I am from South Africa, I contribute in the Seswati wikipedia and I don't stress about contributing there actually, but I am another guy from the United States but who's originally from Swaziland who are very much active in that wikipedia currently. So we want to talk about a subject called the quotation of oral sources in a decolonized context as we all know that this conference is based on this subject of decolonizing the internet. So we also wanted to have our say and our say started when we went through a lot of reading and we also went through a lot of research to look at what is it that we can that other people saying regarding this subject of the quotation of oral sources in a decolonized content. I'm sorry, I'm dyslexic. I just found out like two months ago about that. So my reading is anyway. Yes, so we're going to be talking about that now and do you want to continue? I said as Bobby, I'm passionately irritated by the other representation of oral knowledge that I found in the different countries I lived in and I was searching for it in wikipedia and I couldn't find it. So I started being passionately irritated by that problem and I had a conversation with Bobby and we said okay we would like to talk about that topic today. We don't have solutions but we would like to make you think about certain topics and certain questions. Yes, so as I've mentioned earlier on that this is a subject that has been researched a lot about scholars they have actually tried to find the connection between oral knowledge and written knowledge and then to me especially it touches me directly because I am from a lineage of family that is very much oral orientated. My grandmother for an example is the one who chose the second and the third wife for my grandfather and I asked my mum would you do that to my father and then choose the second and the third wife for my father? She said never, I'm never going to do that and it told me that something is dying there because according to our culture from my mum's side the first wife is the one that is supposed to choose the second and the third wife to look after the kettle, the other one will look after the kettle, the other one will look after the land and the other one will look after the kids. So it's a matrilinial structure in my mother's side of the family and in my father's side of the family something different but one other thing is that my grandmother again whenever there is a funeral or whenever there is a wedding what happens is she will tell you that okay fine we want to organize food for the people and then you ask her how do you know that there's going to be how many people are going to be attending?  How do you know it's going to rain? She's still alive she's going to tell you it's going to rain how do you know it's going to rain? No I just know that it's going to rain because the gods and then she's saying the gods told me that it's going to rain we know because we've been living here We know that when, during the time of September, the gods, it was this time when the gods, because in our culture we don't have 12 months, we have 13 months, so he's telling you because in this month it's named after a certain god that provides rain for us, so they are happy this year and it's going to rain. And when you are looking at what, at the weather pattern using your education, but you cannot, you want proof, something that is tangible, but for her she does not, but eventually it rains. And then you ask yourself how does she know, she's not educated, she does not even know how to write a name. So it forms part of a very close relationship with me because of that reason. And I had to then go to look at the many research that has happened over time by scholars, by people on the open movement, by everyone else to see how is it, what is it, what are the list, what solutions did they have in order to reach the two, what is it that I can do. Then that's when we started this conversation and the solutions are right here. These are the solutions right here. Yes. Do you want to talk on that? Yes, exactly. We don't know what the solution is, what we would like to reflect about with you and these are the examples that Bobby were giving is that there is a big difference between oral knowledge and written knowledge. And it's two different information systems, it's completely two different cultures and sometimes they are not, they're incompatible, you can't combine them. So that's one of the big problems. We don't have a solution yet, but we also are talking a lot about so-called indigenous knowledge and we were asking ourselves what is this. Isn't knowledge knowledge and don't we have a global knowledge? Why do we have to talk about western knowledge, indigenous knowledge and different knowledge? And isn't that maybe a Eurocentric and a volunistic approach and idea that societies have to develop from the primitive to a higher level. So what we would like you to do is to question also your wording when you're talking about knowledge or indigenous knowledge about so-called developed countries and underdeveloped countries. At this stage of our presentation we want to throw the question to you then to tell us the difference or what is it that you think exists between indigenous knowledge and the knowledge that is accepted. Anyone that can tell me what is indigenous knowledge and what is, I don't know whether to call it western knowledge or what, but what do you understand about indigenous knowledge? Anyone can tell me what is indigenous knowledge? Hello again. I think I'll just say it's all about culture to me. I'll make an example of one of the articles that I have translated about marriage and while I was translating I said in my culture this is not marriage so we have to differentiate. So I have to go to Professor Neema who is working, one of my colleagues is a specialist in the indigenous knowledge system is that what is the manner in which marriage is described in another culture might be different in the other culture. So I decided to start a new article which will say indigenous South African marriage and then translate that. Then if you can look at it you will see the difference because in our case marriage is not only about you and me, in fact you started a very big relationship between the glands, your glands and my glands. So it's a long, long process. So I would just say it's about culture. It's about culture. Someone else want to weigh in here? I hope you didn't google there. I think knowledge and specifically indigenous knowledge is something which is about the indigenous perspectivism and about that this perspectivism could contradict to the hierarchy of western or global northern knowledge and knowledge which should be accepted as it is and should be not categorized into western categories. Like one short example, anthropology, so eating humans in western culture referred to as cannibalism. And if you look to specific cultures which when you look from the western side people eating people, but what they think about when they're eating people that they're no different to animals and if they're eating animals they have to get out the human out of the animal in order to make it eatable so they have totally different categories than we do have animal nature and so on. So this should be respected looking at these indigenous knowledge sources that they are sources one of their own and they should not be compared or put into a hierarchy. I love that. Yes, over there. Thank you. I love this question because it's a seemingly straightforward question but once you start looking and start unpacking it you find layers of issues that you have to deal with it. So I would also in order to answer it I would also like to turn it around and point out that one of the issues is that we make the assumption that there is a single corpus that we can put fit stuff into and these have been because of this assumption we keep running into these challenges so maybe what if we start from the other end with the assumption that there are many parallel worlds, many parallel cultures and it's not about putting them into one box but finding ways of allowing them to coexist and interlink. Thank you. Okay, indigenous language sources, I think there's three things that come to mind. The issue of power, exploitation and disappearance. And I think that the issue of power is something we must acknowledge as middle class, western educated people that we can go to a woman in the village, a storyteller, get her stories, I can go there and I can then get published and then I hold the copyright over that work. So we've got a great power to exploit and so how do we work in bringing the knowledge and wisdom, indigenous knowledge and wisdom to make it widely available without exploiting the sources. The fact that they are disappearing as well, the fact that governments don't invest, we've long talked in Africa about indigenous knowledge systems but actually we haven't put our money where our mouth is. And I think the contribution from the Namibian comrade there earlier on about the long history of exploitation and that we may not be meaning, we may be well meaning everyone in this room and I think Wikipedians are the most well meaning people I've come across but we still have the power to exploit. So we need to be sensitive to that power and look for different ways of working with this. Thank you very much. So the question that we are asking ourselves is how an equal exchange between the oral and the written can be made and how to build a bridge between oral and Boston written dominated knowledge systems. And I also attended the decolonize the internet conference last two days and another topic that we would like to talk about is the question of criteria and criteria of relevance and notability. Before we engage in this one, there was a point that you mentioned there at the back that about categorization because once you take the indigenous knowledge then you want to categorize it according to your western knowledge then it changes everything. Why do you have to do that? Then I come back to Mrs. Sulu's response. So what we are aiming to do now is to make us think, I don't want to say make you because it's something that we are still trying to figure out ourselves to say what is happening. We acknowledge all of us in the room I guess now as we are standing here that there are differences between the two knowledges. There are differences between indigenous knowledge and let's call it the western knowledge, the general knowledge that is written that you go to Wikipedia and read about. And we also acknowledge that it needs to be documented somehow but in the documentation process there is power as she mentioned that I would go and want to extract that indigenous knowledge but I would hold the rights to the work that has been done. And while the person that is actually owning the work is not a owner of that work. So yeah we can continue to the next slide. During the conference the colonize the internet I was surprised how much frustration there was about articles having been deleted, having been written and rewritten and then having been deleted. And we were starting intensively to think about the criteria of relevance and notability and the question linked to these two is do we maybe need a discussion about policies. The internet yesterday we were talking about at the colonization of the internet conference we were talking about setting one of the things that hemp us the growth of small language wikipedia is because of the policies that are there. And it's one of the things that people wanted to change. Am I right? What is the truth? In my personal opinion at least in smaller languages or smaller wikipedia is it is easier to have a discussion around which norms should govern that and they should not all be required to copy the English, the French or the top ten languages. And so they can look into their own norms and what makes sense within that culture or the language of that particular wiki. In South America and the Aymara language for instance I don't think that the requirement of written sources makes as much sense as it would make in the Spanish language. And we just as a caveat we just created these slides like this so that anyone can come in whenever they want to come in. A small command for sourcing and notability way back when we were writing French Wikipedia I'm French in 2008 we just had 50,000 articles when I landed on Wikipedia we didn't have the we were not putting source on every sentence. We were not putting source on articles or some people did it and some people didn't. We had good articles which were four pages of text well written with no source at all. We didn't care that just after when we had some controversy in the media that we started to add the requirement of sourcing every fact. But at the beginning and up to 50,000 articles we didn't have such rules for our Wikipedia. So I don't see why the small Wikipedia with 500 or 10,000 should be sourcing all facts and deleting articles if they don't have source. No no we were much more careless ourselves so the small Wikipedia should take it easy on this side. I'd be drawing back to but forgive me for whatever reason. There's a problem here. I experienced this problem several times. The information that I get about the things the way we do things the way things have been done long ago in the Klosakulcha and Amambondo. That information you can get if you go to the elderly people in the village. We still have the one who was born in 1914 and really he can still tell you remember how did you do this culture. What is a polygamy Makul when you ask him he will tell you how did they practice all those things in their own way. It's a very interesting information and it's very positive. It can build us if we can go back to those rules.  That's what we do as well and then you write on Wikipedia.  I think that's what she said and then she delete everything and then she rewrite it. And then she will put the references list of references according to research. And it means those people who conducted this research they are more important than the person who practice the culture itself. So it's very very very difficult. I think we should address that. I don't I don't say allow anybody it's also wrong just to go there and write and write and write.  We need sources sources are important but let us not be choosy in terms of sources. That grandmother is very important. We depend on her. We go to her when things are wrong and she will tell us no this is not a closer culture. This one is lying. So we need a very good guidance on that. Thank you.  Thank you. We have the problem that unfortunately our time is up. I don't know if someone is going to come to pull us out from the stage otherwise we go on. Okay we'll give. Sorry. Okay we can go on. Great. Okay I will just stay in for five minutes and then after we move out. There's a very pertinent. Okay so there's this thing called feedback. Next to the speakers. One two three. Okay it looks okay. So I'd like first to support whoever something said there in the front about the French Wikipedia. The reason that the Wikipedia is in large languages want a lot of sources is that they are so large. So many different people writing and these are huge communities. They went beyond being communities. They are societies. Lots of people there don't know each other. So many of them. So when somebody else writes something it's likely that you don't actually know this person and you don't trust them. So you need a third party verification in these very large communities in smaller communities sources are probably less important. So the demand for sources is not the thing that gets in the way of developing Wikipedia's in small languages because they don't really exist. The demands for sources developed in each of the large languages separately in English and French and German and so on. They don't really apply to the Wikipedia's in small languages until they actually develop inside them. So that's not the thing that gets in the way. The thing that gets in the way as far as I see it the thing that gets in the way of developing Wikipedia's in smaller languages is the fact that the people who would be most of the people who would be most capable to write in the Wikipedia's in small languages usually tend to also know another large language such as English or French. So when they need some information that they would find in Wikipedia they would probably find it in English or French. They wouldn't even notice that the information is missing in their language. That's a highly problematic paradox. Somebody called it the decease of knowledge. You already know something so you don't even notice that somebody else who doesn't know it doesn't know it. So it really depends on people like you.  Your language is spoken by millions of people. It's not that small. But you know this and you can write in your language and it's good that you are aware of this and you should just encourage your friends to do it more. And this demands for sources that's a problem in the Wikipedia's in big languages. It's not a problem in your language. I am glad that we all recognize that there is a problem. I want to move quickly. The point is we all recognize that there is disparity between oral knowledge and oral citation and the standard way of our knowledge that way. I don't know what to call that knowledge. The knowledge that you know. Is it a western knowledge? It's not a western knowledge. It's just knowledge, right? Because it's acceptable. Anyway, yes. Published knowledge. Can I comment? Yes. What is small? How small is small? Finnish language Wikipedia has more than 400,000 articles and the Finnish language speakers are 6 million. Yoruba language Wikipedia has some 1000 articles. It is spoken by 30 million people. I suggest we speak about oral mediation, oral cultures and literate cultures. It's not about small or big. It's about literate culture background and oral culture. We do, however, agree, whatever it is. We say, we see it as small, we see it as big, we see it as the number of people are contributing. They are small or I didn't get your second point. But we do agree that it needs to be documented, right? Somehow we need to document that. You do agree with that. I think this notion of small Wikipedia is a very imperialistic notion. It's more like looking down on the small Wikipedia. You can be careless. Everything is okay. I think that's a very bad way of thinking. As you just mentioned, what happens when either that small Wikipedia gets larger or what is the perspective in relative size? We should get back in the discussion on how are we going to accept this oral tradition. That is the important issue.  That's not what we should be discussing about. Very true. I'm going to have to close. Just peace and then we close. I wonder, is it correct to think about it as a problem rather than as an opportunity? I mean, this is the occasion when you can document whatever was so far just oral knowledge and you can start interviewing the other people, whoever is the people who has the knowledge and which is recognized by the community of the speaker of that language as the people who traditionally, I don't know, I'm not familiar with, but I think from what I refer that there are people who are recognized as the owner of the knowledge and you can interview them, you can take a movie and you can document and you create the basis of having the sources, the former sources and then you think as a second step to put them in Wikipedia. Peter Khaled has actually done that. I was part of that project and we actually have done it exactly like that but there is a problem there that I wanted to highlight quickly. The previous speaker has just made the point I'm about to try and nail down a little bit harder. The difference between documentation and recording. We have technology to record in non-documentary form that is just as valid as evidence. Oral traditions should be recorded as words that are spoken. People that are seen in video format in spoken word recordings, not documented on paper and as digits that become or as bits that become letters of words. That is a different way of recording and it's perfectly valid if you've got that recorded. The other thing about not bothering to record citations in our that has a problem in the future when new people come in and see this stuff and they say where did this come from? We don't know these people, they're not here anymore. If you have got it recorded in some form, you've got your evidence. For oral recordings, for oral knowledge use oral recordings. That's to me the obvious way. The point of this presentation is actually what Peter has highlighted right now. We want to bring to ourselves or to you as the audience and ourselves as editors of Wikipedia to say does really oral knowledge belong to Wikipedia per se? I don't believe that it belongs on Wikipedia per se. I don't believe that when my grandmother tells me about the rain that is going to rain but she does not know how to explain how she knows that and I need to capture it in written knowledge. It's equal as when she is telling me orally. I don't believe that when my surname in our culture we have the way we have been documenting, the way we have been documenting our history is through songs, praise poetry. So everyone with my surname will have some praise poetry that is the same with everyone else that is having my surname. So I don't believe that whenever you do that you need to document it down somehow. There is a death. You have to wear somehow differently. You have to have a particular dance when you are doing a particular citation or doing a particular praise poetry or something like that. That you cannot turn it into words that are written down. It cannot be as equal as when that person is actually performing that. So perhaps Wikipedia is not the right place to record oral knowledge. That's our argument standing here. And it's the end of our presentation without going to the other slide. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Thank you.


Thank you for coming. Good evening. Thank you for coming to Berakon Books for a poetry reading with our former Vermont poet laureate Sydney Lee. A few, yeah, thanks a lot. I'd like to thank Orca Media for filming tonight's event, and I'd like to let you know that you can sign up for our newsletter. There was a clipboard that got passed around to learn about future events. Next week we host the Commissioner of Vermont Forests, Parks and Recreation, Michael Snyder, for a talk on his new book Woods Wise An Exploration of Forests and Forestry. And that might be a nice follow-up to tonight's reading since Sydney's poetry features Vermont's woods and natural rural landscape. Also for you poetry lovers, save the date for October 8th when we host Reuben Jackson and his new poetry collection Scattered Clouds. And this is available here tonight at Berakon Books. So we're thrilled to have Sydney here. His new book here is here. It's a wonderful collection of poems about a life in awe of the world right here around us. The book is a life remembered, a life in gratitude and apology, a life in the 21st century, a life in the country, a life in close proximity to mortality, and a life in mindfulness and love. It is simply stunning in its grace, and I love the poem Spilled Milk, an apology to a daughter almost 40 years late. It really struck me as sweet and insightful. So I urge you all, if you haven't already, to pick up a copy or two because poetry makes a great gift. By the book, support the poet, support your favorite independent bookstore. Sydney will sign books after his reading and talk tonight. Sydney Lee was Vermont Poet Laureate from 2010 to 2015. He was also the founder and for 13 years the editor of New England Review. He taught at Dartmouth, Yale, Middlebury, Wesleyan, the Vermont College MFA, and several European institutions. Winner of the Poets Prize in 1998 and a Pulitzer finalist in 2001, his work has appeared in over 60 anthologies, and he co-edited the anthology, Roads Taken, Contemporary Vermont Poetry, which we have here at the bookstore as well. His poems, essays, and stories have appeared in all the major U.S. literary quarterlies, as well as The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly, The New Republic, Sports Illustrated, and The New York Times. We have plenty of chairs if you wanted to come on out. In addition, Lee has been awarded fellowships from the Fulbright, Rockefeller, and Guggenheim foundations. We're thrilled he's here. Please help me welcome Sydney Lee. I'm going to try and project, but if you feel at any point that I ought to pick up that handheld mic, don't be shy about it. That's a lovely introduction. I wish I lived closer than an hour away from it, because this is my favorite independent bookstore. I don't know how you could find a better one.  But I'm delighted to be invited, and I'll read Old Baker's Dozens of Poems. You can't stop me, so I might as well forge ahead. One of the audience members earlier said a very, very nice thing to me about how the first poem in this book called Here at Summer's End had been a bit of a bomb tour lately during some difficult time, and the last thing on Earth that I imagined my own poetry to be is prophetic. But as curious as I was putting this together, I looked at all the poems written before 2016, including this one, and saw that a lot of them had to do with an insistence on presence, physical, mental, spiritual, psychological, what have you, on here-ness. And then in 2016, August, I had a heart attack, which was something I hadn't predicted, and I felt fine. Indeed, I was training for a six-mile kayak race thinking maybe this year I'd do the 12-mile one, because I was feeling that fit, and then I got this little pinch. And then when they said you're having a heart attack at the local clinic, I said, no, that's what other people have, and that's not me. I've done well in that kayak race since, so they did something right at Eastern Main Medical Center. The first poem in the book is called Here at Summer's End, that birds have largely quieted me distress us. Like neglected male, the garden's lettuce went yellow weeks back, and it simply dissolves. But we ought to pause before we focus on loss, and the season is still teeming with vegetation. No matter the months, our sense of wonder remains, unless we will it to leave. Even now the mercury flirts with 85, so its wonders say how starlings decide to convene for migrations. We can watch their flocks in the roadbeds. It's a marvel as well, whatever the forces that's already started to blanch the legs of the snowshoe hares. Our longing is always for now to endure, though since the dawn of thinking, many a thinker has found death an engine of beauty. Truth is, however, our world will never go dead. Those heads of lettuce have fused with humus below, and after those starlings wing off, the joncos and titmice will show. And the ghostly hairs of winter won't be ghosts at all, the creatures with dark flesh packed with a bone under ivory hides. Coyotes will hunt them to keep alive through the ineluctable, I almost said awful, chill. And even then the ice-peeds on softwood boughs may look, if we want, like permitted fruit. As the season nears, or lingers, or ends, an amplitude can tell us we're still a subject to spells. We're here after all, let's chant it throughout the year, like so much birdsong. We're here, we're here, we're here, we're here. Thank you. Thank you. It's a poem that Samantha referred to called Spilled Milk, an apology to a daughter almost 40 years late. A train lumbered out of Toronto Station. Together we headed for subarctic lakes to visit your brother at camp, your older and only sibling then. I dreamed of Northern air as our coach careened past clinkers, barrels, filthy railway sheds, ugly as you were lovely. I ordered a spread of lunchtime stuff with for me some coffee, a glass of milk for you. A dozen miles would pass before you took a drink.  To reach for your glass while the dining car swayed and quivered. As for me, distracted I was fixed on the winking waters we'd find upstream from the mess of Milky River at Trackside. In time we escaped those outskirts into open prairie space, and you spilled the glass, of course. I pray at least I said nothing out loud, but I have no doubt you could read my miserable thoughts. And now, if I get to hell, as I sometimes think I will if justice prevails, precisely for things I've thought, my Hadean vision may be of your shame-ridden six-year-old face, all riven by worry, which should have been my fatherly duty to soothe, restoring what had been its beauty. My wife is a really interesting friend who farms in Western Massachusetts and does a lot of other things. She's a wonderful artist and photographer and naturalist. And she came up one weekend while I was going to be away to teach my wife and her Jewish friend, local friend, how to make those Ukrainian eggs, gorgeous works of art, the poem called, un-originally, Ukrainian egg. I'm off on a late-season fishing trip with the guys. We bump along in my beat-up pick-up laughing, our humorous adolescent, the day-blown chilling. Meanwhile, her dear friend Portia and Robin, my wife, are learning from Joan here on a visit to fashion Ukrainian eggs. The teacher and students are certain there will really be something to see, the eggs, I mean.  That trio of women back home will be chuckling too, I suspect, though their jokes will remain a lot less crude in a doubt than the ones we're telling. But the women will also be serious, each intending, and I'm sure they will, to make objects of beauty and grace. But why would that cause this weeping response to rise? Vain, nail, I turn my face aside. To call those women cute as absurd and not at all a group that anyone would patronize. It's perhaps that I'm thinking, and not for the very first time, how much in my life I would, if I could, revise. Like the way my grade school posse of punks and clowns would stop when the girls turned to projects all their own. Some more pants under dresses against the cold. They'd play secretary, nurse, or laughably bold, even cops or firefighters, pilots, cowboys, soldiers. And we, we mocked them, we whittled unschooled fools, sure of ourselves, sure that we'd prevail in that age before we helped to raise our daughter. My father was a commander of the so-called colored troops in the segregated army in World War II. Some of the few African-American troops to be at Omaha Beach, 70% of them killed. And I probably, nine out of ten people under 60, don't realize that the army was segregated in that way until after the war on President Truman integrated them. At any rate, I was, came that close from being born in Alabama, where the hurricane recently ravaged. And that something happened that impaled my mother to come north to Pennsylvania where I was born. It's called the Owl and I. Once the Jim Crack Cross got burned on our lawn, my mother took off back north to have me. My father was stationed in Gadgeton, Alabama, before the Second Great War, commander of so-called colored troops. And he'd invited a few of his men inside the house, it seems. A radical thing, indeed, just then in the heart of Jim Crow Jixie. So my mother escaped giving birth down there, though I don't have any idea why I'd think of this, which, near to her death, she spoke of so many years after. Why now, on watching a barred owl glide to a hemlock gone dark at sundown? Everything else is well going dark around me, here where I stand. Once at midnight, she thought she'd heard a whoop of human anguish and wondered whether some soldier were being lynched outside. My father went for a look but found nothing. My lifelong relations with my mother were vexed, I now suspect, in part because between us two stood a lot in common. Jews were being crammed into cattle cars then, but for dad and those troops the evil in Europe lay several months ahead.  Though no signs of nearby violence turned up next morning. The company came on mass to mess. Shit on a shingle, as the G.I. said, dried beef on toast. So life went on, at least for a while, more or less. It ought to bring comfort than I'm where I am, aging but saved, my kin constantly swelling as sons and daughters produce their sons and daughters. And winter so harsh this year, giving way at last to spring, the snow drops glinting, the freshets making their evanescent cascades through the woods. I recall how my mother loved this season. Why then this lonely sensation? It feels that I'm in some pitch black tunnel and won't get out again. That this, as the saying goes, is it. That all have at the end. Of course there can't be anything to it. It's a sorrowful eight note anthem of that single owl. The sound just now having reached my vexed old head. Though I'd be foolish to think that song was addressed to anyone human. I've obviously misrecorded. Oh, 31, not 21. My grandmother always said there was less suffering when the mind went first. I don't seem to be suffering. This is called chimera. The eagle's wings were angled in a stoop that seemed almost languid. And yet in an eye blank it flew past the window and out of view. For me, now in my 70s, it can feel as if everybody were gone or about to be gone. For instance, my brother-in-law dead some time now young. I love them for years and years. Parents, a sibling, peers. The great creatures cutting across the window less sight than loss. As if flight had exemplified the concept brevity. And the bird were conscious of me. And consciousness were crucial in you, or me, or an eagle. I have many friends here who will assure you that I've watched the fun in real life. It's one called I Am Pune a Victorian. It has an epigraph from William Makepeace Thackeray. There are a thousand thoughts lying within a man that he does not know until he takes up a pen to write. Or within a woman. Or maybe Old Thackeray was delusionary, yearning to believe that simply by being a writer he could write and thoughts would just show up. It's been too long since I read about his Becky Sharp and others to evaluate whether in fact they do arrive in his famous vanity fair or elsewhere in the imminent Victorian's work. Maybe he's only vain. But I also yearn to believe that reading that passage somewhere I jotted it down because somehow it's word spoke to something inside me. That is now that I'm taking up the pen's contemporary equivalent now that I'm typing, I hope my scribbles will appear perhaps not as thought, perhaps precisely, but as subject or theme that will ring the least bit true. At least I can dream so. Or on a better day, if you'll forgive my presumption, they may even instruct. How long, however, dear William, must I keep on composing these lines without deliberation before those thoughts you speak of, Supervene? I settle for one. It's exacting to keep all this up dimly expecting some higher level of mental engagement as, meanwhile, the feature by our windows seems keen with the same old delightful birds of our winters. A red-pole pine-siskin, miniscule-brown creeper, nut-hatch, the usual horde of chickadees, a tufted tit-mouse, hairy and downy woodpeckers, and down again to the more alert bird's consternation and mine, though I confess its beauty also thrills me. A sharp-shinned hawk, fixed on murder. It skulks in the high-bare limbs of that paper birch until it stoops upon some blightful victim, curiously merely perches there, a declining to dive into rake its havoc. Your comments have made a little peace in my mind, Mr. Bakepeace. I took you at your word, and here I am, with far-along thoughts, having you and I was at the start. I've been pressing and posing ahead for five desultory stanzas, and I conclude that since I have to move forward, since I have to move toward conclusion, that like so much of life in the way I have known it, all but a tiny part of the process is consisted of waiting without a clue. Not that there isn't a whole array of worse concerns to fret about than this bemusement. I haven't yet gone down to the village store to fetch the newspaper.  But meanwhile, look at these birds, so vivid, brilliant, who etch their small but eloquent marks upon the snow, even the ones without a clue, they're close to death. Many, many years ago, I was sitting in a canoe in West Grand Lake in Washington, Maine, watching an entire peninsula burn. And it burned. Things have changed. We don't have so many forest fires in the east anymore. Better surveillance, better firefighting equipment. But in those days, often these fires would erupt, and then they would burn essentially until the snow came. They'd creep underground along the mulch and then they'd come up again. My favorite poet from the local town of 70 up there, George MacArthur, who would entertain you a lot more than I if he were here as an old water. And it was depression times. And he told me that he worked as a fire watchman one summer. He said, I was loafing. I didn't know nothing to do. He says, I had a little jug of coal.  Anyway. And I reflected on that, remembering that. And then I had a dream. I don't usually like to write about dreams because they're usually boring. I hope this one is not. This poem is called Fire and Jewel. 80-foot hemlock spruce for a pine. They kept lifting off their stumps like so many rockets. Smoke trail and all. And I beheld the fire across late from where I drifted. I'd been plumbing the water for fish when my eyes were lifted. 50 years later, I still recall my thoughts. And I felt that the thinkin' was more than odd. I was glad I had faculties to behold the hills astonishing orange heat as it flared to white with each explosion. Then the whole of that conflagration bending toward Earth, a horizontal wall, a monolith that somehow tore downhill on the sudden fury of wind. It was gorgeous. Several hours he'd go by till I learned Earl Bailey was forced to fly as quickly as he could on his dozer down from the ridge right into Farm Cove. He just had to take the loss that was at or burned. Donald Chambers wielding an axe in his turn with a makeshift crew collapsed from labor and heat. Paul the storekeeper dragged him away by his feet. I knew Don Sadler just a few more years. He and Earl and Paul. Good honest men. I can't account for dreams like the one of last night when I watched that fire again. In what seemed again pure quiet, serene, the same jetliner as years ago crossed high, the same scent rose, torch needles, caustic smoke. The same evil roar came on as I rocked in the same canoe, the waves still slapping its hull. And an hour or five decades back, the length of that ridge line turned the color of onyx. The latest of my wife's birthdays will soon be upon us. Is that why the dream passed smoothly into the next one? I saw, precisely, a beautiful onyx stone hung on her breast from a slip of chain. I'd never dreamt such a woman as that hillside blacken wouldn't meet her for years. Today, I drove through a jewelry shop as if still dreaming, 300 miles to the west of that little mountain. I bought the necklace and I felt some fire in my being, my old version of one that kindled in that old autumn, which has, for a long time, underground kept burning. Oh. A poem called Auction. If I passed their sleigh-backed house on a summer day and like anyone in town, I'd hear Fred scraping at his cherished rosewood fiddle, which is now just char. Hazel would be singing no matter, no better than her husband played. Neither one cared. They made their music for fun, and I made fun of them both. Then came fire. I feel odd guilt to consider their frailty, and I wonder, what am I here to see? I was nowhere, I think, of an early love of how often I laughed at her dreams of being a painter and what she hoped but was simply unable to save with shapes on canvas and colors. Of course, she left me. My life has been more capacious than I deserve, but in those days, her loss kept scorching my soul. I was all but speechless. She later died of an illness horribly young. I reflected after her fire from ahead cooled, and soon, in fact, simply guttered. I sometimes wished catastrophe would strike her. Fred and Hazel reduced to cinder. That was a shock and a shame. But more vanished, too, some even beforehand.  Their son and two daughters are here. Unlike the initial silverware, the tunes we mocked, the crude watercolor-thread rot of sunsets, snowstorms, birds, old barns and deer. Hazel's antimicassers, black wisps on blackened couchs and chair. Old photographs of his parents and hers long gone, now gone again. And again, I'm thinking of gauntness, the way my lover would dip the brush in paint and scowl as if in pain. Here's the little remains to sell as absurd. The auctioneer stumbled, searching for words. The people will get a sense of the mean age of my life. How many people in the room remember stewed bakers? Yeah. They grow old with me. At least call them string beans. And I gotta tell this story about the stewed baker. Not that it has anything to do with the pump. But I was saying earlier to my friend George Thomas that some people sneeze when there's ragweed. I tell stories when something reminds me like a stewed baker. When I was a kid, I'll ask you again. I don't know if anybody ever saw a film called Weed Geordie. It was about an island shepherd who was prepping for the island games and he was what we used to call it, throwing the hammer. A big old sledgehammer. I just thought that was the coolest motion and he won and he got the girl and everything.  Over and over again. One last try. And I don't know what happened. This thing took off.  And it was all like in slow motion. And bang, right on the roof. Thank God, not the windshield, right? This guy pulled it off. Just as my father pulled it off. And he came over. He was the mildest of men. He said, you get in the house. And then some negotiation went on. That was the last thing. So then I came back into the house. My father, what in the world were you? And he started to crack up. Thank God my mother was somewhere else or I'd been beaten to a pulp. But at any rate, that has nothing to do with this film. This is called Stick Season.  And I got thinking on how much I like that time of year, which is counterintuitive to some of you perhaps. But anyway, Stick Season. The one that precedes my season is the one that always shows on this quaint calendar photograph. The one that brings the tourists to scenes that are glorious, granted, exorbitant on the side hills. Most of the leaves incandescent drifting or plunging downward scuttle along the road beds of the creatures reluctant to be seen and warning us to notice them after all. But give me this, middle of November, Season of Sticks, a stubborn oak and beech leaves, umber and dung which rattle and gusts that smell so elemental they stab your heart. The trees, the other, unclothed ones standing there, gaunt bedignified and you can look straight past them. The contours of the mountains are perhaps but lovely in their apparent constancy. That gap-toothed barnhouse of space alone since its owner died. You remember Studebakers? That's one over there, a pickup truck, flat-footed among the sumacs, painted green way back these days at a stake in the hue of these later leaves I love. Old age has changed the mountains, too. They're rounder now than once, shaped so by the eons. Everything's for a time. Another colleague at the Vermont College, now Vermont College of the Fine Arts, named Jack Myers, died a few years ago. Jack was a Jewish boy from the North Shore of Boston and yet he ended up teaching at Southern Methodist University all his life and living in Dallas, but he never lost his love of the ocean so that after he died of cancer, his wife discovered a directive that he wanted his ashes scattered in as many oceans that she could manage to get. And she's been very diligent about that. I think she's been five of the seven seas. I was there for the Atlantic a spreading of the ashes off of Jetty in Winthrop, Massachusetts. That was the first stop. And this is a poem called Dark Chord, remembering Jack Myers, 2011. So an hours before I drove here, I slipped a DVD of Mingus in Europe into the player. And there he was on bass with Eric Dolphie on alto and bass clarinet, Jackie Byer on keyboard. Danny Richman drummed the Johnny Coleson trumpet and Clifford Jordan tenor. He was so young and strong. They were so gifted. And I was here on a jetty above the Atlantic one of several friends and family gathered to scatter the ashes of Jack our poet into the wave.  I'd been no genius. I had so little to offer the world, but here I was now. A pair of cormorants skimmed quickly by while two young lovers embraced the way they're supposed to embrace on the beach. And I saw the moon rise full. All was perfect, it seemed, except that Jack wasn't with us. Which may have accounted for the sound, not the intricate magic of that Mingus band I heard, nor a line or a stance from Jack's mournful witty poems, nor was it the cry of sea birds. And if Wagner didn't drive me almost mad, maybe because he does, I'd have said that the cord was a dark Fognerian one. As it played, it washed all over me as surf does a rocky shore. Some aunt or cousin that evening would show me a picture of Jack at 17 right here in Winfrey, Massachusetts sitting cocky and proud. On a motorcycle, handsome and frank, and it was oddly as though I somehow heard that photograph too, Jack sounded so young. His engine rumbled while he said something in that Boston grove he never lost. A boyhood friend had a word to say as well if it broke down before he could finish. I'll miss him terribly, said Mark, sweet mutual friend, and terrible it might be. So when I heard the cord again, it reminded me as I fought for balance on those rough and slippery rocks because I was old Jack's age exactly, damn it. I was older than those masters of jazz holding forth in Europe vibrant life back in the year when I was only 21. The cord reminded me as I noted the cormorants winging back and the lovers walking back and the moon and noted the ocean breeze the good Jack's went through childhood and thought I could be noting all this idly as believed me in this moment I'd love to have done. The dark cord reminded me something big has been shaping up for years and years and now you know old man it's for all of us here including you. I apologize. I had this corporal tunnel operation and I don't have any feeling back on my fingers yet. As I hope. Thank you very much. Alright. Coming to a close now I always say that when I gave my first poetry reading way back in the early 70s I was just so nervous I couldn't even describe it now. In my best poem I couldn't describe it. But the poet Richard Hugo had been very nice to me when I was starting out and he was out in Seattle but I called him up and I confessed I'm so I'm so nervous. Dick had a great big head with wrinkles not normally found in nature on it. It looked like perhaps on a St. Bernard. And he said well there's a secret to it kid. Oh good. He said never let a poetry reading exceed in length an episode, a single episode of Kojak. When I get to about half an hour I see this big wrinkled head and this bald one on the other shoulder and I become apprehensive. The poem called News Comes Third. Oh these guilty pleasures if that's what I really should call them I buy the local paper with store coffee. Then drive back home and sit ignoring whatever may be transpiring outside the window. Squall of the spring Tom Turkey calling his hands. The contrails of planes on the way to Europe, Tokyo, Rio, Paris who knows. I sit from the cup and turn first things to letter turn first thing to letters primarily to see just what might annoy me today. If it's someone fussing over an issue like water rates in a small town near or far whose fortune or misfortune I have no personal stake in I go right ahead to the sports. I check how my teams are doing that is if I haven't spent the preceding evenings hours watching games on TV but the hell I'm retired so leave me alone. My wife was right upstairs likely watching stuff of her own like some period thing from Great Britain which would allow me to sleep in an instant. No give me two on and two out on the bottom of the ninth an impossible game clenching shot and over time a field goal from 50 yards out. I don't care if some lady winds in her letter have a clerk in a local shop when she asked him for help said forget it I'm busy. That woman claims that people were kinder ones but I bet that complaint was heard when people still lived in caves.  We know each other like twins for decades. Can you tell me you're doing better? A train shakes the valley each morning while I'm feeding my sports addiction. I don't mind that sound far away. News comes third and it seems these days it's always a mess. There I go sounding myself like that woman I just made fun of.  I go back and skin through recaps never mind if I've seen the game above all one that we won but for me to say we is absurd I don't think I don't know it. I'm sure there's not one player who'd give me the time of day. Though I've never met her I don't like to think of that letter writer because I'll start making a picture her husband dead in the gulf her kids all disappointments are worse or drugs or both she stares through tears out her shit box apartment window while I read such letters and fume or check the stats in the box scores I keep my eyes off the photos to go with the news which comes third I know a poem that I like to read and my wife doesn't particularly like me to read pulled my wife back with a little touch of the erotic in here even at my age though not enough to warrant censorship or even perhaps to offend Mike Pence oh but you know I took up this sport of flat water kayak racing when I was probably 16 couldn't even using the word it was always to be used loosely my kids couldn't run anymore my knees wouldn't take it they live very close to the Connecticut river so it's ideal for me there's no impact it's close it's good work out and sometimes sometimes this remembers a time when my wife and I were in an open canoe just doing something much more sane just drifting down and seeing what we could see she and Val and I in the stern wait being what it is and ability oh it's called my wife's back all naked but for a strap it traps my gaze as we paddle as we paddle the deer familiar nubs of spine bone punctuating that sun warm slot the slender muscles that trouble the same sweet surface we've watched and smiled as green herons flushed and hopped ahead at every bend and we've looked up at a red tail tracing open script on the sky so clear and deep we might believe it's autumn no matter it's August still another fall we'll be honest before we know it of course we adore that commotion of color but it seems to come again as soon as it's gone away they all do now we're neither young anymore to put matters plainly my love for you over 40 years extends in all directions just now to your back as we drift paddle down the tranquil Connecticut River we've seen a mink scratch fleas out on a mud flat we've seen an osprey start to dive but seeing us think better of it two Phoebe's wag on an ash limb your torso is long you can't see your legs but they're longer I know Phoebe, osprey heron, hawk marvels under black mountain but I'm fixed on your back indifferent to other wonders bright minnows that flared and the shallows that gleam off that poor mink's coat even the fleas in its fur the various birds the lust of creatures just to survive but I watch your back never have I wished more not to die and finally the bookend the Starapulm began here at Saunders End I go to a poem called Here At Self that's got an inscription from the Eastern Maine Medical Center of patients report 821-2016 the eluting stent placed in the clues right coronary of otherwise fit and pleasant 73 year old male former poet laureate of Vermont Robin Occasionally we'll quote the pleasant part, but not being particularly pleasant. Yeah, I said, and pleasant mind, you know what? Here itself, I had a heart attack, something I kept on thinking when here is from others. In search of dazzling revelation, I'd wandered blind through the world, had begun to see as much. Having approached Paul's barbershop, for instance, down the same asphalt alley, and the same old hard-scrabble hamlet, and through the same old waiting room with those copies, unchanging of guns and ammo, popular mechanics would have you. I contemplated the ancient jug of Lucky Tiger, Paul's horseshoe pitching trophies, the snapshot curling around its tax of the 350-pound bear at his feeder, and Paul and myself right there in the mirror, as ever. It's 30 years and more, he's been cutting my hair as it's dwindled. Three full decades of identical questions when he's nearing the finish. What a dry. Shall I do the eyebrows? A little more off the top, trim the ears? Of course he knows the answers. It's the rightest all, and the very comfort.  I'm here. There's a tough, late solitary dahlia in our flower garden. A hooded McGanza Drake is grating like a rusted hen from our pond. I notice these things as it seems to me now I haven't before. I felt no fear, just wistfulness for wife, children, grandchildren, and friends. I had a dress rehearsal for death, but no terror. Strapped in a gurney, I went off to visit the wonderful Isness of Was, the Isness of Hout Forever.  I can't quite describe it, but here I am to see it. I pushed through the windows of the lustrous fall foliage on the surface. There, above the village steeple, a cloud resembling nothing only itself. Not chastity, not purity, cotton, whipped cream, itself. Who'd wanted other? I'm here to see it, itself, entire. Thank you.


What is up? Do you want to play a game? We're about to give you a house tour, and I want you to count how many things did we do build or make that is in our house.  Write it down, open up Notepad, put it in there. Let's start with the front porch. We made the Santa stop here. We made the interchangeable front porch post. We have the Christmas sign. We have another Christmas sign. It's it's double sided. We have a porch post, the snowflake, the Grinch behind Kim and the door hanger. Oh, and our lanterns and our two lanterns. And you can't see the little cement gnome down there.  That's right. What number are we at already? I don't even know. There's so much more. Come on in and we'll show you guys how fun it is in here. Let's go see how many we have. What is up? A welcome back. Do you like to do build or make it? So do we. And we have a new video each week this week. It's a holiday house tour.  And as you know, we recently moved into our commercial space. So we just moved our home business out of our home. So it's just now kind of coming back together. It's not perfect. But as we moved everything out, we started to take a look around and we realized just how much we've actually built, made or did a set of backwards in this house and we want to show you some of those things. Maybe you've seen some of those videos. Maybe you haven't. You want to go back and check those out. So we thought it would be a good video. Easy video for us this week and a fun video for you guys to wrap up the year. All right, let's start adding to that tally. We did some buffalo plaid. We have a Santa. He's supposed to be on the porch snowman with his buddy Tom Turkey. Also, he's supposed to be put away. We have some Christmas stuff, but I really love this coat rack. This coat rack looks so classy. Yes, it's one of my favorites. There's a few out of your favorite. So be warned. I'll point this out. This is one of them. A bench. Oh, the bench. I totally forgot about the bench. A front four year table and I've got the garch. Oh, that that was a beast to cut out. I made this sign, but I made this at a paint party and this is what kicked off this whole channel to begin with. So she came back asking for a cricket. I did kind of kicked off everything. It did. It did. All right, we've got two rooms this way. Let's move into the office, which was previously our shipping room. Oh, all right. We don't ship everything out of a shipping room. It's not really back to an office yet, but there are a few things in here that I thought we could point out. This artwork here, it's been hanging in here since it was Garrett's office. Oh, yeah. It was originally my office. It was Garrett's office. It was a shipping room. And now it's going to be my office again. This is melted crayon. We did this very early on season one, as Garrett would say. Season one. We did these antique mirrors. I love them. They're going to hang on this wall in here, but I just haven't had a chance to hang those up yet. But I wanted to remind you guys that we made those and they were fun. And they're sitting up on top of the. This has got to go in the garage. I don't know even know what's in here. But yes, this is our spring flower planter. Yes, our hanger. What else? We have the clock. The clock. That was pretty great. We put the paper down and sanded off the paint. The Gothic Arch in here is a prototype. We were hoping to offer it in our store. We have yet to get that quite figured out, but it's just hanging in here. That's coming up some wall space. And I keep forgetting that this little table, which is great and has made it all over the house. Yes, this little table has been used for so many different things. And of course, on the way out here, there's a stack of vertical signs that we rotate in and out of the front porch. There's a spring sign. There's a Fourth of July sign. Another six foot farmhouse sign that I don't know where to put them. I'm hoping to put it in here somewhere. I haven't figured it out yet, but I'm saving it. And I think that's it. Let's move to our game room. Welcome to the Billions room. Pool table, most expensive free thing ever. Ever. The slate was broke and we had to have it moved. It cost us like 800 bucks to get it in the air. And for a free pool table. But we love it. It's fun to play all the time. Yes, and it's become our game room now. So no dining room for us, just a game room. And let's point out some of the things in here. We talked about this ring toss in our last video. We love this thing. We use it all the time. This is another one of my favorite projects. And this is the Ace of Spades, this card, wall art. We happen to see it, I don't know, scrolling through Pinterest one day and Garrett was like, that is cool. I can make that. We can make it. And we used our X card for that. That was way before we ever had a Glowforge. Garrett's assistant, he can make it better. Oh, I can do it better now. He can do a figure. But I love that, I love that one. We did some canvas wall art over here. That was also a season one when I first got my Cricut using a Cricut stencil. The Rick and Morty under the TV is, what is that, red on our canvas. And it's lighted behind it. I have some lights behind it. I have some glow crystals sprinkled in there. And then another one of these projects that I love was this repurposed frame. This was a really dark wood. We got it on clearance from Hobby Lobby. It was shaped and broken. Yes, and all we did was add some chalk paint, add some paneling in the back and the family sign and it's beautiful. We love it. In the kitchen, there's a couple of things here in this little hallway and this butler's pantry. And this is our coffee cup holder. We did this maybe in third or fourth video. It is a very early video, but we still use it and it's still functional. We did this a couple of years ago. We love this wine rack. It's been great. It does hold the bottles of wine and we use it. It's beautiful. I think that's it for in there. You guys can come this way. In our kitchen, there's a few things in here. Of course, we just recently did this. Yeah. Just recently did this noodle board. This thing, it does clean up the look of the stove. I mean, I really like how nice and neat it makes things look. Kind of get the high the mess. It does. Yeah, because you know what? I didn't even have to clean that stove for this video because it's hidden underneath the noodle board. We did our B tier tray and this kind of sits here. We set this here in preparation for our Hello Fresh video. I love to hear ever since. Yeah, I like it there. And let's see. Another tier tray here on our island. This has some accents from, yeah, little Christmas trees. Christmas tree ornaments that we did a couple of years ago and we put those out on our tray this year. And then let's just move over here into our eating nook. Our eating nook. How are we gonna be able to add that calendar? Yes, it's N.V. like we're kids. Just a random builder sign. It has been sitting there. I was supposed to put a bow on it and I haven't supposed to sell it in the farmer's market and I didn't. But I thought I would point out these mirrors. So we purchased this mirror we moved in. We loved it. It's really, really cool. Really, really heavy. It's very heavy. But it looked like it was floating on this wall by itself. So we made these accent mirrors to go with it. We actually made this glass into mirrors and we aged it and it's been great. The only problem is about over the course of a week after we made these mirrors, the liquid nails we used to mount the mirrors onto the frame in the back actually ate through the paint. I don't think they ate through the paint. I think it stuck to the paint better than the paint stuck to the glass. I was going to pull the paint off. Yeah. Well, the mirrors are still strong. They just look silly. And this is a reminder, keep yourself humble. And I'm hoping to redo these eventually but it's not been a priority. So we just leave it. We have a giant six foot farmhouse sign. This is our happy place. And it is. I love it when we get the family together. This is our game room. It doubles as our eating nook game room. I was going to say the same thing about it would be a game room. All right, let's move to our family room. We could be here for a minute. Well, as soon as we enter, we have floating shelves. I think this is season one. Then we have some wood burning that we did with the ammonium chloride. We have one of our first low forge projects with the resin. The first wood burning project where we actually use a little wood burning tool. By hand, but we use sublimation on these metal tiles. Isn't this great? These photos look beautiful. They haven't gone anywhere. Oh, and then we have the lanterns that we made when we made with the glow forge. And the nooms. I love those little nooms. I forget they're up there. They're honestly, they're up there all year round. They stay up there all year because they're way up there and I can't really reach them. So they just stay there. But, oh, and then that moves us right over here into our steampunk lamp that we made with a live edge piece of wood. You can't see the bottom of it.  Oh yeah, that's what it was. Yes. Try to show you a little technique with that one. And then the chair. The chair that the cat loves. Yeah, this was probably the beginning, end of season one, beginning of season two. We love this chair. It's really cool. We actually made part of our family room furniture. Now, the cat loves it. I don't know if you can see it from that distance, but she uses it as a scratchy post. That's okay. And I don't care because I didn't pay much for it. Yeah, it was super affordable. Now, right into the bench. We tried to do some upholstering and we tested it out with a bench. Well, we built the bench. Yeah, we built the bench and then the upholstery. With the upholstery on it. Now, this was supposed to go up in my bedroom. It's never made it because in the, maybe final shots, didn't we have it in here in final shots or something? But I moved it over here, put the cat bed on it and it stayed there ever since. The cat loves it. But I'm sitting next to that window. She's got her bench and her chair. Yeah. And then, now, this is a part of our everyday decor. We still have all of our Christmas decorations up, but we did make our stocking post here. And with all of our kids, it's been a lifesaver. It does hold all of these stockings. We did not make this table, but I love it. And under it, we made everything underneath it. We have made, like, there's two lanterns. An American flag. An American flag, which is normally there. That stays there pretty much all year round. And the lanterns will stay. The snowflakes will go away. Our farmhouse sign. This was our six foot farmhouse sign. There's something kind of fantastic about that, isn't there? This is our little quote from Fantastic Mr. Fox. It's our family favorite movie. There are some ornaments on the Christmas tree. We did the ammonium chloride here. And on a couple of more of these wood rounds. Oh, and we got the Grinch. Oh, and our Grinch back here, our little Grinch Feets in the middle of there. We were talking about a Yeezoo illustrator. Yes, yeah. This was very early on too. This is a clock. Giant clock. We love this giant clock, yes. Oh, don't forget the cement. The little cement pieces. Cement flavor chairs.  We did not move these things here for this video. Except for these, oh, go ahead. Yeah, pillow. I did the sublimation on glitter. Yeah, that was cool technique. Then we don't always keep both of these ottoman tables out. I usually have one or the other, but I did bring out both of them for this video. We did the ottoman table first and we did the carving on the inside with the X-Carve. That was pre-glow forge as well.   Yeah, I think so. We repurposed that. Remember, that was a countdown calendar on the back. Oh, that's right. It was a countdown calendar. And then of course, giant library bookcase. This thing is so heavy, but it's so awesome. It's solid. It's not going anywhere and we love it. As a matter of fact, when we're done with this video, I think I'm gonna do some moving around. I'm gonna move it over here where the floating shelves are and move the floating shelves over here. So, you know, things changed, but I just moved around.  We won't spend a lot of time, but we did make those pumpkins. We made those tiny houses that are on there. And we made a little blower thing with cricket. Yes, we did that. We etched on it on the plexiglass, or what is it? Acrylic. Acrylic, yes, with the cricket. We did some posters over there. Lisa, have some sublimation posters right here. And the, I love that sign. I don't know if you can see it from there. Oh yeah. I think, oh, and we did the armrest on the sofa right here, which has been a lifesaver. Love it. Love it, love it. I eat there half the time. All right, let's move upstairs. Wait, hold on. Oh, yeah. Can we do the bathroom? Do we take a quick trick to the bathroom? Few more things that I couldn't get from that angle. One, we have our blanket ladder. I love this blanket ladder. We have our chunky blanket, where I showed Gary how to make a blanket. This is a funny video, if you haven't seen this one. I'm almost a professional knitter now. This sign up here is one of our most viewed videos ever, how to use a stencil with a cricket. And we keep this in our home. Still hanging here. And then one last room down here is a bathroom. Just want a little peek in there, front half bath down here. Do you have to use the lube? Let's take a peek. In here, we made the leaning shelf. We replaced the light fixture.  And then we added the towel rack. Things in our stairwell as we head upstairs. One of my other favorite projects is this photo frame collage wall. We love these frame collages. We took frames from around the house. We either painted them or waxed them. And we built larger frames for the outside. We stenciled and painted them. And I love this wall and I love these photos. All right, there's more in our hallway upstairs. We recycled and repurposed this home sign. We did this little table here. Garrett's man cave sign. We'll peek in there in a minute. It's not ready. This pub near, we're just right behind you. And then let's make it into the team room. It's semi-clean, but it never gets all the way clean. Just be glad we don't have smell-o-vision. Yes. This whole bedroom suit, we found it at a thrift store and repurposed it, probably in 1980s oak look. And we painted the whole thing and waxed it. We did the nightstand and the chest of drawers. And then we made kids' desks in one of our videos. This is at the very beginning of the pandemic where the girls had to be homeschooled. We made this desk for them and now Sarah uses it as a makeup table. A slightly less team team room. Our second team room. So this one we started with the bed. I'm just gonna steal your thunder. Yes. I love this bed, this bed was awesome. This bed was actually pretty easy to make. Queen size bed and that thing is solid. It is not going anywhere. We love it and we did a great chalk paint and we did layered chalk paint. So when we distressed it, it was a little purple, shall we? Oh, that's right. I remember.  Ooh yeah, open it. We don't know what's in there. Well, it's a semi-cat bed. She lets the cat sleep under there. And then another kids desk and the rotating bookcase. One last thing in here, we did the jewelry organizer. I think that's it. But one of my favorites was the rotating bookcase. Yes, that was obviously. It is a space saver, I enjoy it. Yes, now that takes up a corner of the room, but it's so versatile because it has a bookcase, it has a mirror, it has, it's a coat rack or a towel rack and it's a cork board, it's very versatile. Go, go Gadget. Teen bathroom, don't go in there, but we did do one thing, the tic-tac-toe with the toilet paper. We did that at the beginning of the pandemic. During the toilet paper shortage. Silly, it was the craziest project. We chose that project, not realizing, not thinking about the toilet paper shortage. I think we found like five roles and that was all in the video. It got used. Two rooms in this house that we've done nothing to. Nothing. And that is a laundry room and that's still build-a-grade laundry room, not even gonna show you what that looks like, but that's a 2022 project.  The only thing we've done in here is Garrett's closet and his skateboard shoe rack. I know you've seen that video. If not, you should go check it out. And... Oh, the other crayon one. And the matching drip art on canvas where Garrett did the wax. I did watercolor. We do have this hanging in here. I think that's about it. If you guys wanna walk down. Oh. Do you wanna see the man cave?  All right, we'll show you the man cave. Hold on. Hold on. Let me make sure it's okay. All right, you ready? Let's go. All right, it's not very man cave-ish yet. So you just moved out. I'm moving in, but we're man cave-ing it. It's in its infancy. I have my man cave signs ready and I have my ammonium chloride welcome sign ready. And if you guys watched last week's video, I made a joke about Garrett using these Halloween feet as a side table. Hilarious. Hilarious. All right, let's get out of here. What was your guess? This is how many there actually turned out to be. So were you even close? Let me know in the comments what your guess was. And... And how far off were you? You need to add probably 10 or 15 things to that because you know what we didn't do? We didn't make it into the bonus room. We have a 21 year old who opted out of us filming in her room but the pegboard is up there still. Oh yes, the pegboard. It's a beautiful wall decor. We have a chandelier that's on those stairs along with that fake rust sign that's also on those stairs. So I just added a couple to the ticker. And I'm not even gonna add these to the ticker. There are probably 10 things in the garage that we never even get to show you. We haven't even touched on Halloween. All the Halloween stuff. So we have our Easter things. We have our Easter vertical signs. We have door hangers from St. Patrick's Day. There's a bunch of them. There's a bunch of them. Well, we wanna end this year with a huge thank you and we love you guys and we really love our patrons. Thank you for all of your support. And we look forward to more fun in 2022. You can already see we have some ideas. We're gonna be doing some stuff in our master bedroom and needs a whole makeover. That's probably more than one video. But I'm looking forward to some of those projects. I also want a laundry room makeover. We gotta do something in there. It's a disaster. I'm ready for the laundry room makeover. I think that would be a fun one. All right, well, we are about out of time. So if you're not joining us for the Patron Actor Show, we will see you next week where we'll do it, build it and make it again for real this time. Ha ha!


Turns out selfie sticks are totally old news now because evidently we're going to start doing our selfies with flying drones. I'm with Gordon Cockburn of Habitco and he's going to talk about their newest device. Sure. What we have here is a device called CME and it's a flying camera that is designed to take selfies. It takes 8 megapixel pictures as well as 1080p video and it instantly shares those pictures and videos with your friends on all your social media or some of your social media sites. So while it's still flying or? Well with iOS it works while it's still flying because they allow that but with Android you actually have to land the flying camera first. Oh wow so can we hold one up here and this is an audio podcast and a video podcast where I have you describe it a lot. So this is what about the size of a deck of cards maybe a little bit bigger? It's a little bit bigger than a deck of cards. It's smaller than an iPhone 6 when it's folded up so when it's folded up it looks like this and so that way you can put it in your pocket, you can put it in your purse, your backpack wherever you want and take it with you. Absolutely. So the propellers have all folded in. They all fold in. Okay. So nice and pretty colors, we got a red one, a green one, a black one, purple. Right. We have all designed to have nice fashion type colors. It has a camera on the front that is actually movable so you can move it 90 degrees so you can get the exact angle that you want. So from horizontal to straight down? That's correct. So it has an app that is how you control the drone but it actually flies itself. So it has auto take off and it goes up to about 2 meters and it stays there and it waits for you and until you tell it what to do if you want it to move. If not, you just start snapping pictures or video. Okay, so you can actually control it from the app and not just taking pictures and video but moving the drone. Yeah, the actual flight control can be controlled by the app itself. The angle of the camera, I think you said ahead of time, right? The angle of the camera, yeah, that you do manually before you fly but there's a function that actually turns the camera where you want it. And actually, you know, the camera can move this way. So you can translate and rotate an azimuth. Right. Alright. And what's the resolution on the camera? The camera is a 8 megapixel still shots or 1080p video.  I guess they're not letting you fly them inside here tonight? We cannot fly them inside the building, yeah. Alright, how about under this little cover? We'll just get down on our hands and knees there. Yeah. So what's the connectivity between the two? It's connected by Wi-Fi. Okay, so the CME creates its own Wi-Fi network? That's exactly what it does. It will also connect through 4G if 4G is available. Trying to think what that would mean. That's interesting. Yeah. So is there any kind of encryption of the traffic between the two? There is. It's password controlled. So this phone knows this particular flying camera. Okay, so the camera has a password. Is it AS256? SSL? What are you doing? Well, it starts off being a generic password, but you can then change inside the app itself, you can change the password so no one can actually control your drone other than you. I see. And then the, so the app must have how you connect into your social media accounts? That's right. So you can actually set that up very easily in the settings and so it allows you to set up whether you want it to be Facebook or Twitter or YouTube or Google Plus or, you know, the other social medias that we have set up.  Yes, we are. Yeah, because now, you know, you're going to get this stuff instantly and you're going to get it a lot more often from your friends that like to take selfies. I think if I had to come up with a business plan it would be work off the inherent narcissism in people. So what do you expect the CME to be on go to market? A rate round the first of March. Oh, that's good. And do you have a price point yet? 199. Wow, that's not bad. I was so annoying my friends with something like this. So it's the letter CME and the company is Habiko, H-O-B-B-I-C-O. Correct. And website is c-me-anywhere.com. All right. That sounds great. Thank you very much for your time. Thank you.


You've all chosen a path that demands commitment, compassion, and deep dedication to actually making an impact in the world and I just want to let you guys know that you all will find your calling and your path here at SU. You are surrounded by people that really care about you and that's one of the reasons why I chose SU. I love how intimate our campus is because you're able to interact with all the different programs on campus and you get to meet people from different backgrounds and like what China said you'll get to hear their story and it's inspiring and it really helps me kind of bring back to that why. Take the moment to think about the dream that brought you here today.


Hi, this is Pastor David Rosales. I'm the pastor of Calvary Chapel of the Chino Valley in California. I recently was asked if it's a sin for a Christian to drink alcohol for recreational use. This is one of the topics that provokes heated arguments amongst Christians. The practice of drinking, when argued for by those who believe it permissible, is usually presented under the liberties that believers enjoy within the sphere of God's grace. The argument usually centers on the premise that it is intoxication that is forbidden, but drinking in and of itself is not. So, if someone enjoys wine or beer, then it's permitted as long as one does not get drunk. Those who believe it to be something that is wrong are usually labeled legalists who are imposing their strict moral values on other people and do not understand the grace that has been given to us and has given us liberties that include social drinking. Those who do not believe in recreational drinking will often look at those who exercise such liberty as carnal, because they drink and appear to have the values of the world uncaring of alcohol's dangers and certainly oblivious to how others view them and the detriment to their witness such behavior is. It is instructive to note that in the book of Ephesians Paul said in chapter 5 verses 14 through 17, awake you who sleep arise from the dead and Christ will give you light. See then that you walk circumspectly not as fools but as wise redeeming the time because the days are evil. Therefore do not be unwise but understand what the will of the Lord is. Notice he told them to walk carefully redeem the time do not be unwise understand God's will. Immediately after writing these words he went on to say and do not be drunk with wine which is dissipation but be filled with the spirit. All of these commands hinged on their understanding the times that they were living in. They were living in days where the entire atmosphere was in hostile opposition to Christianity because the days are evil believers are instructed to live Christ honoring lives. Earlier in his letter Paul told them to put on the new man which was created according to God in true righteousness and holiness and this is the kind of life that they were designed for. We need to remember that our lifestyles reveal the sincerity as well as the maturity of our faith in Jesus as well as the depth of our love for him and our devotion to him. This love for Jesus is evidenced by the consistency of our works as well as our words. The new way of life that evidences our walk with the Lord is not something we create for ourselves it is in reality a supernaturally empowered life made possible by the Spirit of God. In order to be able to live lives that bring glory to God we need a spirit. With this in mind Paul commands believers to not be drunk with wine. He contrasts the spirit filled life with drunkenness. Why?  We need to remember that the ancient Greeks were idolaters who worshipped a variety of nature gods and one of the gods that was worshipped was given the name Bacchus. He was especially known as a god of wine and ecstasy. When his devotees worshiped they would drink and they would get drunk. After drinking their priests would begin to prophesy under the influence of their god. As they were drunk they would give their oracles. The worshipers would engage in excesses of every kind including sexual orgies. They believed that drinking was an appropriate way to worship the god who invented wine. Because they were changed in terms of their behavior after drinking they believed that he was the one influencing them. Whatever they did while drunk would be blamed on his influence in their lives and this is what Paul is speaking of when he speaks of dissipation which is no self-control. So that brings us to the obvious question what about alcohol? Again there are Christians who have no problem drinking and argue in its favor. Some are alcohol evangelists. They even attempt to argue people into their position and sadly those who argue in favor of grace very often are more concerned with their wants and forget what Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians chapter 6 verse 12 when he wrote, all things are lawful for me but all things are not helpful all things are lawful for me but I will not be brought under the power of any. For those who enjoy your liberty and drink these questions might help you as you consider the pros and cons of being a sipping saint. Is it costly? Is it something I should spend my money on? Is it habit forming? If I become addicted how will it affect my life or the life of my family? Can I make poor decisions while under its influence? Can my life and those I love be affected by it? Will it offend other Christians? Do I have to defend my drinking to others? Will it harm my Christian testimony? Can I share the gospel effectively while drinking? Is it right? Has it improved my testimony and made me more like Jesus? At this time there are over 16 million alcoholics in the United States 76 million Americans who do not drink who do not drink have an immediate family member who is an alcoholic between 10 and 15 percent of all Americans are alcoholics it is the number one drug problem in the in the United States in the last 50 years more Americans have died due to alcohol than the deaths of World War one and World War two combined 25 to 40 percent of all hospital beds every day in America have people in them with a problem related to alcohol 50 percent of all traffic fatalities related to alcohol 65 a day 20 percent of all freezing deaths 25 percent of choking deaths 50 percent of all falling deaths 52 percent of those who die in a fire is related to alcohol 60 percent of all suicides 64 percent of all murders 69 percent of drownings 72 percent of robberies and assaults related to alcohol 60 percent of all rapes 80 percent of all criminal court cases in the United States related to alcohol up to 50 percent of teen driving deaths related to alcohol interestingly in the United States alcoholism is classified a disease if it's a disease why are there breweries and distilleries why are there liquor stores and bars licensed to sell it why do you have to be a certain age to get it why do you pay taxes on it one website said that Americans spend approximately 57 57 billion dollars on alcohol yearly if there were labs making and selling hepatitis or meningitis they would be closed down 77 of all high school students in America claim to have used alcohol or are using alcohol 44 percent of all eighth graders have used or are presently using alcohol 6.6 million American children under eight live in a home with at least one alcoholic parent in the United States there are 500,000 children between 9 and 12 that are already alcohol dependent 11,000 underage young people try alcohol for the first time every day in the United States if you believe you have liberty to drink and still walk in the spirit please don't evangelize some seem bent on changing other people's minds and attitudes concerning social drinking and seem more concerned about preaching drinking than preaching the gospel I was an alcohol abuser for several years and when I got saved I began to seek and to serve the Lord and to learn how to walk in his spirit I saw what alcohol did to me and to those I knew who were also abusers of alcohol why would I return to the vomit that the blood of Jesus washed me from like the apostle Peter said in 1 Peter 4 3 we have spent enough of our past lifetime in doing the will of the Gentiles when we walked in lewdness lust drunkenness revelries drinking parties and abominable idolatries the reality is that according to Revelation 1 6 we were created by God to serve him as kings and princes craving intoxicants is not for a king clouds judgment and also reveals a weakness of character simply put Christians are not to yield to this kind of control over them just because it is legal to drink doesn't make it morally right or spiritually wise to do so someone said no one starts out to be an alcoholic everyone begins with a defensive attitude saying I'm just a social drinker there's nothing wrong with it no one says it is my ambition that someday I want to lose my job my health my self-respect my marriage and my family someday I want to be dependent on alcohol to get through my day yet this is the destination at which several millions of people have arrived why do you suppose that is it's because alcohol is promoted and elevated as a normal or sophisticated activity in life is also expensive addictive and enslaving someone else said you may be able to handle it but what about your children who are influenced and introduced to your use of alcohol by the example you show what if they're not able to handle it the simple fact is the church needs God's power to be effective seeing that the pressure to conform to the world is constant we need his power constantly the argument seems to be how much alcohol can we consume and still be solid believers the real answer is how can I overcome the temptation to compromise my walk with Jesus be filled with God's holy spirit the spirit needs to anoint to fill be poured out to baptize us that we might be transformed we need to be filled with the person of the spirit who has his own will thoughts and direction the fact is there was a move of the holy spirit when I got saved and we need him to move again Paul is saying don't be intoxicated by the influences of this world you have great potential cultivate it be continually filled with the presence of the one who is all wise all knowing who will guide you in everything that's what you were constructed for thank you for watching if you have any questions or topics that you would like for me to speak about please leave them in the comments of this video I look forward to hearing from you and don't forget to share this post this is David Rosales pastor of Calvary Chapel of the Chino Valley california


Today is a very sad day for me and for the 4th Asia community. Our friend and developer, Arib Jamal, is no longer with us. He passed away this morning in Aligarh, India. We heard from a friend that the oxygen cylinder did not arrive in time. Yesterday, we had a project called, we discussed its condition. Everyone was hoping that he would be healthy in a few days and come back to us. I trusted with him last time on the 22nd of April when we tried to debug an issue together. Arib contributed significantly to 4th Asia and the open source community. He mentored hundreds of junior students voluntarily. He did not care about recognition. He just wanted to share his knowledge with the others. He was one of the most talented developers that I have ever met. And a very humble person. He was always reliable, delivered what he has promised. Whenever I opened an issue within hours, I already saw his update on the status of the issue. He worked very hard and never complained. He really enjoyed his job and what I could see. I liked the way how he explained things to us. Whenever I participate in his workshop or listen to his presentation, I was very proud that he was good at us. It was our project and then life is really too short. What happened to Arib today reminded me how privileged I am. Compared to friends and colleagues who are living in India in all the more unfortunate regions, I will work harder to foster more exchange and collaboration. Only by working together, we can solve a bigger problem. I was also what Arib believed in. Sending our love to his family and friends, he will be missed forever. Arib was a truly good person with a diverse and very interesting personality with so much to discover. He had a special humor as one could see in his tagline on social media. Coda, introvert, gruelingly boring. He wasn't an introvert when he worked on software. He shared his knowledge with the world openly and freely. He helped so many to learn how to use and develop technologies. He was an amazing person, a brilliant developer. I wanted to talk to him many times and ask him to change his tagline. I thought it wasn't just, it wasn't correct. That's not him. But I also thought this is his way and idea to show himself. So in the end, I never asked him to change it. Arib was a straightforward person, but respectful of people in his communication. And we communicated nearly every day in the last two years. He was a fighter for free speech, privacy, justice, democracy. He didn't do it with big words. Sometimes he shared his views online, but mostly he tried to change the world more through his actions and his work in the open source and free software community. The memes and cartoons he shared often had a sarcastic touch. I believe this gave him strength to continue despite a lot of injustices that happened in his home country, India and around him. Once he shared a photo of Modi with Shahrukh and Amir Khan and wrote, best actor of India with Shahrukh and Amir Khan. It made me laugh. And at the same time, the laughter got stuck in my throat when I thought about politics in India. But this was the humor of Arib. Only today, I saw his post of his computer set up of last month. There was a lot of colorful blinking lights. He had many more signs to him that we will now never know, never have the chance to learn about it. He liked to learn about the universe, watch and read about science, nature and humanity. Besides all the scientific and political literature, he also liked a good love story. And he liked Harry Potter books. While I never saw any attempt of him dancing, I know that he liked Indian music, Bollywood, Elvis Presley and Enrique Iglesias. His and mine tastes of music weren't so different. But we will never have the chance to enjoy them together now. When he was finally getting a passport after dealing with a bureaucracy in India, the pandemic made it impossible for us to meet again in Singapore. Last year, we organized the Open Tech Summit in India as a small event in Delhi and discussed plans there for the future. He was getting on board as a full-time developer with Force Asia and we discussed a lot of great ideas. Arib was too young to leave us. Arib had a strong dedication and understanding of so many things, of technology and logic. It was a once-in-a-lifetime lucky chance to work with him. All he wanted was to do good. Arib, you are leaving a huge gap. We will miss you forever.


Sometimes, people found her floating upon the waves. Samadhi is a fantastic place and there is one particular devotee. His face has become exactly like hers. Mayama was… nobody really knows where she came from, but looking at her physical features, probably she came somewhere from Northeastern states, either from Nagarland or somewhere where the features are Mungaloid. She could be from Tibet, for all you know, because I think she never spoke, is that so? She never really spoke. So she was in the town of Kanyakumari, which is the very tip of southern India, Indian Peninsula. So she just wandered the streets like a… like a beggar she walked around, but with a different kind of pride in her. And all the local dogs gathered around her and became her friends. So she had built a whole dog family because she fed them. Whenever she got any food, she naturally fed them, even if she didn't eat. So she went to such extremes in South Indian hotels, some of the dishes you never buy them, I'm telling you. Some of the dishes are displayed in a glass case in front of a restaurant, like Idli… not Idli usually, what are some sweet and laddus.  They are today special. So she would go to that extent that she would grab this food and throw it to the dogs. So there have been incidents where a few times she's been beaten up and abused and everything. So she was getting the social harsh treatment because she's seen just as an irresponsible thief, not as a saintly person because nobody could see anything saintly about her. Because a saint means he must be dressed in such a way, there must be three lines on his forehead and he must say the right things and you know, and he must be lifeless. But she is punky, but sometimes people found her floating upon the waves. She was just floating upon the waves. That amazed people when they started looking at her with little more respect. Later on, some person who was involved in our old age, he brought her to a place called Salem and she lived there and she died there, she left her body there. Har Samadhi is a fantastic place. Fantastic means not in any way, it's just one cement thing, very barely built, a small house, but it's really strong, strong, strong it is. So I happen to be in a small hill station which is close to this place and that day happened to be a power numbing, that is a full moon day. So somebody was talking about this Mayama, Har Samadhi and many things I had heard about her from many people. So we thought we'll drive down from the hill and just go there because it's power numbing evening, let's see. And somebody came and said that something special happening there on power numbing evening. So when I went there at 5.30 in the evening, there was nobody. So we went in and sat in a small room, just in by ten kind of room with a large picture of hers. She looks totally weather beaten like most of the Tibetan women, just about the same kind of face, but it's explosive that place. And there is one particular devotee, this is a man about 50 years of age at that time. His face has become exactly like hers. This man is a Tamil man. He can't have Tibetan or Nepali or Nagaland features, he's a Tamil man. His face is almost like hers, just the same his face has become. This is what devotion can do. Devotion is always the quickest way because when you create unwavering emotion towards something, everything in you just gets focused. Not just your emotion, your mind, it takes it off completely. Your physical body also gets oriented towards that, your energies also get oriented towards that. And this man reshaped his face just like hers, his love for her is such and I thought this is an incredible man. Devotion just means this, it's become a one-pointed consciousness. It is not wavering here and there, it's just one way. Once everything is put, everything that is there in this being is put in one direction, things will happen in ways that you have not believed possible. I want you to just look back on the spiritual history of India. You will see devotees doing incredible things, things that happen around them are too magical for anybody to believe. They had no knowledge, they had no other mantra tantra going with them. The only thing was single-pointed devotion, that's all. Things that happened within them and around them are too magical for anybody to believe. Incredible things happened around them and millions and millions of people were moved simply by their presence. All they had is single-pointed devotion, that's all. Before I went I go with some fruit, he gives me a can of wild honey from the place. He said, I want to die as a yogi, not as a rogui. When I was about fifty-five people were there to witness this, he just sat there and he left.