offered at the University of Birmingham so I thought well this is interesting it was sort of fitting in with some of my interests at the time all the way my interests were going and so I made an application as they say that you know the rest is history I went for an interview they offered me a place on the course and I started that in October September 1970 it was a one-year course and the intention was to finish the course and find a job but the head of department at Birmingham and it was a department of botany in those days which then transformed as many did into plant sciences the head of the department of botany at the University of Birmingham was a guy called Jack Hawkes an internationally renowned plant scientist who spent most of his career working on potatoes and who was one of the founders of the plant genetic resources conservation movement in the 1960s and one of the contributions he felt he could make to that whole movement was to train young people in the the discipline as it were of genetic resources because it had been determined that a real concerted worldwide effort was required to to to collect and conserve genetic resources anyway I went to Birmingham and got stuck into the course and at the end of the first semester he he actually went off to South America to Bolivia to on a potato collecting expedition that would be the end of November early December and he came back in February the following year 1971 and almost immediately on on return he phoned me up they said Mike he said how would you like to go to South America for a year how would you like to go to Peru well I had I mentioned a few minutes ago my interest in in geography and looking at maps and I was absolutely fascinated with the with the the map of South America this huge continent of jungles of mountains and for some reason or I still don't really know why I had always wanted to visit Peru and here was the opportunity somebody was offering me the chance to go and visit Peru and pay me to do so so I said like when's that when do I get the ticket well it didn't quite work out like that because what had happened he'd gone to Peru he had had collaboration from a USAID North Carolina State University Peru joint mission on potatoes this had been set up in the mid 1960s and it was slowly transforming itself into what became the International Potato Center and the then Director General Dick Sawyer was busy looking for funding and he'd been to the UK and he'd talked to the the people in the department that now is now called DFID looking for support had he really wanted somebody to go to Peru for one year to take over the management of a germplasm collection while he sent a young Peruvian to Birmingham for training well what got in the way of me going immediately was the CGIAR because in it would be or during 1971 the discussions were taking place to form what became the CGIAR and the UK agency were still debating whether it should join this entity or whether it should continue to give funding on a bilateral basis so instead of going out to Peru in October 1971 as was originally planned I got delayed for another 15 months so I actually started a PhD at the University of Birmingham funded by the UK government and eventually headed off to Peru in January 1973 so I had the best of both worlds in many ways I was employed by the by the center by the International Potato Center but at the same time I was doing my PhD in a country that I'd always wanted to visit and it was a marvelous time as a I was 24 years old as they say the world's your oyster and my fiance now my wife came out and joined me in mid-1973 July 73 we got married in Lima in October 73 and we stayed there for another couple of years or so and I had responsibility for germplasm collecting and carrying out a piece of research on one section of the germplasm germplasm collection that it was maintaining well I went back to Birmingham in mid-1975 spent a month or so writing up my thesis defending it making plans to go back to to Peru and the decision was made fairly early on that they would send me to Central America to set up a program here I was 26 years old and they said go to Costa Rica and set up a research program and so we moved to Costa Rica we moved to Turi Alba there was a an international center there regional center called Cati a and we had a they hosted me for nearly five years and I spent time looking at adaptation of potatoes to tropical conditions got involved in a lot of plant pathology work because there was a bacterial disease bacterial wilt that became a very important problem of potato cultivation in that environment so spent three four years working on bacterial wilt and also setting up a regional potato program that was really one of the first consortia if not the first within the CG system called preco depa funded by the Swiss and they funded it for about 28 years originally involving six countries in the region Mexico Guatemala Honduras Costa Rica Panama and the Dominican Republic but after I left it then expanded out into the Caribbean included Cuba Haiti Belize came in so all languages of the region and at the end of 1980 I went back to Lima I thought that I'd done what I could in in Central America it was a great time beautiful part of the world to live our first child was born in Costa Rica we moved back to to Lima not quite sure what was going to happen originally Dick Sawyer the director general said well we'll send you to to to Brazil was the regional leader for the southern Cone countries but then the Brazilians said no they didn't they didn't want to yanky even though I'm British so we weren't quite sure and in the meantime a position had become vacant at the University of Birmingham and I decided to apply for that a teaching position went for interview flew flew from Peru for interview got the the job and and decided to return to the UK in April 1981 but I had it was a it was a quite an exciting time because the director general had already said to me I think it's a great idea that you go for an interview but if you're not successful here's a contract waiting for you when you come back and we'll send you to the Philippines well I didn't go to the Philippines in 1981 it took and further 10 years but here I am so went back to Birmingham set up a had to essentially devise a teaching program mainly graduate teaching on genetic resources set up a fairly active research program on potatoes but also on legume species had a good crop of PhD students came through and that was that was an interesting time second child was born during the during the 80s and second daughter I'd started become restless towards the night at the end of the 1980s in no in due in no small part to Margaret Thatcher and her government so and in a in a sense I can you can blame the fact that I came to to Erie on Margaret Thatcher her government was imposing a lot of measures on the university system and I was getting very uncomfortable with this and I started to question my role within the university system I enjoyed the teaching but advancement within the within the university system didn't necessarily take into account one's complete contributions I mean your research was paramount and yet you're expected to do all this teaching which I was doing and so when the opportunity came one day out of the blue an advertisement landed on my desk I don't know who it came from friend or foe and it was for the position of the head of what was then called the rice genetic resources center at Erie so I put an application that would be around about September or so 1990 and I was called for interview the first week of January 1991 it's rather interesting with three candidates that were interviewed we all knew each other obviously in the world of genetic resources but even more so we all had MSc's and PhD's from the University of Birmingham and we'd all been supervised by the same major professor which caused a little bit of consternation when amongst the the folks here at Erie because you know we all came in at the same time we we socialized with each other we talked about things and they were a bit concerned that you know that we would feel uncomfortable about being at Erie for interview and but no it all worked out fine I I waited a few weeks they they phoned me offered me the job I accepted more or less and came here in July 1991 came on my own in the first instance left the family back in the UK got myself settled in and then towards the end of December 1991 that's when the family turned up I'd only when when I joined Erie I'd only actually visited Asia once that was in the mid 1980s when I attended a meeting in in Jakarta and that's where I met TT Chang for the first time so I'd not traveled in Asia and I have to admit my my focus my interest was clearly in Latin America I absolutely adored living in Latin America I I'd always wanted to go there I became fluent in Spanish so it was it was a very exciting time in my life and I was obviously that much younger so I joined Erie when I was in my early 40s and this was really represented quite a quite a challenge as I said I had been given the chance 10 years earlier to come to the Philippines but had moved back to the UK so it was it was with both excitement and some trepidation that we made the decision to move to Asia and it was also a concern because I had daughters at that time who were 13 and 9 years old and taking them out of the education system in the UK and then faced with putting them into a really I would say alien education system in an international school as things turned out that that was not a problem and they both benefited enormously from the experience of living abroad from attending international schools and having a big circle of friends from from wherever I think that's really one of the positives that we take away from all our years is that multicultural experience for all of us in coming to Asia and Asia was also a big eye-opener I mean it's so different from all of my experiences to date and I'm sure for many people when they come to to Erie it's a time of adjustment took me I suppose three or four years maybe a little longer before I started to calm down driving and other elements of living in the Philippines but I think age also helps well in those days the the position had been advertised to bring together what had what at that time was called the International Rice Joan Plasm Center which was the gene bank the International Network for Genetic Evaluation of Rice Injure and the seed health unit all into one entity and that's what I was interviewed for by the time between interviewing January 91 and arriving in July 91 a decision had been made to take the seed health unit out of the equation which I think was a very wise move because with both the gene bank and in your your managing seeds your distributing seeds receiving seeds and I think you know the the seed health unit is is there to ensure that you know things are done correctly and you don't really want to be in a situation of gamekeeper and poacher as it as it were in the management of seeds so that was out of the equation it really was a challenge in two ways on both the gene bank side and the genetic resources center in general on the gene bank side when I came here for interview we were all shown around the Institute we were shown the gene bank and they had this well-oiled entity the gene bank that operated you know it was slick everything happened etc when I got here and as it were pulled back that veneer and found out how things were actually operating I was really quite shocked there was very little application of best practice it was very little application of some of the latest science and the staff showed very little initiative well this surprised me given the nature of the job they were doing but it was clear to me that they had never been asked to show any initiative and therefore didn't offer any and it was a challenge to get them to understand it maybe took six months to a year I think they they had been used to one regime that had not changed for years and here was this strange person from halfway around the world coming in and asking all these questions about how the gene bank was running and what one should do and I think they probably found it quite a threat but in in exploring these issues with them and and getting them to understand that they're you know they're always two sides to a situation that you can you can ask questions about what they're doing and why they're doing it and then making suggestions as to perhaps it might be worthwhile looking at some different options over time they realized that I wasn't there to to really well as I think they thought I was going to destroy things but to actually make opportunities for them to get more involved to free up time to give them more exciting things to do and so we made major changes in our data management the management of the seeds we were given the opportunity very excitingly to to renovate our facilities and there was a big renovation of facilities in the Institute in the early 90s anyway and I was able to persuade eerie management to include the gene bank and we were good beneficiaries of that but almost everything that the gene bank did we had a you know a serious look at and and the staff responded and in responding and participating and and taking ownership of what they did and and at the same time we were able to get the majority of the staff positions upgraded so that people took responsibility and accepted accountability within about four years we had what was clearly a top-class genetic resources program that was built on the very solid foundations of my predecessor but we had we had brought it up to the end of the the 20th century as it were so when we had a a gene bank review I think it was in 1996 it was clear that the eerie gene bank came out way ahead of of the other gene banks in the CG system and and that review that good positive review is in doing no small part to the excellent staff that the genetic resources center on the gene bank side has so what was my other challenge well frankly it was a an injured group that didn't see that they needed to be included in a new organizational structure and were really quite obstructive in trying to bring about changes that would have led to greater efficiencies they just did not want to be part of the genetic resources center and that really was quite a battle over the years now as we know India has now moved out of GRC and is now in plant breeding I'm not sure whether that's a good thing or a bad thing and then you know India has to decide what it has to do but I had been given a mandate to try and bring about some some efficiencies there I mean I wasn't head of India I wasn't running it on a day-to-day basis but I did have to try and provide the the resources under the umbrella of the genetic resources center for India to to operate and I wanted to bring about changes particularly in the field so that we could you know use the staff resources in a much more flexible and beneficial way to all the operations in the gene bank as I say it was not a particularly comfortable number of years we did get there in the end and by the time I left the gene bank there were various parts of the operations of both India and the gene bank which were working much more closely with each other and a single set of administrative procedures which in the end I think brought about efficiencies well I've actually been fortunate that I've actually had five careers but I've only worked in three places because I had two careers in in SIP in Lima and then when I moved into the regional program my career in Birmingham and as you say two careers at Erie and when I joined Erie I more or less said to myself you know ten years that'll be about the right sort of time and here we are almost 19 years later and I'm still here but I said to myself ten years would be the appropriate time to to be at the Institute and towards the end of the 90s a number of opportunities outside Erie did occur which I did look at and in one or two cases was interviewed but it was clear in my field that carrying a British passport was not necessarily the best thing given the circumstances but anyway we'd had a group I'm can't remember who they were I think it was associated with future harvest in some way that came to look at in what they were considering is philanthropic fundraising and somehow or other I got involved in these workshops and I believe that one of the people involved in organizing the workshop had a word in Ron Cantrell's ear and my name came up that's what I'm led to believe anyway the outcome was that I received a phone call from the DG's office one day saying would I come over and for a discussion well I had at that time thought it might be something to do with the emerging global crop diversity trust and had got at the back in my mind that perhaps somebody asked for me to be seconded that's what I you know the only scenario that I could possibly think of so it was a bit of a shock when I walked into the DG's office and he was sitting there and there was Ren Wang the DDG research and Willie Padelina the DDG operations and support services sitting around the table and Mike sit down what's all this about anyway the way Ron and Ron Cantrell put it he said you know if a donor was to come to Erie tomorrow and offer a five million dollars he said I couldn't refuse it he said but I have no idea how it would fit in with the scheme of things we really do not have much idea of what money we're raising where how it's being spent etc and we really do need to bring some order to this whole process and we'd like you to set up a new unit it'll be at a director level there had been a liaison coordination planning unit before but for whatever reasons it appears that that had not been as successful as it might have been and he said we want you to to you know clean sleep the clean slate set something up so we had a bit of a question and a discussion on it and I do remember saying something else I said well okay I've got to think about this but I think I can make it work if I can get somebody like Carinta Guerta to come and work with me well I'd never worked with Carinta she is she was a soil chemist in another division but I'd been aware of some of the things she'd been involved in and I'd been on an interview panel promotion panel a couple of years before and was very impressed with what I'd seen anyway to cut a long story short Ron Cantrell asked me to consider moving from essentially a research division into the senior management team and for a number of reasons I actually turned him down said no and we left it at that there were certain aspects of the to our terms of reference that I wasn't particularly happy with and he wouldn't budge on and about six weeks later through a roundabout way I got a message that they were still looking to fill the position and if I was interested he'd like to have another chat with me about it so we we had another chat and there were certain aspects of the to our that he wouldn't budge on but there were others that he would and so we came to an agreement and on the 1st of May 2001 I started as director for program planning and coordination and that's what I've been doing for the last nine years essentially yes it's very different from running a gene bank but in some ways it's not a gene bank in order for a gene bank to operate you have to make sure that all the different elements all the different processes the flows of information are integrated and work together and in the gene bank you manage samples of seeds which we call accessions well managing donor relations managing projects managing contracts etc there's a little bit like running a gene bank instead of packets of seeds we have grants we have projects we have contracts and all the information that flows between them and one of the important things that I I think I've I brought to the gene bank and to this particular office is some systematic way of doing business it one of my biggest frustrations a dairy is the fact that in the past we have ended up when you asked to do something doing it multiple times because the instructions for doing something have never been clearly spelled out and so you waste an awful amount of time with people interpreting what they have to do well I like to try and do something once and do it right and I was able to build a team here in we call DPC who understood what I was trying to achieve and I think we achieved it we've set up systems of interaction with the donors we've certainly raised the profile and the reputation of the Institute with the donors I think we've contributed significantly to increasing the budget of the Institute by ensuring that our the Institute's response is coordinated in such a way that the identity of the Institute is clearly there in any communication branding that the quality of the communications is as high as we can achieve it and for that I have to thank the support that we have received over the years from the communications and publication services staff who've helped us and I think have clearly understood what we were out to achieve both in the presentation of materials and the editing and the quality of writing and to be able to deliver not next week or the week after or the week after that but when there's something to be done it gets done and delivered and I think that is very important. I mean one of the significant issues when I when I did move was that A the Institute didn't really know how many grants it had it more or less on the back of an envelope type operation so within the first week we actually made an inventory of all the grants we thought the Institute had and then we then we applied a really high-powered piece of rocket science we gave everything a unique ID just like we would an accession in a gene bank and that way through all our database work the database development all our communications we'd done it was then able we were then able to track information between these offices between the finance office HR wherever and and to provide you know a backbone on which you could then start to assemble all the other pieces of of information and the other thing we discovered is that the Institute was about 90% deficient shall we say in reporting its grants back to donors and the Institute was getting hurt we were getting a bad reputation as the bad boy of the system you know eerie does not deliver now you can argue I suppose the value of reporting and I know our scientists get quite frustrated at times that they are required to take time out from what they see as more important things to sit down and write reports but that's part of the contract part of the deal of receiving research funding that you you report back to somebody how you actually spent the money did you achieve what you say you were going to do and this is this is important for accountability because I think we have to accept that the the funding we get is somebody else's tax dollars or tax pounds or euros and the agencies that give us the funding have a constituency to report back to so they have to be able to say whether the funding was applied appropriately but every wasn't reporting well we got that down to about 10% within six months just by making the whole reporting process part of doing research you write a concept note a proposal it's submitted you implement your your research you report back periodically and at the end of the project you bring it all together and hopefully it leads to out out those outputs lead to outcomes and an impact but you have a way of monitoring that all the way through those weren't in place before it's absolutely standard operating procedure now at Erie and I think it's one of the strengths that the the the office brought to the whole research management at the Institute I was joking with somebody a few weeks ago about when it's my time at the at the guesthouse for the hail and farewell when they said what do you want on your plaque and I said well I don't particularly appreciate you know these these long statements that go on forever about everything you ever did and I would like if it were possible for people to remember my contributions at Erie in the following way he left things better than he found them and I think in terms of the gene bank we we made significant changes in the way that we manage rice germ plasm in the field in the screen house in the the the the whole processing that prior to the material going into the gene bank in our data management systems etc we we built a series of operations that I think a world-class and that the Institute should be proud of and I'm certainly proud of that and and and I think it was a good basis for my successor Rory sight of all Hamilton to come in and he's been able to build on those as I had built on the on the the foundation that TT Chang established and much of what we built in the 1990s is in place I'm pleased about the contributions we made to the debate discussions about on farm conservation we were successful in the mid 90s to to receive over three million dollars from the Swiss Development Corporation for a project to collect germ plasm around the world and we increased the size of the collection by 25 percent we also trained a lot of people in germ plasm but I was able to recruit a population geneticist and a social anthropologist to work side by side on a project on farm conservation there was a lot of propaganda shall we say that this was the you know gene banks were were what people were calling gene mortuaries you know don't put your seeds in a gene bank it'll be forgotten the material will die and needless to say I do not believe that if the gene bank is is is properly managed and everybody was a lot of people were saying we we need to increase our investment in on farm conservation my concern was or on farm in situ conservation it was very it was quite dangerous promoting an approach or a technology without really knowing what it meant what the dynamics of such a situation system were so it was good that we were able to get a population geneticist who could actually look at how farmer varieties were changing genetically if indeed they were changing and to have a social anthropologist trying to put that into some sort of social context so I was very pleased about that and we got a number of quite important publications out there and made a contribution to that overall debate I would say in general the clamor for on farm conservation has in fact declined over the last decade since we finished that work in terms of another area I was able towards the end of the 90s to persuade the system my genetic resources program to provide funding for a workshop that I conceptualized and in fact we ran in the Netherlands at what was then is now over a three or four day period in September 1999 I'd heard of a paper at a one of the rice genetics congresses here in Manila given by the late Dr. Mike Gale who had done a significant amount of work on the genetic similarities between wheat and maize and rice etc and it got me thinking that you know if it were possible to find a gene in wheat safe for drought resistance or let's take a better example in sorghum that you could find the genetic basis for drought in sorghum could you use that information I was thinking from a molecular point of view could use that to go on probe a germplasm collection of rice to find drought genes well we organize this workshop in in the Netherlands we got some of the best people are from around the world in comparative genetics and genomics I think we were four or five years too soon because some of the technologies that we now take for absolutely for granted were only beginning to emerge but there was you know that sort of glimmer on the horizon that we weren't being too fanciful I wasn't able to take it forward for a number of reasons it it didn't find a lot of favor here at Erie but within 18 months they'd formed the generation challenge program as you know Bob Ziegler was the first director of that challenge program and he had attended my workshop and so I think some of the thinking that we put into comparative genetics from a germplasm collection management point of view found its way into the thinking of the of the generation challenge program and I think that was quite interesting that a group of genetic conservationists should have as it were been pushing the agenda in that area and he goes without saying that the I think the the stability that we have brought to our donor relations and fundraising here at Erie has has put us ahead of the game compared to many other institutions and yeah and it's you know it will be with a sense of satisfaction when I do finally come to leave the Institute in a few weeks time that we've we've put in place some solid foundations from which the Institute can continue to grow Erie is a very complex organization I mean it's in many ways it's it's a Filipino organization over which you have this sort of layer of international staff some of the ways that the Institute does business I still don't understand because the relationships at various levels you have that added complexity of the international staff I forget how many nationalities well 30 national and we all look at the world in in in different ways what is of what is a value to somebody say from France or from India may be very different to what I perceive as a value as a British citizen so we do look at the world in different ways and that is is both a fantastic opportunity when you're working though in this sort of group and of course I had lived abroad before worked in a CG center 10 years more than 10 years before I joined here so it wasn't new to me but it's both an opportunity and a great challenge and so I would say there's never been huge frustrations there's been lots of small battles that one has had to to wage Erie is I know this because I've talked to people in other centers Erie is regarded as being of quite an arrogant center and I think it has good reason in many ways but I mean we do set ourselves some targets to reach we do esteem good science do we always reach it well that's for others to to judge our peers to judge the sometimes I think and it's can be dangerous a sense of self-satisfaction that leads people working at the Institute to accept the status quo and not want to push the boundaries not you know there's that there's there's very much well this is the way we've done it for the last 30 years why change and so there are things that happen or don't happen that are based on that sort of attitude which I don't think are really acceptable in an international organization 50 years after its after its foundation so that can be frustrating getting people to to to accept that there's you can always make change and things better and to be thinking about those opportunities rather than sort of sitting back in and being comfortable all the time I have to say I've been blessed I have had two fantastic groups of staff who come to understand the values that I have and the goals and objectives that I set for myself and I'll set for the for the for in the first case GRC and then the program planning and coordination and they've gone along with me and understood why I've wanted to do things in a particular way and it's not been a struggle working with them they've been extremely supportive and that has been one of the joys of working at Erie you say hindsight hindsight is a wonderful thing some of the things I would have liked to have done were not possible because we didn't have the technology there are things they're doing now that you know I had thought wouldn't it be nice to be able to do but we couldn't yeah they couldn't afford it I mean the fantastic opportunity we have now that the rice genome has been sequenced we have a whole range of molecular technologies and approaches that just weren't available in the early 90s we take for granted that everybody has a computer on the desk when I arrived and Mark of Vanderburg who is head of IT now was head of IT in 1991 and I sort of had to almost get down on my knees and beg for a for a PC on my desk it just wasn't that routine and now there are a number of things that we do and we really couldn't contemplate doing without access to some of these technologies so I often think boy if I'd had that available when I was running the gene bank what would we have done so but the opportunities presented themselves at a later date and other people have taken up the up the up the mantle as it were and so it's great to see some of those those ideas being taken taken forward so I certainly you know there's never been a time I can't think and I've thought about this quite long and hard there's never really been a time joined the 18 plus years that I've been here nearly 19 where I felt so frustrated I just wanted to get out of it lots of petty frustrations but we all find that in in in working in an organization like this yeah I it's it's it's not been plain sailing far from it but it hasn't been stormy weather either I'm looking back on 40 years of a career and okay 40 years actually takes me back to when I was a final year or senior year undergraduate because it was at that time that you know in a sense my career was was pushed in in a certain direction but we are all the result of the ideas that we've picked up the people that we we have interacted with and and how they've influenced what we do I mean for it for example you know what made Melissa Fitzgerald become a soil chemist and Eugene became a writer editor in the communications business why did I become a botanist and then move into it's all its environment in a sense there must them there must be something genetic there but it's a lot it's a lot is environment so the people and looking over my career it's the people that I've I've interacted with I have been very fortunate I think to have had a number of people who were fantastic mentors and I've always made it a point wherever I've been it's to sort of establish an interaction with one or two people with whom I could share you know aspects of of of what I was doing you know there's it's always good to have somebody who you can trust who you can bounce ideas off and get their reactions you don't have to follow what they they say but it's great to have that and everywhere I've been I've had somebody that I could go to and say well look this is a concern or what do you think of the following and and got that sort of feedback that I think is very important in some of his career but having spent most of my career working overseas and I got in the as you can imagine the CG right at the ground floor the CG had been formed I think in the back end of 1771 or early 1772 and I joined SIP in 1973 January that's over 37 years ago and in SIP we were six members of staff no laboratories virtually no offices and that was quite an experience I was 24 years old and sort of thrown into this the deep end and I got to meet many of the people who helped form the CG I wouldn't say people evangelical about it but there did seem to be a sense of purpose as to why you were there working in the center and what you could achieve and the donors certainly I think had a much better understanding then than they do today now it's always dangerous saying all things were better in the good old days but with this whole process that has gone on now for two or three years the so-called change process I really do think that there are quite a significant number of people outside the centers but also within the centers who have frankly lost the plot I don't think there's a good understanding any more of what the centers can or should deliver there seems certainly amongst colleagues in other centers a feeling that science is not a good science is not a something that we shouldn't necessarily strive for science doesn't seem to you know appear part of the equation process seems to be more important than output and I think you were talking we were talking about frustration a little while ago and I suppose talking about this now maybe is my biggest frustration and a little sad at the end of my career having come in at the ground floor now leaving the CG or leaving an area as the CG is trying to trying to change in a way that I I don't think if things go the way there they could go is going to be particularly helpful for Erie but more importantly for the for the people for whom Erie works and that is that that has been over the last couple of years or so a serious frustration but that is not a frustration of me doing my particular job it's a general frustration as to in the ways in which international agricultural research seems to be going with research now with a lower case R rather than a lover case yeah I am I it the things I really remember the people who who who contributed to that whole development of international agricultural research people who were contemporaries of of Boulog and they were ex Rockefeller people who'd been in Mexico those that had helped set up the centers the donors in those days were many of whom would also work to work overseas and so they understood better what the centers were trying to achieve and that's all become rather blurred


Jerry Seinfeld once quipped that most people at a funeral would rather be in the coffin than give the eulogy. Does that describe your feelings about public speaking? Don't worry, you're not alone. Speech anxiety is a major issue for most beginning speakers. In this video we'll address what speech anxiety is and provide some tips for reducing and managing that nervousness. So why is speech anxiety, which is sometimes called communication apprehension, such a large issue for so many of us? Well there are lots of factors that can come into play for different people. Things like shyness and introversion, fear of scrutiny or criticism, discomfort at the idea of being watched or examined, and negative prior experiences in public speaking can all result in varying levels of speech anxiety. When one or more than one of these elements is in play it can trigger the fight-or-flight response causing adrenaline to be released and take that nervousness to all new levels, creating a kind of snowball effect for your anxiety. The good news is that this is all completely normal. Once you know what to expect, there are steps that you can take to reduce and manage your anxiety about public speaking. That's the real message of this video, so let's get straight into discussing some of those strategies. Before we get to some tips on reducing nervousness when giving a speech, let's talk about two common mistakes that you should avoid. First, don't start your speech with a comment about how nervous you are. It's perfectly understandable for a speaker to be nervous, but there's no need to draw attention to your nervousness by saying, I'm really nervous, and pointing it out to the audience. Another popular but ineffective strategy for combating nervousness is to picture the audience naked or in their underwear. Not only is this not helpful in managing your anxiety, it can be a distraction for the speaker and generally uncomfortable for everyone. Now that we know what not to do, let's talk about some effective strategies for reducing nervousness when giving a speech. Our first tip is to acquire speaking experience. The more speaking you do and the more positive experiences you have with public speaking, the less anxiety you will feel about doing so in the future. This is not to say that it will happen in large leaps or all at once. Every time you speak, though, you'll feel a tiny bit less nervous about doing it in the future. Over time, those tiny bits will add up to larger bits and you'll be on your way toward confidence as a speaker. Preparation and practice is another critical piece in reducing nervousness about public speaking. Being thoroughly prepared and allowing ample time and opportunity to practice your speech will exponentially increase your confidence leading up to your speech. Good speech preparation includes things like thoughtful development and organization of the main points and other content, research and creating presentational aids. When you practice your speech, be sure to do so in a way that resembles the actual speech as much as possible. By this, I mean practice it out loud so that you get comfortable saying the words and can work on the desired inflection, vocal variety and elements of physical delivery. You should also incorporate any presentational aids that you will use during the speech into your practice so that you can use them comfortably and smoothly during the speech. As silly as this may sound, it can help to think positive thoughts about public speaking. Focus on the positives that can come from the experience. You could make a good impression. You could change someone's mind on the topic. You could help someone understand a concept better.  Whatever the case, try to associate the public speaking process with good things. There are some other things that you can also do to reduce your nervousness about speaking in public. Visualizing success can be helpful. Close your eyes for a moment and imagine your speech going well. Your introduction goes smoothly and people are interested and engaged. You're nailing your main points. Your evidence is solid and your citations enhance your credibility. Your conclusion has a clear impact on the audience and they all applaud loudly after your speech. Don't you feel better about all of this already? It's also important to remember that your nervousness is not really that evident to the audience. It's always way worse in your mind and inside your body than it is on the outside. Don't believe me?  After your speech, you write down a number that represents how nervous you felt. I'll bet that your neighbor's number is at least a couple numbers lower than yours. Nerves show up way more on the inside than they do on the outside. All of that nervous energy doesn't have to be a bad thing either. There are ways that you can channel it into positive effects. Nervous energy can help you be more lively and animated during your speech. You can also release some of that excess energy through gestures and other appropriate movement. Just be sure that your movement doesn't become a distraction during the speech. You should also have realistic expectations for your speech. Your audience doesn't expect perfection from you and you shouldn't get too hung up on it either. When mistakes happen, take them in stride, fix it if necessary, and then move on. If nothing else, you can take comfort in knowing that you are not alone in all of this. Most, if not all, of your classmates are experiencing the same kinds of nervousness that you are. You're in good company. Even more importantly, remember that your classmates and instructor are pulling for you. They want you to be successful and they're cheering for you. They can't do it out loud because that would be distracting, but believe me, they're cheering for you. Another mental exercise that you can practice to reduce nervousness about speaking is to engage in cognitive reframing. Don't think of it as giving a huge and complicated presentation. Think of it as a conversation where you just happen to be talking to more than one person. You are also doing the audience a favor with your speech by sharing important information with them. We have just a few final tips for reducing nervousness. The first is to use presentational aids. If you're uncomfortable with the idea of the audience looking at you the whole time, then using aids can help by giving them something else to focus on for a moment or two. You can also involve the audience in your speech. This can help with framing the speech as a conversation in your mind. And like using presentational aids, it can put the eyes of the audience on something else for a moment. Believe it or not, making eye contact with the audience can help reduce nervousness. First, establishing eye contact with individuals will help you picture the speech as a conversation with individuals rather than a big scary presentation to an audience. Eye contact is also a great way to gather positive feedback, which can help with confidence. Finally, making eye contact can also make you appear more confident, which in turn can make you feel more confident. Your nervousness about public speaking can also be reduced by simply projecting confidence. The technical communication terminology for this is fake it till you make it. Projecting confidence, even when you don't really feel confident, can sort of trick your mind and body into following along and eventually believing that you are confident. In a sort of trickle down effect, it will also help the audience believe in you, which in turn will give you more confidence. As I just mentioned, sometimes you have to fake it till you make it. Can you think of some ways that you can project confidence as a speaker, even when you're not necessarily really feeling that confidence? Why don't you jot some ideas down? Go ahead, I'll give you a moment. If you need more time to think about ways that you can project confidence as a speaker, feel free to pause the video now. Otherwise, let's continue. Finally, you can take steps to minimize the visible signs of your nervousness by recognizing how it shows up for you. For example, if you tend to blush during speeches, then don't wear red and stay away from v-neck shirts and tops. If you get butterflies the size of jumbo jets in your stomach, watch what you eat on the day of the speech and avoid caffeine as much as possible. Do you tend to sweat a lot while you're speaking? Then don't wear a light colored shirt for your speech. If you tend to fidget with your hands, then clear objects away from the speaking area, empty your pockets, avoid wearing necklaces, bracelets and other loose jewelry, and use note cards instead of full size sheets of paper. Being self aware about how your nervousness may come out will allow you to take steps in advance to control your anxiety and minimize those effects. In this video, we discussed what speech anxiety is, and provided some tips for reducing and managing that nervousness. Check out some of our other videos for more insight into the public speaking process.


Chapter 35 of The Girl from Hollywood by Edgar Rice-Burroughs. This libel box recording is in the public domain. According by Joe DeNoya, Somerset, New Jersey. Eva was still breathing faintly as the sun dropped behind the western hills. Shannon had not left the house all day. She felt that Custer needed her, that they all needed her, however little she can do to mitigate the grief. There was at least a sense of sharing their burden and her fine sensibilities told her that this service of love was quite as essential as the more practical help that she would have been glad to offer had it been within her power. She was standing in the patio with Custer at Sunset, within call of Eva's room, as they had all been during the entire day. When a car drove up along the south drive and stopped at the patio entrance, three of the four men in it alighted in advance toward them. You are Custer Pennington, one of the masts? Pennington nodded. And you are Miss Burke? Miss Shannon Burke? I am. I'm a deputy sheriff. I have a warrant here for your arrest. Arrest, esteemed Custer? For what? He read the warrant to them. They charged them with a murder of Wilson Crone. I'm sorry, Mr. Pennington said the deputy sheriff, but I've been given these warrants and there's nothing for me to do but serve them. You have to take us away now? Can't you wait until my sister is dying in there? Couldn't it be arranged that I could stay here under arrest as long as she lives? The deputy shook his head. It would be all right with me, he said, but I have no authority to let you stay. I'll telephone in though and see what I can do. Where is the telephone? Pennington told him.  He was gone about 15 minutes. When he returned, he shook his head. Nothing doing, he said. I have to bring you both in right away. May I go to her room and see her again before I leave, asked Custer? Yes, said the deputy, but when Custer turned toward his sister's room, the officer accompanied him. Dr. Baldwin and one of the nurses were in the room. Young Pennington came and stood beside the bed, looking down on the white face and the tumbled curls upon the pillow. He could not perceive the slightest indication of life, yet they told him that Eva still lived. He knelt and kissed her and then turned away. He tried to say goodbye to her, but his voice broke and he turned and left the room hurriedly. Colonel and Mrs. Pennington were in the patio with Shannon and the officers. The Colonel and his wife had just learned of this new blow and both of them were stunned. The Colonel seemed to have aged a generation in a single day. He was a tired, hopeless old man. The heart of his boy and that of Shannon Burke went out to him and to the suffering mother, from whom their son was to be taken at this moment in their lives when they needed him most. In their compassion for the older Penningtons, they almost forgot the seriousness of their own situation. At their arraignment next morning, the preliminary hearing was set for the following Friday. Early in the morning, Custer had received word from God on whether Eva still lived, and that Dr. Baldwin now believed they might have some slight hope for her recovery. At Canado, despair and anxiety had told heavily upon the Penningtons. The Colonel felt that he should be in Los Angeles to assist in the defense of his son, and yet he knew that his place was with his wife, whose need of him was even greater. Nor would his heart permit him to leave the daughter whom he worshipped, so long as even a faint spark of life remained in that beloved frame. Mrs. Evans returned from Los Angeles the following day. She was almost prostrated by this last of a series of tragedies ordered. And it seemed by some malignant faint for the wrecking of her happiness. She told him the guy appeared to be hopelessly insane. He did not know his mother, nor did he give the slightest indication of any recollection of his past life, or of the events that had overthrown his reason. At 10 o'clock on Wednesday night, Dr. Baldwin came to the living room, where the Colonel and his wife were sitting with Mrs. Evans. For two days, none of them had been in bed. They were tired and haggard, but not more so than the old doctor, who remained constantly on duty from the moment when he was summoned. Never had man worked with more indefatigable zeal than he to rest the young life from the path of the Green Reaper. There were deep lines beneath his eyes, and his face was pale and drawn, as he entered the room and stood before them. But for the first time in many hours, there was a smile upon his lips. I believe, he said, that we're going to save her. The others were too much affected to speak, so long had hope been denied that now they dared not even think of hope. She regained consciousness a few moments ago. She looked up at me and smiled, then she fell asleep. She's breathing quite naturally now. She must not be disturbed, though. I think it would be well if you all retired. Mrs. Pennington, you certainly must get some sleep, and you too, Mrs. Evans, or I cannot be responsible for the results. I have left work for the night, Urs, to call me immediately, if necessary, and if you will all go to your rooms, I will lie on this over here in the living room. I feel at last that it will be safe for me to leave her in the hands of the nurse, and a little sleep won't hurt me. The colonel took his old friend by the hand. Bald Windy said, it is useless to try to thank you. I couldn't, even if there were words to do it with. You don't have to, Pennington. I think I love her as much as you do. There isn't anyone who knows her who doesn't love her, and who wouldn't have done as much as I. Now get off to bed, all of you, and I think we'll find something to be very happy about by morning. If there's any change for the worse, I'll let you know immediately. In the County Jail in Los Angeles, Custer Pennington and Shannon Burke, awaiting trial on charges of a capital crime, were filled with increasing happiness as the daily reports from Ganano brought word of Ava's steady improvement. Until at last, she was entirely out of danger. The TD's preliminaries of selecting a jury were finally concluded. As witness after witness was called, Pennington came to realize for the first time what a web of circumstantial evidence that the state had fabricated about him. Even from servants whom he knew to be loyal and friendly, the most damaging evidence was elicited. His mother's second maid testified that she had seen him fully dressed in his room late in the evening before the murder, when she had come in, as was her custom, with a pitcher of iced water, not knowing that the young man was there. She had seen him lying upon the bed with his gun on its holster, hanging from the belt about its waist. She also testified that the following morning, when she had come in to make the bed, she had discovered that he had not been slept in. The stableman testified that the Apache had been out the night of the murder. He had rubbed the animal off early in the evening when the defendant had come in from riding. At that time, the two had examined the horseshoes, the animal having just been reshot. He said that on the morning after the murder, there were saddle sweat marks upon the Apache's back, and that the off foreshoe was missing. One of the KKS employees testified that a young man, whom he partially identified as Custer, had ridden into their camp about nine o'clock on the night of the murder, and had inquired concerning the whereabouts of Crumb. He said that the young man seemed excited, and upon being told that Crumb was away, he had ridden off rapidly towards Sycamore Canyon. Added to all this were the damaging evidence of the detective who had found the Apache's off foreshoe under Crumb's body, and the positive identification of the shoe by Allen. The one thing that was lacking, a motive for the crime, was supplied by Allen and the Pennington's houseman. The latter testified that among his other duties was the care of the hot water heater in the basement of the Pennington home.  He had returned about nine o'clock to do so. When he left the house by the passageway leading from the basement, beneath the south drive, and the opening of the hillside just above the water gardens, he had seen a man standing by the upper pool, with his arms about a woman whom he was kissing. It was a bright moonlight night, and the houseman had recognized the two as Custer Pennington and Miss Burke. Being embarrassed by having thus accidentally come upon them, he had moved away quietly in the opposite direction, among the shadows of the trees, and had returned to the bunkhouse. The connecting link between this evidence and the motive for the crime was elicited from Allen in half an hour of direct examination, which constituted the most harrowing ordeal that Shannon Burke had ever endured, for it laid bare before the world, and before the man she loved, the sordid history of her life with Wilson Crumb. It portrayed her as a drug addict and a wanton, but, more terribly still, it established a motive for the murder of Crumb by Custer Pennington. Owing to the fact that he had laid in the drunken stupor during the night of the crime, that no one had seen him from the time when the maid entered his room to bring his ice water until his father had found him fully clothed upon his bed at five o'clock the following morning, young Pennington was unable to account for his actions, or to state his whereabouts at the time when the murder was committed. He realized what the effect of the evidence must be upon the minds of the jurors, when he himself was unable to assert positively, even to himself, that he had not left his room that night. Nor was he very anxious to refute the charge against him, since in his heart he believed that Shannon Burke had killed Crumb. He did not even take the stand in his own defense. The evidence against Shannon was less convincing, a motive had been established in Crumb's knowledge of her past life and the maligned influence that he had upon it. The testimony of the camp flunky who had seen her oblitering what evidence the trail might have given in the former hoof prints constituted practically the only direct evidence that was brought against her. It seemed to Custer that the gravest charge that could be justly brought against her was that of an accessory after the fact, provided the jury was convinced of his guilt. Many witnesses testified giving evidence concerning apparent irrelevant subjects.  When Shannon Burke took the stand, all eyes were riveted upon her. They were attracted not only by her youth and beauty, but also by the morbid interest which the frequenters of courtrooms would naturally feel in the disclosure of a life she had led in the Hollywood. Even to the most sophisticated, it appeared incredible that this refined girl, whose soft, well-modulated voice and quiet manner carried a conviction of innate modesty, could be the woman whom Slick Allen's testimony had revealed in such a role of vice and degradation. Allen's eyes were fastened upon her with the same intent and searching expression that had marked his attitude upon the occasion of his last visit to the Vista del Paso bungalow, as if he were trying to recall the identity of some half-forgotten face. Though Shannon gave her evidence in a simple, straightforward manner, it was manifest that she was undergoing an intense, nervous strain. The story that she told, coming as he did out of the clear sky, unguessed either by the prosecution or by the defense, proved a veritable bombshell to them both. It came after it appeared that the last link had been forged in the chain that fixed the guilt upon Cousin Brennan. She had asked then to be permitted to take the stand and tell her story in her own way. I did not see Mr. Crone, she said, from the time I left Hollywood on the 30th of July last year until the afternoon before he was killed, nor had I communicated with him during that time. What Mr. Allen told you about my having been a drug addict was true, but he did not tell you that Crone made me what I was, or that after I came to Canado to live, I overcame the habit. I did not live with Crone as his wife. He used me to peddle narcotics for him. I was afraid of him and did not want to go back to him. When I left, I did not even let him know where I was going. The afternoon before he was killed, I met him accidentally in the patio of Colonel Pennington's home. The Pennington's had no knowledge of my association with Crone. I knew that they wouldn't have tolerated me had they known what I had been. Crone demanded that I should return to him and threaten to expose me if I refused. I knew that he was going to be up in the canyon that night. I rode up there and shot him. The next morning I went back and attempted to obliterate the tracks of my horse, for I learned from Custer Pennington that it is sometimes easy to recognize individual peculiarities in the tracks of a shot horse. That is all, except that Mr. Pennington had no knowledge of what I did and no part of it. Momentarily, her statements seemed to overthrow the state's case against Pennington. But that the district attorney was not convinced of its truth was indicated by his cross-examination of her and other witnesses, and later by calling them a new witness. They could not shake her testimony, but on the other hand, she was unable to prove that she had ever possessed a .45 caliber pistol, or to account for what she had done with it after the crime. During the course of her cross-examination, many apparently unimportant and relevant facts were reduced, among them the name of the middle western town in which she had been born. This trivial bit of testimony was the only point that seemed to make any impression on Allen. Anyone watching him at the moment would have seen a sudden expression of incredulity and consternation overspread his face, the hard lines of which slowly gave place to what might, in another, have suggested a semblance of grief. For several minutes, he sat staring intently at Shannon, then he crossed the side of her attorney and whispered a few words in a lawyer's ear. Receiving an assent to whatever his suggestion might have been, he left the courtroom. On the following day, the defense reduced a new witness in the person of a Japanese who had been a house servant in the bungalow of the Visa del Paso. His testimony substantiated Shannon Burke's statement that she and Crumb had not lived together as men and wife. Then Allen was recalled to the stand. He told that the last eating that he had spent at Crumb's bungalow, and of the fact that Miss Burke, who was then known to him as Goss of Delor, had left the house at the same time he did. He testified that Crumb had asked her why she was going home so early, that she had replied that she wanted to write a letter, that he, Allen, had remarked, I thought you lived here, to which he replied, I'm here all day, but I go home nights. The witness added that his conversation took place in Crumb's presence, and that the director did not in any way deny the truth of the girl's assertion. While Allen should have suddenly espoused her case was a mystery to Shannon, only to be accounted for upon the presumption that if he could lessen the value of that part of her testimony which had indicated the possible motive for the crime, he might thereby strengthen the case against Pennington, toward whom he still fit enmity, and whom he had long ago threatened to get. The district attorney, in his final argument, drew a convincing picture of the crime from the moment when Custer Pennington settled his horse at the stables of Canado. He followed him up to the canyon to the camp in Jackknife, where he had inquired concerning Crumb, and then down to Sycamore again, where, at the mouth of Jackknife, the lights of Crumb's carc would have been visible up the larger canyon. He demonstrated clearly that a man familiar with the hills, and searching for someone whom sentiments of jealousy and revenge were prompting him to destroy, would naturally investigate this automobile light that it was shining, where no automobile should be. That the prisoner had ridden out with the intention of killing Crumb was apparent from the fact that he had carried a pistol in a country where, under ordinary circumstances, there was no necessity for carrying a weapon for self-defense. He vividly portrayed the very incident of the commission of the crime, how Pennington leaned from his saddle and shot Crumb through the heart, the sudden leap of the murderer's horse as he was startled by the report of the pistol, or possibly by the fallen body of a murdered man, and how, in so jumping, he had forged and torn off the shoe that had been found beneath Crumb's body.  She knew it, and she made no effort to prevent it. On the contrary, as soon as it was light enough, she would directly to the spot where Crumb's body lay, and, as has been conclusively demonstrated by the unimpeachable testimony of an eyewitness, she deliberately sought to expunge all traces of her lover's guilt. He derided Shannon's confession, which he termed an 11th hour effort to save a guilty man from the gallows.  He picked up the bullet that had been extracted from Crumb's body. Where is the pistol from which this bullet came? Here it is, gentlemen. He picked up the weapon that had been taken from Custer's room. Compare this bullet with those that were taken from the clip in the handle of this automatic. They are identical. This pistol did not belong to Shannon Burke. It was never in her possession. No pistol of this character was ever in her possession. Had she had one, she could have told where she obtained it and whether it had been sold to her or to another, and the records of the seller would show whether or not she spoke the truth. Feeling to tell us where she procured the weapon, she could at least lead us to a spot where she had disposed of it. She can do neither, and the reason why she cannot is because she never owned a .45 caliber pistol. She never had one in her possession, and therefore, she could not have killed Crumb with one. When at length the case went to the jury, Custer Pennington's conviction seemed a foregone conclusion, while the fate of Shannon Burke was yet in the laps of the gods. The testimony that Allen and the Japanese servant had given in substantiation of Shannon's own statement that her relations with Wilson Crumb had only been those of an accomplice and the disposal of narcotics removed from the consideration of the principal motive that she might have had for killing Crumb. And so there was no great surprise when, several hours later, the jury returned to verdict in accordance with the public opinion of Los Angeles, where, owing to the fact that murder juries are not isolated, such cases are tried largely by the newspapers and the public. They found Custer Pennington Jr. guilty of murder in the first degree, and Shannon Burke not guilty. On the day when Custer was to be sentenced, Colonel Pennington and Shannon Burke were present in the courtroom. Mrs. Pennington had remained at home with Eva, who was still the convalescing. Shannon reached the courtroom before the Colonel. When he arrived, he sat down beside her and placed his hand on hers. Whatever happens, he said, we shall still believe in him, no matter what the evidence, and I do not deny that the jury brought in an just verdict in accordance with it. I know that he is innocent. He told me yesterday that he was innocent, and my boy would not lie to me. He thought that you killed Crumb, Shannon.  He knows now, as we all know, that you did not. Probably, it must always remain a mystery. He would not tell me he was innocent until after you have been proven so. He loves you very much, my girl. After all that he heard here in court, after what I have been, I thought none of you would ever want to see me again. The Colonel pressed her hand. Whatever happens, he said, you're going back home with me. You tried to give your life for my son. This were not enough. The fact that he loves you and that we love you is enough. Two tears crept down Shannon's cheeks, the first visible sign of emotion that she had manifested during all the long weeks of the ordeal that she had been through. Nothing had so deeply affected her as the magnanimity of the proud old Pennington, whose pride and honor, while she had always admired him, she had regarded it as an indication of a certain puritanical narrowness that could not forgive the transgression of a woman. When the judge announced the sentence and they realized that Custer Pennington was to pay the death penalty, although it had been almost a foregone conclusion, the shock left them numb and cold. Neither the condemned man nor his father gave any outward indication of the effect of the blow. They were Penningtons, and the Pennington pride permitted them to show no weakness before the eyes of strangers. Nor yet was there any bravado in their demeanor. The younger Pennington did not look at his father or Shannon as he was led away toward his cell between two bailiffs. As Shannon Burke walked from the courtroom with the colonel, she could think of nothing but the fact that in two months the man she loved was to be hanged. She tried to formulate plans for his release, wild, quixotic plans, but she could not concentrate her mind upon anything but the bewildered thought that in two months they would hang him by the neck until he was dead. She knew that he was innocent, who then had committed the crime, who had murdered Wilson Crumb. Outside the Hall of Justice she was accosted by Allen, whom she attempted to pass without noticing. The colonel turned angrily on the man. He was in the mood to commit murder himself, but Allen forestalled any outbreak on the old man's part by a pacific gesture of his hands and a quick uphill to Shannon. Just a moment please, he said. I know you think I had a lot to do with Pennington's conviction. I want to help you now. I can't tell you why. I don't believe he was guilty. I changed my mind recently. If I can see you alone, Miss Burke, I can tell you something that might give you a line to the guilty party. Under no conceivable circumstances can you see Miss Burke alone snap the colonel. I'm not going to hurt her, said Allen. Just let her talk to me here alone on the sidewalk, or no one can overhear. Yes, said the girl, who could see no opportunity pass which held the slightest ray of hope for Custer. The colonel walked away, but turned and kept his eyes on the man when he was out of earshot. Allen spoke hardly to the girl for 10 or 15 minutes, and then turned and left her. When she returned to the colonel, the latter did not question her. When she did not offer to confide in him, he knew that she must have good reason for her reticence, since he realized that her sole interest lay in aiding Custer. For the next two months, the colonel divided his time between Donato and San Francisco, that he might be near San Quentin, where Custer was held pending the day of execution. Business Pennington, broken in health by the succession of blows that she had sustained, was sorely in need of his companionship and help. Eva was rapidly regaining her strength and some measure of her spirit. She had begun to realize how useless and foolish her attempt at self-destruction had been, and to see that the braver and noble course would have been to give Guy the benefit of remoral support in his time of need. The colonel, who had wormed from Custer the full story of his conviction upon the liquor charge, was able to convince her that Guy had not played at this honorable part, and that of the two he had suffered more than Custer. Her father did not condone or excuse Guy's wrongdoing, but he tried to make her understand that it was no indication of a criminal inclination, but rather the thoughtless act of an undeveloped boy. During the two months they saw little or nothing of Shannon. She remained in Los Angeles, and when she made the long trip to San Quentin to see Custer, or when they chance to see her, they could not but note how thin and drawn she was becoming. The roses had left her cheeks, and there were deep lines beneath her eyes, in which they were constantly an expression of haunting fear. As the day of the execution drew nearer, the gloom that had hovered over Ganado for months settled like a dense pall upon them. On the day before the execution, the colonel left for San Francisco to say goodbye to his son for the last time. Custer had insisted that his mother and Eva must not come, and they acceded to his wish. On the afternoon when the colonel arrived at San Quentin, he was permitted to see his son for the last time. The two conversed in low tones. Custer asking questions about his mother and sister, and about the little everyday activities of the ranch. Neither of them referred to the event of the following morning. Has Shannon been here today? The colonel asked. Custer shook his head. I haven't seen her this week, he said. I suppose she dreaded coming. I don't blame her. I should like to have seen her once more, though. Presently, they stood in silence for several moments. You better go, dads, of the boy.  Don't take it too hard. It wasn't so bad after all. I have led a bully life. I have never forgotten once that I am a Pennington. I shall not forget it tomorrow. The father could not speak. They clasped hands once. The older man turned away, and the guards led Custer back to the death cell for the last time. End of Chapter 36. Chapter 37 of The Girl from Hollywood by Edgar Rice Burroughs. This live box recording is in the public domain. Recording by Joe DeNoya, Somerset, New Jersey. It was morning when the colonel reached the ranch. He found his wife and Eva sitting in Custer's room. They knew the hour, and they were waiting there to be as near him as they could. They were weeping quietly. In the kitchen across the patio, they can hear Hannah sobbing. They sat there for a long time in silence. Suddenly, they heard a door slam in the patio, in the sound of someone running. Colonel Pennington, Colonel Pennington, a voice cried. The colonel stepped to the door of Custer's room. It was the bookkeeper calling him. What is it, he asked? Here I am. The governor has granted a stay of execution. There is new evidence. Ms. Berger's on her way here now. She has found the man who killed Crumb. What more he said the colonel did not hear, for he had turned back into the room and, collapsing on his son's bed, had broken into tears. He had gone through these long weeks like a man of iron. It was nearly noon before Shannon arrived. She had been driven from Los Angeles by an attaché of the district attorney's office. The Pennington had been standing on the east porch, watching the road with binoculars, so anxious worthy for confirmation of their hopes. She was out of the car before it had stopped and was running toward them. The man who had accompanied her followed and joined them on the porch. Shannon threw her arms around Mrs. Pennington's neck. He is safe, she cried. Another has confessed and has satisfied the district attorney of his guilt. Who was it, they asked? Shannon turned towards Eva. It is going to be another blow to you all, she said, but wait until I am through and you will understand that it would not have been otherwise. It was Guy who killed Wilson Crumb. Guy? Why should he have done it? That was it. That was why suspicion never directed toward him. Only he knew the facts that prompted him to commit the deed. It was Allen who suggested to me the possibility that it might have been Guy. I spent nearly two months at the sanatorium with this gentleman from the district attorney's office in an effort to awaken Guy's sleeping intellect to a realization of the past and of the present necessity for recalling it. He had been improving steadily, but it was only yesterday that memory returned to him. We worked on the theory that if he made to realize that Eva lived, the cause of his mental sickness could be removed. We tried everything, we had almost given up hope when, almost like a miracle, his memory returned while he was looking at a Kodak picture of Eva that I had shown him. The rest was easy, especially after he knew that she had recovered. Instead of the necessity for confession resulting in further shock, it seemed to inspired him. His one thought was of Custer, his one hope that he would be in time to save him. Why he killed Crumb asked Eva.  Very carefully, Shannon related all that Guy had told of Crumb's relations with his sister up to the moment of Grace's death. I am glad he killed him, said Eva. I would have no respect for him if he hadn't done it. Guy told me that the evening before he killed Crumb, he had been looking over a motion picture magazine and he had seen a picture of Crumb which tallied with the photograph he had taken from Grace's dressing table. A portrait of the man who, as she told him, was responsible for her trouble. Guy had never been able to learn his man's identity but the picture in the magazine with his name below it was a reproduction of the same photograph. There was no question as to the man's identity. The scarf pin and a lock of hair falling in a peculiar way over the forehead marked the pictures as identical. Though Guy had never seen Crumb, he knew from conversations that he had heard here that it was Wilson Crumb who was directing the picture that was to be taken on Ganada. He immediately got his pistol, sailed his horse and rode up to the camp in search of Crumb. It was he whom one of the witnesses mistook for Custer. He then did what the district attorney attributed to Custer. He rode to the mouth of Jackknife and saw the lights of Crumb's car up near El Camino Largo. While he was in Jackknife, Eva must have ridden out Sycamore with her meeting with Crumb, passing Jackknife before Guy rode back into Sycamore. He rode up to where Crumb was attempting to crank his engine. Evidently the starter had failed to work, for Crumb was standing in front of the car and the glare of the headlights attempted to crank it. Guy accosted him, charged him with the murder of Grace and shot him. He then started for home by way of El Camino Largo. Half a mile up the trail he dismounted and hit his pistol and belt in a hollow tree, then he rode home. He told me that while he never for an instant regretted his act, he did not sleep all that night and was in a highly nervous condition when the shock of Eva's supposed death unbalanced his mind. Otherwise he would gladly have assumed the guilt of Crumb's death at the time when Custer and I were accosted. After we had obtained Guy's confession, Allen gave us further information tending to prove Custer's innocence. He said he could not give it before without incriminating himself, and as he had no love for Custer, he did not intend to hang for a crime he had not committed. He knew that he would surely hang if he confessed the part he had been played in formulating the evidence against Custer. Crumb had been the means of sending Allen to the county jail after robbing him of several thousand dollars. The day before Crumb was killed, Allen's sentence expired. The first thing he did was a search for Crumb with the intention of killing the man. He learned that the studio where Crumb was and he followed him immediately. He was hanging around the camp out of sight waiting for Crumb when he heard the shot that killed him. His investigation led him to Crumb's body. He was instantly overcome by the fear, induced by his guilty conscience, that the crime would be laid at his door. In casting about for some plan by which he might divert suspicion from himself, he discovered an opportunity to turn against a man whom he hated. The fact that he had been a stable man at Ganado and was familiar with the customs of the ranch made it an easy thing for him to do to ride to the stables, settle the Apache and ride on with the sycamore to Crumb's body. Here he deliberately pulled the off-force shoe from the horse and hid it under Crumb's body. Then he rode back to the stable, unsettled the Apache and made his way to the village. The district attorney said that we need have no fear, but the Custer would be exonerated and free. And Eva, she turned to the girl with a happy smile, I have it very confidentially that there is a small likelihood that any jury in Southern California will convict Guy if he bases his defense upon a plea of insanity. Eva smiled bravely and said, One thing I don't understand, Shannon, is what you were doing brushing the road with a bough from a tree on the morning after the killing of Crumb, if you weren't trying to obliterate someone's tracks. That's just what I was trying to do, said Shannon. Ever since Custer taught me something about tracking, it has held a certain fascination for me so that I often try to interpret the tracks I see along the trails of the hills. It was because of this, I suppose, that I immediately recognized the Apache's tracks around the body of Crumb. I immediately jumped to the conclusion that Custer had killed him, and I did what I could to remove this evidence. As it turned out, my efforts did more harm than good, until Alan's explanation cleared up the matter. And why, asked the colonel, did Alan undergo this sudden change of heart?  It is a hard thing for me to tell you, she said. Alan is a bad man, a very bad man, yet in the worst of man there is a spark of good. Alan told me this morning, in the district attorney's office, what it was that kindled to life the spark of good in him. He is my father. End of Chapter 37 End of The Girl from Hollywood by Edgar Rice Burroughs Recording by Joe DeNoya, Somerset, New Jersey


Fisher Tiger is gone. Orohime proves to be trying to really bridge this gap between fishmen and humans, and Arlong has split away. Ladies and gentlemen welcome back to the channel, my name is JackTheBusRy and I'll be watching more One Piece today. We are still in this backstory where we are finding out everything that happened way back in the day in Fishman Island, with Arlong, Jimbae, all of them were growing up, and sort of how everybody found their paths. Orohime has set off with this celestial dragon to try to help negotiate and find some kind of solution for the fishmen and the humans. We know this doesn't end up pretty because Orohime is dead in the present day that we know, and how we get to that point we still don't know. I've got a fat like on this one if you haven't already, and let's hop into it. I'll neptune all them. We're scared, yeah? His wife, their mom was just gone. No word. Oh my, there's no way. Brother. Brother! What is she like, eight? This just gets worse and worse. So I'm guessing he didn't have his double fruit at this point.  Dude, it feels illegal watching this! Legendary Murphy Resin control the sea kings. Okay, maybe it's different than Haki. Well, like Haki has some control over sea kings, and just animals in general. My goodness! I wonder why?  Oh, now you do!  Some probably still like to hear her speeches. People switch up fast, bro. All the little kids. All they could do. Either she came back or word of her dying arrived. Do I know this ship? Wait, is that the Sun Pirate ship? She's alive! Wait, so I wanted to see like the conversations she might have had with humans though. Like who did she talk to? It must feel her hard that people were actually like awaiting her, especially with how it was when she left. Is she the paper? Oh, shoot, wait, she actually did accomplish like something hefty. It's stamped by them, I can see it. Oh my gosh, they endorsed what she had to say. So not everybody would sign it. There's either there's hope. Dang, dude. This makes it like a sense into reality. Some are hesitant still though. They probably think it's like some kind of trap from the humans. Nobody?! What?! They still didn't. Despite everything she did. It's, uh, that was their hope. Her investment in the next generation paid off. It only took something to get the ball rolling. Man. I thought she eventually died thinking that like there was no hope for anything because nothing, nothing ever happened in terms of progress. They need more, they need more room. Oh man. What happened? What changed? It was her dream come true. All those years. Aww. Oh, because of her. She was brave enough to speak with them. My only guess is that this endorsement was just like not followed through. I don't know. It has to be. Is it like an official endorsement? Yeah, for real man. This is Tiger's dream too. Oh man. That was what gave her the courage? Because Shirahoshi is also a part of the next generation. She's like this legendary mermaid. Neptune can talk to whales? Oh the way that makes sense. The little whale he has. So yeah, it isn't hockey I don't think. I think it's just this legendary power. Someone will guide her. Is that Luffy? It's so sad seeing all this and seeing the state of Fishman Island over a decade later. This is so sad. The tide's returning literally. And where we were now, Shirahoshi was locked away in this room. I mean she had to be because of Van der Decken and Fishman and humans. Nothing is fixed, even remotely. She could use them. They have them the best job but they're trying their best. The unexpected. Yeah, why? I'm so sick of this show man. I'm not but you know what I mean. Look at those boxes! But they trusted Queen Oda Hime in the new era. And she didn't allow manipulation! Aw, these kids tried signing several times. Shows how about it they are.  Oh here we go. Did someone burn them? No shot! Oh my god! What do you mean water? Who did it? Did she just pour it on herself? Oh my god! We can get more papers, that people will resign!  Oh my god. Who, Arlong? Oh my god, if it was Arlong, I can't forgive him even more for everything that's happened. There's no way he would stoop that low though, no? Or Horty? Maybe Hort- No, cause I don't know.  The kids were there.  Get out of here man! Oh that's when he touched her! Oh my god! Come through. It's like a mystery to this day. Maybe they never even found out. God, even in death. Oh man, Shirahoshi. It's the Sea Kings. It's like intense emotion. Maybe it does have a connection to Haki. Yeah, cause it's this intense emotion. Oh my god. I think that's why she tried to stay calm even though she died. Despite the fact that this is how she was her whole life.  Damn, that's all she asked of them too. God damn man. They had to be brave for her. So much more respect for the princess now. I thought they were such dumbasses man. They just smiled as their mom died. My god. And it went nowhere. She knew she died. But it was still that sad. There's so man. Oh my gosh. It's just the relationship of the brothers trying to be strong for her. I mean I guess the whole island depended on it too. They knew the weight that was on their shoulders to make sure that Shirahoshi wasn't upset. At least try to calm her down. My goodness man. Every arc this show just punches me in the stomach over and over again. It never lets up. Alright, 547 next episode I guess. That fine whoever did it man. They really didn't know. It had to have been either maybe like one of Arlong's men. I don't know. I don't know if Arlong would make a move like that. Cause he knows Tai wherever he's washing from. Would never, would never be for that. I don't think. Oh. Wait really? Jame said what should I do with this anger? Find that shooter and destroy him. Wait, Hordi stopped him? That was Hordi's voice. Hordi killed him, the shooter. It was a son pirate. Oh my god. It's even worse. Yeah, you have to hide this man. And Hordi knows that he hid the truth. Oh my god. Oh my god. Oh my goodness. Oh, it makes sense. This forged Hordi's path. He showed everyone. Oh my goodness. F**k. That's what shifted everything. That's not her dying, the fact that she died to the hands of a human. She can't come back. Was he the same one that set fire to the signatures then? Neptune finding out. Bro, what did Neptune do in the past? Honestly. I get that he was like the placeholder as like a ruler. But brother. I get that the focus is more on Oda Hime and her efforts, but we haven't seen him do anything. And he's clearly passionate about things. Maybe he just doesn't show everything he did and all he cared about. And maybe that's the point of us being in the present now. And him having a place in all of this. Him and Shirahoshi. Maybe he blames himself because he wasn't able to protect her. I feel bad now. I feel bad. Man. He knew he owed it to her. He's right. It's easiest to agree with something until you're put in that situation. You have to face the reality. I feel so bad now. I'm so sorry. Oh my god. This is so depressing. Please make it stop.  Please stop. He has to look after them. Oh, he's in a suit. Oh my god. Is it from VanderDekken? He started with letters. Oh man. I'm in love with you. I suspect. Kill me. He knew they were in danger. I don't blame him. They couldn't even get closure on their mom's own death or funeral. What? What? Yeah, Neptune didn't know about this. To not lose faith in an Otahime's word is 100% what he says. He still has power as her son. The son pirates too. There was a summit in two years? Oh. So every four years there's a summit. They'll be ready one year. Damn. He's actually giving everyone time. I leave. Please stop with the puner rolls over. Oh my god, we're back to the present. That's it. That's the whole story. Oh my gosh. You know so much lore now. It feels so nice, but so horrible at the same time. So, but why did Orling end up being a spook because of him? He's just saying because of their differences and how they split off. So Jinbei never found out. Oh my gosh. But he doesn't need Sanji's approval. Yeah, he needs Nami's word. Jinbei just has a kind heart so he holds himself responsible. Yeah. Orling's just a byproduct of everything that happened when they were kids and how he grew up. True. Yeah. It's a blessing and a curse. I like how Luffy has sat by and just let all of this unfold and fold. My heart. You see what she said? Oh my gosh. Damn. He sees a parallel of Fisher and Oh the Hime and Nami. Oh my gosh. Just on the human side. She was mistreated by fishmen. She didn't hold it against all of them. God. Even hot shots crying. I love Frankie bro. I like how Luffy's just sitting in and taking this and just sitting by. Oh my god. I'm so done. I'm so done. I'm so goddamn over him. I'm kidding. I don't hold it against you Luffy. He said are you crying? But he missed all of it. I can't. He missed his entire. When did he fall asleep? At what point? Yeah. He missed. Oh my god. Oh my gosh. That was literally the very beginning of the story. Dang. Yeah. Man. If only a little Hime-sama could see this bro. God dang it. Who's still are you? Oh my gosh. Brother. Yeah bro. There's like a foreign attack going on right now. This entire backstory. Yeah. It's not just the palace. It's like all the towns and everything. There's no time to waste. Y'all gotta get in there. More than Arlong. Bro, that's saying something too. Because Arlong actually got out there in the world and took his anger out. Hori's been here. Oh, true actually. Hori even heard S- Oh wow. Yeah. He's forcing everyone, even fishmen that care about Hime-sama or Odo Hime's word to switch over. Oh my gosh. Yeah. Arlong would have never. That's true. Arlong just hated humans in general. This year is the summit. Oh dude. This isn't even a bigger deal than I thought then. The planning of the attack makes sense then. Is that a phone? That's a transponders now. Why is Chopper screaming? Oh it's huge. Oh my gosh. I thought it was like a weird perspective thing. Where is this from? Is it from the palace? From Hori? Oh it's totally Hori. Oh shoot. We'll be just staring at him bro. This is like his declaration of war. Oh my god bro. That backstory obliterated me and it seems like it's over. But holy, that took a toll on me that I was not expecting. I mean I was invested in only Hime's story for sure but I did not think actually seeing her death or assassination would hit that hard. This arc as a whole has hit very hard. I mean I almost cried at Fisher Tiger dying or the betrayal of him. Because I mean you see what these characters go through and we've known them for so long at least the history of them. So to now actually see it like firsthand examples and what not it just hits even harder. That's why one piece is so long man I reiterate again and again. Like the story of Nami, the story of Shirahoshi and those coming together. Nami saying we've been through similar things it just, it couldn't be like it couldn't be more true. And Jembe being introduced in the entire like impel down into where we are now and how he fits this role it's just perfect. It's just stuff that could only be set up if you had planned for it so far in advance. I.e. Arlong Pirates the Arlong Park arc bro. It's just one piece is incredible sometimes. But guys that has been it for my reaction today. If you enjoyed it make sure to drop a sub on the channel and a like if you haven't already and I'll see you in the next one. Peace base.


Hey guys and gals it's Joe Kelly again This week we are going to talk about applying the risk reward calculator. So last week's episode We introduced that calculator and now we're going to give some chart examples on how to apply it in your trading if you were going to say let's say short the lines that bow talks about and buy the Outer lines that bow talks about so short the upper outer lines and buy the lower outer lines Alright, so if this is our chart Here's what we're going to do when we're going to apply this technical analysis We're just going to break down the chart and the simple support and resistance and once today's Chart opens. We were going to play those outer resistance lines and the outer Support lines long and short and we're going to apply the risk reward calculator based on that. So let's identify our Lines of support and resistance that we would play off of so obviously right here around the 1.5 area This would probably be pretty key Right because you've got you've got resistance and then it acted as support again And then up here around to you've got another line That is an outer line as well. So really your lines here are 1.5 2 and then after 1.5. You can probably expect like 1.3 right here. That's going to be key and Then you're going to go all the way back down here But this is probably let's say that in this example you had probably like some low volume over here or something and That way that you know over here. You're not really focusing on that too much So these are your lines to play off of you've got 1.3 1.5 2 now Let's say that today at the open this opens right about here, okay? And in the morning we get this wash out So since it opens so close to this 1.5 you probably should skip that and look to the outer line At 1.3. So let's say it dips down here Now we're going to go ahead and apply our risk-reward calculator at this point all right, so in this example, we're going to use a percentage of account and We are going to use this with a $5,000 account and We're going to say a 1% risk So that's going to give us a $50 max loss just based on the account size So now let's apply a stop and a profit target so for if we're going to scale around the 1.3 line in that area and We want to target 1.5 our stop Let's pick 1.1. Let's just say 20 cents below the scale zone So that's going to give us an earliest entry of 120 now that is using a three-to-one risk-reward scenario. So what that says is that I have three-to-one risk-reward if I'm risking 110 with a target of 150 and my earliest entry can be 120 and No sooner