If you've been going to Daily Mass, you've been hearing the book of Tobit, and it's a pretty long, a lot of long readings. It's a wonderful, wonderful book. It's delightfully weird. And I encourage all of you to read the story of the book of Tobit. The book of Tobit tells us something.  Tobit is situated at the time of the exile, and just the brief history of it. David was the king, Solomon was his son, but Solomon had many wives, and the kingdom fractured. There was the northern kingdom of Israel, and the southern kingdom of Judah, which is where Jerusalem was. And a lot of the focus of Scripture goes into that southern kingdom where Jerusalem is, but Tobit's one of the few stories we have about a faithful family in the northern kingdom. In fact, two faithful families. These are faithful Jews trying to live in a pagan culture. And in the beginning of the book of Tobit, Tobit buries dead people. That wasn't something that the pagans of Nineveh did, but it was part of the laws, part of the Torah. And so being faithful, when somebody died, he would get up and he would bury the body. This was a holy and righteous act. Now, because he touched a dead person, also part of the law is that he couldn't go back into his house until he went through purification. So he buried the body and he didn't sleep in his home. He slept outside. And while he was sleeping outside, this is where it gets weird, some bird droppings fell on his eyes and blinded him. Yeah, it's gross, right? Meanwhile, in another part of Nineveh is another faithful family, Miguel and his daughter, Sarah. And unlike many of the other unfaithful families that are starting to marry into pagan culture, they want to keep the Jewish faith alive. And so Miguel tries to find for Sarah a Jewish husband.  Yeah, it's a tough story. And I think for both of them, in the natural level and in the supernatural level, they had every cause to complain to the Lord. They were just trying to be faithful. And I think we can feel this way too, right? I think of a famous quote of Teresa of Avila. She was on horseback doing mission work of God. They went into a river and the horse bucked. And she fell off the horse. Soaking wet, almost drowned, almost stomped by the horse. And as she got out of the river, she said, Lord, if this is how you treat your friends, no wonder you have so few of them. We can feel that way, right? You know, Tobit can say, like, Lord, all I was trying to do was something good and now I'm blinded. And Miguel could say, all I was trying to do was set up my daughter with a good Jewish man and now all these men have died. In all of our lives, we can have these moments, right? I think in my own life, probably the most powerful moment of this for me was, you know, getting married and coming out of Steubenville. I was in Orlando, Florida and I really felt a call of the Lord to drop everything and to come study at Franciscan. And so I did. I found a wonderful woman. We got married. I was off to do youth ministry. I had a number of really good job offers. I took the worst one because I felt the Lord was calling me to this.  We're pregnant, which is so exciting. Everything's going great. And midway through the pregnancy, there's no more heartbeat. And I just remember thinking, Lord, I'm doing everything for you. Like, what's up with this? And that's part of our spiritual lives, my brothers and sisters. It's like mine, amen. All of us have this thing where we're like, Lord, I thought if I gave everything to you that, you know, there wouldn't be sickness. People wouldn't die. My car wouldn't break down. I wouldn't lose my job. The list goes on and on and on. And in these moments, we can feel like, Lord, do you see me? Do you hear me? Do you care? But the Lord sees us. The Lord hears us. And the Lord loves us. In the story of Tobit, he hears the prayers of Tobias, of Tobit and Sarah. And he sends an angel.  Like, he sends an archangel who's in disguise the whole time.  And when Tobias sees Sarah, his heart leaps and he says, I need to marry her like right now. And Miguel says, yes, praise God. I believe in this. You can get married tonight. And as they go off to the wedding chamber, Miguel, this faithful man, starts digging a grave for Tobias. He's been there. He's been there done that, right? He's been burned before. He's ready for this one. How often do we do that, though? You know, we can actually get so used to failure that we're just sure that's going to happen. Where's the shovel? And we keep that shovel by our door. Well, Lord answered the prayer of Tobias and Sarah. They got married, no death, no demon. Raphael fought it. They go back to Tobit. Raphael gives Tobias a cure that he wipes on Tobit's eyes, and now Tobit can see. And at the end, this is the end of the book that we hear today, that Tobit's eyes are healed. Tobias and Sarah are married. And Raphael pulls Tobit into Tobias, the side, and does one of those, aha, I'm an angel, moments. And the message was, Angel Raphael was saying, like, he heard your prayer. And look, I've been with you this whole time. And maybe you just didn't realize it. I think for all of us that have gone through these times of suffering and struggle, too, you know, even though they look back at that very difficult time in my life, at the time when at the moment I thought God was the least present, he was actually the most present. He was there holding me, holding my wife, bringing us together. It was still tragic, it was still suffering, but he was there in the midst of that suffering because that's who our God is, my brothers and sisters. You see, we want God to get rid of our suffering. He does the opposite. He embraces it. He comes in the midst of it.  He answers our prayer in a way we never thought. We wanted God to free us from suffering and sin, and we wanted him to kind of snap his fingers and do it, and instead he became flesh and dwelt among us. He took on flesh so that he could feel pain. He took on our life so that he could experience death.  That's why he came to conquer it. That's why he came to overcome it. And what he shows us is that for all the good Fridays in our lives, there's an Easter Sunday. He hears us. He loves us. Even if it's a small thing, and that's what's so beautiful about today's gospel.  And then he sees a widow. And it's always hard to be a widow. I know some of you are widows. I think in that culture earlier it was even more difficult because it was such a patriarchal culture if you were a widow. You know, scriptures always talk about taking care of the widows and the orphans because they were the most vulnerable in the society at that time. And he sees a widow just throwing in a few pennies. I wonder what was going on in her mind. I wonder if she was thinking, man, look at all these rich people, powerful people, these holy people, look at all the money they're given. I have nothing. I always worry at conferences that maybe sometimes you might think that about people on stage or about me. You know, we might be really talented in speaking or singing. Talent does not equal holiness, not in one bit. And sometimes it's easy to look at somebody on a stage or on a screen and say, wow, they've got so much to give and I have nothing. The Lord delights in the gift. He doesn't care how much it is. He delights in the fullness of what we give because he wants us to give it all. To give it all to him. It's all about pleasing him. It's all about drawing near his heart and receiving his blessing. He is present. He is faithful. He is good. This is what we heard yesterday. This is what's reinforced in our scriptures today. That he sees you. He knows what you're going through right now. He hears your prayer. Even if you feel like you've prayed it a thousand times, it's not falling on deaf ears. And he loves you. Even if he's not answering your prayer in the way you want or the way you think it should be answered. Because he's God. Today we gather at the altar. We have an opportunity to receive Jesus body, blood, soul and divinity. He answered our prayer of being in communion with him in a fascinating way. Not only did he become flesh and dwell among us, but he remains present among us. And he humbles himself to become small enough that we can receive him even in our mouths. It's the fullness of God. It's not just a piece of God. It's all of God. All the body, blood, soul and divinity. And he gives himself to us his strength for the journey. These sufferings that we feel in this life in Saint Paul referred to them as light and momentary troubles. And here was a guy who was shipwrecked, flogged, beaten, light and momentary troubles. These sufferings that we have in life just remind us that this world is actually not our home. That we were made for a place where there is no more sorrow, no more sickness and no more death. And as we continue on this pilgrimage of hope, this pilgrimage of love, he gives himself to us as bread for the journey, as hope and salvation. Brothers and sisters, as we receive Christ in the Eucharist this day, may we ask that he would open our eyes. May he give us the strength to look back in those dark times in our life and see Jesus present in the midst of it. That when we were weeping, he was weeping with us. When we were rejoicing, he is rejoicing with us. And for all of us he is calling us together to this altar to celebrate his love. You are seen by God.  Jesus give us the grace to hear your voice and say yes to you and to walk with you even in difficult times knowing that for all of our Good Fridays Sunday is coming.


I've got this all in the right place. So listener Elliott has two for us. They are peripherally related, according to Elliott, to our recent discussion about the new YouTube video downloaders. Number one is Vinegar for $2. It's a Safari extension that eliminates ads and tracking, allows video to play in the background, and enables picture-in-picture. You can also access video quality settings more easily, set a preferred quality, and turn autoplay on or off. Wow, that sounds like if you're watching a lot of YouTube videos in Safari, that sounds like a great one. Thank you for that, Elliott. And then secondly, it says there are slew of programs, of course, to download YouTube audio, or to download audio from YouTube videos. I've tried them all since I like to have MP3s of concert footage in my music library. Oh, very interesting. Most require a lot of manual intervention in the process of downloading the audio and or locating and disposing of the video track after download. But I just found YouTube to MP3 free from Media Human. It works entirely in the background if you copy the address of a YouTube video from which you want to download and extract the audio. Or you can install a bookmarklet, put it in your bookmark bar and just click on it when you are at the website you wanna download from. Optionally, it'll notify you when the background download is complete. Multiple simultaneous downloads can happen, and you can also download as AUG or M4A, stipulate the quality and bitrate at any time. Wow, there's a lot of features to this. That's fantastic. Thank you for that, Elliott. Those two seem like great additions.


Hello. Hi everyone. Welcome to Stampin' Chat. A Stampin' Jill. And who? And Aubrey and Beth. Good job. They're sisters. We are sisters. Today you get all three of us. Yes. I don't know, I'm sure it was put in the description what we're doing but we'll explain a little bit. So I wanted to challenge these two to create with a stamp set, the same stamp set, all of us the same stamp set and not show each other what we're doing as we do it. We had a privacy screen. So it's a surprise for all of us. And so I created with it and Jill created with it and Beth created with it. It's this hooray for surprises set. It's actually super fun. And the dies that coordinate. So that was our assignment is to use these two. Yes. And just play and create and don't look at what each other's doing. It was so fun. It was. It was. So we still haven't seen each other's cards. Some people have seen them. I have not. Jill's a peeker. She peeks. I'm not a peeker. It's alright. She had already made her card so it wasn't. So hi Margaret. Thanks for joining us from Illinois. We're so glad you're here with us. Yes. Welcome. Okay. So this, this stamp set is super fun.  So we should show them in the catalog. Oh yeah. Good idea. So it has an interactive feature with it. If you've ever seen like, well, I keep thinking of like, like milled packages where they have like the perforated thing that you pull up and then it opens it up. That's what these dies that coordinate with this stamp set are like. So it has like We're going to switch the camera. Switch that over. It has like this one. And then you can see these little notches. That's where the paper still stays connected. So it cuts out a little area and then you can put something underneath it and peel it back for a surprise. So show them. So it's kind of like this card here. It's hard to see because it's white, but it's got that pull tab that you can open up your card. Yeah. And the round one also has a pull tab. Yeah. So it was kind of different. It's a different idea than what we've played with before. So we stamped what we were stamping, but we haven't pulled the tab and we're going to actually pull it. Yeah. So hopefully, hopefully they all work out. So, but it's super cute. It has different ones like this is a circle one. There's two circle ones and there's a heart one that has the pull thing and then the long strip one and then just some of the coordinating dies that go with it too. So, shall we show them how should we do it? Like one of us show all or show one, two, three, one, two, three. Okay. Okay. Don't need to go first. Yes. Sure. Okay. Ooh. Now I don't know what one to show first. I'll just go in the order that I made them. Okay. Is that okay? This is Aubrey's. Okay. I'm going to do the same thing. Okay. So this was my first one. Oh, I love it. Hope your birthday is wonderful. Cute colors. Oh my goodness. And it just opens normally. But then if you pull, let's see if I did it right. You can pull this. It's a gift card. So cute. And on the back of here, it says make a wish. Oh, cute. Love it. That just can slide down in there. Yeah. So awesome. Kind of a fun birthday card. Mine's pretty simple. This first one. Okay. And it's just the lavender. Is that what the, I think so. Perennial postage. And it just says for you. So with that, oh, sorry. And I'm going to open that up here. You are simply amazing. So cute. Good job lining it up. I know. That was, yeah. I put a postage note. Oh, cute. So it's just on the inside of it. Yeah. Hope your birthday is so it's, they can see it both. But then it's kind of like a surprise and they opened it up and the actual die part is longer. But I just stopped it right here where the fold was and only did my plastic piece right to there. So I just opened this up and laid the plastic from here over. So that's how that did that. Good idea. How'd you line up the stamp? You tell them how. Like on the inside? Oh, I took a postage note.  And then I cut that out and then I was able to put the, because this was like this. And then I put the postage note of the negative or the other spot. And then so when I, when I opened it up, actually the postage note went this way. I'm so excited. I'm the best. And then when I went on it, I stamped it. Yeah. Don't listen to me with who. No, I did. I'm so excited that I was able to figure something out. So let me grab actually my little template that I made. Let me show you. I should have thought to this. It's in the garbage. She's getting her templates away. I'm asking if you're going to show how you created them. So we aren't going to today. We're just going to show the cards, but I think this would be a great video. So watch for a video probably on our Watch It Weekly Wednesday videos and we'll do some of these cards and show some tips on it. Yeah, because these were really fun. It was fun. And there was definitely a learning curve. I, at least I found, I found just with, um, especially if, like if you wanted to do designer series paper, it's thinner. And so, um, it, it kind of tears a little bit, but like I noticed Jill, she put it on card stock. And so it just makes it a little more sturdy. I did that on one of my. Right. I tried it with, um, paper and it didn't work. Yeah. Okay. I'm ready. Okay. Are you ready? Yes. Yes. Okay. So here's my first one. Cute. Oh my goodness. A little birthday one. And then you pull right here, right? Let's see. You are simply amazing. But it's not on the inside of my card. I wanted it. It's cute. Yeah. So the way I lined it up was I ran two of these sizes through at the same time. Okay. Oh. So I lined them up together. I cut two pieces and then I ran them through with the die. I popped out the first one and then I had, I didn't have this piece on yet, but I layered it on and I knew exactly where to stamp because I knew what the other piece would be. Awesome. So then I stamped it and then I put the one on with this still connected and knew it would be in the right spot. Nice. I like that one. So yeah, little template. Just cut them out the same, which actually worked great because some of these, they only connect in a couple spots. Yes. So if you run it through twice, the one on the bottom gets a little bit less pressure. So do your template on the top and then that one you want out anyway. Yeah. So it worked out really well. Awesome. Oh, good idea. Very good. So yeah, we all used the cakes on our first one. Let's see what happens next. Okay, my next one. I'm really excited about this one. This is my Valentine. Oh, that's so pretty. I didn't even look at it before I showed you. This is supposed to be like cute and ruffled behind here. It's real cute. So don't notice that it came undone. Pretty peacock paper. Yeah. So on this one I this card is closed. So you have to open or tear the thing off in order to open the card and it took some like figuring out how to do that because well I'll explain it all to you but let's open it and see. What happens? Well, that needs to come off too. Sending you lots of love. So another gift card holder. Okay, so you can see. Oh, yeah, the little. It's back behind. So what I had to do when I When I scored it, I scored it at four inches. Well, let's see. It would have been two inches and then one and seven eighth inches because I needed this extra little like do you see the two score lines here? Oh, yeah. If it was, I can't see. I'm sorry. So it's bigger. If it only has one score line, it pulls too much on the paper when you go to like fold it behind. Do you see how it doesn't like. Is that what almost makes it like a little album? Yeah, instead. And it's on both sides. Yes. So it doesn't pull apart when the stress of it. Like when you go to like adhere on the back. Got it. So that helped there. And then if you add designer series paper and card stock, it strengthens. It gives it a little bit of a little pull. Yeah. So I think this should be a blog post. Yeah, we should do a blog post with all of our stuff. This is my easy one. You're the best. Way cute. I love your color choices. Kind of reminds me of a Stanley cup. That's a cute idea.  I think Jackie bowl. I stayed a card like this and I just thought it was really cute. And I just made a square.  So simple. I didn't even use the cutout part on this one. That's okay though. Very cute. Okay, well, and I didn't use the cut out on my next one. I did a little different. So here's mine. Oh, so cute. So I did, I loved this dye that did like the polka dot look. And so I wanted to use that. I embossed this. This is like white embossed on top of red. And then use the little flower dye in there. Oh, cute. Love it with the just simple, no zippy things on this, but a fun way to use the other dice that were in there. Yeah, because there's the heart dye, but there's also the polka dotted heart. Yeah, I texture that goes inside. Yeah. It was really cute. So just simple for me to Jill. Awesome. Love it. Okay. Operates one. Let's see. Yeah. So next I use the flower. Pretty. And then this says open here. We'll see if this will pull off or not. I don't know. Oh, yeah. Kind of. And then you're the best. Oh, cute. Really cute. And then it just opens like that. Love it. Love it. Love it. So cute. And did you stamp that sentiment over and over? Yes. So I stamped it in the back. You are amazing back behind. Yeah, ready to use that. That's really cute. Yeah, I didn't even realize that that was not paper. Yeah, because it's so good. All right, this is kind of a fun fold. And I don't know if I use the Oh, I did use it on the inside. Okay, this is mine. It's I use the heart and that little heart stamp and just put that like that. And the bumblebee paper because it's kind of fun. And then I used it here. And this is the one where I just did it out of the designer series paper and I'm like, uh, that's not going to work. So let's you're the best. So cute. So cute. So that's how that one is. Love that. So sending you love and you're the best. Cute. But wait, I love it. How we're all so different. I know. Okay, here's my last one. Oh, pretty kind of glitzed it up a little. Oh, that's so that gold. This paper is really pretty. Gold paper. This is the, is that new? Yeah, I have to remember what it's called because we don't have this bundle. We just got the this is how I knew Jill was spying on me today because she said we have that paper but we don't have this stamp set. No, I was, I was looking at it because I was working on something else. I got to find it. So it's like the natural. Super cute. This one. Nature sweetness. Oh, so in the catalog, you kind of, I didn't realize it was gold. I didn't either. Like it looks so natural and like crumb cakey, which I love too. But I was just browsing through and yeah, the one side is gold. So I did golden black. The inside, I just used some of the paper too. It's like the cute little grid. But when you pull this. Oh, I love that. And you stamp that with stays on stays on. Under there too. Yeah, it's kind of decorated up a little bit like a little window. And then these I just used with the gold foil that we carry. And this paper, this is also from that same. Very cute. So fun. Okay, Aubrey. Aubrey, I have one. Yes, she did it. I just had another thought. So this is my last one. It's really simple. Did you color your heart? I did. I colored the heart. I just took some blends and just did some of those dots. So it kind of looked like sprinkles. Sprinkles, I thought that was good. So let's see. I love how you did the heart on the point. And the heart, yeah, I just. Simply amazing. Oh, and look, I didn't get my white long enough apparently. Yeah, that's all right. Just pretend that it is. Anyway, just kind of a simple one. I love your colors. Those are so fun. Thanks. So what do you all think of what we did? Yes, I know. I, I love all I like none of them even look this same. You can switch the camera. I love that we took something that at first we were kind of like, what do you do with this? How does it work? And we all kind of found different ways to make it work. I love that. So there's no right and wrong way to do it, but whatever works for you. Yeah. Yeah. And yeah, I think it'd be fun to take some of these and do a blog post to show tips and tricks on them since they are kind of some are a little more technical. Yeah, so maybe we'll watch that you can check your back here and we'll post the link for that. We'll work on that this week. Yeah, I just love how everybody just went different ways and I think that was so cool. Super fun.  Yes. All right. Well, we will post all of these on our Facebook group stamping Jill, stamping Jill's VIP group. Good job. I always, every time you don't see it usually cause she's behind the camera. Usually Beth is telling me what to say. Jen's behind the camera today. Yes. Anyway, you can go and see them there and thanks so much for joining us. Yes. We'll see you next time.


Have you join us on Coast to Coast? This is episode 17. It's hard to believe that we've been on this journey for four months, looking really at the future of cities in context of COVID-19. We've looked at all sorts of topics, from mobility to equity, with really an emphasis on public spaces and technology. We're really thinking through, what are the tangible practical solutions that we can think through for our cities? And for all of you who are in the audience today, of course, for the parents out there, including myself, what we do with our kids is on the top of our minds. I know I have a three-year-old who is in school and then his world turned literally upside down when all schools were shut down. And so we're gonna be looking at, what are some of the solutions that we're thinking about for schools and really making them safe? How can we leverage an outdoor space during this time? So I'll examine how schools can leverage green space during COVID-19. And we'll take a look at how parks and public spaces can provide a safer space for outdoor learning. And we have a leading expert on this. So I wanna welcome Sharon Danks, the CEO and founder of Green School Yards America, a nonprofit that supports schools and using the outdoor areas more strategically to improve the well-being of children, their communities, and the urban environment. So hey, Sharon, how's it going? Hi, thanks so much for having me today. I'm thrilled to have you. Thank you for being here. I know all of the parents out there are ego children more about what you have to say about schools and green spaces. So thanks again for joining us. What I really also think is very, very interesting about Green School Yards America is that you guys are the co-founder of the National COVID-19 Outdoor Learning Initiative, which is helping school districts across the country use outdoor spaces as they reopen with physical distancing measures in place. So that's gonna be a big bulk of what we're talking about today. So for our audience members out there, so the way this is gonna work for you, Sharon, and me is we're gonna have about 15 minutes for an interview. We'll go through a few questions around what you're doing, now how you're responding in context of COVID-19 and really kind of looking at the future after, because hopefully COVID will end, right? And there will be a future to all of this. So we'll have 15 minutes of that. And then we'll have time for our audience members to put in their questions in the Q&A box at the bottom of the screen, or on Facebook or Twitter, hashtag Night Live. So we'll have about 10-ish minutes to take live questions together. So with that, Sharon, let's get started. So I would love to start with some context setting. For you to tell us a bit about your work with Green School Yards America and why you started this work, I know you've been personally involved with this for over 20 years, and Green School Yards has been, you've guys have been at this for about seven years. So tell us a little bit about what you're doing and your theory of change. Sure, thanks. I've been in the Green School Yard field for 20 years, originally started in grad school, looking at the question of how do we make green cities? And it seemed to me that it wasn't a technical problem, we know how to make cities that are good for the ecosystems, but it's a consensus problem. And so I've been working on trying to solve the consensus problem of green cities, I'd say for the last 20 years, someone with an urban planning background. And I also have been intersecting that with how do we make great spaces for children in my work in general. And to me, a Green School Yard is a place that is a microcosm of the green city that you'd like to see. So it's a place where you can demonstrate where the rain should go, what it falls, how it comes off the rooftops and goes down the downspouts and soaks into the ground, how you can plant trees to change the microclimate of your neighborhood and also directly protect kids from heat, how you can add wildlife habitat for the birds and butterflies coming through and grow food with agriculture and then also involve kids and teachers and the community in the democratic processes that we'd like to see around how shared public space gets governed and decisions made for that. So for me, it's always been about that shifting a school yard into the place that you want to model what you wanna see in the environment. And about seven years ago after designing Green School Yards and working on participatory design in many schools, I decided to found a nonprofit, Green School Yards America to work at city scale change and to work with school districts and ask them the larger questions that would, I hope, change the norm for what we think of as a traditional school ground. How do we turn all of our school grounds into more park-like spaces that have benefits for children's learning and health and ecological systems and community access to public open space? And so we work with school districts and we ask them, what do you want the hundreds of acres that you manage to do for your kids and your community? How do you want it to be resources for education? How do you want it to help mental and physical health and the ecosystems? And we're thinking about this too on the larger scale and the state scale where we live, for example, in California, we have 10,000 schools and they are collectively on 130,000 acres of land with a daily user rate of 6.2 million kids and several hundred thousand adults. And so that makes it some of our most heavily used public land, public park space, but we're not investing in it as if it matters and as if it is the most valued space. So that's the frame we bring to this. We start from the kind of land space of it and ask what we want from our shared public space and how we can act together to make it better. What's so interesting about this is that schools, what you said is so powerful because schools take up so much of the land within our cities, but we don't think about that land as part of kind of the bigger picture of our public space. And so this is really an interesting holistic look that I don't think is necessarily new. My understanding is in Scandinavia, many countries are looking at it more holistically that this is all part of the public land and their country, but in the United States, that's not necessarily a common practice is my understanding, right? Right, right. And I also co-founded an organization called the International School Grounds Alliance. And so we meet with colleagues from Europe and Asia and elsewhere and look at how they use land and we're trying to essentially with green school years America here, trying to look at which of those ideas would fit in our context that have been our tried and true and that have resulted in large scale shifts that are really positive for kids and the environment. And so we look to Berlin, Germany, for example, where 25 years ago they made a law that every school property and I think every parcel has to absorb all of the rain that falls on it. And with that one public policy change, 400 schools almost completely unpaved about 20, 25 years ago. And now they have what they call sponge school yards which absorb all of their storm water and which have forests on all the school grounds. And so you have kind of the ideal setup for climate resilience and nurturing children in park-like spaces. And so that's what we're trying to model. We know it works, it's been done. It's been done decades ago. We're slow to join. Yeah. Right. And so I wanna also link to your book, Asphalt to Ecosystems, which Asphalt will goes in more in depth than in the concepts that you're talking about. And but a couple of things. It's a win for children, right? But it's also a win for cities from what I'm hearing. It's a micro, it's starting with the schools and it's a micro ecosystem of what you want your cities to be, which makes perfect sense. So thanks for that setup and that context setting for what you do, the really important work. And what I wanna now talk about this crazy moment in time that we're in with in the middle of a pandemic and with COVID-19 and the work that you've done has become incredibly relevant during COVID-19. And so can you tell us why? Why is it relevant? And how your organization is responding? Sure. Yeah, this time has been, as we all know, just an incredibly challenging one. And from a school perspective, it's really hard for schools to reopen with physical distancing measures in place because our buildings just weren't built to have enough space inside for kids six feet apart, get them in the classroom. And they weren't built with ventilation systems capable of filtering a pandemic from the air. So we have space problems and air quality problems inside our buildings. And we also have, we know that kids during this time are experiencing trauma in their lives from separation from one another, from watching family members or friends be ill during the pandemic. So they're gonna be returning to school with a lot of mental health problems and also adults also are feeling that stress. And so bringing them outside, not only has more space and better air quality, but also the therapeutic value of landscape is right there. We know that trees and nature calm our nervous systems and help us reduce stress and be able to focus better. And so we see that as a positive for going outside as well. And it's also being online has also caused an exacerbated inequalities, existing inequalities in our system. And it's vitally important that we bring as many kids back, particularly the most vulnerable as soon as possible so that they can have caring, nurturing, stable environments at school with adults who they can, who will support them in all ways. And so bringing kids back and not everyone has been able to access Wi-Fi equally or access their computers equally. And so we've seen massive learning loss. So returning to school as a priority but doing so in a way that is healthy and within health guidance is very important. So to meet that need and to address those concerns, we collaborated with four other, three other partners, Florence Hall of Science, which is a science museum, 10 strands, which is a nonprofit and San Mateo County Office of Education to create something called the National COVID-19 Outdoor Learning Initiative, which supports schools and districts around the country and their efforts to be open safely and equitably using outdoor spaces as strategic cost-effective tools that can maximize the number of kids who can safely return to campus with physical distancing. And we've been building this initiative over the last two and a half, three months, 53 months. And we're joined now by about 15 other organizations and hundreds of volunteers who are helping us write an online free how-to manual. So if a school or district wants to be able to say, says, yes, this is a good idea. I wanna take our kids outside to solve those problems we're talking about. How do we do it? And we wanna have the answers to how do you do it on our website?  It's more of a series of frequently asked question answers that are set out to explain to different communities or different people within educational systems how this might work. And we have some of the pieces already online the site planning pieces, for example, that will help a principal work with their teachers to walk their site and see where classes could physically sit and think about what the materials would be that they would use and what it might cost and run through some of the logistics to figure out how they can go outside. There's lots of other pieces of the manual coming soon. And we know that schools have very different types of landscapes. And so we're also thinking about if you don't have enough space on your own school ground how might you go to a local park or it was a street like we're doing for restaurants in so many cities to have space outside. And we're also seeing this as a potential new plan A for example, so schools right now their first plan is to go online or to go inside. So we're saying in general, what if your plan A could be going outside and staying outside whenever conditions were right for your school to be outside and then coming in, going to the back up plan of online or inside when you need to. And so for some schools that those conditions shift with the weather and so it's too hot in the fall in Southern California that you might wait until it cools off. If it's too cold in the Northeast in the winter you might come in when it gets really cold. And so we're helping with things through some of the logistics around what would make it easier to stay out for plan A longer like adding tents or making sure every kid has the right clothing to be outside. Right, right. And I love that this is the plan A that you're thinking about. You said a few things that you guys have built a toolkit for schools to be able to navigate this new territory. So we're gonna link to the National COVID-19 Outdoor Learning Initiative where it has all of the toolkit and all the information around this. So for our audience members to access it. And you said something interesting around the weather because I think that that's probably a pushback that many folks have. Whether it's too hot or too cold. And when we had a chat before this I said, well Sharon I have a bunch of communities and the Dakotas how are they gonna do this? And you talked a little bit about the working groups and the regions and you told me a little bit about a working group from Vermont and Maine and how they're thinking about it. Could you share a little bit about that and how they were thinking about the outdoor learning? Sure, so we've had 10 working groups working on this on various aspects of these questions for the last couple of months. And one of them is the outdoor infrastructure working group which has been focusing on questions about weather and where we will put our weather based answer document online or idea document really online in the next couple of weeks. It's almost finished. And I think it's, I think that responses to weather are very cultural more than driven by the actual temperature. The schools in the Northeast tell us they're comfortable being outside, many of them, until 10 degrees. I'm from Miami, so that sounds crazy. Exactly, it's in Florida, people might think it's cold. When I've been in Florida people have told me it's cold at 50, right? We come inside too cold for recess sometimes at 35, 40. So I think it's relative and that's okay. We're just trying to help people be comfortable where they are. I think it's more focused more on the idea of adults can relate to the concept of outdoor dining and wanting to be outside and those picnic tables with the umbrellas and sitting outside in a comfortable place. And so how do we extend the comfort in the restaurant context when the adults are dining? We put up shade umbrellas, we pull out heaters if we need to when it's a little cold. And some of those, of course, need to be checked to meet safety standards for children which are generally built, but the idea is generally the same. How do you feel more comfortable outside when everyone has a warm enough coat and rain boots if it's raining? There are these fabulous head to toe jumpsuits for rain that forest schools, even up in the North, use to have their kids outside all day, even when it's damp, the kids enjoy it. But the idea is to make people comfortable. So if that involves a tent, put up a tent, there's many solutions. And I think we will be outlining those and describing what they are in this document. Right. And so for folks who wanna look more at the working groups we're also gonna link to specifically those working groups. And so you talked a little bit about whether it's a tent or whatever, this doesn't have to be incredibly fancy what outdoor learning looks like. So I would like to ask for us to flash up. We have a couple of pictures of what this could look like for, were these pilots sharing or prototypes of what the outdoor learning could look like? Or is this an actual example? This is an actual example from a school called Goldston Education in El Cerrito, California where they had a running, they were running a summer program and they built outdoor classroom spaces to run their summer program. And they had a COVID health protocol that they used that kept everyone healthy all summer. And they've just reopened with a waiver from the health department because their protocol meets code for the fall. So they're now in session as well using this space although it's transformed to now have a bigger tent over it. Amazing. But it's not fancy, but it does the job, right? And then here's another example that we pulled. Can you tell us about this one? Yeah, it's the same school. And this is an example of we're recommending that schools look first to what they already have before they buy anything new. And so these were desks that were literally in the school's basement that weren't, they were in storage, they weren't being used. And so they pulled them out and made them their outdoor learning stations and they just added a tent so that it would stay out of the sun and out of a light drizzle. And so that's what they use also in the summer, same school. Great, great. So with this, before we take some questions from the audience, I wanna ask you, obviously this is a stressful time for all of us with COVID, but with crisis brings opportunity. And I think the fact that we're all talking about this, the fact that so many schools, that you're leading the way to our thinking about how do we leverage the outdoors? What do you think is potentially the opportunity for the future of how we think about schools and outdoor spaces in our cities? Well, it's been really exciting to see schools and districts try outdoor learning for the first time. We've been, one of our working groups, I didn't mention earlier was, is a group that's a community of practice for early adopter schools and districts who are waiting for the manual to come out for diving right in and making plans and some of them already have opened outside. And so I think what we've seen from that experience is that some schools that I'd never tried after our learning are considering this to be an option to go to scale with right now. And we hope that once they're out there that they'll find themselves really comfortable in this environment. And just as when we move restaurant dining outside, we find ourselves really comfortable out there and say, why don't we sit inside all the time when there's all this nice, it's nice to be outside. So we hope that a lot of schools will see that. We hope that they will also see that there are hands-on learning resources all around them if you go outside. And if it's a school's first time outside, they'll probably take their indoor curriculum out, which is great. But when you've been out there for longer, you can start to build on and add to the resources you have in your teaching toolbox by using the environment as something to learn from as well as in. Yeah, and I wonder Sharon too, if there's an opportunity for us to just be reimagining the relationship that we have between parks and schools too. You said that now some schools are potentially leveraging parks and rec during this time too. So we'll see. Definitely, and one of our working groups is working on the topic specifically about how to best set up relationships between school districts and park systems and the city who might be able to open the sidewalk or go close streets temporarily, like they're doing in New York City right now as they plan to scale up and so we're trying to help make that easier. Schools and parks haven't traditionally in the United States been part of the same planning unit as they are in Europe where it's just a little easier to plan together, but they are both public lands for public benefits and it would be wonderful to see them weaving their bowls together and collaborating more in the future as well. Absolutely, especially in our denser communities. Okay, great, so let's take some questions that we have from the audience. So the first one that I see is around a question around engagement. So how engaged have families and their students been willing to be and what have been some best practices and engaging with the families during this time? We have another working group working on community engagement recommendations and those will be online shortly. We are recommending that the communities be involved in the decision making that the schools are going through right now and I think parents are super involved as our teachers in responses to COVID. Everyone wants to keep everyone else, they want to keep themselves and everyone else healthy and safe and so I think that's been the priority. It's been kind of a triage moment of how do we do this? And it's easy to overlook all the people who should be involved in that conversation, but we definitely think that all people who are affected, parents, students, teachers, principals should be asked what they want for their school and be part of the conversation to craft the solution that they'd like. Absolutely. And so there's a question, kind of a follow up around this. For schools that maybe aren't on board for outdoor learning, are there any techniques or part of a toolkit that can help persuade them perhaps to get on board? Yeah, I think that there are, I mean, you can come outside, it's beneficial to be outside as much as possible. So that could be during class time, but it also could be at lunch or at the school's certain breakfast and those are times of days when all the kids and all the adults who are eating will have their masks off. So what better time to be outside where the air is fresh and the breeze is blowing and transmission rates are much lower. So just having meals outside is important, having PE outside, potentially having music outside if you can space kids apart, having art or a library outside, things like that. We spoke with one librarian who had designed a whole outdoor library program because she knew that she was gonna be asked to see 500 kids at her school and wanted to make sure that they were not all coming through an indoor space where she was. And so she created an outdoor library program. So it's not just the classrooms, definitely any specialty programs benefit from being outside. So the more of the day that can be out the better. Absolutely. So one of the things that you said was around dressing appropriately, right? And especially as weather is gonna be changing. And so there's a question kind of around the equity piece of that. And so, how can we ensure that children have the proper clothes to be able to withstand the cold weather for outdoor learning? Have you guys put any thought into that? Yes. We think that the clothing should be considered part of the infrastructure for outdoor classrooms and that it should be budgeted for along with the tents and seating. That it is something that every child needs. And so schools could handle that differently to assess how many of what they need to buy for clothing, but we think that they should check and make sure that every child has warm enough clothes and either talk to retailers who might be able to give them bulk purchases of new items or some, we've heard at least one district talking about trying to source high quality used clothing to be able to hand it out for free as well because they didn't have a budget for it yet. But we think that it's central to be able to do it. And the best way to do that is to think of it as infrastructure for being outside. It's part of the gear that's needed. And so it should be provided by the same centralized school processes that are building outdoor classrooms. Absolutely. I love that. It's part of the infrastructure. It is just part of what has to be done. When I was in Copenhagen, Sharon, I think I told you this before, but when they had bad weather, when I claimed there was bad weather, they said, no, no, no, no. There's no such thing as bad weather. There's just bad clothes. And that we all, that you just have to be prepared. But making sure that our children are protected is critical. So it seems like you're absolutely thinking about that. So there's a question around, and you highlighted this about the budgeting piece and that you put this in the budget. But of course, schools don't have as much resources as they've had before. Many are really stressed actually financially. And so what part of the school budget are you recommending that we pull these funds for to implement these ideas around the outdoor learning? Have you guys thought about that? Yeah, I think that budgets follow priorities. And it's a question of making this a priority. When everyone thought that plan A should be online learning, the funds came out of the woodwork to buy computers. And also the indoor screens, like pieces of plexiglass are going in everywhere. That money is coming from, is because schools are focusing on indoors as a priority. It exists. And we imagine that that can be shifted when you say our priority is to be outside. The same resources that fed those pieces of the budget could potentially feed outdoor learning. We have heard some school districts are using CARES Act funds to build outdoor classrooms as they would to shift indoor classrooms. We've heard others doing fundraisers around their programs. But I think that we need to put it in the same category as providing the infrastructure to go online or providing the infrastructure to be safe inside and thinking about what are the costs to society if we can't get our kids back in a safe way. All those parents who are out there trying to work with kids at home or whose equity-wise kids who can't access any school unless they come back. And if inside doesn't have enough space and not enough air quality, not good enough air quality, then we can't shift that piece of the economy forward. And so I think it should be a priority and should be prioritized in the budget space. Absolutely, it is what you said earlier and we have to wrap up, but the time flew by. But this is about being plan A, right? This is plan A and this is the priority. We're in a crisis and we have to figure out how to make sure this is a priority within our communities and how this is a priority for our kids. And so with that, Sharon, thank you so much for talking with us about how we can leverage green spaces for our schools during this very, very dynamic time during the pandemic. I really appreciate it. I appreciate your leadership during this time and how you are working with hundreds and hundreds of schools across the country. There were a bunch of questions in the chat around looking at pictures, finding out more information for everyone who wants to have more information. We linked everything into the chat box below in the Zoom webinar. And so you can have access and it's really, really easy to go on Green School Yards website and everything is on there around the COVID response where you can get more involved and where you can learn practically around how to do this in your community. Good luck, Sharon, with your work and thank you for sharing this very, very valuable information. For our viewers out there, next week, we are going to have Gabe Klein on our show and we'll be talking about the future of budgeting and how cities can really look at their budget and during this really difficult dynamic time. And so with that, see you next Tuesday at 1 p.m. Eastern. Take care.


Omega-3, 6 and 9 fatty acids. This will answer questions ranging from do we need to consume fish, is high omega-6 bad, is there inflammation and oxidation in the body associated with imbalances, ultimately why these omegas are good for us as well as bad for us. Omega-3 fatty acids are polyunsaturated fats, a type of fat that our body cannot produce. The three major types of omega-3 fatty acids are alpha-linolenic acid, EPA, ecosopentanoic acid and DHA, docosahexanoic acid. The main function of EPA is to produce ecosanoids that have anti-inflammatory properties in the body. Prostaglandins are a subset of ecosanoids that are not too well understood. They are inflammatory regulators in the body. So wherever inflammation is occurring, we know there will be ecosanoids on site. The thing to understand here about ecosanoids is that when you consume too much omega-6 or too much omega-3 fatty acids, imbalance of prostaglandins is associated with negative things. Too high omega-6, arthritis, too high omega-3, thrombosis, a.k.a. stroke. DHA, docosahexanoic acid, makes up about 8% of our brain weight and is incredibly important for brain development as well as function. The brain actually requires 4.6 milligrams of DHA per day. This explains very well why DHA deficiencies can result in impaired cognitive function. One shocking metric is the variance in DHA levels in human breast milk. From 0.06% to 1.4%, that is over a 20-fold variance in DHA. If that doesn't convince you that omega-3 fatty acids are important in all stages of life, I don't really know what will. These two fatty acids, EPA and DHA, are our bread and butter, essentially what we need to focus on getting in our diet. EPA for regulation of cellular inflammation and DHA for brain health as well as nerve cell structure and function. DHA is most commonly obtained from eggs. It is found especially in fish as well, including shellfish. It's also found in the brain tissues of ruminant animals. DHA in brain tissue as well as DHA in fish eggs, a.k.a. fish row, caviar, occurs in a different form. This is called the phospholipid form, which can be absorbed into the brain easier. Some of you guys may have heard Dr. Ronda Patrick talk about this in the past. There's plenty of research you can read on that. I'm pretty sure it's not conclusive, but definitely an interesting theory. In regards to EPA, the nice thing is that foods that contain DHA inherently contain EPA. So we don't have to focus on getting EPA on its own. We just have to focus on getting DHA. Now there are tons of benefits to consuming omega-3 fatty acids demonstrated in both fish as well as supplemental form, although there are definitely benefits to a higher extent from consuming fish demonstrated in studies as well as from a logical standpoint. The fatty acids in fish are less oxidized. There's more nutrients in fish. People that are going to go out of their way to consume fish likely follow a healthier lifestyle in general. Many confounding factors tying into that. The inverse correlation of fish consumption and mortality from cardiovascular disease is demonstrated here. One interesting thing about the blood of Eskimos because they have a high omega-3 consumption is that it clots drastically slower. This relates to platelet adherence as well as concentration of fibrinogen in the blood. This essentially makes them immune to platelet aggregation or stroke as well as heart disease. So this is a pretty crazy mechanism of omega-3 fatty acids. What they're essentially doing is thinning the blood and making the blood cells more elastic, reducing the fibrinogen in the blood, making your blood flow so smoothly that you're immune to heart disease and stroke. This is an incredible mechanism and this is the reason that I would rather focus on mechanisms as opposed to show you guys hundreds to thousands of studies on omega-3s associated with this. You can always look those up as there are thousands and thousands of them out there. One thing people are concerned about is oxidation of fish oil supplements and this is certainly a concern as when you take the fish oil out of the context of the fish, you're removing the antioxidant properties of things like vitamin E, vitamin C, even iodine. That's why you usually see vitamin E, sometimes in the form of rosemary oil, added to various supplements. This is not a cut and dry answer. It depends on the amount of antioxidants in your body, what you're consuming, as well as the level of oxidation you currently have in your diet. This also varies from person to person depending on genes. The safe bet is to consume canned fish, non-oxidized oils, things that haven't been taken outside of the context of the fish. I guess it would also be important not to fry fish at super high temperatures. If you can obtain the omega-3 fatty acids, all of the fat-soluble vitamins through foods, you don't have to worry about consuming oxidized oils to reach these goals. Alphalinolemic acid, ALA, is mostly associated with being in plant foods but it's contained in animal foods as well. It's mainly used in the body for energy. The body can store it in adipose tissue, use it for acetyl coenzyme A for energy production as well as convert other fatty acids into longer-chain fatty acids using alphalinolemic acid. A lot of people believe that alphalinolemic acid can be converted into EPA and DHA but it can only invert into EPA at very low rates of approximately 4% and ALA has never been shown to raise blood levels of DHA. The reason for this is that ALA competes with omega-6 fatty acids like linoleic acid for an enzyme that is needed to metabolize it, 6 desaturates. High levels of ALA have also been shown to impair EPA and DHA absorption. There is no indication that we need to obtain this alphalinolemic acid from plant foods. It's very clear that animal foods are adequate in this context. This is more of a concern in vegans that think they're able to convert EPA and DHA from it which is not true at all. There would likely be more benefits to limiting your alphalinolemic acid consumption on a high omega-6 diet than there would be to consume more of it to try to get some more EPA and DHA. You can take an algae supplement but there are cyanotoxins in algae supplements. One thing I haven't heard people talk about is the context of animal foods containing alphalinolemic acid without high levels of omega-6. So it's very likely that we can obtain enough omega-3s, EPA and DHA on a carnivore diet without the consumption of brains or fish under two conditions. The beef we are consuming is incredibly high quality. The pasture was excellent summer pasture, completely grass fed and the majority of our calories come from fat approximately 70-80%. Unfortunately, most people don't have access to such high quality beef. The reason for this is the levels of alphalinolemic acid in grass fed beef are substantially higher as much as 10 times higher than grain fed beef. Omega-6 fatty acids are also polyunsaturated fats. The most common types being linoleic acid found in seed oils, conjugated linoleic acid found in animal tissue as well as arachidonic acid found in animal tissue. Linoleic acid being exclusive to seed oils, sunflower, safflower, soybean, corn, canola. As you can imagine, it's something relatively new to humans and has had drastic negative effects. Almost anyone who has done their research on health knows how dangerous these oils are but a main focus of today is going to be to understand why these seed oils are so bad for you. We spoke earlier about how high levels of linoleic acid impede conversion of alphalinolemic acid into EPA and DHA because of the competition for that 6D saturase enzyme. But that is just the tip of the iceberg. What happens when you consume large amounts of linoleic acid is that the fatty acid composition of your triglycerides, all of your cholesterol, as well as adipose tissue change into linoleic acid. You are what you eat. The body cannot distinguish linoleic acid from bacteria as it is unnatural. What this ultimately results in is incredible amounts of oxidative stress in the arteries and the organs, essentially all tissues of the body because all tissues in your body are made of cholesterol and fat. This is the main cause of heart disease, fatty liver, so many negative things associated with this. Linoleic acid is involved in early state atherosclerosis through endothelial dysfunction. This study here actually used soybean oil to induce oxidation of LDL cholesterol. It also shows that oxidized LDL enhanced uptake in macrophages, aka white blood cells, and resulted in foam cell formation, essentially atherosclerosis or heart disease. So this LDL cholesterol enters the arterial wall. Since it's composed of linoleic acid, the body essentially attacks it. These white blood cells attack the linoleic acid, they take it up, they turn into macrophages, then they get embedded in the arterial wall because of the oxidation. The cells themselves oxidize, turn into foam cells, eventually causing heart disease. The oxidation byproduct, HPODE, is what this linoleic acid turns into. That's why sometimes we see high blood levels of polyunsaturated fats and low levels of heart disease. The reason for this is that it just hasn't oxidized into HPODE yet. The following civilizations were free from heart disease. The Melanesian Katavins, the New Guinean Tukey Sineta, and the Ugandan and Nigerians. The one common factor between all of these groups is that they did not consume seed oils. It's definitely safe to say that these seed oils are something that we should not be consuming and from a mechanistic standpoint it's very evident these are one of the most dangerous things to have in your diet. And as much as we could have excluded these based solely on their origin and that hey, they used to use this as machine lubricants, it's important to understand why. The fatty acid ratio in animals changes just like humans does. So unfortunately animals are fed vegetable seed oils like soybean oil and corn oil which is why pork and chicken can have high levels of omega-6 and cause oxidative stress in the body even though we are not directly consuming these processed seed oils. Conjugated linoleic acid is essentially the opposite of the plant-based linoleic acid. It's found in meat and dairy and it's known to have various health benefits. There are 28 known types of CLA that have various proven biological functions. Guys there are hundreds of fatty acids in the body, it would be amazing to have an encyclopedia on them and have bullet points of pros and cons but unfortunately Frankie Boy is the best you got right now. This conjugated linoleic acid is much higher in grass-fed animals. It's been shown to alleviate non-alcoholic fatty liver disease in rats whereas linoleic acid is actually required for development of fatty liver in alcoholics.  It improves overall metabolism, it's anti-cancer, anti-obesity, anti-diabetic, anti-hypertensive meaning it prevents lifestyle diseases. As we can imagine with the metabolic benefits it is shown to produce modest weight loss as well. Conjugated linoleic acid has also been linked to gene expression, the turning on and off of various genes in our body to regulate cell functions. This is a very important aspect to human health, we see with all fat soluble vitamins such as A and D3 it literally regulates how every single cell in our body is made through cell differentiation. The importance of this is an understatement. If you could rank the biological functions of consuming something in regards to their health benefits, gene expression and cell differentiation are at the top and these functions are greatly associated with animal forms of vitamins showing the importance of animal foods in our diet. Arachidonic acid isn't usually talked about, it's a polyunsaturated omega-6 fatty acid found exclusively in animal foods. It cannot be converted by increasing blood levels of linoleic acid. This is related to the enzyme we spoke about earlier, 6 desaturates and guys if anything has convinced you in this video to consume more omega-3s and less omega-6 it's the 6 desaturates enzyme and how literally everything seems to compete with it for conversion. Just like the brain requires 4.6 milligrams of DHA per day, it requires 17.8 milligrams of arachidonic acid. This can be inherently achieved by consuming animal products. As long as you are eating animal foods, there is no reason to seek out arachidonic acid on its own. Omega-9 fatty acids, I'm sorry to disappoint you guys, they're not necessary, the body can convert them from all of the other fatty acids we are consuming. If you guys do want to look up the health benefits of omega-9 fatty acids, I didn't really find anything too compelling so I didn't want to make this video any longer that it has to be. If you guys do want to find outcome data and associations with these things, you can literally Google thousands and thousands of studies. The purpose of this is to understand some mechanisms of these omega-f fatty acids, essentially how we can consume them and at the end of the day guys, the solution really is follow an indigenous or native diet composed of a minimum of 55-65% of your calories from high quality animal foods and all of this will inherently be achieved. Because you are consuming high quality foods, your omega-3 to omega-6 ratio will not be off and because these animals are fed properly, they will contain the omega-3 fatty acids and the nutrients your body needs. One thing we didn't really go too much into is oxidative stress in the body and how various vitamins, substances in the body that are determined by genes, how well your body converts them, is important in reducing oxidative stress. This is why we see people that can eat chicken, fried in soybean oil for 50 years and be fine whereas some people drop dead when they're 45 years old. So always guys, I like to be safe and err on the side of caution and not consume these foods. So thank you guys for watching. If you guys would like to support the channel, please like, subscribe and share the video. Frankie Boy is not getting too much sleep making these videos for you guys every day so I hope you guys appreciate it. If you do want to support me, Patreon is a great way to do that as well as a way for me to answer personalized questions. Down below is also my Amazon shop where you can find things like cod liver oil, canned cod liver, vitamin D3, things I use in my day to day life. Guys, I'm on Twitter, I'm on Instagram, I'll probably post some of these studies later on Twitter and you guys can see the Greek physique that is established by this information on my Instagram. If you guys do want to reach out to me for one-on-one consultations in regards to improving your overall health through nutrient density, you can shoot me an email frankatufano at gmail.com or contact me through the form on my website below frank-tufano.com.


Okay, welcome everyone here and in person and online. I want to share today the wikitopia proposal slash discussion slash concept. The idea is that wikipedia, wikimedia is inherently utopian concept and we shouldn't be approaching it quite as ordinary business as usual. And it's valuable to think big and to think of larger areas we can expand to and it's in fact it's necessary. I don't think we'll survive as a niche product, as a niche experience. And that sort of, there's this wild ideas track at this conference and I created this very much in mind. So the idea is that we need a radical evolution of the wikimedia movement in response to global trends. The wikiway is an alternative to the Silicon Valley empires of the world and the over-commercialization of the internet and all the problems that brings. I think that the non-profit approach has a unique strength on digital spaces that it doesn't in other places and I think we've underutilized what we can do online with the non-profit approach. Yeah, so the idea is that there are some shortcomings in the movement and there's some barriers to growth based on what has happened in the past. So we have to update or replace some of the concepts that have limited us, perhaps. So rather than technological humility and sort of trying to use other folks' products and seeing how we integrate properly with commercial services, we might think about some technological autonomy. Instead of an academic conservatism, we might look more toward creativity and how we can be not just like the conservative accepted thing but also try new exciting things because we shouldn't be trying so hard to be encyclopedia Britannica in 1911. We're a little bit past that stage and it's time to try new things and to be exuberant about it. And the other is that rather than being a selective movement or a movement that's sort of neutral and faceless, we should try to be a movement that embraces solidarity. First, I was going to use community but I think more than community solidarity, we have to embrace ourselves as sort of a class of free knowledge producers and users that's broader than just the editorship, that's a very large part of society that gets a benefit from it. I do see it as a utopian project. Some people think that Wikipedia or Wikimedia is about 23 years old. It's actually about 23 centuries old which is when the Library of Alexandria was built and it's gone quite a utopian way but still has quite a ways to go. So for the exercise for today, I took three of these ideas and I'm suggesting that we have a writing exercise in groups to write some things about the future utopian movement and maybe to describe it in a narrative way to help establish a strategy. So it depends on what you want to do but there are three here. One is the WikiSocial 1.0 manual which is an introduction to WikiSocial 1.0 which is a toolkit for all social and sort of search communications around the movement. Two is a very wiki day which is a diary entry, you write a diary entry for one person's fictional person's engagement with the Wikipedia, the wiki verse on a particularly serendipitous busy and wiki field day. The protagonist is not a heavy editor but makes full use of both existing and importantly future free knowledge projects. So many of the things that say same and Sarah were alluding to and how they get around town, how they cook, how they work, how they get their news and information, things like that. And the third one is the solidarity aspect, the wiki Woodstock Anthem. So this envisions that we have at some point in the future, we have a folk festival of folk internet culture. I'm wearing the t-shirt for one today for the Clean Word Festival founded by the folk singer Pete Seeger which saved the Hudson River in New York. And I think this kind of thing can work for our social movement as much as it works for the environmental movement and the labor movement. And the idea is you're writing the great song of the anthem of wiki woodstock and talk about what people are doing there and other social engagements and the history and struggles of the movement. And yeah, I'd encourage you to get in groups and I'm going to get some poster board and some posted notes and you can pick a topic and work on it together. And then you can post it on wikisport and you can reach the page on wikisport by going to utopia.wikisport.org. Wikisport is the place where all your wildest dreams come true, particularly if you want to start a new wiki that's in the wiki media ecosystem. Yeah, yeah, we'll gather a small number of tables, please. You're encouraged, yeah, if you want to start two tables it'd be great. You could write things that happen on the very wiki day. Because this is Tisa who's been together. Okay, I unfortunately have to leave. I'll give you more direction with two tables. So we already have some for you. We forgot how to get started. So maybe you want to do the very wiki day? So where someone who has wikipedia, wikipedia, wikipedia has a lot of new projects. We do a lot of interesting things. We replace a lot of the commercial internet with a lot of commercial information. And how does someone go about their day? What's their diary entry? Maybe they get some pizza. Maybe they learn how to cook something. Maybe they see something that meets election day. Yeah, if you have any ideas of what someone might do going around and use that as a guide if you want. So to create a wiki day, right?  But how has that like evolved in the future? Potentially in our imagination. And you choose your time zone. Oh, I see. I like what you're getting at. What you're getting at is how do you incorporate something about wikipedia into your daily life. So it's not something outside of your day? What you do? I wish it was Eddie or in the day.  What about time? Sorry, I've gone on to like an alarm clock time, tangent. But like, what about an idea where, what do I mean? Like, we're in our different geographic time zones, but perhaps what you're doing is choosing the like time that you're in to fit with the activities that you're going with. Yeah, something like that. Sorry. We can do it. Oh, I've done something like that before. You deal with a candidate. I did something like that once before, and it got deleted. It was too political. You imagine? It sat up there for about two or three months. You think? It was one of these conferences. They mentioned the role that we could play during an election. We could like, do a Wikipedia article on a candidate. And then from that, people will learn about that candidate who will help with the election. But that kind of stuff is really, really political. Yeah, definitely. And the person that I did the Wikipedia article on, she was challenging the city over public properties that was being used by developers. And we had found out all kinds of stuff, how the mayor was changing idols and properties. And then we put something in there about the Blob deal. And that was removed first. And then the article itself was removed. And she did win the election because the Villa State Board had been sponsored by other candidates. And telling lies about that candidate. Like this is the song, right? But you might be lucky. You might be lucky. Yeah, yeah. But at least it'd be a source where someone gets to know who that candidate really is. I don't know where you live, but in New York, you don't really get to hear anything. Other than a week or so. So I tried to make a difference because I was at a conference with somebody mentioned. That's something we could do. And I tried it. What else is on our wiki day? Yeah. Did you see there's a thing for wiki data cocktail recipes? I didn't know that. I've been dealing mostly with using wikipedia to create a curriculum. Oh, cool. And using the wiki to create books. Yeah, okay, yeah, yeah. So I would start off with an article. Like an article I'd write or an article I'd already written. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then we would find key words and terms and then take that. We would repeat the article that connects. Yeah. And we did that for a Juneteenth event. Because Sherry wanted to do something on Juneteenth. Yeah. Oh, you know what? You know what's happening? I wrote the update newsletter from 2022. It's very serious. They want to charge all the people who have the wood, wood, wood, wood up. They want them to pay $20,000 for this device. So as far as pizza go, we might lose our affordable food. I could see doing a wiki school where we find wikipedia articles and take, and that way we can take it off the page. Great, bye. Wiki tour. Create your own book. Wiki source. Yeah, I've seen a lot of that. I want to use that more. I'll use it with the data. Yeah. But I really like that you can do so much with the books. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's the thing, I don't have to do anything in. Yeah. Someone told me about a book. You know, since Juneteenth was a ship in the Atlantic, this guy, I know that works at Bloomberg radio, and he's an older guy, and he does the stock exchange in South Africa. And he told me when he used the book, the two prints of collar bombs. Okay, yeah. And after reading the book, I decided, wow, from what I've learned from the book, I wrote things down. From that, I wrote wiki books. All right. Just from that. So I call it rapid books. You don't have to stop in the beginning to the end. So I've done like about six of those during the lockdown. I could edit forever. That's an amazing initiative. That's an amazing initiative. But you know what's really weird? If you can't get people to visit, I was in another section they were talking about, it's difficult to get people to actually edit. So I was able to bypass that. I was able to get them involved in discussions, conversations, and looking for information, and talking about what to put in the book. Even though I was doing all the editing, I still was able to keep them involved by using that. I'm going to write that down. That's an idea to steal. I'm going to write that down as an idea. Yeah, we did about six. What was your book? Can you give me a title? We could create a wiki cookbook. Yeah, there's a cookbook on wiki books. It's almost a sister project. Like we could make our own. Yeah. And keep it on wiki books. Wait a minute. We're here. You can find out about food, find wikipedia articles about food in Singapore. Yeah. And then take those recipes and put them in some wikipedia. Yeah. Are there like criteria for creating one? Are there criteria for creating one? It's pretty open. It's very open. You decide where you want to put things. It's very open. Because you're using existing articles. Yeah, yeah. The only thing you're writing is maybe the introduction. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's about all, you know. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it's good for people because you say you don't have to edit. So it's like an editor's tool. You become like an editor. Like you said, everybody likes food. So here's some of them. The first one I did with the profit during the lockdown was I wrote an article long time ago about the Associated Needle Press. Right? A lot of people don't know that we had a thriving Associated Press, Negro Press, in the 20s, 30s, and the 40s, in the 50s. And then in the 60s it, and so people don't even know. And it wasn't just in the United States. It was actually, they didn't even use the word pan-African, but it was people from all over the world that were contributors. So it was an article that I wrote about four years ago. Yeah, yeah. I wanted to engage people, so I took that article. And then from that article, we created the Wikipedia book from the people that participated in that. Yeah, that's amazing. So early writers associated Negro Press and African-American newspapers. Yeah, that's pretty cool. Can I take a page about your page? And then, now some of them I put, now this one was done around COVID. Oh, yeah, yeah. When people were saying, why is it that a lot of African-Americans were very paranoid about doctors? So because that was happening in reality, in my environment, we pulled this one together. Medical history, healing practices in Africa, Africa, diaspora, and the Caribbean. Now you can have this. Now this, okay, these are the user books under my username. Now this platform has almost gone away. Now you have to transfer to pediatrics. Uh-huh. But anyway, you can look at some of those. Yeah, thank you. But it's about six of them. Yeah, that's so cool. Like, say you're trying to learn something, right? Yeah. You can create a book around it. Yeah, that's really interesting. Right? Yeah, really, yeah. And I did one on cryptocurrencies for newbies. I thought it was cool. Because I was interested. That's not my field of study or anything. So I'd like to see, I think Wikipedia plays a big role in the play in education. We can do it better than a machine. Yeah, definitely. A machine does not have an imagination. A machine can just do what we tell it to do. Yeah. It can support to be in your document. But that's not an imagination. Yeah. So I don't buy it at all. It's a tool. It's a tool. It's a tool. Yeah. But if you give me your email address, I will send you some of the books I did. And another thing that you discovered from doing one around Juneteenth, because I wanted to, you know, I did one on a woman named Patricia Singeter. I have no head. No, Patricia Robert. No, Andre, that was that one. Okay. A lot of time from Juneteenth to holiday, you don't know about before. Yeah. Yeah, I know about Juneteenth. Okay. I felt like the narrative was very limited. Mm-hmm. Everybody just said the people in Galveston, Texas, found out late that they were emancipated. Mm-hmm. So that's what everybody says, like, public, public, public. Yeah. So we were, so I started just research, started from nowhere. Mm-hmm. So I found out about Andreya Roberts and how she has altered the narrative. Mm-hmm. It's not what people think at all. Mm-hmm. It's like, what do you do? And what do you feel after emancipation? You just run around in a great land. Mm-hmm. Is that emancipation? Mm-hmm. That doesn't even, that's a child, right? Mm-hmm. So we found out that in Texas alone, after enslavement, they built 550, what they call it, freedom of colony, freedom of settlements. That wasn't in the narrative. Hello. So we wrote a Juneteenth reader. Mm-hmm. That's cool. You see, you see how that works? Yeah, yeah. Mm-hmm. And we did the same thing around cryptocurrencies for dummies. And we did, let me see. That's really interesting. Thank you. That's really interesting. You create your own book. Yeah. Yeah. And what I was in college, I don't know if you've heard of Marshall McClellan? Yeah, yeah. Okay. You predicted that he would be able to create your own book. Yeah, I did it later. I studied Marshall McClellan. Okay. But when I was in college, you did what your classes told you to do. But then it was always the college outside the college. Yeah, yeah.  Yeah. And now that you do just what the college tells you to do, right? Yeah, yeah.  Yeah. But that's one thing she predicted. So that's why I love doing the books. That's so cool. And it's a YouTube clip we're talking about. Where we're going with the technology. Wow. And I have that YouTube clip. I wish I could have shown it when we were doing the presentation. It's like a three-minute clip. Which presentation? It's like a two-minute clip. Okay. So the influence predictions of future technology capabilities is very much like what we are able to do using the Wikipedia book creator. Brain-fizzing. Brain-fizzing. Like, I mean, I did. They would predict that everybody was going to see everybody chase this. True. But I think, and I was back and read all of this stuff. I read in college. I read it recently. I started this award. But I think the main challenge is the Wikipedia challenge. We live in a world where people are not really readers. And we come from a print culture, all of us. Yeah, consumption is changing. So we're dealing with a very visual world. And they want everything summarized. And then we're dealing with the television age and the radio age. And in the early computer age, we're dealing with the plug-and-play mentality. And the new technology, even interested, is not a plug-and-play reality. You live in a world where you're constantly problem-solving. You constantly figuring out how to do this. You can't plug-and-play it. Now with AI again, we're seeing another version of plug-and-play. But it's still machine. So how do we... But I think Wikipedia is a big role-play in education. Yeah, definitely. We want something to be able to summarize an article. Yeah, and it's where people go. Whether you want them to or not. Like, all my students, like, they go to... Or they teach archaeology. And they go to the Wikipedia page for the site. Before anywhere else. The articles delivered to, like... Either we rise or rise. Because, like, everyone's right, they're born now. Yeah. So there's a lot there. And that would be the article. Because they would just explore the page. Yeah, the problem is... Some of the articles just aren't... Not necessarily in my teaching, but in other people's teaching. Like, the... Oh, no. The very last line... Necessarily helpful for them. Or, like, the opinions... Pretty good after until the last line. In the spirit of collaboration, our anthem reads to me. Every single day. In unity with AI, we like the question. Yeah. Thank you for sharing it. It's a lot of love with that. Educational training. Yeah. And how do you... Yeah. Will these new tools replace the classical trash... Classical? Which is... It's stowaway. I was not even stowaway getting stuff somewhere. Yeah. I think you can have tools right there on the book. Yeah. Why wouldn't you? And then also, I think... One of the things we've learned... When you start to write something, you're starting from zero. Yeah, yeah. I'll bring in the theme of reclaiming AI. I think you would know it. It emphasizes you till you don't. We have a bad habit of thinking we don't know. I don't know if it's a cultural thing, or whatever. But then do we have to go further? Yeah. I thought I grasped it. But I didn't. I was being honest. A colleague wrote a really good article about what are medievalists and medieval historians. How things they can do with the media. One of the most important things he said was to add sections on historiography or interpretation. To help... To add a body of content that shows that the past is not static. People see it different ways. And it's still objective because it's so and so says this. So and so has the other opinion. But he was saying that that will then... The hope, because that will then help with people's understanding of the topic. People will start to look at it with the media page and go, oh, say this is interpreted. It's not one thing. It's not monochrome. It is something that's interpreted. So I started doing that quite a lot. You could take an article and create a wiki book from the article. Yeah, yeah. What would you pull out of it?  It's nothing. It's fun. Yeah, yeah. Definitely fun. And you're learning. You're navigating. Navigating is learning. So the classroom, the traditional classroom is stored. You're not navigating. You're being told. So what does that do for your brain? Not very much, right? So that's what wikipedia is actually progressive. Yeah, yeah. It's got a big role in the play. Totally. So we've got to see that with that, you know. Yeah. I like the idea of, like, querying wiki data to find out what to have for dinner. Yeah. I find that quite a good idea. Maybe you want to, like, oh, you could also do it to pair food and wine. Yeah. Yeah. A wiki sommelier. Wait, I just happened to kill that wiki data. Wait, I just happened to kill that wiki data. I'm going to put it down before that idea is forgotten. Yeah, really. Give it a light form. You could... What happened to my refrigerator? No, I haven't... I have to put it up again. I'm going to get it. Oh, wiki tours. You could find articles that give tours. Yeah, I always wanted to have walking tours. There's so many possibilities are open. Yeah. Yeah. Well, you could... I mean, I don't know enough about structured data, but could you again follow that choose-your-own-adventure idea and be like, I'm in this place. I'm interested in, I don't know, Victorian architecture. Can you build query... Can a query build me at all? And then that could then map onto... And then, like, download the coordinates. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. There'll be other kind of data, but I want to stop at a toilet on the way. Yeah. Because in the UK, we've just put all the public toilets and wiki data. So jealous. But you can touch on that. We have virtually a photo. Oh, no. Oh, well. Where do you live? England, yeah. Oh, it's broken. There's so many possibilities. A list of... Hmm. And then people are going to come up and see these lines. Wait, here's my question. I came to New York the way they just do on buildings. Oh, yeah. We don't take pictures of them. Are they going to be in the library? Is this conference that right? And I love old architecture. Annie had another one. Really? What's the fashion show? I was like wondering, like, this would be the object. Funny. What's the presentation? I can't believe how people use the wiki comment. I just take pictures of events and things like that. But I just know I could do all of that. It's fast. It's fast. Hmm. I did one article in 2018 on a town called Chimbup to New York. Hmm. I really knew. I found out about two years ago. When I found out I did have an article I started to work on it. And then while I was working on the article I found out there was a festival. It's an organization called John Brown. Yeah, yeah. And I told a friend about it. So we went to the late classes and hooked up with that organization. Had a great time. Amazing. So that was one where you could take it off. Yeah. Yeah. Hmm. So it would become more social. I agree with that. And then because we're apart of our lives we've had something stagnant and online. I had the walking tour so you might have to take a break. I think so. But I might go and try and find a coffee or some other kind of drink. Yeah. Thanks for... Did you find first? Yeah, sure. Richard is always coming up with ideas. Yeah. So he designed these shirts. Feeding my brain. Thank you. So all the things I missed I can... Okay. Yeah, just stay busy. That's it. Yeah. Maybe someone will watch it later. Yeah, okay. I can share. You can find us on the page on the WikiSport page. We have some suggestions here. What is WikiTime? Is it self-selected? WikiNews on Free Streaming Podcast. Wikipedia has all the maps to navigate. Alice picks the food recipe she likes on WikiVersity. This is Alice in this case. Add ingredients on WikiData. Add photos on Commons. WikiVoyages used by Alice for planning her trip trip itineraries. Share image to WikiSocial and opt into scanning into Commons. Go to school for free online at WikiVersity. WikiSimalier Mix food and wine with... Mix your choice of food and wine What? Yeah, hi. We're sharing the fictional adventures of Alice as she goes about her very wiki day using Wikipedia but also the other Wikipedia projects but especially the ones that haven't been invented yet. Besides the WikiSimalier and the WikiTours and the WikiVersity she also reviews a book on WikiSource. She reads a bedtime book on WikiSource and she reads a public domain book before bed. Alice has a very eventful day learning through WikiMedia projects and learning about her neighborhood and her communities. So are we... Is the song ready? Or should we wait for a minute? And who's going to sing? We're not singing. Okay. So we have a wiki mania chat book. There are five songs.  I will revise. Let's get information. Common's fornication. A wiki day. And monkeys at typewriters. Thanks. Thanks folks at home for wherever you are. Say hello to your cat for me.