Good morning and welcome to this week's edition of Encompass Live. I am your host, Krista Porter, here at the Nebraska Library Commission. Encompass Live is the commission's weekly webinar series where we cover a variety of topics that may be of interest to libraries. We broadcast the show live every Wednesday morning at 10 a.m. central time, but if you're unable to join us on Wednesdays, that's fine. We do record the show as we are doing today, and then you can watch it later at your convenience. Both the live show and the recordings are free and open to anyone to watch, so please do share with your friends, family, neighbors, colleagues, anyone who you think may be interested in any of the topics we have on the show. For those of you not from Nebraska, the Nebraska Library Commission is the state agency for libraries, similar to your state library. So we provide training, consulting, and grants and services to all sorts of libraries in the state. So we will have shows on Encompass Live that could be for all types of libraries, public, academic, K-12, archives, museums, corrections, all sorts of things. Could be anything, book reviews, interviews, mini-training sessions, demos of services and products. So we have something for everybody who's interested in libraries, at least. We sometimes have Nebraska Library Commission staff come on the show to talk about programs and services we're doing through the commission, but we also bring on guest speakers, which we have today. With us today is Erin Hannah, who is from our Lexington Middle School. Good morning, Erin. Good morning. And Joanne Neiman, who is a director at our Beatrice Public Library. So both Nebraska people. Good morning, Joanne. And they're going to talk about, this is a great program that was first, I think first put out last year, but is still available. The Heartland Honors 9-11 Victims and Survivors. So I'll just hand over to you, Erin and Joanne, to explain what this was and how you got involved and what you did at each of your libraries, both a school and a public library. Well, I think I'll start, Erin, if that's okay with you. Beatrice has used the Smithsonian poster exhibit for a couple years now. So when the 9-11 anniversary one came up, we took the opportunity to turn that into a whole program for the library. So if you want to go ahead and hit the slide for me. Just try to advance it and now it will not. No worries, no worries. Just a minute. I love technology. This is just part of, for me, because you'll see in my slides here, I did a boo boo, but it turned out okay. So this was the Smithsonian's educational exhibit that we can do. And so I put down the website down there at the bottom, Sites, because you can do just about anything. And I just recently got done doing the pollinators, which here in Nebraska, it's kind of that big, big thing. And so we, again, went and kind of combined all of our areas and kind of showcased the pollinators. So my first one was we did a September 11 book display, and it just showcased all of the books that were written then and now. And you can go ahead and do the slide again. Yeah, if you should be. It wasn't dancing. Let's see now. Can you, I don't know if I'm advancing with your arrow keys, make it advance and go back instead of trying to use the mouse potentially. I was trying to use the arrow keys and not working. Sometimes just clicking on it with a mouse would make it advance potentially. Okay, so here was the poster exhibit. And what we did was we have movable panels. And so our staff helped me put it into a complete square so that you had to walk in and we made it intentionally a little darker so that it was more dramatic. And you walked around and you looked at the and read the posters on the inside. So if you want to go ahead and so we also have a story walk, which if anybody doesn't know about story walks. It's a registered walk that you can buy and then follow the rules and it can you can walk in. And learn at the same time so it's outdoors. So this very tree I was so excited about and I bought it and I bought the three copies you were supposed to do and ripped up the other two, not counting the pages, and we have 20 spots for page. In a picture book the pictures took up too much room so I didn't know what to do with this book that I have already laminated and made so I put it on the outside. So if you want to hit the screen advanced so I put it on the outside. So you could go outside the the box of walls and see the the story walk that couldn't be in in our story walk, but what was the story walks are like you said outdoors to get people out like individual posts with the where you put each page of a book or a couple of pages in there. And that will be coming up and that will be coming up so I did save myself a little bit. But this is an interesting way of doing it if you don't I mean this is actually interesting for people who don't have the space to do an outdoor story walk. Right. Right. You can do a story walk indoors just post the pages up wherever you have an area where people can walk around walk through hallways or through the library. I'm kind of like a scavenger fun time maybe. By page. And so but I like one and just I love serendipity. When if you'll notice the shadow was unplanned but there is a shadow on the very darkest of the dark page and that was not planned. I was putting stapling him to the to the wall and that was and I didn't even notice it until later that that was where the darkest panel was and so where you're going to go. Yeah. And so the darkest of the book was also darkest in the in the library. But if you want to go ahead and advance. So I had talked to one of the schools and they were excited about going down to the story walk because they are very close to the story walk. And when I called and said it's now at the library because I made too many of them or I there was too many pages. She was disappointed. And so she goes well how about if I buy you another book, another title, and we make another one. And so I said no you don't have to buy it if there if you have another title that would be great. So she gave me branches of hope went and bought three copies of that and put it down in the story walk. So if you want to go ahead and advance again. So this is our story walk. A group of individuals in in management courses in the city. Every year decide what to write a grant about and and so they asked my opinion I said yes I would love to have a story walk. And hence it has done so you have these. Nice display. And they're about. Oh three feet away, maybe four feet away and you you literally walk to each station, and you read the story. So if you want to go ahead and and advance for me. So this is so I want to explain the short, obviously just what is the topic of those two books the obviously it was this. Sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry, yes, I did not know this being from Nebraska, I don't hear everything. I never knew that there was this tree. That kind of stood as as the tree of hope that it was the only tree that kind of survived the devastation and the crash so they this, the two story books. They tell about how they took the one, this one little tree and I want to say it was a cherry blossom tree but I can't remember. Anyway they take it and they take it to a nursery they nurse it back to help and it is still there. They replanted it then on the site and it's there and it stands as its own memorial of kind of endurance and it is a very cool story and I never knew that never so 20 years later. And I was old enough, obviously, to know to hear about things like that and I just, I just didn't. And so that was really disappointing, as far as, as me, not searching stuff out, but I took care of that and it was actually because I'm looking on that the cover that one book yet was actually a pear tree. Oh pear tree. Thank you. Thank you. I know it was a fruit tree of some kind. I just kind of remember which one. Yeah, yeah. So anyway, so this is, this is St. Joe's Church School that came to to view it and our paper was was wonderful enough to kind of add to our program announcements that what we were all doing and they also found out that our own local Veterans Club was doing their thing so it really did become a community wide thing starting and kind of I don't want to say starting with us because obviously they they did it on their own but it kind of collaborated. So if you want to go ahead and switch slides. So, we also do a book club, a book discussion every month. And so I kind of wanted to tie the book discussion into it so the day the world came to town is is a fantastic book if no one has read it yet. You have to. I have not gone to the Broadway play come from a way which when I was making this slideshow it was showing in in Lincoln, Nebraska. And so it is again another I didn't know this was happening, but it's just another thing. It was the town of Gander, Newfoundland, and it's the size of Beatrice, you know from 13,000, and how this whole community came together because all the airspace in over the United States was closed and no one this is prior to everyone having a cell phone. No one knew what was going on. And so Gander was at one time, an Air Force base, and so it was able to hold like all of these 20 some huge jumbo jets that were on their everywhere in the world. And so now this town had to come together and figure out what to do with all of these people that were on all of these planes because they didn't know what was going on, they didn't know how long it was going to go on. And it was just, it was an incredible it is, it is an incredible story. So, yeah, if I hope I've picked someone's interest in reading it. I've read it twice, and I love it. So that was our other ones if you want to go ahead and do the next. So, so I tried to do get the kids involved, get their parents involved, get the, the whole community involved and so then that's how I did it. So thank you very much. Aaron, I'll hand it over to you. I just want to let people know because someone did ask. Yes, you will have access to these slides afterwards. So all the links and information in here you will have when we do the, on the archive is put up the recording recorded session. Thank you. I think it was kind of neat that we both felt it was important for kids who weren't even alive during this time to be able to learn about and experience this, this part of history and I think the story walk is a cool idea that involved the community. I was in a school setting and so most of mine, all of just about all of mine just took place during the school day. And right here you see a couple of ELL classes. They didn't do the same thing that all of the other classes did when they went through the display I'll show you in just a minute but we did show them some of the video and they did look around at the posters and here they're looking at some of the firefighter example here. So some things I had to think about because we were in a school was just where in the world where I put this. We have a classroom in our library but it's often used for other things so it was a little bit tricky trying to get that booked. Also, a key concern of always will teachers be willing to bring their classes it will they see this as a worthy enough activity to schedule their classes to come into. And so I did a little recruiting with the history teachers and fortunately was able to have just about everybody in the school come through. We didn't have display boards. There were of course time constraints we have a bell every 45 minutes or so and then wanted to do an open house for the community. We needed to use the iPads that the kids had. I really wanted the kids to be engaged with things and just to maybe not see it as much as an assignment but just as a way to explore part of history in a fun way. And then I also wanted to build that website and assignment so over to the right you see I had with each of the posters that came from the Smithsonian. I had a couple of questions that the kids needed to answer as they were going through so it was kind of Christie you mentioned this as scavenger hunt type thing earlier that this is not like go wherever and try to find things they were following the posters but they did have to look for specific bits of information to answer those questions. And then I built a website too so they just QR code. There was a QR code entrance into it and then they just advanced from poster to poster and it tells them some things that they can look at. And most of those linked back to what was on the Smithsonian or the 911 Memorial and Museum. Pages with the interviews from some of the people that were there at the time. Some just videos that I found elsewhere some pictures some of the artifacts that they have posted on their website and in their museum that I wanted the kids to make sure that they were seeing at various points along with the posters. So we were able to schedule the library classroom. I mentioned about the history teachers and then we had kids hall these display boards over from the Dawson County Historical Museum. And this is kind of how we set it up kind of like a museum type experience. And I guess as I'm looking at this and after looking at your pictures of the story walk. It's similar in a sense although we don't have a book going on but they're moving from station to station so over to the left we have the first couple of stations and the first couple of posters. And again that QR code is on the table and it will take them to their first assignment so they would have been given their assignment sheet that they are following around in small groups. This was a little bit tricky because we had a lot of teachers that wanted to like bring the entire grade and like all of first periods seventh graders for example and so they came in these groups of like 40 and we couldn't really crowd around a small poster. And so we split into groups of four and you'll see in a minute that I had to create a few other stations to spread the kids around the room. But here is kind of how how those display boards were set up and there weren't enough to do the whole thing so you'll see in a minute that I had to use some walls and things. So over to the far left is where this gets started. We did have some teachers that were pretty actively exploring this with their students. You can see Mr Lara and Mr Allen and these pictures here and the kids are discussing with each other. Trying to trying to figure out what the answers were for the various questions we did borrow some volunteer fire department here from our town. I wanted it to be kind of a tangible thing where kids were really imagining what would it have been like to be there. And so they were lifting up the heavy boots and then the coat and you just hopefully it gave them a pretty good sense of that was a really difficult thing and to add fire and frantic frantic people and just the whole tragic sense of the day to it. Hopefully, really got cemented in their mind something that I'm hoping that they won't forget now that they're that they've left this experience to the audio and video recordings really, really captivated our students and especially the principal aid adults. That's a little picture of her over to the right. And she was talking about trying to get her kids out to safety and how they they kind of got separated and then what it was like for her. And she had somebody that she loved that was in one of the towers and just how her emotions were split among all these all these different people. But that felt very real to the kids. I think because they were in a school building at the time. Todd Beamer's phone recording with with the air. And I can't even think for sure who we was talking to the air tower the air support and then the Red Cross volunteer was another one that really stood out to them that I that I really noticed them being captivated by and that she was talking about her experiences, but also how the effect of 9-11 is nowhere near over because she still has people in her life. She and her husband and others who not only lost their lives, but who are still suffering just with the complications from the the dust and all of the other injuries that may be sustained through the through that, I guess, just the collapse of the buildings and and just the clean up efforts. You know, our art teacher had something up in her classroom and she wanted to include this. So we just incorporated it right in and that's the slide and or the picture that's in the center. And it kind of shows the changed skyline and the timeline of events if it were on a step phone. We had some things that were kind of made up to you'll notice on the picture to the right.  Just some things to try to get them in the mindset of. If you're traveling. This is what it would have been like. Parts of our tour were really, really quiet. There was the part about all of the memorials that were left, but also that my daughter is missing. Here's what she looks like. Can you help us reunite those kinds of things were very, very thought provoking. I think the kids really were able to put themselves in the place to an extent of the people experiencing 911 firsthand. There were a lot of things that I hadn't known that were presented in the posters. I didn't really know about some of the other attacks on U.S. embassies and things that were highlighted in the posters. I know that right. So that's interesting. So they included thing other from other times other previous events or since then that have been that have happened. It wasn't. It's not just about 911. Right. Right. So the first few posters were about. The specific events of the day, but then it did talk about things that had maybe led up to it or related events. And then it talked about. Even some of the memorials that have been established or what have our whatever laws changed to be like in the airport security is obviously heightened and things like that since then. So they have they definitely took that kind of they took the event but then went before it and then went after it as well. We tried to highlight some of the books from our collection. We have some fiction books that are 911 related. And so that's what you see over here to the left. I added pictures all over the place and and masks and things to try to kind of tie it into what's going on more recently with COVID. And then in just a second here. Here you see to our nonfiction titles. I think that's really interesting. I did bring an oak tree in and this was a little bit tragic because I then went to go point it at my house and I didn't think it was going to make it. titles. I did bring an oak tree in and this was a little bit tragic because I then went to go plant it at my house. I didn't think it was going to make it, but it is. It's surviving, but we tied yellow ribbons on that just to kind of get the sense of remembering and honoring this event and history. And then, like I said, we had a lot of kids in the library and that's not a huge classroom, so we also spread out until a while in the library. And these were some additional questions that were that were asked that were not poster-related, but we just kind of had them be thinking like what does a terrorist look like? We talked about stereotypes and there has been a lot of stereotyping at this at the time that we did this last last fall with placing a lot of flame on any person who is Chinese. Like you're the cause of this virus and so we talked about that a little bit too. Very timely, yes. Yeah, they could definitely relate to aspects of it and I think they found it very interesting when they looked over at those pictures to the left too. Like who do I think is a terrorist here? And all of all of them and I said what do they look like? Well, they look like everybody. It's not that it's not the look, it's the action of the person of a terrorist. So that was interesting to watch the kids look at that. We also had a little little section about the flight path so you could kind of see where the planes were headed, kind of what the what the terrorist plan was and how they planned to attack. Here we have another teacher. This is Mr. Sullivan. He is trying to get some of those QR code videos to play on his phone and then we just have some pictures about the patriotism. So all of these videos and the QR code videos that you've been talking about, so those are provided as part of the poster exhibit from the 9-11 Museum? They're on the website. Okay. There are some teaching materials that aren't given with that and they have some things, but tons and tons of information. So I just kind of selected some that I thought would be especially, I guess, significant for our students and just kind of tried to highlight some of those. And then they had the link as well if they wanted to explore it further. But they have amazing information on their on their site. We also I'd mentioned we tried to kind of do that connection between COVID and 9-11, just in the in terms of the health impact, in terms of people feeling scared, society kind of shutting down. And a lot of kids were really able to do some of that comparing and contrasting. So it was very interesting to see what they came up with. Just on that Venn diagram, we just stuck on the wall. Our public library loaned us some newspapers that were from New York in the days following 9-11. And so that was very cool to be able to see just what the immediate impact was and to kind of look at some of that primary source material that we don't often get to see. They think the kids were very, very surprised. I mean, when you just glance at those, it looks very sensationalized, almost like what you might see in an inquire or something. But it was just that big. And it was sensational, real news. That was the feeling. And nationally, that was the general feeling. It wasn't like, yes, didn't feel sensationalized at all at the time. No, it was what it was necessary. Mm-hmm. One of the things that I thought was really looking at for me about 9-11 is just how much you saw the efforts of communities coming together. And I didn't know either about the community of Gander that Joanne was talking about, but just that so many, so many groups were putting together fundraisers, bringing food and all kinds of things like that. So we did just a little unite and kindness. And then they had an opportunity to say thank you to some of those people that were especially heroic during 9-11 and who helped protect our community today. And then there was just a crossword puzzle station. And again, that's part of that was just to split the kids up a bit and to get them moving around the room. We did do a public open house. The Daughters of the American Revolution, their local chapter came to host that event. And so here you see Linda Minns and Marge Bader, they are part of our local chapter. And they brought snacks and also just kind of hosted a Saturday afternoon time. And people came from the community to look through. And we had students that had been through the experience kind of lead them through and point out things that were that were highlights to them. And just kind of shared their own impressions of what had what had struck them that they didn't know about. And it was interesting for the students to because a lot of those community remember members were remembering things from that time and sharing with them as well. So I think yeah, that's that's the end of it. That's interesting thing. Yeah, that I mean, there's all these resources from the 911 Museum and part of this exhibit. But we who were, as you said, Joanne, around at the time and not, you know, like these children who are not even born yet, we have our own memories and that we can be resources for them about what happened and how it felt and how it affected us to all across the country. That was something too that was really neat about the materials that were provided by the 911 Memorial Museum. And that they had a lot of these firsthand accounts. But they also had people that were maybe related to somebody who was there. And so they did, it did branch out a bit. But it was it was a neat addition when our community members had come to win just the things that they shared, you're right. Yeah. Um, yeah, I know some people may know, know me, I'm from New York, actually, I'm not a native Nebraska. And as many of you may be, I moved to Nebraska in 2000, actually, just the year before this happened. Be a test. Sorry, they're doing fire alarm testing here today. Bad timing. So sorry, mute myself for a second there. Anyway, yes, I am from New York, I moved here in 2000, right the year before this happened. And so yeah, this is something that is very, and that you were one of you mentioned that still years later, it's, it's a heart wrenching thing, it's still upsets me today, seeing all this in the presentations and things. I've been to and in the Twin Towers multiple times, you know, before, of course, in years before, my sister had worked worked sometimes in Manhattan. And on the day of this, I wasn't sure where she was working with she, you know, there was so there was a lot of that panic and chaos and fear and wondering, okay, how do I get in touch with her can't reach her because she's in New York, call someone else who's farther upstate New York, who can find me can reach and find out what's going on. traveling right afterwards, you mentioned the planes, you know, the planes that were everything was shut down. And that's, that's really all our students have ever known if they've been to an airport is just that the increased security and they've never known a time that wasn't like this. Sorry. When this happened, actually, I was traveling and I was in Ohio for a work meeting. And it was like the first day of the meeting. And I said, like a couple of days left and getting back home. Plains. I apologize again. Plains were grounded for days. This wasn't just the day of it was like for at least a week or more. I mean, I don't know exactly timing, but they were grounded for days. And I had flown to Ohio, I had to rent a car and drive myself back home because there were no flights. There was no way to get anywhere. So there's a lot of the things that happened beyond the day that I think sometimes you don't realize, you know, sometimes traumatic events, things like this are a one day thing. And then we figure out how to deal with it. But this week became so big. Like you mentioned, say and nationalize. No, it was huge. Yeah. One of the things I wanted to say, you know, we didn't think here in Nebraska touched us, but it actually did because when they cleared the airspace, President Bush was on Air Force One and landed in Omaha. And no one knew he was in Omaha, but that's where he went. And he landed in at the at off of Air Force Base. So we here in middle America, we even had something touching us. Right, because we are is one of the strategic places that they would send the president during times of crisis that you like you said, you're not supposed to know because it's supposed to keep him safe. Yeah. So some questions about the actual poster sessions and getting ahold of this. This is something as you both mentioned from the it's the 911 Memorial Inn Museum. I want to make sure I got the title of that, right? How many can you explain exactly what comes with it? We feel what people are asking you how many posters?  How much space might you need? How did you get these printed out? Do they send you the posters? Do you do it yourself? How did you know? How does that all work or? Yeah, there were 14 posters that were sent and you could request them in poster form. And that's what I did. We don't have and we have a big printer. So all I did was downloaded it and printed it ourselves. So you have an options. Okay. And they came with some suggested here's how you can display and it was more just in a big row with X number of inches between them. But I knew ahead of that that I really wanted it to be something where more kids could get around them and have a little more experience. And so I spread it out a lot more than what they had recommended. And we did the opposite. We wanted to make it be more dramatic and feel like you were in it. And so we kind of made it in a smaller space. And that it can see how that would definitely add to that, that whole feeling of, you know, being trapped in the towers and yeah, they were very easy to work with. There was a training that we could do online. And then there was also there were also some live program type videos that we could show, yes, on on the September moment date that I believe were available the day ahead as well. I wasn't able to do that in with classrooms. We could have it showing when we did our open house. And that was more just a big commemoration of the 20th anniversary and just a lot of that. So the Museum Friday with some training and instruction on how to use this, they didn't, it wasn't just, you know, figure it out for yourself. Their resources are really, really good.  Oh, a book called discussion questions type thing. I wish they would have done that. They did not do that. It was, it was questions concerning the posters. But resources were there. And my book club, my personal book club had read this a while ago. And so I knew this book was the book that I was going to do. After after I had done that, I thought, Oh, my gosh, there were so many other books I could have chosen to that there was even a teen one that extremely loud, incredibly close, or something like that, which was a movie to with Tom Hanks, and that would have been a great one to do too. So there was unlimited choices. Yeah, there are, there's been many things put together made since in like books and obviously senior displays there of both fiction and nonfiction books and movies made and whatnot. Another question here, I see a lot of and it is the most dramatic view, of course, that a lot of these pictures are of the Twin Towers in New York City, Manhattan. Is there anything about the other locations to the Pentagon? And in Pennsylvania, was there, is there information about that in this as well? Yes. And I'm going to shrink this down and I can back up so you can see. Not sure you can see it well. One of my, my most dramatic ones was the one, you know, help me find this person we're searching for and and then the watch that they found and just personal items that they found. Yeah, this one I thought there was a picture there is a picture of the Pentagon and that's what the kids are looking at right here. And I thought there was a little better view of that of the poster, but there isn't. Okay, so they include everything from the day. I mean, it is obviously the well, the pictures of Pentagon are very dramatic as well. Well, there was even a poster of the one that was headed towards the White House that went in. They crashed into the field in Philadelphia, in Pennsylvania, that there was a poster on that one too. And there were two just like the one in the middle here that is showing that was one of the candlelight vigils that they had. And I think over, yeah, and this this one in this, this 13th station, they, they had several different memorials, they showed Memorial Glade. And it just, it was very moving, just because I think I was I was amazed, honestly, you kind of never know what you're going to get for sure with middle school. I'd usually they are great learners, but sometimes they're not super engaged. But I think they could tell even from the people in the pictures that this was, that this was a big, big deal, even though they weren't alive during this time, I think it really came to life for them through these posters. Definitely. All right. Oh, think that was. All right. Does anybody have any other questions they want to ask? We still have 15 minutes left. We're doing this perfect timing here today. I know we weren't sure this is the first time you've all done this presentation, correct? On this or this fall? Yeah. Awesome. If anybody does have any other questions? Sorry, that was my hand. No problem. You can type into the question section again and ask any questions about the session about the what's available, the resources. One of you did mention that this was you did this both last year, it was the 20th anniversary of 9 11. So of course, that made sense to do that. But the poster session is still available. It wasn't correct. It wasn't just just for last year. Yeah, they have posters back from they had the World War One. I believe World War One was the anniversary of that that was the first posters that we had ordered from from the Smithsonian. And so and you can still get those too. Okay, yeah. And we do have the link to the page, the 9 11 more museum page about that. Yeah, you can download it PDF friendly. There's an installation guide.   But whenever someone might want to do this particular session, any September, anytime in August or September, the resources are still available out there for people to use. Now, is this something? Oh, here we go. Okay, so that's a good question. Is this something that you would do again, like redo one of these set poster sessions regularly? Like I know Aaron, you did it with those certain students. But was it only certain age groups that came in? Like, would you do that as an annual thing or regularly? So the new students coming up might experience it? Yeah, I would not do it. We have a few things at our school that we rotate every three years, so that every kid that's in the building gets at some point. So I can I can see myself doing this again, like, in three years with the new batch of kids, you know, with but I because we did seven than eight, it's not something that I would repeat yearly for the right way till there's new kids to sure. So teachers wanted something specific from it or wanted to borrow. I definitely kept everything. Oh, sure. You could open as a possibility. Yeah, and it's something like you said, it's interesting to see how you both used parts of it in different ways that you could pick out just some of them to do something smaller or something for a special event or something as you want to in the future. Yeah. Good questions. Yeah. I really like, you know, the more I think about just the different ways to set it up to I mean, that would be a whole different experience for people to have if they were just, you know, in the posters and then kind of confined space like that. I think that'd be really meaningful. Yeah, getting creative with it and doing it in yeah, in a different, different setup for different reasons for a different event. Yeah. We did have a little bit of kinks to work out, I guess, after our first group of kids came through, we had first everybody brought their iPads and we had a full bunch of different videos playing at different points. And so we, we wised up and just thought, okay, one iPad per group was much easier to manage and noise was chaotic. Sure, sure. So we kind of learned as we go, like always, right, not seeing any new questions coming in, just making sure I can't see as people are typing stuff to wait until you're done to see if you've got something you're you're typing in into the questions. But I don't see anything new coming in right now, but that's that's fine. This was a very great session. Thank you so much, Joanne and Erin sharing how you use this session. I hope other schools and libraries used this last year. I know we did promote that it was available from the Commission to let people, libraries and everyone know that it was out there, that they had put together this new exhibit that's available from the 9-11 Memorial and Museum. And like Joanne says, the Smithsonian does these kind of things all the time for all sorts of topics. The pollinators won and then we're one and you know, just check their pages, the websites, you're always going to find something new that you can use and do this. And not having to come up with it yourself from scratch is, I think, awesome. That they will send you the posters or give you the files if you have the ability to print them yourself or do it every you can that just makes it so much easier. I mean, I know we're always looking for programming and displays, display ideas and having to build it all ourselves can be a lot, I think. But having these pre-created is really awesome. All right. Well, I didn't see any other questions come in while I was just babbling there. Any last words from you, Joanne and Erin, before we wrap things up? Well, if I do it again, like in however many years, I loved how Erin made its stations and really kind of made it interactive. So I would probably try and do something more like that too, just to, I like the interactiveness and just kind of making it more real. It just opens your mind, I think, seeing other people as like, I like yours as well, Joanne. I'm really appreciative, Krista, that you mentioned this because I had never heard of it. I'm not a, I've been in the library for five years and I don't always know where to look for things, but this was so beautifully curated by the Smithsonian. I felt like it was free. It's just, yes, yes, I'll say that's a key. I felt really proud of it and not by my own doing, but just, I was, I was really glad to be able to offer the experience to our school. And I think that's how I felt when I went to the Smithsonian too, like, whoa, this is amazing and I didn't know these things. Oh, they, they know what they're doing when they're putting together their own displays in the actual Smithsonian and I think it's great that they're willing to share their expertise at doing this with any libraries and schools that want to use them. Yeah, awesome. All right. Okay, so thank you so much. Thank you, Joanne and Erin for sharing about this. Thank you everyone for attending today. I'm going to pull back presenter control to my screen, so I want to just do a little wrap up for today's show. So as I said, the slides will be available. Erin, you can email me the link to that whenever you get a chance. Those are the Google slides that she has there. So everyone have access to that. You can see all of their displays, how they did things, the links that are in there as well. This is the session page for today's show and I was going to show you, I do have the link here to the information on the 9-11 Memorial and Museum's page about the, this goes directly to, this is a whole website all about 9-11 of course, but this is going directly to the page about the poster exhibition, where as you can see you can download them, get your installation guide, training, they do ask if you want to share what you're doing with them, that you have a Facebook, Twitter, Instagram. So if you wanted to do something at your library or your school with this, the resources are still out there and you can definitely do that at any time for with any event on any anniversary of 9-11 if you wanted to. So we have a link right there for you to access that. So that will wrap it up for today's show, as I said it has been recorded and it will be on our archive page, I'll just pop over here, this is our main page for Encompass Live, our upcoming shows are here, our link to our archives is here at the bottom and these are the most recent ones at the top, so today's show will be right here at the top, should have it uploaded and ready for everyone to watch by the end of the day tomorrow. Everyone who attended today's show and registered today's show will get an email directly from me, otherwise you pushed out on our Twitter and Facebook and social media and are through our mailing lists here at the library commission, there'll be a link to the recording which goes on to our YouTube channel and a link to the slides. Okay, while we're here, I'm going to do a lot of editing to this show I can tell, all the muting I've had to do. While we're here I'll share there's a search here, you can search our show archives for any topics you might be interested in, see if we've done a show about it, you can search the full archives or just the most recent 12 months if you want just real recent, that is because this is our full show archives going all the way to the beginning and I'm not going to scroll all the way down. Okay, Encompass Live premiered in January 2009 and we have shows going all the way back, so just pay attention to the original broadcast date of anything, so you can just know when that show actually happened. I apologize again now about this, I obviously have no control over when they do these tests in our building. At least we know you'll be safe. All right, so so just pay attention to the original broadcast date of anything that you watch in here. Some of our shows will stand the test of time, some may be and still be good and useful, some will be old outdated information, links may no longer work, you never know, so just pay attention to that, but we are a library, we do, this is something we do sometimes keep things for historical purposes, and we'll always keep them out there for as long as there's somewhere to host them. I mentioned we do put things out onto our social media, we do a Facebook page for Encompass Live, I have that linked here. If you like to use Facebook, give us a like, we have reminders of when or here's a lot, my turn along in today's show about our speakers, when our recordings are available, we also push out onto our Twitter and Instagram, we use the encomp live little hashtag abbreviation for the show, so you can keep an eye on things we're doing that way. So that wrap it up for today's show, and here's our schedule for the upcoming months, look for more dates to be filled in for July and August, next week we'll be talking about policies of yes, librarians from North Liberty Library in Iowa, our neighbors in Iowa, are talking to us about their inclusion policy statement that they've done for their library and how you can do that at your own library, so please do sign up for that show or any of our other upcoming shows we have on our schedule. Thank you everybody for being here with us this morning, thank you Erin and Joanne for sharing what you did with your 9-11 displays on this wonderful information, and hopefully we will see you all on a future episode of Encompass Live. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, bye-bye.


It wasn't really my intention, Mr. Speaker, to delve in any kind of detail or even superficially into the appointment of the deputy speaker, but certainly a hope, Mr. Speaker, given that the member from Kastri South has opened up the box, the Pandora's box, you will allow me to respond in some kind of detail, Mr. Speaker. The member, oh, all of a sudden there's a motion. When you went on your journey. Member, when a member responds to what you see, why he responded, there's only one chair, and then you're going to see your time is up. Thank you very much for your advice, Mr. Speaker. Always very much appreciated. So, Mr. Speaker, on the situation with the deputy speaker, and members want to, how did we arrive at this position? Members on the opposite side, Mr. Speaker, when they were in opposition for five years made an allegation that there was a breach in the constitution of, because of their own interpretation of the act, and many people around this table share that interpretation, and that's their privilege. We all can interpret things of the constitution. Constitution is not necessarily, Mr. Speaker, always a very easy document to understand. The document, the constitution, was very clear about the deputy speaker. It always envisaged, always, that the deputy speaker would come from a member who is in the house. That means a member, a member of parliament ought to be, had to be, the deputy speaker. Always. And the constitution also makes a very clear clarification between government and opposition. That's why there's a government and there's an opposition. And when it speaks to the house, it speaks of the collective assembly of our parliament, meaning both the opposition as well as the government. And in the constitution, Mr. Speaker, it is very clear that when the house first meets, Mr. Speaker, when it first meets, Mr. Speaker, there has to be the first, the election of a speaker, and the speaker may come from either among the members of the house or a person who comes from outside the house, it could be elected. That's the first order of business. The second order of the business of the house, Mr. Speaker, is that we must have a deputy speaker elected in order for the house to proceed. It is also very clear, Mr. Speaker, at any point for whatever circumstances that a speaker vacates the position of the speaker of the house. The house must have a speaker before it reconveals. It must, cannot proceed without that. In the case of the deputy speaker, Mr. Speaker, what it says is that the house, excuse me, what it said before the amendment, before the amendment, Mr. Speaker, what it said was is that the house must elect a member from the house who does not hold the position either of a minister nor of a parliament secretary at its earliest convenience. It doesn't say that the house needs to proceed or needs a speaker, a deputy speaker to proceed. Now, that is a member for Microsoft. With all due respect, you sought the latitude of the chair to respond to what the member for Cassree South said. At no point in time in the Cassree South MP's presentation did he proceed along the lines that you are going down. What he spoke about was your anticipation of what would happen today. So I am always a student for learning. So as much as I appreciate your lecture on the Constitution, the member for Cassree South never ventured down that path. So if you are going to seek my latitude, please respond to what he said. I thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. But I am getting to his question because he did say that we were surprised or not to have been surprised by the appointment of a member from the house and that our anticipation that somebody was going to come from outside the house, Mr. Speaker. I was giving the background to how we got there. So the fact is, Mr. Speaker, and let me hurry it up for everyone, Mr. Speaker, the fact is that after five years of crying rather than taking it to the court, the government, when it came in, decided to fulfill a campaign promise, Mr. Speaker, and that it was going to amend the Constitution. And there were supposed to be two amendments to the Constitution, Mr. Speaker. One amendment, Mr. Speaker, was supposed to be that we must have a deputy speaker in the house. So it cannot be at its earliest convenience anymore. And that section of the Constitution was amended to say that if a deputy speaker resigned, we must immediately or no later than the next house sitting elect a new deputy speaker. And that's fine. The problem, though, was the second amendment they were supposed to make, Mr. Speaker, was to say that the deputy speaker must come from the government side. Okay? But you see, they didn't do that, Mr. Speaker. Although that's what they had been advocating all along. Instead, what did they do? They said that the deputy speaker can come from either within the house, one of its members who was not a cabinet member or parliamentary secretary, or somebody from outside. How can members on the opposite side want to sit here for any moment and convince anyone in St. Lucia that there was never a contemplation on their side of possibly bringing in a deputy speaker from outside the house? Member, I can't allow you to prolong that. The Prime Minister made it abundantly clear up to this morning. He never said members of his side contemplated or did not contemplate. What he said was clear and unambiguous that he never made a statement that the deputy speaker would come from outside the house. That is what the Prime Minister said. So you are now bringing a new element about whether the government contemplated bring a deputy speaker. Clearly, if an amendment is made where it allows for a deputy speaker from outside, it does mean that the government would contemplate at some point in time. But today, the Prime Minister made it, if I may borrow a phrase from the late Forbes Brunham, plusically clear that he never said, not that he never contemplated, but he never said that he intended to bring a deputy speaker from outside. So you have made your point, I think you can move on. Thank you very much, the Speaker. But it is important to say that they created the option of either having the person appointed. And there were several press conferences and public pronouncements by the government and the Prime Minister included in which many people would have interpreted that the intention was to bring somebody from another. In fact, Mr. Speaker, there was even rumors as to who those persons would be. But I move on, Mr. Speaker. The fact, Mr. Speaker, the fact is, Mr. Speaker, as the leader of the opposition, I had to take it my job very seriously. And to remind the government that even though they may have made that amendment to that section, Mr. Speaker, that it's still required for section 30 to be amended, because it's interesting, you know, Mr. Speaker, the framers of the Constitution give the latitude, the latitude, Mr. Speaker, for Parliament to amend the Constitution by themselves. But they are special sections within the Constitution, Mr. Speaker, in which the framers of the Constitution make it very clear that the parliamentarians by themselves, even with a two-thirds majority, cannot make those amendments by themselves. It must include the approval of the people which is through a referendum. And so, Mr. Speaker, next week we are about to approve what should be something very simple, which is the estimates. And in proving the estimates, a lot of people may not have realized that. Their estimates are not approved at the end of the debate. Their estimates are approved once they are laid in the House. And it is required, Mr. Speaker, a very important part of our constitutional process, that in order for the government to pay salaries on April 1st, in order for government to pay debt or to pay any of the operating costs, the estimates must be approved before March 31st. If they are not, then we would be in the breach of the Financial Act. And if, in fact, Mr. Speaker, the government had taken up its option of which it had alluded to and come to the House and attempted to have approved a deputy speaker from outside the House, it would have been our responsibility to have pointed out the illegality of that process. So, Mr. Speaker, the members from the opposition are, in fact, very pleased and happy to see that the government decided not to put the Constitution to test and have not decided to place our finances of this country in a quagmire and have done the reasonable thing of choosing and who you wanted to choose on your side as long as they were not a minister or not a parliamentary sector, we can proceed. So, Mr. Speaker, I move on now to the tourism thing. Mr. Speaker, I have to say that I am extremely pleased by not only the member from Cass tree south in his recent pronouncements, but also for the majority of the members on the opposite side of the government side of their new discovery of the importance of tourism. And I welcome, honestly, Mr. Speaker, I welcome the fact now that we don't have to get into this nonsensical debate about tourism and racism, subservience, et cetera, that we have to now start understanding the importance of foreign direct investment, Mr. Speaker, and that we're not going to demonize tourism. We're not going to demonize foreign direct investment. And in fact, we are now going to be able to create an environment to support the growth of tourism. And the fact is, is that the difference between the two political parties at this point on tourism, Mr. Speaker, is how to do that, but not anymore, whether we should do that. Because it has been very questionable by the actions and the policies and the statements made publicly by some of the members of government as to whether they really, truly genuinely appreciate. I mean, even the member from castries east in his pronouncement that all of a sudden he now didn't know that understand tourism and he now understands the importance of tourism. I don't criticize him for that. I welcome that we finally have gotten to that threshold where both sides now can agree. So Mr. Speaker, all of a sudden now sandals and all inclusive and whether it's negative against the country. I see now there's a new love affair and a new embracing of sandals as to how great they are and the contribution that not only making in San Lucia but throughout the region. So I say to the members on the opposite side, thank you finally that you've reached up to us and we can now celebrate Butte Stewart, a great individual who we should all be very proud of as a West Indian man as to building a brand in the Caribbean that is globally competitive and the thousands of jobs and the millions of millions of dollars that he's invested into this region. I am glad now that the members on the opposite side have embraced that. I am so happy Mr. Speaker and even more happy for the people at Cabot that the members on the opposite side now have recognized that this is a world-class investment and this is going to make a significant economic contribution to the country and have understood that it's not just about a hotel. It's not just about a golf course, but it's about real estate development and the jobs that are going to be generated and preparing our workforce to be able to not only take up those jobs but to do them at a world-class level because the Cabot, Mr. Speaker, has been ranked number 75 in the world already and projections are that it will make it into the top 20. I want to remind us in this house, Mr. Speaker, only one other golf course in the entire Caribbean has made it into the 100 rank and that is in the Dominican Republic and it was ranked number 74 this year. Cabot is one behind it in its first year and I'm just so glad to see members going to Cabot participating in the opening and finally, Mr. Speaker, publicly embracing Cabot and the investors of Cabot. That is a good sign, Mr. Speaker. It is good to see the embracing of Merritt Courtyard because I know that there was a hesitation on some of the members on the opposite side whether we should be putting a hotel near Point Serif in. I am so happy and you all are welcome that when you all came in that the project had already been signed financing negotiating and work had already begun. I am so happy, Mr. Speaker, that we don't have to be in a point of contention anymore as to whether that was a good investment or not. That was good. That was started by us. We celebrate the fact that you've now embraced it and you're continuing it. Mr. Speaker, I'm so sorry that my friend from member of Castry Central is not here. He has repeatedly and I believe I didn't hear him today but I'm pretty sure it's one of his top 10 list of things he loves to talk about. Is the acquisition of the land at Mont Piedmont, Mr. Speaker. Both the land was acquired at Mont Piedmont as well as the land at shock and I dare say the land that Galaxy is being built on was also acquired back after the 2008-2009 financial crisis, Mr. Speaker. So guess what? When we came into government we found out that both shock and Mont Piedmont were still in receivership and we knew that even if we identified an investor there were plenty of hurdles that would have to be overcome. So the government acquired the lands for $11 million through Invest in Lucia. So Invest in Lucia purchased the lands from the receiver in the UK and got terms for the financing. The land at shock was sold for I think is just either under or above $6 million and then the lands recently, based on what I've seen in public announcements with Mont Piedmont was sold for $15 million. So that means that the two properties that were owned by Invest in Lucia that were acquired by our government for $11 million was actually now sold for $21 million. That means Invest in Lucia when it gets paid would have actually made a profit of $11 million but more importantly, because Invest owned it Invest had the ability of being able to control the narrative of those investors in terms of what they're going to be. So I am happy, I am happy that my government was able to do that. I'm even happier now that there is no argument by members on the opposite side as to how brilliant of a decision that was and to embrace that as a positive move and to grow on that. Mr. Speaker Galaxy, again Galaxy was sold the land under the CIP program and Galaxy is building three hotels in that location and I'm so happy to see that members on the opposite side traveling to Dubai, getting them to sponsor all kinds of things and how abrasive they are to that project and how encouraging the news is of the progress of that particular project and to see that the members on the other side finally now believe in that project because initially there was a lot of doom and gloom but I am so happy Mr. Speaker to hear members on the opposite especially the CIP program encouraged by what's taking place there and the development is taking place in the south and the impact it's going to have. Sabasha, Mr. Speaker, again I'm happy to hear when the government came in that they continued and even though there was some misunderstandings in the initial part and I understand that thinking that the Bulgarians that are Sabasha were the Bulgarians that they left there to now find out that they're two separate companies and again I want to be able to thank the Bulgarians that are doing Merit Courtyard that when they realized the difficulties they were having with that project they found a new investor and I'm very grateful that the government has continued to do the work these things take time I know you're getting the road fixed up and I know the displacement of some of the residents there is being worked on I want to congratulate you but it's because of your new understanding of tourism and the impact it's going to have on solutions that I see this new renewed effort on your part to make these things happen I am very happy Mr. Speaker I hope now that members on the opposite side would have realized when they went to Koknit Bay that there's two hotels at Koknit Bay there's the old Koknit Bay and there's Serenity and the impact of a high-end property in Koknit Bay and in terms of the employment it's generated and the economic activity it's generated and again I'm hoping I'm pretty sure I know they will because of their renewed understanding of tourism that when the expansion plans come to expand both Serenity and even Koknit Bay that I know that members on the opposite side will embrace that and facilitate it so they can happen as quickly as possible Mr. Speaker Village Tourism Despite again the members wanting to change the name that's come in common place with the members on the opposite side I want to encourage them to really understand the detail behind the Village Tourism if we are going to have more solutions and that's what we want we want to see the expansion of tourism Mr. Speaker that more solutions are given that opportunity and it's very difficult when you have a small property Mr. Speaker to make the infrastructural investments by yourself I mean I went through that personally with Coco Creole which was originally 12 rooms it is virtually impossible to make a decent return on that size property this is why it was hurtful Mr. Speaker you have to be honest with me when members on the opposite side wanted to play and let me restrain from using that adjective play cheap politics in the sense that roads you can't eat roads the roads up to your area in Saltables how many people and we know that my business at our homes do Airbnb and who are now so grateful for the fact that it makes it easier to be able to sell those properties roads in Grozellet Casamba all of a sudden well I wish at Boston Hills it's a story for you I'll be happy to touch it but again the roads are no longer just about making it comfortable for us to drive it's open up more opportunities and that's again Mr. Speaker there's two aspects to village tourism that I have said and I want to be able to reiterate Mr. Speaker one is to be an incubator to be able to provide small hotels or restaurants to software to interior decoration to financial support and also to make it even better for the banks Mr. Speaker that when the banks now are lending money to these small businesses the banks know that there's somebody they can go to because there's somebody holding that that investors hand and many of our banks Mr. Speaker despite the fact that tourism is such a big part of our economy they themselves have lacked the appropriate skills Mr. Speaker to assess tourism properly and to be able to provide that support so village tourism was to be an incubator to help people who want to get into the industry whether it's by way of an attraction whether it's by way of an Airbnb whether it's by way of having a small room whether it's by having a restaurant whether it's by having an art shop and a gift shop but facilitating them through an incubator with all the professional skills that they would need the second component of village tourism which is very important is the infrastructure so when you go down to an ancillary or you go down to a canry or you go to a souffre that all of the villas and Airbnbs that are on the exterior the reception of the hotel becomes the village that there's restaurants shops and activity that they can participate in that is what generates the character that is what's going to differentiate St. Lucia by authentic tourism the big hotels play their important part Mr. Speaker of volume and that is necessary but it's going to be impossible for solutions themselves to build a sandals to build a St. James hotel I'm hoping that one day it will not be impossible but for now there are not many solutions who have the financial or where with it all to build a hotel of that size so in the meanwhile what are we going to do to help them get into the industry that conceptually this idea of this fund is a very good thing again when I go back to the act that was passed and the absence of the regulations the teeth of the matter the details of the matter there's one thing that is in this proposal that concerns me a little bit who is going to determine what the excess amount of money from the levee is going to be because it was really my understanding Mr. Speaker that when we put the levee together the levee was to be used for marketing why? because the hotels are already paying taxes at the airport the customer comes in they pay $98 all of the electricity cost and even when they're bringing in food and they're bringing in their operating materials they pay duties on that that's not duty free the hotels in the tourism sector are already paying a significant amount of money to the taxes and the purpose of this was really to put the money in and having it related to the performance what do I mean by that Mr. Speaker I'm hoping in their new exuberance of tourism that members on the opposite side will also appreciate that marketing is not a cost marketing is an investment and the investment that you make with marketing and branding is what drives value if you take a 3 star hotel in solution it's probably going to get an average of $120 to $150 rate per night that same hotel in Barbados gets $200 or something that same hotel in Cayman gets over $600 a night and that is what the branding of the destination it is the marketing of the destination that creates now added value and that added value is very important because the operating cost and solution are so high so Mr. Speaker I would just like to say to the government my little advice if in fact you're going to use this where you're going to make a discretion a discretionary decision as to how much the levy is going to be and how much of that percentage that levy is going to remain in the fund the marketing fund is it called the tourism authority who is going to make that decision this does not say that it only says it's possible but nowhere does it describe what the overflow is I can only assume it is an excess amount that you determine because it's for the government or the ministry of tourism to determine how much the levy is going to be in the first place the same persons that are going to say well three quarters of the levy is going to remain in the tourism authority and one third is going to go into this and I would hope to think that that's not the case it has always been the belief that the extra revenue we're generating in tourism the monies that we're going to get from donor countries etc that that money would be used to help improve the infrastructure of tourism not at the expense of marketing Mr. Speaker we are now having a better conversation because we no longer have to have a discussion as to whether tourism is a good thing we now know that we're now getting into the details and I'm going to say it to all of us it is important that we understand the marketing and branding in differentiating our product to drive the airlift and to drive the rates because with a proper brand people are willing to pay more and that more is absolutely necessary because the cost of electricity is too high here and as the prime minister said the member from castries E said hard to control that I'm importing that cost of bringing containers in expensive local transportation is high we don't have the economies of scale so the discussion that has to take place Mr. Speaker very important is a plan for tourism where are we going how many rooms do we want and is that scientifically worked out in terms of our own competitiveness because it becomes back to our competitiveness what are we doing to train our workers what are we doing to train our service providers to go into the sectors of tourism that we want because tourism is not one thing in itself there's romance there's family, there's business there's all kinds of tourism products we don't have different needs so Mr. Speaker let me reiterate my position again I am very happy and we should all be that both political parties now are going to embrace tourism both political parties now are going to talk no longer about demonizing foreign direct investors no longer demonizing and being racist with the type of tourists that come to Sadusha but more importantly this nonsensical argument that this rhetorical question that is asked all the time how many rooms did you build so again sandals cabot Marriott Courtyard Monk Pleasant Monk Pied Maussary and Shock Galaxy Sadusha Serenity just to name a few that we were involved in in the last administration oh la it's amazing to me how bold which one ok great congratulations end of the day we need all hands on deck so I'm hoping that the members on the opposite side will continue with their new discovery of tourism and stop politicizing it and realize that we all need to be on the same page the differences will come in terms of branding the differences may come in the number of rooms ok but the fact is let us agree that we have to move the needle forward and stop trying to make cheap political points at the expense of an industry that the member from castry south now has admitted that it's resilient it's withstood the test of times it helps distribute income to all kinds there are a whole bunch of people now that depend on tourism and that can continue but I'm so happy well you know Mr. Speaker I'm not even going to get into that Mr. Speaker I've made my point Mr. Speaker I thank you again for your opportunity for me to expand on the deputy speaker issue Mr. Speaker and I look forward to this new relationship that we both political parties have as it pertains to tourism and I look forward that we can work in collusion to make sure that Saint Lucia is the best destination in the world and that the most number of solutions are benefitting from it and that we can earn a satisfactory income to propel our country forward I thank you Mr. Speaker let me sell for you


Hi you guys my name is Brittany and welcome back to my YouTube channel. You guys in today's video I'm going to share with you my summer homeschooling update. So um yeah let's go ahead and get on into this thing you guys. So if you guys haven't seen like my summer plans and like all the stuff that I originally had planned for our homeschooling summer then go ahead and check out that video. I'm going to put it in my iCards and in the description box below so you guys can actually see what I planned and what actually happened this summer. So our summer you guys is cut pretty short because we are starting year-round homeschooling so our tentative start date is going to be July 18th but if anything happens I will push us back to July 25th to start our school year. So I'm really really excited for us to get like our soft start to our school year to really just begin like our learning experience for this homeschooling year. So um yeah so you guys I'm going to go ahead and first talk about like our biggest fail which was definitely our chapter book read aloud. So um we actually didn't read any chapter book read aloud. It was just so crazy like every single time it was time for us like pick up our chapter book read aloud they didn't happen and I'm going to tell you why they didn't happen. It was because we were making a lot of trips to the library this summer. You guys like Brielle has been devouring um like some books. She has really been like reading a lot this summer and I'm really proud of her and every single time we went to the library it was like a new picture book or some other books she was interested in um mainly picture books. So we've read a lot of picture books together so I have her uh reading log right here because I wanted to like record all the books that she read. So I'm going to go ahead and name off all the picture books we've read. These are books I definitely would recommend to you guys because they were really really good. So the first picture book we read was change things. We've read island born. I am every good thing. A story about ify. I will be fierce. Ambitious girl. The year we learned to fly. Eyes that kiss in the corners. Suley. Cannonball which is one that I own. You guys that book was so good. We read dear reader and we also read eyes that speak to the stars. So those are like all of the picture books that we checked out from the library that were so so good and so like inspiring. Like a lot of these picture books you guys like if I find them like on thrift books or on book outlet where I always shot for all of my books I definitely am going to grab some of these titles because they were all such like great and like empowering picture books. So I'm so happy that we did do a lot of reading. Even though it wasn't like in our chapter books we still did a lot of reading this summer. So I'm still proud of me and Brubri for just still reading. Now as far as books that Brielle read independently she did an awesome job. She read I think almost 10 chapter books. So I'm going to name off all of the chapter books that she read and again we utilized our library a lot this summer. So the first chapter book she read was when the world turned upside down she read more to the story a soft place to land a mall unbound. She read a royal guide to monster slaying. So those were the books she checked out from the library and she enjoyed. Now some of the books that she didn't finish off that she already had in her bookshelf at home was the Sophie Washington series. So she finished reading the last three books of that series. You guys this Sophie Washington series is definitely a great series especially if you have like a young girl between like the ages of like eight and I should I really would say eight to 12 because these were like really really fun readers and Brie really enjoyed these. She also finished off reading Amber Song which is a series that goes with Ainsley's bank bakeoff and Ashton's dream. So this is like the last book in that series and Brielle really really enjoyed this series right here. So right now from the library what Brielle is actually reading she is reading Omari Rising and we recently checked this one out from the library so she told me she wanted to continue with the series so this is the second part of Amala Unbound. So she told me she's really enjoying this one and then another book that she's seen that she's excited to dive in next is Zoey in Wonderland and she already told me she wants me to buy this one for her so oh my gosh like Brielle is going to kill the bank when it comes to like our book budget because she just wants all the books but we have been doing really really good like utilizing our library and I've been telling Brielle like we have to use our library more we have to like stick to our book budget so yeah. So Brie and us I guess we did pretty good when it came to like our reading things like that. Now as far as like what we did to continue on with like actual book work we actually was working on Saxon a lot this summer. We started off or we ended off our school year on lesson 64 and we are on lesson 80 right now so Brie did an awesome job this summer. We had to take a few lessons in here slower we had to do we had to break them up into two days because it was some new concepts that Brielle was understanding oh that was she was having like a hard time understanding but overall she's doing really really great with this program. We are on lesson 80 of 120 lessons and while I love Saxon so so so much like I love this curriculum it's definitely a solid curriculum. I'm finding it's a couple of concepts that Brie needs to work on and because we're so close to finishing this I'm not too sure you guys like I'm just going to go ahead and let you know I'm not too sure if I'm going to advance her into seven six just yet. I think I may use some of the supplemental practice that they have in the back for us to like practice some of these concepts that I'm seeing she's struggling with a little bit more before we move on to Saxon seven six. I look through Saxon seven six you guys and the rigor actually bumps up like quite a bit and it moves pretty fast compared to this Saxon six five so I want to prepare her as best as I can for Saxon seven six because I know that that's only one level before you get to Brie algebra so I really want her to be prepared and I really want her to have mastered and honed in on these skills so right now that is my goal for Saxon is that after she finishes this I think I'm going to make sure that she has solidified those concepts and if she hasn't we will just take this maybe slow before going into Saxon seven six so that is my goal as far as math but she did really really good this summer and I'm so happy that we like kept on going. Now something else Brielle worked on this summer was her vocabulary. You guys this school nest vocabulary notebook is so cute and Brielle really has retained a lot of her vocabulary by using this school nest notebook and we are going to continue this vocabulary style throughout the school year so I'm really really excited about us doing vocabulary like in this non-traditional way. She definitely has been retaining it these flashcards that she uses from Sullivan learning have been really really great in showing her the part of speech the pronunciation the root words so she's really really honing in on that vocabulary skill that she needed to work on so I'm so happy about that. Now as far as my toddlers go you guys like they're just being toddlers but I really wanted to do a lot more units in this plan preschool with them so far we have we will have completed two units so we did the nursery rhyme unit we completed that one and right now I have a few more lessons for us to complete the clothing unit that we have been doing which has been so much fun. You guys like I completely like I love this plan preschool curriculum so so so much but I will say it's teacher intensive because you have to get like all the activities the supplies and things like that. You definitely have to be prepared when using this curriculum um but it's definitely worth it because my daughter has retained a lot. Now going into our school year I already know like this may get shelved a little bit just because we are going to primarily focus on a gentle and a classical preschool which is going to be Leia's core my four-year-olds core when it comes to like her pre-k curriculum however I did pick out a couple of units that we're going to be doing in this plan preschool pretty much in the spring time we're going to do the weather unit we're going to do and we're also going to do the I think I tagged it right here we're going to do the water unit as well because Brielle is going to be doing in her science curriculum this upcoming school year she's going to be studying space and water and weather um it's going to be a fun way for me to like connect both of the kids when it comes to science and it's really going to mainstream it for me so I'm really excited to utilize the activities in here once Brielle gets to that in her science curriculum so um that's just my tentative plan right now I really don't know what's going to happen but um I do thoroughly love this and I enjoy this program I definitely will recommend this one because we had so much fun this summer doing um plan preschool now you guys I wanted to share with you some of the books that I have read and what I have gotten up to this summer you guys I really have been trying my best to take care of myself this summer um I know I am preparing for a marathon this is going I'm going into my third year of homeschooling you guys so it's like I already know what to expect I already know that uh I am gonna get burnt out I already know all of those things so this summer like I have been really trying hard to like fill this mama cup up so I've been like just doing a lot of pleasure reading so I have read two of the Bridgerton series and if you guys follow me on Instagram you see like all the times that I post to these books that I've read and I have really been enjoying this series reading this historical fiction and um I have the rest of the series are ready to go on like my bookshelf and I want to definitely make sure that I spend that time to take care of myself throughout the school year so um I'm going to challenge myself to pick up some of my just pleasure reads so uh yeah I really enjoyed these two this summer I also have been doing a reread of rhythms of renewal this book you guys is amazing I love this book so um I'm definitely trying my best to finish this one off but I'm still taking my time on this one it's a great read and the main book that I'm reading right now has been A Place to Belong by Amber O'Neil Johnston celebrating the diversity and kinship in the home and beyond this book you guys has been so amazing for me to read and I have been getting very emotional reading this book um I would recommend this to any homeschooling family like just pick up this book read it you will not regret it but um this has definitely been a great read a lot of the things that she talked about in this book I'm going to try my best to implement those things uh just in my life in my home school in my family just all of the things because she really drops a lot of you know good nuggets in this book so um this has been a great great read so I'm gonna be so sad when I'm done with this book so I'm taking my time but it's been great so you guys um some of the other fails that I feel like this summer we failed on is um we didn't do any field trips like I wanted us to go to the zoo and you know go to the aquarium and do like some fun type of things but you guys I'm not gonna lie we have really been enjoying just being at the house um my daughter she's been enjoying like hanging out with her cousin they've been going to the pool and you guys we have just been so late back and I think that's probably best because that's probably just what we needed just this like slow pace Brielle has been continuously writing doing creative writing she finished another one of her stories and um she's been drawing a lot on her ipad or procreate you guys she's been getting really really good on procreate so she's been doing that she's been doing like a lot of just free drawing so Brielle has really been like thriving in this like late back environment that uh we're in right now so um you guys that really it has been our summer like uh I still will call it a success even though I didn't like hit on all the things that I wanted to hit on uh but I still feel like we really really enjoyed ourselves at least I enjoyed myself I asked Brielle how she enjoyed herself and she definitely said um yes so you guys um I hope you enjoyed today's video I hope you all are still like having a great summer you're enjoying like your family your friendships all the things um as you guys are going to see on my channel I am going to start putting out like my get ready for home school videos my home school prep get it all done type of videos so I hope you guys enjoy uh watching that playlist as I drop some of those videos out as I'm preparing to start my school years so um yeah so you guys thank you so much for watching today's video I hope you enjoy and I look forward to seeing everybody in my next one bye


Hey everyone, this is Mike Kramer of my capital today is Wednesday, October 18th. It's around eight o'clock New York time So today we saw market sell off. We saw the the equity market sell off We saw the rates move higher bond prices sell off and we saw the dollar continuing to strengthen and Tomorrow at least Thursday October 19th, we're gonna have Jay Powell speaking at around noon he'll be doing a Q&A session with a moderator at the Economic Club of New York And they'll probably be links available that you'll be able to see that I would check with your local news or your or YouTube or perhaps the website for the the club and It seems that look the blackout period the blackout period comes On Friday and so he's obviously doing this at the last moment. This was scheduled. I think late last week Clearly if we know many of the Fed governors have come out and they're certainly leaning more towards being more patient approach not wanting to Raise rates at this meeting it would seem from the ones that I've listened to and heard it seems like some of that has been Moderated I think it's interesting that he's doing this at this point We've seen this before from him where he comes out right before the blackout date I can think back to November of last year specifically You know, he kind of moderated The expectations of a rate hike if you remember at that point the Fed was still doing 75 intervals And that was when you know, they started to indicate they were gonna start slowing the pace to 50 and then eventually they got to 25 and so It seems like, you know, if if I'm pal, I guess which obviously I'm not But if you're pal and you're thinking about, you know, where things are and how things have tilted the market expectation is that there is no rate hike in November and I think that he wants the market to at least Respect the idea that there could be a rate hike still to come You know, certainly the back of the yield curve has done a lot of work for pal The economic data is certainly been very supportive of him coming out and being hawkish but you know again the issue is is you're gonna try to balance the scales and and try to be the person who comes out tomorrow and not not so much that he You know wants the markets to go down But more so that he wants to kind of get the market to not be so sure that there's not going to be a rate hike in November that he wants the market to feel that every meeting is a live meeting and That's really the big question here because I don't really think there's much he could say that's really going to be new We know that the labor market is still tight. We know that they're showing some signs of loosening We know that wage growth is still too high. We know inflation is still too high We know super core CPI came in has shown a couple of months of acceleration on the month over month basis We know CPI on a year-over-year basis has certainly increased since June and expectations are rising for it to be closer to 3.6 to 3.7 percent by the end of this year We know that retail sales came in much stronger than expected So I mean there's certainly ample evidence to support the idea that he can come out tomorrow and try to you know rebalance the scales or perhaps, you know, just totally go with what the other Fed governors have been saying that Perhaps, you know, we may still raise rates again But right now we think that we're seeing some moderation in the data that suggests that maybe we can wait It seems redundant for him to come out and do that again only because that's what everyone's been saying and That's what the market is expecting So again, maybe he gives us a point of view where he talks about where rates are going to be over the longer term it doesn't really seem like exactly the appropriate time for that conversation, but That's sort of where we are right now And if we look at the the euro versus the dollar and we start with the currency market because currencies and rates usually have these things Pretty well understood You can see the euro has been consolidating here And what's really interesting about the euro is that it's been sort of just hovering around the 10-day exponential moving average Really that had served as a very good resistance marker for some time and you can see we got above it We came back below it now. We came above it again, and we're back below it again So certainly this could be telling us that perhaps the consolidation period in the euro is over Certainly you can see there's a broadening wedge here And I know I have the trend line drawn here because I was trying to illustrate it as acting as resistance, but if you were to move it just simply over this way and Adjusted a little bit you could also make the the argument that this is not only a broadening wedge But a potential bear flag Suggesting that the euro breaks below the 105 level and eventually undercuts this 104 Low that we had back at the beginning of October and begins to head back down to this 102 region Certainly from a port standpoint There's just not much long-term support in this area and so I think once you undercut this low I think there's a potential for you to see the euro drop back down to this 102 region when we look at the pound It's a similar sort of look here again. You can see the Trend line if we were to just move this over to here you could make an argument that this is Again a bear flag and would suggest that we undercut this low like the euro the 10-day exponential moving average has been serving as Good guidepost in terms of you know where this market is going to go So you can see it's already started to turn lower and you would just need a break below the 120 and a half level to really see that decline potentially into this 118 region and you can see why we've stopped here. This was an area of support back in the middle of March So again, it's not a big support region, but it's enough to have at least load it We'll see what happens at that point when we look at the yen The end is trying and really very close now to potentially breaking out It looks like the end is Consolidating in what appears to be a an ascending triangle We're pretty much at the end of it here, right? So it would seem there's going to be a big break one way or the other in the end I mean just given where the other two currencies are given where US rates have moved on the long end of the curve Given the strength of the economic data given BOJ monetary policy, which is still living in the wrong decade You would begin to think that yes There's the possibility that the yen breaks out here to the upside and above 150 The only issue we have is we don't know if Japan will come in and intervene Which looks like they did at this point in time and they also may have done so back Back at this point in time now. It's interesting because the other time they intervene They got closer to this 151 region 150 and a half 151 So there may be a little bit of room to see to get past that 150 region and for all we know The Japan may have already achieved his goal What which was just to slow the move higher in in the end and the end weakening? And perhaps that goal has already met and their threshold is at a higher level now Unfortunately, this is the type of thing. We're just going to have to wait and find out on When we move over to US markets, it wasn't really a pretty day for US markets We saw the NASDAQ get hit by about 1.4 percent We broke through support at this 14 990 and that sent us down to around 14 875 or so This green line this one green line here is a big level of Support that goes back all the way to the lows and right now. We're just we've been zigzagging around it We've also moved back below the 10-day exponential moving average, which could be a bearish indicator and Right now. We're also Additionally, we also hit this resistance level If we're just in the mode of playing ping-pong The next obvious sort of stop would be somewhere in this 14,300 region and and for that to happen, you know We nearly we obviously need to see some clear follow-through tomorrow to the downside and really an interrupted way Take out the low today 14 860 which is something that we really need to see happen pretty early in the day which would remove this Take this out of the way as well, which would really set up a pretty sharp decline down to this 14 600 region when we look at the Dow Jones Again, this is an index that's looked pretty troubling yesterday We noted the rising flag pattern, which is a little bit different than the typical flag This is more a reversal pattern and that certainly played out today breaking this uptrend, you know We're still at this 33,000 five sixty five region again Ideally if you're bearish if you're looking for lower prices You want to see the index the average gap below this support level tomorrow And I think that would set up a pretty sharp decline and the opportunity for that to happen Likewise, if we don't break that level you could be looking for some sort of rebound back to 33,790 and we look at the SMP The SMP Clearly broke down today. It hit this 4304 level Bounced right off of it. This is the level that really goes back here And it marks and it marks this area in here on the August 16 2022 area, you can see if you just zoom in here. I have this marked at 4305 And not this area just because when we came up with we stopped here and we held Then we moved higher when we came down We went below it and came back up and we stopped and so this tells you that this is some form of support and resistance That's stronger than this. This was also a key sort of turning area. So That's the reason why I have this 4305 level marked off and you can see we stopped right at it today and That was basically again where we were if you're bearish on the index You want to really see the the SMP 500? Gap below this 4300 level tomorrow Which is only 14 points and then I think that would open up a retest of 42 85 and then eventually a drop into the 42 20s Option expiration is this week as well. We know that there's a lot of gamma up in this 4400 region We know the call wall is up in that region the put wall as of today was around 4300 That probably also offered some support But as we go into OPEX on Friday the risk here is that everyone that has these calls at higher levels may begin to sell them That would allow, you know a market maker to begin to unwind some of their hedges The market maker will begin to unwind some of their hedges regardless because those calls that are open at higher levels Are going to start really losing value very quickly That means that they can start selling the positions They're longing as the hedge against the calls that they're short on And that could also act as a driving force pushing things lower and you know again with pal at 12 o'clock and the VIX only at 1920 There's a chance that you could see implied volatility ramp up just a little bit going into him speaking Around noon, which means that if you get implied volatility moving up into the low 20s ahead of him talking that implies that the morning could be Assault we were we see more selling take place in the morning and then once we get past him You see that event risk come out of the market implied volatility falls and you get one of those little afternoon pops That would be the sort of thing. I may be looking for tomorrow Just given the dynamics given how we know that the market tends to React and respond to some of these events were pal is speaking obviously There's a lot of other things going on in the world as well But this is just if we were to just you know, kind of take that out and just focus on pal This was this would be something that I would be looking for tomorrow. Anyway, I hope this helps and we'll see you soon. Bye