Welcome to Celebrate Life. My name is Gary DeCarlas and I am in your house. The inspiration for this series is to show the amazing lives people live. Key word here is live. I hope to capture through interviewing many wonderful Vermonters and even a few people outside Vermont, some stories of their lives and experiences to our audience while they are still very much alive. Over the years, I have read too many obituaries that left me pondering. Why did I not have a chance to meet this person while they were alive? The goal of this program is to celebrate the lives of everyday Vermonters while they are still with us. Some people will be recognized by many viewers and lots of the people I plan to interview will be known by only a few close, intimate group of friends and family. I will guarantee that all the people who are interviewed will have fascinating stories to share with you. You see, I am of the notion that everyone has a story to tell. If you would like to be interviewed or know someone who you think would be like, would like to be interviewed, please contact the CC TV channel coordinator, Gordon Butterfield. This information will be posted at the end of the show. Also, if you find yourself wanting to follow up on this interview and have a question for the interview, we can write the CC TV channel coordinator with your question and he will reach out to the interviewer for a response. Make sure you also leave your contact information, telephone and email address. Thank you. Now, I would like to introduce you to Eddie Baker. I know Eddie as a man of many talents and qualities. He runs the addiction recovery channel on this same station. He's got a master's in social work. He's been a therapist for years and long-term recovery, strong advocate for stigma-busting, cares deeply about his fellow human being, concerned about racial justice and change for good. So welcome, Eddie. Glad to have you on the show. Oh, thank you. Thank you, Gary. I'm so excited to be here. I just loved your introduction. What a great concept to celebrate life and have people on your show that can share their lives and be examples for others, especially in this time where we're all a little bit, not a little bit, we're all very beleaguered as putting it mildly. So focusing on celebrating life, I think is a great idea. I want to congratulate you, Gary, from the bottom of my heart. And I want to also thank you from the same place for honoring me and asking me to be the guest on your maiden voyage, your inaugural show. Well, thank you. It's going to be a lot of fun. And I look forward to this time together for this interview. Now, all those things that I mentioned about you don't happen overnight. So if you would, take us back to Eddie Baker as a young boy and some of the foundational things that shaped your life to make you who you are today. Yeah, sure. I'll be happy to. And I mean, I was born in 1946, so a long time ago in the Bronx, New York. I have the same name as my father. My father's name is Edwin Baker. My father was a beautiful, simple, hardworking, honest man. He was a cab driver for many years. He was good to me. We did many things together. He was an avid kite flyer. He was a towel man. He would always focus on the towel was the most important part. He would get in trouble with my mom because he would use material from the house to make towels for kites. I can remember once at Ferry Point Park in the Bronx, it was by one of the bridges, the bridge that went over to Queens from the Bronx, where it was very windy there all the time and that's where we would go to fight. And our cord was very, very long. You could hardly see our kite. That's how high it was. He was a great kite flyer. And I can remember once where he had me holding the cord and then that tension between the force of that kite moving with the wind and you holding it down was just a little scary, but the fact that he trusted me and felt that I could do that was a beautiful memory. And that he took the time to be with you and do things like that. That sounds like a wonderful father, son type of thing. Oh, we collected coins, Gary. Back in those days in like the fifties, when we collected coins, you could go to the bank and get a couple of rolls of pennies or a couple of rolls of nickels or dimes and sift through them and find really collectible coins. Of course, they were still in circulation. We had a great coin collection. We had pennies, Indian head pennies, buffalo and nickels. What are the mercury dimes, Liberty quarters? We had a great coin collection. You know, that's one of my fondest memories of him. He came to all my baseball games. He was a wonderful, wonderful man. My mom, Agnes, my mom was an orphan. And back then in the early 1900s, you know, we didn't have child care laws. We didn't have child welfare laws the way we do today. She was brought up in an orphanage. And my mom always had a penchant and affinity for people who had less, for people who longed to be understood and longed to be loved and had less. She always had a big open heart because of her experience. My mom and my dad met dancing at Roseland. They were really, really good dancers.  My oldest brother, Bobby was 20 years my senior. My sister, Barbara was right behind him. My sister, Billy is 10 years my senior. I was very much the baby of the family. And I can just say that we never had money. My dad, you know, he didn't make a lot of money, but we always had a lot of good food. My mother was an Italian. She loved to cook Italian. And she loves to have people over for food. Where does that work? We were taught to be good. I was a good boy. I went to Catholic school. I did baptism, communion, confirmation. I was just good. I was a good kid. We had a normal family and I was a good kid. So that part of you that is very passionate about helping others in your life.  Yeah, yeah. You know, my mother was, she was very big in the 60s. She was big into civil rights. She was, I think, one of the initial people who was involved in orphans' rights during the 60s. There was a movement. And I don't think they got really far either, but she was involved in orphans' rights also. We were taught to love people. We lived in, you know, we didn't eradicate white supremacy, but we knew how to love people. We lived in an Italian neighborhood in the Bronx and a white Italian neighborhood in the Bronx. And every once in a while, someone of color, either a black person, a black family, or a Hispanic Puerto Rican family would move into the neighborhood and they would get shunned by people. They would get shunned by people. This is no joke, but not by my family. No, we were about to reach out and that's what we did. The 60s were very difficult. I saw a bussing happen. Racism was, like violent racism was alive and well in the Bronx in the 60s. And we weren't a part of that. We stood up to that. Good for you, though. Good for your family. Do you have childhood heroes, Eddie, outside the family? You know, you want me to be honest with you? Like it's a little embarrassing. I like superheroes. I like, I would always, I would have superhero comic books, but Superman, now Superman on TV, you know, the full Superman series. Oh yeah. I would actually stand at attention in the Superman pose when they went through the truth, justice in the American way part. I really, that, that resonated. That's great. It really, that's great. That's just in the American way. It still resonates with me and it resonated very, very deeply as a little boy. Any dreams of what you wanted to be when you grew up? Yeah, you know, I mean, that's an interesting question. I think about that sometimes now when I meditate because I did, I was a Christian boy and I do believe that I just wanted to do good. You know, so something having to do with the Christian faith was not out of the ballpark. Also, police work, protecting and serving, protecting and serving, what was definitely a little closer maybe to to something that I had an aspiration toward. Just doing good, doing good. It was all about doing good. So then you started growing up, you went to high school, you eventually to college it sounds like. Well, well, with my life, Gary, you know, my life is, you know, what happened in my life, we would call it today an early adverse experience or adverse childhood experience, a toxic experience that actually changed my brain and really kind of set me off on a self-destructive tangent for many years. My lovely father suddenly died when I was 13 years old. And this was, my entire family was devastated. And God bless them, you know, they didn't know what to do with me. I was just 13. That's a very fragile age. They didn't know how to talk to me. They didn't know about counseling. So as we read adverse childhood experience theory today, there's toxic stress that overwhelms the child and there's no adult to help them mediate that. Well, that was what happened to me. And as a result, I began, you know, really hitting the streets basically. I mean, there's no other way to put it.  And I'm one of those people where you hear about addiction as genetic risk factors and then environmental factors. Well, I had no genetic risk factors, but I had all environmental factors. That trauma really knocked me for a loop. And I developed an addiction, a full-blown addiction as a result that lasted from age 14. It began, you know, around 14 and lasted actually until I was 37 years old. So that really, you know, if we talk about my life, we have to talk about that. Because it shaped my life in a way that I was, I had no choice, I was powerless over it. So that's a good 20 some years, 23 years. 23 years. What was the pivotal, what changed things though? At 37, something happened. Well, you know, I like to think, Gary, that inside me, in my inner world, that there has always been, I like metaphors. I would just call it a flame. There's always been a flame. And it started in childhood to do good, to be good. And it was never extinguished. Even without the addiction, it was never extinguished. And it was almost extinguished. It was fully extinguished. For instance, when I was sentenced, I went to prison in Massachusetts and for drug related offenses. And in prison, I motivated to get my GED.  I later on went to Fordham University and it was that GED that got me in. I decided to be a master's level social worker because I had been in therapy with one of my mentors, Millie Claiman. Millie, I was in therapy with Millie for seven years towards the end of my addiction. And she was a social worker and she appealed to that little flame. She resonated with me. And I decided that this would be my way to do good. I would be a social worker. And I got an undergraduate degree and a master's degree in social work. I was a fellow at Columbia University. But I was still in the grips of the disease. At that point, I wasn't using opioids or stimulants or drugs of that. I wasn't injecting drugs any longer, but I was drinking. And even while that was developing this last phase of alcoholism, which I finally ended in 1984 at the age of 37, that little flame was kind of driving me. I was doing my best with it. So I achieved degrees in social work. In 1984, I can just tell you this, that I was at an all-time low emotionally. And I ran into a group of people who there was no stigma. They saw me for who I was. They loved me and understood me and supported me because I was a person with addiction. Because I was a person with alcoholism.  It was Vermonters in 1984 that literally saved my life. And since that point, there's a demarcation in my life. And it's July of 22nd, 1984, boom. That was when literally, I was 37 years old and I'm 74 now, it was exactly a half-way point. Yeah, yeah, exactly. So that unconditional love that you got from a group of people for just embracing you for who you were and are, it allowed you to recapture that youthful Eddie who wanted to do good in the world and bring it right up to 37th birthday and moving forward. Exactly, exactly. And they became the father I never had or the father that I lost, I had, because I had one. While I lost the mother, the siblings, the family, they became everything to me. And they, I began to live there again. And it's been a wonderful journey. We can literally say my life is definitely half-full, if not more, you know, the empty part is over and behind me and more so, more so than that. And I'll get into that a little bit later about what it means to have that behind me. It's a very, very complicated story. And I don't mean to say too much or wind around too much, but this is my life, it was complicated. Absolutely, and the image I has is that that flame was on like a pilot light and now it's, and it just blew up, it's just big flame. And other, have you had some mentors along the road? 337, post-37, that really made things different for you in a good way. It was, it was a pre, it was Millie Klingman was the psychotherapist and there's a picture that I have of her. She's at my graduation and we're both full of joy. She really was my, one of my main mentors. She saved me. I can remember, I went to my first session with Millie and I was such a mess that she said, you know, we were in her therapy room. And she said, you know, I'm gonna end the session now.  She took me in her kitchen. She lived in the outthorpe, a beautiful, one of those buildings on the West, Upper West side of Manhattan, like the Dakota. She was wonderful. She said, you know, just come with me.  What can I say? And I spent seven years and, you know, she'll always be very, very special to me. I became a social worker because of Millie Klingman.  And some of them have passed away. Some of them I'm still friends with and they're my oldest friends. And they just taught me, I think how to be honest, how to strive to live a spiritual life and, you know, stay on a spiritual course and realize what's really important in life and not get distracted. And not, you know, it's so easy for someone with addiction to begin to forget and move backwards. And these mentors have made sure that I am well equipped to not move backwards. I like to think for me that each moment is a point of no return. I like to look at life as a continual moving forward. I look at each moment as a point of no return. And I believe deeply in preparation that life prepares me. Life prepares you. You may not know what for, but it's prepared you. And if you're sensitive to it, you'll be prepared for whatever the moment brings you. And it's like addiction prepares you for recovery. And recovery prepares you for helping others. You know, it just, I just have that. They taught me that, taught me that.  I like to, you know, that really has been my life, Gary, for a very long time. To be a helper, to do good, to try to have empathy, compassion, to try to listen. I spent over 30 years listening to people, to try to listen to and understand them. And, you know, or for whatever kind of support I have or they need. I like to, I call it the alchemy, alchemy of the meaning. That if you look up alchemists in the dictionary, alchemists were sort of, you know, chemical wizards. You know, they were always striving to turn lead into gold, to do magic. And I think meaning does that. You know, we cannot change the past. We cannot reach back into the past and change it. But when we change the meaning of it, the leaden past becomes gold. And there's also like a redemptive power in helping people with it. When you can help someone with your past, no matter how tragic it was, no matter how terrible some of the things you did were, when you can tell them, I understand you, I've been where you are. I know they're no longer alone. So by infusing the past with meaning, you actually reach into it and you get just about as close to changing it as you can. And you help somebody with it. So that's been the guiding force of my life for a long time. That's been the guiding force of my life. Well said, Eddie. Yeah. You have a family. You have some children. You're married, happily married. I do. So how has all of this helped you be the father that you are and the husband that you are? Oh, what a great question. You know, my lovely wife, Ellen, the sweetest wife you could ever imagine. She's so sweet.  My lovely wife. My lovely wife, sweetie.  And she's like, managed to sort of bring the love out of me. She's irresistible. I love her. Along with that came, you know, growing and learning and being a good husband that these things are in us, but you know, we don't know it until they're brought out. She's brought this out in me. My own ability to love her more and more every day, really, and my own ability to be a good husband. And I would tell you that she's just wonderful. And I would tell you that my boys, Jed and Josie and my grandson, Cassidy, and my daughter-in-law, Kathy, my boys in particular have, and I had a lot of fear about being a father because of what happened to me. Yeah. I had a lot of fear about it, but somehow because I was in recovery, I got into recovery when they were two and one years old, thank goodness. I allowed them to do the same thing, or I allowed myself to learn how to be a father to them. And I have been a good father to them for their entire lives. That's great. And we're close today. We're so close today. It's such a joy. I really, I can't even... It's hard to put into words how much I love them and how much joy it is to be with them. We do a lot of things together. We're in contact all the time. It is, people live all over the place now, but we'll be seeing them this summer. Jed will be getting married. My oldest son, Jed, will be getting married next year. Josie and Kathy have one boy, my grandson, Cassidy, who we have a beautiful picture of Cassidy to put up too. And the joy of being a grandfather is just something that for many years, I didn't think this would ever happen. When I was in that dark place. Yeah, sure. So I didn't think these things would happen. I have to ask you a question.  Yes, yes, yes. And Josie has gone with Cassidy too. Yes. Nice. Yes, for sure. Nice. And we will again. Good.  You're giving a lot to people all the time, receiving a lot from other people. Do you have any applications, things that you do just for you, things that are fun for you to do? Let me talk about life's work again for one minute because I think this is important. I was listening to an author yesterday. I don't have his name with me, but he was speaking about white supremacy and eloquently, eloquently, talking about, you know, the black experience in America. And he used a phrase that I had never really heard before, but it really put something in perspective for me. He used the phrase communal grief and he talked about how black Africans, descendants of enslaved Africans, you know, must experience this communal grief of the things that have happened to them over the past 400 years. And I heard that and I thought that it really explained a lot to me because in 2015, that this number, 28,647, there were 28,647 overdose fatalities in 2014. I learned about that in 2015. And Gary, I, though these are my people, people was, I experienced communal grief. I kid you not, I didn't know what it was when I experienced it and I don't talk about it, but it was the tsunami, an overwhelming, frightening tsunami of grief for those who were taken by addiction, for those who had no choice. And that moment, or you know, like I say, things, everything is preparation. I had been prepared for it, but that moment really set in my heart and in my soul the focus of my work to eliminate the stigma wrongly placed on people with substance use disorder. That it became like a burning singular, you know, focus. And the art show, the addiction recovery channel and a lot of the public speaking engagements that I'll do are all focused on that because for some reason I experienced communal grief and it wasn't, it was a gift, Gary. It wasn't something that I said, okay, now I'm gonna do this. It happened, it happened. Right. And that's actually as a Euro-American that that's not something that people who are of the same color who and I are experienced so much. You know, I think Native Americans, African Americans, many people experience that communal grief and with no outlet to help feel that in many ways. Yeah. Yeah. And you know, this particular author, I wish I could find his name, Resma, there it is, Resma Monacum, Resma Monacum. He wrote my grandmother's hands.  But he talked about like for a white person, we have to kind of excavate. We have to get down in there and remove things that are blocking it.  And that communal grief is our communal grief too. When we experienced, not only when we experienced it, then we can begin to move on to something new and new structure for our culture. So this is something that Eddie, me, I wanna do this. And I don't think it's going to be easy because of the layers, you know, that we've learned that are covering it. It's very, very difficult. But I would like to think that I'm committed at this point to moving forward in some clumsy way, you know, to accomplish that at some point. That's fantastic. And, you know, in the recovery community in a sense, may have a lens into this that others don't. But I think I'd like your idea that we are all, there is no division between white and black and Native American that one's grief is all of ours grief. And how do we put that together so that we can all heal together? Yeah, yeah. And when you begin to look at it and begin to read books, there's another book, White Privilege, that is very, in some sense it's easy reading, but in some sense it's very difficult reading. And then there's another one, how to be an anti-racist. There's a few publications around that just I'm reading them. I'm reading them.  And when you look at it, Gary, I mean, you know, you're kind of around the same age as me. We've seen things like what's happening today in America. We've seen the 60s. You know, we've seen voting rights and civil rights and Martin Luther King, Jr. We've seen this. We've seen starts to this and then we've seen, we've seen everything fall apart. People get complacent, done enough and back to business as usual. So this is another time when this is in our face and it's our opportunity to, I think, and this is about my life. I mean, this is what makes me me. I do believe that for me it's morally compelling. It is morally compelling and it must be done. I have to do it. I have to come to grips with this and do something about it. Moral and compelling. It's not politically correct. It's not politically expedient. It's not emotionally expedient. It's morally compelling. It goes down deep. It's right at the core of who you are and what you want to do with your life. Sounds like it. It is. Yep, good for you. Anything about your life to date, you want to share around wisdom, learn a nugget from an experience that can help others in the audience grow and learn from? It's an interesting question. You know, I do believe I've alluded to it before and I'll go into it a little bit and then I want to tell you about having fun, but I do believe it's not like a nugget of anything, but I do believe that everything is preparation. I think that everything is preparation. I think that maybe it has to do with age. Maybe my wisdom can only be accepted by old people. I don't know. It seems kind of difficult if you're young, but I do believe that everything is preparation and... In other words, everything in your life for this point is how prepared you to be who you are today. There's no bad experience. It's an experience that you've grown and learned from. I do believe that. I do believe that. And then along with that, we have a responsibility to kind of cultivate like an inner sensitivity toward, whatever the next experiences that we're being prepared to face. So we're prepared, but we have to also be aware of here, this coming at me now is what I'm being prepared for. You can miss opportunities to do things that are meaningful even though you've been prepared for them if you're not aware of the opportunity. And that's really only two of the three ingredients. The next ingredient is free will. So you're prepared, okay. You're sensitive, okay. You're aware now of the opportunity, but that third part, that third part. Now, when you exercise free will, is it going to be to accept the responsibility of responding to the opportunity you've been prepared for? That's crucial. And I think that's essential to understand that about ourselves as we face life that is coming at us. We have that free will. And that really kind of burrows down into who you are and how you want to perceive yourself and live your life. And I guess that's one of the things that I think about a lot. And I'm a thinker. I think about these things pretty often. And that's something that I guess is becoming clearer to me as I move along. And it's beautiful. It's just beautiful. And if you can hear there's something that is going to bring you to your best self in life, then what is really an improvement on that really? I mean, that's a beautiful thing to understand that we all have that. Yeah. We all have that. I get the sense too that when faced with that free will, for you a lot of times it's take action to do something that you have the freedom to say, I understand it, it's there. I'm not going to do anything about it, but that's not Eddie Baker. It is in certain areas. I feel like I have competence and something of merit to offer. And I try to stick with that. I just try to stick with that. I also, you know, I guess at this point I do get, I get a lot of doing something for nothing. I don't know how to say that. I just, I get a lot out of, I get a great spirit. I become more spiritually prosperous when I do something just to do it, just to do it. I'm doing it and the reward is in doing it. And that's new, that wasn't always that way. That's something new. And I guess that's what I mean. That's one of that, you know, I've been prepared for it. The opportunity is here and my free will is saying yes. That's a good example actually, yeah. That's great, that's great. All right, so what are those things that you love to do for Eddie Baker? My wife and I, my wife and I have spent quite a bit of time dancing. We were, you know, we don't go that much anymore, but, you know, years of our marriage we spent dancing, West Coast swing, a very funky dance. Oh, nice. We would go to events and clubs and honky-tonks and, you know, dance till early in the morning. And yeah, it's just one of the fondest memories of my life. My mom and dad were dancers, they met at Roseland. That's right, exactly. Yeah, and my sweetie and I, I tell you, we were pretty good dancers and we still are, but we just don't go that much anymore. And that was so much, I mean, talking about driving to Boston, flying to Georgia. Wow.  I mean, we used to go dancing all the time. We were just dancers. Competitive? Did you, was this competitive dancing? We competed, but not on a professional level. Uh-huh, uh-huh. Yes, we competed, we got first place once in a competition and then we got second place once. Wow. And then third place a couple of times. So we were pretty accomplished West Coast swingers. We had a great time. That's fantastic. In fact, the inside of our wedding ring, the inscription on the inside of our wedding ring is their hearts of dancing. Oh, is it that? Wow. Perfect. Yeah. It is.   We, that's always been a beautiful treasure and always, always will be. My, one of my, not one of my, my main number one hobby is mountain biking. I could be considered an avid mountain biker. I love mountain biking. Wow. Nice. Yeah. And where did you pick that up? But how did that happen? That happened about seven years ago. I think my son, Josie, took me out on a trail and something happened. I just liked it and started biking and I didn't even have a mountain bike and I would do it anyway. I got a little more interested in it. I got a bike. I got better at it. It's one of those skills where, I mean, it has everything. It's out there in nature. It's gorgeous. I mean, there are spiritual moments out there. You'll clear your mind out and you'll let things in. Beautiful thoughts, beautiful feelings. You're in touch with the here and now. You have to pay attention to the here and now when you're mountain biking where you can get rid of the hurt. So you kind of managed to sort of be here now. And plus it's great for your heart. It's great for your body.  You can eat whatever you want and stay friendly if you're mountain biking. And plus, plus, if you like gadgets and high quality things, mountain bikes, there really is no limit to what can happen with a mountain bike. I mean, it's really a real deal. So it's one of my favorite things. That's wonderful. That's wonderful. Now, I cook. I've been learning to cook. I cook a lot actually. I cook dinner a lot for my wife and I. I enjoy that tremendously. It's a really nice time. We have like almost every night. You know, we sit down, we make special time. We have a nice dinner together every night. That's wonderful. It's beautiful. A lot of them are cooked. And did you pick up some of that cooking from your mom? Well, yeah, you know, I think it's probably, you know, like kind of like an environmental, I love it. You know, my mom, probably genetic too. My mom, she, Gary, she would make spreads, you know, pasta and meatballs, sausages, bread, you know, vegetables, dessert. All kind of eggplant, parmesan, lasagna, all kinds of stuff. She'd make a lot of it.  Oh, yeah, the grater. I would have to grate up a big mountain of parmesan cheese before everybody came over. And then she would have this huge pot on the stove simmering all day and she'd be spooning off whatever fat rose to the top, spooning it off, and there'd be meatballs in there and sausage in there. There's tomato sauce.  That was my thing. So if I got cooking from anybody, it's definitely from her. She would do something. That's wonderful. My goodness, a rich life. And then you and I would like to travel. We like to travel. You know, we've been to Thailand. We've been to Mexico. We've been to Italy. We spent quite a while in Italy. We had a trip last year scheduled for our 25th wedding anniversary. We were going to Italy for a couple of weeks and then over to Greece for our 25th anniversary.  And because of COVID, we had to cancel it. And then we would be there right now. We had planned to go now or next week. It's still not right. So maybe next year. But we'll go on like local vacations. And one of the things, I mean, being somewhere beautiful and having breakfast made and all that is a lot of fun. But really, one of the main things, you know, independent of where we go is this idea of really paying absolute attention to each other.  It's all about you and me. And we really get to really give each other the kind of attention that we like to get. Quality time to get. And you don't have to travel very far to do that. If you unplug yourself from all the stuff that goes on in the world. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, good for you. For you. Well, Eddie, we're getting close to the end of the interview. Is there anything you would like to share, think of this great life that you've led to date? Share pearls of wisdom, parting thoughts. Anything you want to wrap this up in a way for the audience? And for you. And for you. I guess, I guess, you know, I've talked a lot. And thank you for being interested in me. I really appreciate that, Gary. And I hope that I hope that the viewers, you know, found some merit in my sharing my life. You know, I think I'm a firm believer in a beauty and meaning being in the eye and soul of the beholder.  Yeah, I just hope that that that I gave, I gave, I hope I gave the audience. I hope I gave the audience something. From my perspective, you gave the audience a lot, Eddie Baker. I really appreciate you making the time to do this. It's been wonderful to have you on my first show. You set a high bar for future guests. Thank you.  I'd like to think that. Absolutely. And then I want to pay homage to Margaret Harrington, also of our fearless little station here. Margaret had her own show. And Margaret invited me on to talk about the overdose of Christ a number of years ago. I think it was four years ago. And I was flattered to be on her show. I went on her show and I talked about the overdose crisis that she interviewed me. And after the show, Gary, she said, hey, hey, you know, I think maybe you could have your own show. And I had never, ever, had never, ever crossed my mind in a million years. But it was having been prepared for it. Prepared, yes. Tensitive to it. And then my will saying yes to it. So I see that in you, Gary. I see that in you. You know, it's the same exact process I see it in you. Absolutely. Thank you. And I have one last question for you. You grew up in the Bronx. Did you go to Yankee Stadium? I did. I know where Yankee Stadium is. Okay. Of course. Are you a Yankee fan? No. Oh my goodness. No. Who do you think, who do you think my family was fans of? We're nothing Yankees. The Mets. Willie Mays. Oh, okay. The Giants. Oh, the Giants. Oh my goodness. We were Giants fans. We just was the way it was. You know how it is in your apartment? Like we're Giants fans. We're watching the Giants fans. That's the way it was. Giants fans all the way. 100%. All right. What's the Yankee fan? Ellen's the Yankee fan. Good for her. All right. Thank you so much, Eddie Baker. Have a good day. Thank you, Gary. Thank you so much. Yep. Bye-bye. Bye-bye.


Hey guys, this is Rich here on behalf of RichTVLive and I have some breaking news for you. Aurora Cannabis appears headed to the New York Stock Exchange as predicted. As I told you they would, Aurora Cannabis on the TSX under the symbol ACB on the OTC QX under the symbol ACBFF has publicly disclosed that it will be listing on a major exchange in the United States in October, but until today the exchange was unknown. The company revealed in a public filing the form 40F that has registered to list on the New York Stock Exchange. There it is. Congratulations to all the winners. The stock is exploding as we speak based on this huge news. We are breaking this news. You can find all the information at RichTVLive.com, hover over news, stocks, and if you want to join our secret group, join it. It's free. What could be causing this explosion? You ask. Well, there's the news. We break it to you first, don't we? We break it to you and we break it to you first. 96% buy on bar chart at $12.86. Up 4.93% on this news. I expect it to run enormous amounts from here. This is the news we've been waiting for. It is currently a moderate buy on bar chart, up 67.4% in the last month. Wow, 142% in the last three months and 383% in the last year. Wow, breaking news, huge news. Only your boy, Rich, gets to the news first. Here it is. Aurora Cannabis hasn't yet revealed the timing or its trading symbol through ACB. It is apparently available. The company will join Canobie Growth, TSX UnderWeed, New York Stock Exchange under the CGC, while Chronos Group is on the TSX under Cron and under the NASDAQ under Cron, C-R-O-N, and Tilray on the NASDAQ under T-L-R-Y. Trade on the NASDAQ, Alephia TSX-V under A-L-E-F, and on the OTC A-L-E-A-F has filed its Form 40F and intends to trade on the NASDAQ. I like the New York Stock Exchange. There's less shorting on the New York Stock Exchange than the NASDAQ. This is a brilliant, genius move for Aurora Cannabis. This is the catalyst that they have been waiting for. This is the catalyst that investors have been waiting for. Look at this. While it is likely that Aphria and Cantrust will list on a major US exchange as well. So let's continue to watch Alephia and obviously Aurora Cannabis on this news and subsequent to this, Aphria and Cantrust will also be most likely uplifting. So this is huge news, breaking news until Kronos Group listed on the NASDAQ earlier this year. No companies growing, processing, or selling cannabis had done so with the exception of GW Pharma under the symbol GWPH. This is huge Aurora Cannabis. Let's just quickly look at investing.com and see how they finished the day and what type of momentum this created for Aurora Cannabis. Let's see here because the indicators on bar chart are very bullish. Still climbing 12.81. Look at this. It's still climbing up 5.3%. So all the indicators are showing a lot of strength here for Aurora Cannabis. So this is huge news. What do you think about this news? Please comment down below. Let me know what you think about this news. Like the video, share it everywhere. If I win and you win, we all win. It is still climbing post market. Big news. Aurora Cannabis has filed a form 40F and is headed to the New York Stock Exchange. If you're not winning, you're not watching. Remember, wish to you live is strictly for education and entertainment purposes. Do your due diligence. Do your research before you invest in anything that we talk about here on Rich TV Live. Strong by. Strong by. Strong by. Strong by. Wow. Have a great long weekend if you're in Canada. Have a great weekend everywhere else in the world that's watching Aurora Cannabis. I told you it was my number one yesterday and they just broke the big news. I got to go in on. I'm going all in on Aurora. Let's go champ. Aurora Cannabis, congratulations to all the winners. Let's go. Who's Aurora Cannabis? Wow. Winning.


So, now let us write out the equations of the Kalman filter. If you remember, we are referring to the system which is given here, system whose state and observations are given by these. Remember that wk's and bk's are independent Gaussian noise. The initial state x0 is also independent of wk and vk and it is itself a Gaussian vector. The xk's evolved linearly as written here. The observations that we get are also linear observations. The disturbances uk are known exogenous sequences.  We will then try to interpret and understand them, okay. So, here is the Kalman filtering theorem. So, consider the linear Gaussian system above and we will assume that all the parameters are known with known parameters and what are the parameters? They are the ak's, the ck's which appear in the observations, the fk, gk which are coefficients of u, the qk which is the variance of wk, rk which is the covariance of vk, the initial the mean of the initial state x hat 0 and the mean and the variance of the covariance of the initial state which is sigma 0, okay. And with known prior distribution, known prior distribution pi 0 which is given by x hat 0, sigma 0, okay. Then pi k of x, remember pi k of x was just the probability that xk equals x given all the observations from up until time k. Then this particular this pi k of x is given by pi k of x is a Gaussian distribution with mean given by x hat k and its covariance given by sigma k, okay. So, what is x hat k? Then x hat k is the conditional expectation of xk given by 1 to yk and sigma k is the covariance of the covariance of which is this, sigma k is x minus x hat k into x minus xk minus x hat k transpose, okay. So, this is the covariance of covariance sigma k, okay. So, pi k is a Gaussian random variable with mean x hat k and covariance given by sigma k. Now, the algorithm, so and now the distribution is specified in terms of x hat k and sigma k. Now, how does this, how do we find this x hat k's and sigma k's? So, that is where the recursive computation is comes up. So, here x hat k, sigma k are computed recursively as follows. So, I will write out the algorithm on the next page. So, this is the Kalman filtering algorithm. Here is the Kalman filtering algorithm. So, for time k, time k equal to 1 to whatever and given observation yk, so compute the following recursively. So, your x hat k plus, so first we have like we had for the other for the more general filtering equation, we first have prediction step, okay. So, first we predict the mean, okay, given the observations you have up until that time. So, x hat k plus 1 given k.  We also do a prediction of the measurement that we would make using the information that we have up until that time. So, sitting at time k, we predict the measurement that we have, we would get at time k plus 1. That is therefore, in a straight forward way is equal to x hat k plus 1 given k plus g k plus 1, sorry this is c k plus 1, g k plus 1 uk plus 1. Then you have sigma k plus 1 given k. This is equal to ak sigma k ak transpose plus q k. Now, what is the significance of sigma k plus 1 given k? Well, actually what these the x hat k plus 1 given k is only the mean of the of x k plus 1 given the observation up until time k. Here, you have the covariance of the same term of x k plus 1 given the observations up until that time k. But the important thing is that these actually these two are enough for us to specify actually the distribution of x k plus 1 given the information up until time k. So, it is enough to give the predicted distribution, the predicted distribution. And so, and the reason for that is that the predicted distribution is also itself a Gaussian because of what I said we have all these x's and y's are all jointly Gaussian. So, this here is itself these two here are specifying for us together a Gaussian distribution. So, this here is my let me write here this is a prediction step prediction step and specifies a Gaussian, specifies a Gaussian distribution and the Gaussian being mean x hat k plus 1 given k comma sigma k plus 1 given k. So, this is your this is the this is the distribution. So, this so, now notice that this depend now x hat k plus 1. So, this is the predicted step predicted step prediction step this depends itself on x hat k which is the the which is the mean that you have from the previous time step it also depends on sigma k which is the variance that you would have from the previous time step. So, putting these two together now what we need to do is use this to use this to compute the similar mean and and similar mean and covariance at the next time step. So, you have s k plus 1. So, in order to do so what we need to do now is compute a similar mean and covariance for the next time step. So, in other words now what we need to do is the next step which is the measurement update step. So, to do the measurement update step let us write out some intermediate calculations.  Now, using s k plus 1 we do our measurement update. So, we have our new x hat k plus 1. So, which is the conditional mean of x k plus 1 given the observation up until time k plus 1. So, we have x hat k plus 1 equal to the predicted x hat k plus 1. So, you have this plus sigma k plus 1 given k c k transpose s k plus 1 inverse times here is where the measurement update comes up. So, this is your new measurement minus what we had as the prediction of the new measurement. Now, this gives us therefore the mean at the next time step the mean of the of so, this gives us basically the mean of pi of the distribution pi k plus 1.  So, this therefore completes our description. So, what we have here is that x hat k here at any time k. So, your pi k remember was equal to the Gaussian with mean x hat k and covariance sigma k. So, you start off with something like that and what we get is a new Gaussian now here with which is pi k plus 1 which is which has mean x hat k plus 1 and covariance sigma k plus 1. The the as I mentioned there are these two steps one is the prediction step the other the other step here is the measurement update. These are precisely the two steps that we do when we were when we wrote out the more general equation for general filtering recursion. Now what this is the important thing to note here in the in the measurement update is this beautiful new term that that shows up in a very explicit manner and that measure and that is what allows us to make this so so easily recursive. The new term that shows up here is this y k plus 1 given y y k plus 1 minus y k plus 1 given given given k. So, what is this term? This term is is basically we can we can think of this term as this term here is the difference between difference between tomorrow's observation and today's estimate or today's estimate or prediction let us say today's prediction of tomorrow's observation. So, it is the it is this difference between what you actually see when you you would actually see tomorrow and what you think you would see or what you predict you would see tomorrow based on the information that you have so far. So, this is precisely you can say the additional information that you have learnt from the new observation that you could not have that you did not know from the previous from all the previous information that you already had. So, if y k plus 1 which is the new the new observation if that turns out to be predictable using all the previous observations then you would actually get that this this would be 0. So, the new observation gives you no additional information than what you had from from what you already had from your previous observations. So, rightly so this term is actually often called also the innovation. So, this sequence is called the innovation. So, the reason this is essentially is the novel or new innovation new information that has come to us because of the new observation y k plus 1. So, what does this basically tell us then it tells us that the way to do the measurement update is to take your earlier prediction which is coming from here take the prediction that we have earlier and take a linear combination of that with the innovation with the and why do we need to take the innovation because this is this here remember is the additional information that is coming up and we take the linear combination because after all remember if our new estimate has to be a linear function of everything that we knew so far. So, it is a function it is a linear function therefore of our prediction best prediction and the new information and in the incorporating the new information we are really only keeping that information that we could not have predicted from our previous observations. So, the as a consequence of this the this is how the sort of the new update looks. So, you have a combination of a prediction plus any you know you look at all the incremental new information that has come in from the innovation from the new observations in terms of the innovation sequence and then use the linear combination of the two to get to the new estimate. So, this only helps us of course estimate the mean from here we also need to do something similar for the for the for the covariance and that is actually exactly something similar is what is worked out here for the covariance as well. So, this is these two put together give us this prediction step and the measurement update step together give us the Kalman filter. So, what is the secret of that makes this Kalman filtering equation works so easily and Kalman filtering work out so easily. So, I mean we have we as I said we have a complicated integral where for which we do not in general have an explicit solution why did we get an explicit solution so neatly in this particular in for this linear Gaussian problem. The reason for that is actually a property of Gaussians itself and that that property is often known by the name by this very colorful name it is called the Swiss army knife of Gaussian distributions. So, this is called the Swiss army knife of Gaussians. So, if you remember this Swiss army knife is this multi-purpose knife which can be used to for for many many many many unique little and assorted different tasks. So, this is this result is something of that you know it has it it is it can it is it is a combination of many different tools all wrapped into one. So, how does one what is the how does one apply what is the result let me let us write that down. So, consider Gaussian densities the densities are given in as for us so it is so one is a density. So, here you have a density which will be written as a function of y the mean is c times x and the covariance is r and the other density is a function of x its mean is mu and its covariance is p. Now, what is if you so if I just multiply what this the result basically says is that this the product of these two can be factored in this knit way n of y times x mu p this this here is the following this product of these two densities is is the following it is it is actually can be written as p of this n of y with mean c mu and covariance c p c transpose plus r times n of now x with the mean m plus let us say k bar times y minus c mu and a covariance p minus k bar c p I will explain what m and k bar are k bar here is p c transpose c p c transpose plus r the whole inverse m is mu plus k bar y minus c mu. Now, what is the let us let us just absorb this a little bit and then I will explain the consequences of this as well. So, the so what what do we have here you have a density here which is written in terms of y and another density in which is written in terms of x but if you notice that the density of y its mean actually depends on x right and if this is the same x here. So, in other words this here this density here is actually a density a conditional density of y given x. So, you are fixing an x here out here and fixing the x and then you are computing the density of y and it turns out to be in the form c you know with mean c x and covariance r. So, this is really capturing a model of the form this here is capturing a model of the form if y equals c x plus noise something of that sort has been a model of this form is captured here. Then you have on the next term here is simply this is a adjusted density a marginal density of x itself when you take the product of these two what we are effectively doing is so this here is capturing a model of as I said y equal to c x plus noise and the density here is the density of y given x equal to x. So, it is a probability density of y given x equal to x that is this term the term here is simply the marginal density of x. So, this is simply the probability of x equal to x. So, as a consequence of that this here the left hand side here is the probability that of y equal to y times and x equals x and that has that is effectively been written in this form it is given it is written in the form probability of y given x equal to x times probability of x equal to x. Now, this that is what we have here on the left hand side. Now, what do we have on the right hand side well on the right hand side the roles have been reversed now what we have here this now looks like a probability of x given y equal to y because if you see there is there is now a y here which has come up in the mean of x the same y that was present here. So, the y this y has shown up here which was which is also present here. So, this is now a probability of x given y and what we have out here is just the probability of y itself. So, it is really what you have done here is written the joint density of of x and y in two different ways one by writing it as y given x times the density of x and the other case you have written it as x given y times the density of y. But what is the importance of this well it is giving us therefore a way of going from posterior to from prior to posterior. So, if you have a model in which you have a prior distribution x right and you have you have a prior distribution x you have an observation y and from there if you wanted to you wanted to know what is now the posterior model well the posterior model is given by this the posterior distribution from the observation y is given by this expression here it is p of it is it is this is your expression p of x given x given y right. So, let me let me write out the consequence more explicitly here. So, we have therefore we have a couple of results. So, first is if I take the integral of the left hand side the integral of the on the left on the left hand side with respect to x this now because of this decomposition that we have on the right hand side see earlier the what we have what we would have had on the left hand side is that we would have had x sitting in both of these densities. Now, what has happened is the x has come out x is now here right. So, if I integrate this out on the on the right hand side I am left with just this the first term here which is n a normal density or as a function of y with mean c mu and c p c transpose plus r. So, as a therefore therefore what we are left. So, so the therefore the term on the right hand side that the the term that got integrated out this particular term is in fact the posterior density. So, in other words the n of y given c x comma r n of x mu p divided by the integral of the same term this is equal to this is what we have here. So, now from here we it is very easy to actually compute to compute the Kalman filtering equations all one needs to really observe is all one really needs to do is is apply compute the prediction and the measurement update steps by using this particular Swiss Army knife formula that we have. So, let us let us do that in a moment. So, so first you have the prediction step we have our prediction step which we will in the prediction step not remember we are we are doing p x k plus 1 given y 1 to y k. Now what we will do is we will actually apply induction for we will we will assume that the filtered Gaussian density. So, we will assume that pi k of x k is is in fact a Gaussian. So, we will assume that the filter density is a Gaussian and then from there conclude that the the density at the next time step is also Gaussian. So, and since we are starting from a Gaussian density this will ensure that the density at each time step is Gaussian. So, we will assume pi k of x k is pi k is Gaussian and equal to x hat k with sigma k all right this is with this particular density.  So, this is remember just coming from our from our filtering master filtering equation this is this is the system model this is the prior this is the prior and what we find is that the prediction is itself Gaussian we using the Swiss army knife equation. So, we get that this is the Gaussian function of x k plus 1 with mean x hat k plus 1 given k comma with covariance sigma k plus 1 given k and now we can apply the measurement update. So, measurement update the measurement update is p gives us p x k plus 1 given y 1 to y k plus 1 since we are predicting now using the additional observation y 1 to y k plus 1 and that is simply given by this c k plus 1 x k plus 1 the mean this with this mean and r k plus 1 times the prediction that we that we just derived which is x k plus 1 normal of x k plus 1 x hat k plus 1 given k comma sigma k plus 1 given k divided by the integral of the same thing integral remember over over the integral over x k plus 1.  So, that is what we have we we can now so all that we have used here is really just the is is only the Swiss army knife formula and it is just by induction given us that if you start off with the Gaussian prior then you get a posterior and you have Gaussian noise in your measurements then you get a posterior which is Gaussian and the explicit formula can be computed using the Swiss army knife equation. So, this completes our study of the of of the Kalman filter explicitly we will what this is we will see in the next in the next class is combine this filter with the linear Gaussian problem and make a few observations about it and then and and and take the theory of partially observed systems in to the next step then. Thank you.


Hello and welcome to my YouTube channel. I'm Sandy Olock and I'm an artist. And if we haven't met yet, hey there, glad to see you here. I hope you'll subscribe to my channel and get more videos from me every Tuesday and Saturday. I want to talk about ink tense pencils today. In my previous video, I talked about the difference between color pencils and watercolor pencils, but one difference I wanted to point out, and I thought I'd do a whole video dedicated to it is ink tense pencils, because these are ink pencils, not watercolor pencils. They have slightly different properties. And I want to talk about those and some applications, some techniques, and I'll be using some stamped images from Colorado Craft Company that are new by Anita Jerome. Let's get started. If you're watching this video just for the Colorado Craft Company release and you don't care about ink tense pencils, you can skip ahead to almost 10 minutes and be able to see just that portion, because this is a long video today. Ink tense pencils. I made a chart because when I have a lot to say, if I make a chart, I can keep on track better and not blather so much. So ink tense pencils are brighter colors because they're ink pencils. They're not watercolor pencils. Yes, they work with water and people get it in their head that that means they're watercolor pencils, but they're actually not. They stay brighter even when they're dry than watercolor pencils do. Watercolor just tends to dull down a little bit and lighten. And that does not help happen nearly as much with ink tense pencils, not enough that it's super noticeable, just a little bit. But you can control that intensity because sometimes those colors are just way, way, way, way bright. Just put down less pencil. I just did a very, very light coating of pencil. And then I do the water over top of it and blend it. And it'll work just fine as a lighter color. And you could just get lighter and lighter and lighter by practicing putting down less and less pigment. And yes, you can get blends almost to white. We'll talk about that in a minute. But I'm going to blend this and then dry it completely because one of the things that the Ink Tense Pencil website at Derwent says about these pencils and everybody says they're permanent, they won't move. I'm going to tell you, you can layer over dry colors because the dry pigment is semi permanent. And I'm going to prove to you that I am right in just a moment. But what you're supposed to do is put some color over dry pigment. And you can see that you can put color right over that blue. The blue stays. It doesn't really soften the edge all that much. There's a little bit of the blue turning the yellow slightly, slightly green. But you'll see more about why that matters in a little bit. Now, the powder when you're using pigment powder, I like to use a tea strainer to make some powder out of my watercolor pencils. And I also do that with colored pencils. And you can put water down and then get a great texture in the water. It only sticks to where the water is. And you just blow off the pigment from the surface and you've got a great texture. You can put the pigment powder onto dry paper and just paint where you want it to stick. Now, here I just painted over that amount of powder, whatever it was. And then I blew on the right hand side. I just blew off the rest of the pigment and look how light it could make it. Almost looked like there was no pigment left on the paper, but there was just a few granules. So you can get a super pale color just by using powdered pigment. Now, blending for gradations, you can do that with a brush. You can do that with a baby wipe. These are just alternate ways that you can do some blending. And if I'm sketching on very lightweight paper and I don't want to put a lot of water down, I'll often use a baby wipe. And I'll even use it on watercolor paper like I'm using here. This is arches and you can get soft edges. You can get things that blend from dark to light. But look at how light the color is compared to using water with it. Water keeps the intensity unless you keep rinsing your brush.  Same with a baby wipe. The reason that lightened is because half the colors left on the baby wipe now. Now, let's talk about that semi permanent, permanent thing because you can lift inktense and they tell you you can't.   It's on certain papers. There was one paper that I tried. It was a cheap watercolor paper. Somebody sent me a swatch of it. It was a European company. I hadn't heard of them before. I don't even remember the name of it. But I remember trying inktense on it and I couldn't lift bupkus on it. So test the paper that you're using because that'll make a difference. But on arches and on I've tried it on Canson XL as well. You can lift. I'm going to prove that to you as well. Using some Canson XL in the crafty section of this video. So to lift, there's three different ways you can lift. One is to just take your time and scrub it with water. You can scrub that edge and slowly bring it to almost white paper. It depends on the color. If you've got a staining color, that might be harder to do. But look, look at what a baby wipe does. My magical baby wipes. I use these things for all kinds of stuff. You can totally lift the color off of Arches paper. Don't tell me these are permanent pencils. They're not. And then the last bit of lifting. I don't know if this is necessarily lifting, but when you get those little bits of pencil pigment that are stuck to the ridges of the paper, because cold press paper has ridges on it. Kind of has little mountains and valleys. And the paper kind of holds onto it on the ridges. And you end up with those little dark spots. Well, just work at it with your brush. And you can even put in some extra pencil pigment. Just, you know, grate some over the top of it so you have more to work with. And you can start to work in a good blend. But just notice every time I stop the brush, I get a hard edge. So that causes overall problems in terms of other things. And we'll talk about that later, too. But I wanted to show you intense blocks because you may be confused when you see those. What are they for? And they are basically an intense pencil in a stick form. That's really all it is. And you can put more color down all at once. So if you're doing something that you wanted to do a heavy sketch with, then you could use these easily. You can also, like, take the little wells that are in the palette and crush up a small chunk of them and then mix it with water and you make paint out of it. And then you have these bright, bright paints. You could also do that with pencil pigment. Put that into some water and make your own colors that way.  Now I had not actually drawn anything with these so I wasn't really sure what to do. I did put down more than I probably should have. They got a little crazy with my seals. These two seals are a picture that I found on Paint My Photo, which is one of my favorite places to get free photos that you can use without worry of copyright problems. And it's just these two seals. One of them has his flipper on the other. Like, he's either patting them on the butt or they're in love. I'm not really sure which. But I've been wanting to draw it. And so here we go. You're gonna see kind of a hot mess here. But I used red, yellow, and blue for my colors. And I wanted to show you that even with inktense, with everything, every medium, the rules of color theory apply. Because when I blended blue, red, and yellow together, I got neutrals. So I'm getting some neutral colors in these seals even though I didn't use any neutral except for dropping in some black when I got scared and everything started going haywire. I decided to make them really dark and contrasting. But look what happens as I start layering these colors and just kind of mushing with my brush over top of them. I get browns because that's the colors of pigment that are on the paper. And one of the other things inktense has in their pencil set, if you buy the full set, is you get an outliner pencil. And the sketch that I drew in the first place, that outline sketch was drawn with the outliner and I'm using the outliner here. And that is not water soluble, but it has to feel more of the inktense pencils rather than just using a regular pencil because you can draw with a regular pencil.  It feels more like using the black pencil but it's just not waterproof. So don't use that thinking you're gonna water color it because it won't move with water. You can erase it a little bit as you're sketching. Now let's look at the Colorado Craft Company release along with some techniques used in each one of the projects. They have three new mermaids and they're big stamps. So they'd be like a five and a half by five and a half kind of card, big square ones. There's one that has a whale and a walrus and a bunch of other things in it. This one has flying penguins or well swimming penguins unless she's flying I suppose. And then this one has seahorses. Very cute, big stamps just so you know. And then there's two minis. I love these minis as soon as I saw the walrus I knew I had to color him because he's so cute. And I paired it with the seagulls because the walrus is half a walrus as you can see. So I had to come up with a creative way to stamp the walrus, you could stamp him on the side of the paper and make him peeking in but you could also put him in between the piers or you could just put one of the piers on with one of the seagulls. But I decided to put them here next to him and he's kind of crawling up on the beach because the two piers have some lines drawn below them as if they're in the sand.  I drew a horizon line and some water in the background and I also had to draw the walrus' butt because that was not included in the stamp. It's just that left half. I started by using a light brown color to apply to the paper just by scribbling color on and using a brush to move it. Very traditional way of using inktense pencils and the amount of pigment that you put on will indicate how dark it's gonna be. So you use light color, you'll get light sand if you use a heavy application of color, you'll get a lot more in there. Really depends on the look you need for what you're coloring and you can blend it out with water until it's kind of soft on the bottom edge and I added some powdered pigment into it while it was wet so that that would stick in there and then dried it without moving any of that pigment so the sand texture would remain. I used the same color for the piers but I added to it some charcoal gray and I've added it in the center because the lighting for this is behind the walrus and the pier and the birds so the shadows are gonna be facing toward the viewer. So the shadow is on the side that you're seeing so it's in the center and there's a little bit of light curling around the two sides of each of the piers but not very much. Same thing with the walrus, he's gonna have light curling around the outside edges of him too and the darkest part is in his center and where that flipper is that I'm painting and the contrast between having him be in the shadow and dark and the light tusks makes it very clear that he's a walrus. So paint all of that out using a brush if you start getting too much dark color and you find yourself dragging color around, just rinse your brush so you have a clean brush and you're not moving pigment any more than necessary. To create some shadows, I made them angled toward the sun so that you get that indication that that's where the light source is and once I painted over these, they were wet and I added more powdered pigment in since moving the water over top of that removes that texture from the underlying powdered pigment that was sitting down there and then started painting in the water leaving a little bit of reflection for the sun in the water itself and then it was time for the sky. Now I just released a sunrise sunset class which is something I talked about in my last video. It's taught in both color pencil and water color pencil and here's an idea if you're gonna take that class in inktense pencils use very light pigment instead of the heavy coverage that you'll see in class and use a baby wipe to move the color. The baby wipe pulls more color off the page rather than using a brush to slosh it around and you can also move it in softer ways than you might be able to. You could even try this with regular color pencils not just with inktense pencils. While it was drying, I put some detail into the water just using a pencil and I'm not gonna do any water with it just leave the pencil lines on there and then I got the idea to use the baby wipe as a brush since I'd already used it as a brush to move the yellow why not use it to add the red without getting really hard edges in there. I did get some scrubby edges because of just the nature of the way that a baby wipe applies color but once I finished applying the basic red that I wanted I could use the baby wipe on that pigment a clean section of the baby wipe to move the color around and soften the edges. So again, another way to achieve the same kinds of techniques that are used in the class but with inktense pencils because then at least they won't be like electric screaming bright. And then of course had to add some seagulls because that's what I do and I'll show you the card at the end of the video. So the mermaids, I did a project with all three mermaids in one project and I started by drawing a box around each one of them so they would have a border and for this one it took me forever to color it just lots of little bits and trying to get the blending good and some of the blending didn't work so I started doodling and then I got carried away doodling over all of it adding more texture onto the water adding texture onto the rocks and I'm a doodler that's just what I love to do so doodle your heart out as far as I'm concerned for the penguins I decided to use the charcoal gray and anytime you're coloring something in inktense that's supposed to be black start with the gray you can always add black to it later but if you start with a gray you have some opportunity for subtle color differences the black is really hard to keep it from getting too crazy because the black is really intense and really powerful this is gonna help to soften that a bit. For the background I thought I was doing something genius I was gonna make this really easy all of this coloring by just coloring the whole background first in one blue and then go in and color all of the swirlies in a dark color just something darker and let it be at that and it was maybe a smart idea until I used too dark of a color and I didn't like the amount of contrast that I had going on in the background now because that contrast draws your eye and by the time I color the mermaid your eye is still gonna be looking at all that contrast and I wanted to soften that so I added a bunch of pencil onto the background thinking I'll just go over this with just a light touch with this nice wide super soft brush and I had to kind of work my way around the penguins and as I was doing that look at what starts to happen color is lifting so don't let nobody tell you it's permanent because it's lifting right here on camera before your very eyes so when you're doing any kind of color layering test your paper and test the pigments just test, test, test, test, test take a swatch and just test a corner of something so that you know what's gonna happen because at first I was ready to toss this I was really worried because now I didn't have any contrast and do I just go around the whole thing and wipe off all the color I decided to try to see whether it was just that corner or whether I just needed a softer touch and I did use a lighter touch as I moved on to see if I could retain the color in the background but it still did lift some it was just really tough, really tough to do this I ended up doing some doodling here which the camera had a little corrupt spot on the card apparently because it didn't save that was just the one chunk it didn't save out of all the chunks but you'll see the results in just a moment for the third mermaid I drew some circles with a compass onto the paper and used powdered pigment I just sprinkled powder pigment in an area and then started painting into one of the circles and used different amounts of powdered pigment every time I got a section done I would just blow the color off of the rest of the paper made sure there was no pigment left and then could switch to a different color or a different amount of color on the page so I could end up with a whole bunch of overlapping circles in various shades and tints of greens and blues so here is the finished piece all mounted on one long strip so this is all of the juicy detail in the mermaid and whale stamp kind of one I love adding all those little extra bits and here's the result from the circular one and for that one I decided to go around each of the circles with a pen as well to just give it a little more definition which was fun and the third one is the one with all the doodling that didn't capture on film I also added a whole bunch of bubbles to it because I wanted more to pull the eye to the mermaid and not as much to my crazy background that I had such a giant fail with but the whole piece is actually gonna be a prize next month in Art Venture so if you haven't joined Art Venture now would be a good time to go do that and here's how the mermaid folds and you could stand it up in the studio on a shelf for some inspiration if you were the winner and of course my little card, so cute gotta love this little walrus, be adorable thank you so much for watching this video if you liked it please click the like button and hit that subscribe if you haven't already the links to everything you need to know are in the doobly-doo down below this video and I will talk to you guys later get out there and create something every day, bye bye.


Good morning everybody we're in Brandon Manitoba the Husky we're going to Timmy's Very that's all right the Timmy's We get our breakfast and then we're gonna head that way for about two and a half to three hours and This trip will be done This is the same Timmy's we stopped at on the way to Saskatchewan Hopefully got parking for us in the back here you know I find very often that Timmy's and Esso gas stations and truck stops are on the same property. I wonder if they got like a deal going Are they owned by the same company or something? Very often right across Canada if there's an Esso very likely there's gonna be a Timmy's there too Esso is just like a big Big gas station chain across the entire country up here for those of you not from Canada This is ESSO Esso. They bought out Husky and it's a pretty big thing right now. It's sort of like You're so like pilot You know how pilot flying J. They became one thing up here. Esso Husky became one thing But I'm wondering if Tim Hortons like how they get in on it because they're at every almost at every Esso too Maybe they're just good buddies. I don't know I'm pretty sure there's some money involved there somewhere anywhere. There's a Tim Hortons. There's money involved People who own the own Tim Hortons. They always say that Tim Hortons is the bank for them Very expensive to get into it, but once you have a store Apparently it's very profitable the blue 42 here. It's been very good to me Running very good. This is our load that we have behind us One ton dodge. It's got some damage to it on the other side. There's Some more windows are smashed out and won't roll up and stuff But I'm pretty sure it's either being fixed in Winnipeg or being used for parts We're taking it from Saskatoon, Saskatchewan to Winnipeg, Manitoba. It's about a nine-hour ride I'm gonna listen to Karen right there, which is just west of Winnipeg. It was pretty much Winnipeg I'm just gonna grab some fuel so I can bring this truck back and park it with full tanks for the next driver or For me if I use it next seems like I've been using this truck the most I'm gonna go to that pump right there Highlighted road right here Karen Going to get fuel Try and keep up always like to leave it with full tanks It's always a pain when you get into a truck and it's not ready for the road, you know What does this say? No DEF available at this pump? Okay? That's okay Don't need DEF today and we have DEF at the yard anyway Well old blue you're a bit dirty now But it was a good trip. We had a good ride The old Pete was over there on the end of the lineup We'll be hanging out on Monday For now it's time to go home Do stuff that isn't work Well, that's a lie. No, there is no end to the work There is just the work you get paid for and the work you don't get paid for The work at home. You usually don't get paid for you usually have to pay for that work Well, it's not gonna work by itself. Nothing fixes itself Actually, I don't think there is any work that we have to really be doing At home that vapor barriers our next big project and I'm probably gonna hire a professional to get that done down there Because I don't want any leaks or anything. I want to make sure all the moisture is trapped in the ground and I'm a professional driver I'm not a professional vapor barrier installer So I'll do as many projects and fix as many things as I can myself But some things you just need a professional to do to make sure it's done right And sometimes it's just a little bit of a peace of mind getting someone who's done it before and who is professional to do it You know, it's sort of like hauling freight, you know, you got to move some freight from point A to point B You could do it yourself Or you could hire the professional who will make sure that it gets there and that all the laws and regulations are followed And that everything is done right and you know It all depends. I mean you could do it yourself. Why not why not get the professional right? That's the point Let's get out of the yard here and we'll be back here soon enough got more trucking to do on Monday Saturday right now home sweet home Now you don't really realize how much you appreciate home until you're gone for a day or two It's a little house. It's it's nothing to really show off like I've said before it's a means to an end We like it though. I mean it's got everything we need right now. I'm about to take these guys out to the dog park Get them Exercise get some energy out of them. We're very fortunate that a new dog park opened in town this last summer Was it the summer before last summer? I think Which is it's a pretty small town. So everything is close by which is very handy It's very very nice once we build on our land. We'll have our own dog park Because it won't be our yard.  It's gonna be a little garden of Eden Right in our front yard dogs aren't allowed in the front yard. They're gonna be fenced in in the back And It'll be a pretty big fence That's one of the reasons we're taking a little longer to save up to to build this place Because I want a fence around as big of a portion of our land as possible. We got a huge chunk of land So I don't know if I'll be able to fence the whole thing in Like with this we want to use the same fence that we used here Just a six-foot black chain link. I'd like to go around our whole property. There's a Clearing around our land already so you could put a fence in there already so whoever subdivided it You know, they cleared lines that's clear where the property lines are which I really appreciate so there's no confusion Okay, my my line or my land goes up to where there's like a that's like an eight foot ten foot clearing And then right in the center of that clearing is where the stakes are. There's no mistaking. We know where the end is I really like that but I could put a fence right down there then right but it's just gonna cost a lot of money Just this fence for around our little yard here. It was a hundred and forty one feet of six-foot chain link fence with one gate Just around half of it because we had a fence on the other half already, right? so cost us $4100 when we moved in here So on our land out there To fence the whole thing in we're probably looking at like $40,000 who knows probably more. I don't know. I just I didn't do the math in my head just there It would be tens of thousands probably so we're not Probably gonna be able to fence the whole thing and we'll see but that's what I want to save up because I really would like the dogs to be able to just wander our land and Not have to worry. I don't even know 40 50,000. I probably wouldn't even be enough Now that I'm thinking about the math in my head It would be quite a bit where we're gonna fence in a huge portion of it Anyway, so they have this huge open space to run around in and also I want to take it into the bush a little bit So they can wander through the bush and that way we don't have to worry about Predators bears and wolves as much coming into our yard. Sure. They can scale the fence if they really want to but do they really want to? Depends on the bear depends on the wolf, right? At least there's an obstacle there to make it harder for them, right?  He's like, huh Is it worth it as long as we keep like our barbecue clean and keep food and garbage Well taken care of and out of their scent range What reason do they have to go through the work of climbing over our fence, right? They could yeah, they still it's not gonna keep everything out But at least it'll a little bit of peace of mind. It'll keep the dogs in right our dogs. They don't jump fences At least they haven't yet.  I didn't come up with a new quote. I Heard a new quote, which I'm sort of gonna apply to my life and sort of make it my motto. I Heard it on this TV series called. What was the call again lost in space? There's a download of the season. I've been watching it when like when I did these overnights I was watching it on the road and I love this quote that they had it's called Except the unexpected Not just expect it because you know what's gonna happen But when it does happen in your life and something unexpected comes along and stops you dead in your tracks accept it weigh your options and move forward, okay So I want to apply that to you know trucking and other things in my life, you know You're walking along here. We're trying to build a house. We're trying to save up and there's obstacles we have to Get over constantly always something in life that comes up So when something unexpected comes up you stop you accept it. This is here. This is how it is now weigh your options and Then move forward Thought that it resounded well with me That way you don't get all depressed and frustrated when unexpected things happen You don't get lost and think oh, what am I gonna do now? Now all my plans are completely thrown out the window This is so unexpected. Yeah, all your plans get thrown out the window Stop accept it weigh your options find a way around it and move forward I wanted to share that with you I heard that in the in the TV in the TV from the TV, you know, you learn something every day I'm not the smartest guy out there. I'll Share that with you right now. I'm not a scientist. I'm not a doctor. I'm not a You know rocket scientists. I'm a truck driver. I'm confident in my ability to do my job and do it well Like I've said before I can tell you how to tie down a load of steel Secure it safely get it across the continent deliver it on time Through whatever weather you can throw at me. I can do that. That's where my professionalism comes in That's what I'm professional at but many things in life like like our crawl space underneath the house for instance That's gonna be a big expense for us now because now I've got to hire someone who knows what they're doing to do a vapor barrier and Encapsulation around our whole crawl space and the crawl space is very small. It's only 18 inches high So they're gonna have to crawl around. I'm gonna have to find a contractor that actually wants to do it Then I have to pay him to do it. That was unexpected. I did not expect that expense to pop up But here we are I've got to get it done because I want this house to last and I want it to be more valuable When I try and sell it than when I bought it. So we'll get this done. We realized it was a problem We weighed our options Now we'll move forward with it That's the way life is So thanks for watching everybody. I appreciate it. We had a lot of fun. I hope you enjoyed this. It was a two-niter We'll probably do more of these in the future. I go wherever they need me. I do whatever they need me to do I'm sort of the their catch-all guy. I guess whenever they need something done I want to make sure that I can do everything in the yard and everything that they need done so that you know I'm the guy they can count on So I'll talk to you tomorrow. I hope you have a great weekend