I'm Harold Pacius, we're on the air again with another edition of Pacius on the News. We started 15 or 16 years ago and came up with a name, probably took us about a minute to come up with that name, because it started with me reading the newspaper and expressing outrage about certain things in the newspaper. So we called it Pacius on the News. But then we started having guests, and we've had a string of very, very interesting guests. A lot of politicians from outside of Maine, members of Congress, senators, governors from Maine. Tonight, we're doing something slightly different. We have a fellow who was governor of Connecticut for two terms, Dan Malloy, governor Dan Malloy, who is now the head, the chancellor of the University of Maine System, all of the campuses.  Dan is fine. We have a governor in Maine, and so I defer to the good governor of Maine. But I answered a mayor, governor, chancellor, Dan, you know, hey, you, my mother used to run through all of the boys' names before she got to mine when she was yelling at me. Well, Dan, welcome. We're glad you're in Maine. We're glad you agreed to come on this show and talk about the University of Maine System and higher education in Maine. Let me ask you this. This is kind of unusual. I think folks ask themselves, a lot of people read about you being the new chancellor. A lot of people know that you were the governor of Connecticut before you came here to be the chancellor of our higher education system. Isn't it unusual? I mean, a guy who is a politician and a lawyer, a politician, says, yeah, I'll do that. Well, yeah, I suppose it's an unusual story. It's not a unique story. There are a number of folks who have political backgrounds. I think what's unique about this story is that I'm not the chancellor or president of the University of Connecticut. I'm heading a system in another state. But there is some history to that. I was always involved in educational issues. I grew up with very serious learning and physical disabilities that took, you know, forever. Actually, you never overcome some of the processing disorders I suffer from. And so I was always committed to education, particularly public education. I attended most of my time was in public education. My dad was in the insurance business and he did get the contract on a local Catholic school. So I had to leave public school after fourth grade and go to fifth, sixth, seventh and eighth. Because it was good for business. Yeah, it was good for my dad's business. So he was an insurance agent. So I... So you went to Catholic... So I went to St. Purchitt's school through fifth through eighth grade. Then I went back to public education. But the point is that I wouldn't be who I am and have accomplished what I...if I've accomplished anything, would not have accomplished anything but for public education and the teachers who took time to bring me along. And I've repaid that by being involved in educational issues all my life, served on a board of education, have championed educational reform issues, taught at the University of Connecticut for a number, actually 12 or 13 years as an adjunct professor while I was also doing other things just because I wanted to stay in touch with how younger people were processing information, younger people than I were processing information and treating information. And made a decision that as my political career was coming to an end that the field that I wanted to be active and again for what I call my fifth career would be higher education. And I don't think anyone's more surprised than I am that some other state hired some other state's governor to had a system. But I'm very grateful for it and I think that what we've been able to accomplish in a relatively short period of time, at least the trustees who hired me should feel good about what we've done. Well, you know, I got some other questions to ask you about your background because you said five careers. Yeah. And before I ask you take up on what you said, which is, you know, you think you've accomplished some things as a chance to the University of Maine. I want to insert in there, what are the five careers? So I, you know, I graduated from Boston College Law School and I immediately went down and was an assistant district attorney. Excuse me, one second. There's a lot of eagles around here in Maine.  I'm a double eagle. Yeah, I got my undergraduate degree and went directly to law school and graduated from law school in 1980. So that kind of gives you an idea how old I am. And upon graduation, before graduation, I was given a job as an assistant district attorney, Kings County, New York, which is Brooklyn. Interestingly enough, part of my family from Ireland came through Brooklyn, so I was returning in some senses. Did that for about three and a half years, tried 23 felony cases, had convictions in 22 of those cases, ended up in the homicide bureau.  I tried, yeah, I tried murder cases. Four murders I prosecuted and had convictions in each of them and actually did some defense work subsequently to that, including a homicide case. So then I was in private practice of law, very different than being a prosecutor or assistant district attorney. Then I was mayor of Stanford for 14 years. And as I told you in a prior conversation, no one has ever did that for more than eight years or has done it for more than eight years other than myself a year later. This is a strong mayor, strong mayor form of government. And it's not not a part time job, not a part time job. And it's a partisan elections and a 40 member city council and the board of finance and a board of education. I served also on the board of education, as I mentioned, served on the board of finance for 11 years, was mayor for 14 years. A year after I was mayor, she gave me one second. And in that job, it's mayor of Stanford, Connecticut. You had to have political skills, right? Actually, being the youngest of eight children, you had to have political skills. So it starts well before that. Yeah, no, it's a different. It's different than the job is known in Maine. I would I would suggest to you. OK, so then I've met and have made friends of a number of people who have been, for instance, the mayor of Portland, but it's a very different form of government. Yeah, chief executive. And then, OK, and then did you go directly to the election for governor from mayor? Yeah, I had I had run for mayor. I had run for governor once before and won the convention, but lost a primary. And that was in 2006. In 2010, I came back and ran. I was I was primaried and won that primary. Actually, the current governor of Connecticut, Ned Lamont, was the person who ran against me for the nomination and I defeated him. Then I was elected governor and then reelected governor and then moved on to. Actually, I spent a period of time as the Rappaport distinguished visiting professor at Boston College Law School and then subsequently had an opportunity to join the academic world in a different capacity, had several opportunities to do that and decided to come to Maine to take on the challenge of a system as opposed to an individual university. First thing that occurs to me when I hear your story and your background is that you told me in the beginning that when you were in school, you had to overcome some learning disabilities and physical disabilities and physical disabilities and and I never overcame the learning disabilities. I still suffer from from some processing disorders. And and but, you know, you learn how to work around it. Well, and there are people watching who themselves or in their family, children have learning disabilities. And so this is a very interesting discussion we're having because you can have learning disabilities and do all that you have done.  My mother, actually, so I was the youngest of eight children. Several of my siblings also had learning disabilities. My mother became a self taught expert in the area. She was a registered nurse and because my some of my older siblings had suffered far less of a disability than I did. She she knew what to do and and and how to protect me and how to encourage me and and and the like. But I was thought to be I have records.  And but I didn't have hand to eye coordination. And written language is to this day a very difficult process for me. If you if you use your phone or you use a typewriter, every time I look at that, I'm in essence seeing it for the first time. There's no pattern that that comes easily to to me. And so if you were asked me to write a sentence, I would have to concentrate on each word to to accomplish that word. And that's still a disability I wrestle with on a daily basis. So what's the secret to doing what you have done in your life, not withstanding these disabilities? Is it I don't want to be trite, but is it just hard work? I you know, I think it's I listen, I my mother I can remember the and I've told this story publicly before, you know, when I was a very young child, my mother purchased a radio in those days.  And she put it on the table next to my bed and she set it to talk radio so that she so that I would develop a speaking style and a vocabulary that would would be ahead of other people. My mother thought that I had natural leadership abilities and she encouraged me to exercise those abilities.  I can remember my mother at a young age, you know, driving me to a nursing home and telling me to get out of the car and go in there and brighten somebody's day. And so as a series of experiences of some teachers who cared, some who didn't, a mother who and father, but primarily my mother was the lead and quite frankly, the experience of some of my older siblings. So I didn't come to talk about that. I know I've had a very interesting life. I didn't ask you to, but now I'm asking you. So you've got to respond to my questions. That's the rule here. Yeah, I got it. Yeah, that's that's the way we do it. But it's the last thing on this subject.  Yes. Irish. Yeah. Irish. Her family was Irish. My family. I'm all Irish. So my mother was all Irish. My father was all Irish, but her mother came from Ireland. Catherine Fagan. Yeah. OK. All right. So now let's go back to the University of Maine system of higher education. Yeah. So the trustees hired you to come here. Governor points you, right? No, I don't I think the governor probably didn't, you know, she has to OK. I don't know. I don't think that that's part of the process. I think I think she may have been consulted and and and didn't object. But but the trustees were, you know, it's a it's a big process to be a select that as a president or or or a chancellor of a system. So lots of people touch it. So they they they were brave, by the way. I mean, you know, I give I why they say they were brave. Well, you know, I I never I actually didn't apply for the position initially, because I just didn't think, you know, some other state public. I could see a private university of another state hiring somebody from, you know, it was governor of a state nearby. But I just it didn't make I didn't think that a public system would do that. And so the firm that was doing the search contacted me a couple of times and I finally said, OK, I'll put my application in. I was active in other applications, was being interviewed, had some other opportunities I could have taken, and they took me. And so I took them. And and today in that process, when you were being hired, did they indicate to you what they as a board of trustees really thought needed to be done? Well, you know, the board had published a series of documents over a number of years about the challenges that the system needed to confront and the necessity of confronting those challenges. And and and when you go through this process, everybody is given a series of documents to review so that they would be familiar with the challenges of a state higher educational conglomerate, if you will. And so I read all those materials and and I certainly understand that there are great challenges here in Maine. You know, our demographic where the so I was governor of the seventh oldest state in the nation, and that means average age of population. And I came to the oldest state in the nation, and that is the average age of the population. We we're not we're not a particularly wealthy state here in Maine. We have fiscal challenges. You know, we we between demographics and fiscal challenges. There are hard decisions that have to be made and hard decisions, you know, is is a difficult decision. And and, you know, ultimately, they decided to offer me the job. And ultimately, I accepted that that opportunity. And I'm happy for having accepted it. And one of the first challenges was to bring about really a groundbreaking alignment of universities to go from a system where each university was loosely connected but operated under its own. Can I stop you? They're just a couple of we mean each of the seven campuses, seven campuses. And so when you talk about university, you're talking about university at Fort Kent, Fort Kent, Fort Prescott, Farmington, the campus. You you Maine, which is an or no. So now we have the contact by the law school. I don't want to machias. OK, now I'm safe. So so there's the context. And you say that they were loosely well, they're in a system in the sense that the employees were had a system, but they were each individually recognized by the accrediting agency as a freestanding university operating under its own accreditation. We are now a system of universities operating under the systems accreditation, which is is a first in the nation to go from one style of accreditation to a different style of accreditation. And the first case of that happening in New England. And and why? Yeah. Yeah, because of the challenges I was just referencing previously, financial challenges and demographic challenges that that that we have to confront. I hope Maine gets younger. But I also hope I'm part of making Maine older. I want to live a long time, right? And we we are graduating fewer people from our high schools. The current demographic doesn't change for the next 18 years. That's not to say that it won't change. But we know what birth rates are. Before I came here, we would we were estimating on on a 12 year cycle. And I said, well, let's do some research and understand what the relationship of that 12 year cycle is to to birth rates. And they absolutely align. So now we really know what what we're looking at 18 years from now. And those demographics are not changing, although there is some inward migration. The COVID experience in the United States is is lessened the birth rate universally, apparently, across the state, across the nation. So we have these these, you know, and and we derive income by how many students are in our system, as well as what the state allocates. And so that's a great challenge. And there are and we suffer from the same financial pressures of inflation and and cost and equity that that other employers have to to rankle with. So it's having said that we have a different style of of management, which is intended to be to make sure that everyone's consulted, not everyone agrees, but everyone's consulted that tends to take a lot of time to change the direction of the ship. Unfortunately, the captain of the Titanic didn't have much warning, but we do. And and how do we react to the warning that that we currently have? So what is so can you describe how you think that ship has to change over time? I think we have to. Of course, sure. I think that we always have to be looking for ways to be financially effective and use the assets that may be on one campus to help the students who may be on another campus and do that in a cost-effective way. I guess there's one way to say it. I think most people in Maine think of us as one university to begin with a term that I don't use. We are a collection of universities that that the people of Maine have the right to expect we would work together for the good of Maine. So you making it more unitary. That is one campus. You're saying one campus may have certain strengths or be able to offer certain things that another campus doesn't. And so the idea is if you're a student in the university Maine system, you can draw on resources from all of these places. Yeah, I think that that that that is that is a big part of what we should be able to do. Why should someone in our system not be able to access a great professor, a great course, if there's room in that course on another campus, particularly in an environment where people are increasingly desirous of having some of their education experience and in some cases all of their education experience online. So we're adjusting to technology and people's use of that technology at a time that we are facing this great challenge with respect to demographics and how many students will be available to occupy spaces. And how do we how do we have an absolutely great education provided at all of our institutions to anyone who wants to access that, regardless of whether they come from a big city like Portland or surrounding community or one of our smallest communities?  So how do you do that? You know, I I'm I'm not skeptical, but I'm affected by what I've learned over the years. And I have a perception and you can correct me. The University of Maine faculty some years ago, we had a chancellor who really wanted to push distance learning. The faculty I and I may be summarizing in an inaccurate way, seemed to me were opposed to the more the more you do distance learning, the more students you can serve, the more the bigger the ratio between faculty and students. So if you had distance learning, you might have one faculty member could take care of 50 or 60 or 70 students because they don't all have to be in the same room. So they didn't like it. So let me respond to that. Using part of our conversation from from earlier in the interview, I would not be successful. In a distance learning environment, I needed to be in a classroom. I needed to converse. I needed to be able to read people's reactions to the information that they were receiving or the argument that was being made. That's true of me, but it's not true of everyone. I wanted to be in a classroom and I wanted to get my education that way, but not everyone will. And what we've learned in the pandemic is that people can adapt and will adapt. And having adapted at least a core, a cohort of, let's say, three or four years of high school plus three or four years of college at that experience, that eight, let's call that an eight year gap, a group of people who have had to change on a dime. They're not all going to go back to one style or another. So the winners when it comes to an education model will be those that can adapt to the marketplace. And there's nothing more important than adapting to the marketplace than in a state that has a declining graduation rate from not a rate, a declining number of students coming out of high school. I don't think we should seek to dictate what style people want to be taught in or what various styles they want to be taught in. Our job is to make sure that we're delivering a great education product in the style selected by the individual who's paying us to provide that education. So you talk about the marketplace, that makes sense to me. You've got to understand what your market is and you've got to appeal to people and you've got to offer something that will draw people. Correct. That's the market. But but that but that's not the only market. Part of the market, if I might interrupt for just a second, is students and parents are putting more and more emphasis on what's that going? What what's my son, my daughter, my grandchild? What are what are they going to do with the education you're providing? How are they going to make a living? Are they going to be able to if they're a middle class kid coming from parents who weren't born in the middle class, but rose to middle class? Are they going to be able to make the next jump in their life? Are they going to be able to educate their children? They're going to be able to pay for those things. And there's a greater connection. And by the way, I'm a liberal arts graduate. I think I want to I want us to remain in the liberal arts business. But we have to recognize that there are financial pressures on individual individuals, families that are driving them to make decisions that are different than we might have seen in 1962. When or are they are anytime in the 1960s when the children of a veteran were now coming into into college and we're going to receive that that first in their family degree. Now, we have lots of people receiving the first in the family degree, but those parents are pretty nervous about the investment that they're making, much more so than you saw in the post World War Two period of time. I'm not inventing this. This is a reality that exists. And so, yeah, we want our child to have a great liberal arts education. But what are they going to make when they're done? What are they going to do with that degree? And I think that we we need to defend what we do, which is to give a broad education. But we also need to be able to answer the question, and what are you going to do with that? So you on it. I'm listening to you and I said, well, this guy, he understands that he's runs this system and he sees these problems. And then you talk about the market and trying to design a system that will overcome some of the demographic obstacles and so forth. And I say to myself, but he's not really in charge. And you can respond to say he's not really charged because you have in the university system tenure, which means that sometimes it's you don't get to lay off people. That you think you can do it. You have a union that probably has a contract that says, if you do have layoffs, last in first out, no matter how good the teaching is. And so maybe you don't have that. But between tenure and a union and this sense of shared governance that really the fact, if you ask some faculty members, I know I had a battle with the USM faculty when they chased out a president some years ago. She probably should have been chased out. But I wanted, I was saying to her, what's wrong? They were pretty tough, tough on me, tough on her. So how do you do it? They say, you can't govern. We have shared governance and we have tenure and we have a union. And so what do you got to do with it? How are you going to solve it with that? Listen, we have data and we have a system that we want to protect. And we have individual institutions operating under a unified accreditation that I want to see be successful. And so part of that is dialogue and part of it is the reality of studying. These are bright people. Everyone you just refer to are bright people and have the ability to look at data, I believe, and understand the experiences. They're going to be, you know, Vermont in the last few years has seen a number of colleges close. New Hampshire has seen that. Massachusetts has seen. Becker College in Worcester just this past year closed on basically on a dime. These demographic changes are not unique. They are throughout the Northeast. And we have real challenges in the perfect world. We will do better. We will get more students from both in and out of the state of Maine. By the way, if somebody comes and is educated in Maine at one of our institutions, they're far more likely to remain in Maine. We need inward migration on an ongoing basis to Maine. If we want to see the kinds of economic growth that we want to have play out. So, you know, it takes dialogue. It takes conversation. It takes in some sense as it takes the experience we've had in the COVID pandemic to understand that there are this larger larger than we thought cohort of people who want to have their education delivered in multiple modalities. They may want one course taught one way and another course taught another way. And the institutions that respond to those needs or those desires will be the successful ones. And those that refuse to respond in an appropriate way at least are in some peril. OK, so you're right. But faculty say we're in charge. You're not going to make these decisions unless we make them together. You're not going to make them. We have a union. We have ten you're not going to get rid of any teachers and bring in new ones or whatever. You're not going to do it because we have tenure. So how do you accomplish these things? Well, the desire is not to have fewer people. Desires to increase the audience of people that that keep people occupied, that keep them employed. On the other hand, there are people like me getting older. There are going to be retirements. There are going to be changes. There's going to be people are going to adapt. I want each of our universities to be successful. This is not about trying to close anyone or to treat everyone as one university, which was a term that was used in Maine to describe some of the changes. And I've stopped. I said, we're not going to use that anymore. What we're talking about is working together. How do we, if we all have the same last name and we're all in the same family, how do we work together to have a successful family business? OK, so the Alfon Foundation has funded a study to combine in a unit the Graduate School of Business, the Muskie School of Public Policy, the Law School, and there was pushback. First, for instance, the faculty, the business faculty in Arno said we're the business school. And people in USM said we're in the middle of the market. We had all kinds of people want to go to graduate school because there are people here. So whatever happened with that was I knew there was resistance a few years ago. What happened is there's a an MBA program, which in the pandemic is largely online, which has 402 students, which is multiple several times over of the total number of MBA students who were in the programs that existed previously. That's a reality. It's having said that, I don't think I would have handled all of that the way it got handled. I think that we could have used better terminology. We could have been more collegial in figuring those things out. So, you know, one of the things about being a president or a chancellor of a system as I am is you inherit history. And even though you weren't here, you get blamed for history. We've got to work through some of that, I think, the realities. And we have to build confidence in the concept that what we're really trying to do is to make sure all our universities can be as successful as they can be and that we are a family of universities and in a family, you help one another out. So did it get resolved? You have 402 MBA students? Yeah, MBA students. 402 in the system? In the MBA program. And who teaches them? People in Arno or people in University of Southern Maine or both? To some extent, both. You know, the original concept was that Southern Maine would provide about half of the teaching and and Arno would provide half of the teaching. And I think as of a year ago or so that semester, I think it had dropped to about 4 percent. What's 4 percent? Southern Maine was teaching about 4 percent of the courses and University of Maine or other faculty were teaching the majority of that. Again, I think that that is a great example of the right thing to do, but the wrong way to do it. And I have said publicly that I think that if I had been chancellor, I might have done it. And I hope perhaps I would have done it in a different way and brought about the results. So for instance. In a different way. So let's use a different example. We are seeking to tie together to have worked together the engineering program, which is a relatively small program at the University of Southern Maine with a much larger engineering school up at Arno where we're making it very clear that students who are educated in this combined engineering program who receive their education at Southern Maine will in fact receive a Southern Maine degree. And students who take that program at the University of Maine, the same program, the same alliance of educational professionals providing it, well, if they graduate from the University of Maine in the engineering program, their degree will say that. It's a very different approach. We're not eliminating anyone. But let's go back to the market. Yeah. I looked at this the other day for some other reason, obviously the metropolitan, whatever statistic for Greater Portland is over 530,000, over a half million. A lot of people here, a lot of jobs here, a lot of businesses here. So if we want to develop technology jobs in this area in Maine, a lot of them are going to be right around here in Portland. Sure. But only 4% of the people getting MBAs are being taught from the University of Southern Maine down here in the Southern part of the state. Works fine if everybody's online and there's a pandemic. But there may come a time where people want to go at night to a classroom, to interrelate with other MBA students, to interrelate with professors and so forth. And we're saying 95% of it will be in R and O. No, but see, that's incorrect. So I want to be respectful. Yeah, that's good. Because I'm on charge of the show. Yeah, but let me push back a little bit. So you just described the geographic area with a large percentage of the population of the state of Maine. In fact, I'd even go further. It's probably about 700,000 people. I come from a smaller state than Maine, but... Not in population. But not in population, about three and a half million people. But have you ever visited stores? I have, I drove to... You know why? I wanted to see, with a basketball arena, I wanted to see they have an indoor football place now. No, they have a practice facility. But the reality is it's away from everything as well. And the reality of Maine is the vast majority of engineers who are in that career, continue to be in that career, are in fact educated at one of our institutions and overwhelmingly at one of those two that have engineering programs. That's the reality. What we haven't made available, I think, is graduate education, engineering education in this part of the state. And that is a problem and one that has to be addressed because engineers, just like everybody else, have to move along in their careers. They have to, they want to take graduate courses. They want graduate degrees. They want to be introduced to other areas. And one of our universities can provide that service and already has the faculty to do it. And one of the things we want to do in the state of Maine, to grow the state of Maine, to be more responsive, to be more like 128 was in Massachusetts in the 1970s or what Southern Maine was in the 80s and 90s, Southern New Hampshire was in the 70s, 80s and 90s. We want that to play out here. And if we're going to do that, we have to produce more folks with computing and engineering backgrounds to drive the economic growth for the next 20 or 30 years and thereafter. And so we seek a model to introduce the capacity to do that. And I think we live in a age where distance is far less important than it ever was and that we can overcome the problems of distance. But can we overcome the problems of demographics, of wealth and how that wealth is distributed? And I think that's the question that we have to deal with as a system, as a state, as a region because some of these issues are playing out. As I said, Connecticut's the seventh oldest state. Massachusetts is a little bit better because of a larger than both of those states because of a larger immigration. But New England is getting older. Every single day, New England gets older. So back to the centers and the combination of the law school and some business courses and the musky school, what's the status of that now? So we have 402 people in the MBAO program, 71% of those from Maine. Is that part of the concept of the center? Yep. The law school has its largest class in years, has a new dean, Lee Softley, who served in the judiciary in the state with great distinction for many, many years, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. I have to tell you, he's telling us about Lee Softley and he's praising her. I talked to somebody today and told him I was going to have this show and the guy said to me, and I know Lee Softley very well, he said, and you know, Lee Softley is very high on him. She thinks he's excellent. So that's why I smile when you started praising her. I said, this is a mutual praise. Your comment about whether Lee does think that or not, but my mother's immediate response, she would come home and she'd say, Daniel, I met Mrs. Jones today. And I said, yes, ma'am, Mrs. Jones thinks you're a wonderful boy. Yes, ma'am, you had something to eat there, yes. And she said your habits at the table were very good and you were a good conversationalist and she thinks very highly of you. And then she'd pause and she'd say, see, Daniel, you fooled another one. Well, you fooled Lee. So anyway, back to the center and how does the law school has its biggest class? It's largest class in many years. Yeah, it's, again, you know, when I came here, the law school was in trouble. There was a panel studying the law school. What is there a road forward? I was for 15 years the chairman of the Board of Visitors of the law school and they did have their issues. Right, and I'm not here to blame you for any of those. Thanks. I think Maine's economy would suffer mightily if we were not able to provide for the legal needs within the state. I'm not saying that you couldn't attract talent from outside the state. I think it would be difficult to attract enough talent from outside the state. I came to the conclusion relatively quickly that it would be bad for Maine to be one of the states that didn't have a law school. The firm that you're affiliated with hires a lot of folks from... I do. And all of the big firms do. But more importantly, in some senses, and forgive me for saying this, is we are the largest provider of rural legal assistance. And although you might be able to, you know, up your hiring from outside of the state by some percentage to overcome a closed law school. Not in Prescott, it won't happen. And so I became convinced rather quickly that we needed to take steps to save and then strengthen the law school. And I think that's exactly what Lee is doing. She accuses me of fooling her into taking the job, but I know she likes it. So while we're on the law school, and I just want to go... Well, before we, you know, while we're on the law school, is there going to be a new building someday, do you think? Well, we are moving the law school into downtown Portland. The 1L class will move into a new building, not a new building, a renovated building. A wonderful building. A wonderful building. In the old port. In the old port. When does that happen? With them walking distance to the court house. And we hope that that will all be done in time to open classes in August, actually at the 304 Street building, yeah. Oh, wow, that's quite a building. And that will... It's pretty rapid, isn't it? It's pretty rapid. And also, I know from my own experience as the chairman of the Board of Visitors that the students are very sensitive to where they are, where they go to school, what the facilities are. They've been in a lousy, terrible facility for a long time at the downtown campus of USM. This is gonna make a big difference. So, Leah sent me here to ask you to make a major donation to the law school because you think so highly of it and you know how important it is. I'm happy to take your check and bring it back to the organization. I would love to do that. I don't have my checkbook. Oh, there you go. I'll come back then. Yeah, I don't have my checkbook. So, but the foundation, the Alfond Foundation had made a pledge of tens of millions of dollars for this center, this consolidation. What's the money gonna be spent on? In part, helping us move to a new building, perhaps produce a permanent home. For that building, a higher additional faculty. The Alfond Foundation made a $240 million commitment to the system and in various tranches of money to be matched by money that we need to raise. It's around main athletics. It's around the law school, MBA program, musky school. It's around engineering and it's around the success of our students, making sure that we increase our retention rates and our success rates and our experiential learning opportunities for those students. $240 million at the time it was done was one of the 10 largest single commitments made to any public educational institution in America. I think we've slipped to the 11th or 12th. And so you ask me, how am I gonna get some of these things done? The Alfons are helping. The reality to have the money to double the size of the engineering program and computing program, the engineering computing output at our universities to drive economic growth which in itself will return monies to the state by making the state a more wealthy place because we attract those jobs and you know how income is garnered on people's income. So you know, I think it's a, we're just so grateful to the Alfond, Mr. Alfond who set up the foundation, the family members who continue to serve the foundation, the investment vehicles that generate the kinds of money to be invested in our system is greatly appreciated. They also support many other institutions in the state for which we should all be grateful as well. So now you've got to hire a new president at the University of Southern Maine. And the University of Anagusta. Oh, and Anagusta. So we're a little provincial on this program because this is carried throughout the cable system in Greater Portland. So most of the people watching are in Greater Portland, although they do, this station is affiliated with other public access stations in Maine so they do feed those stations. But back to my provincial inquiry, which is the University of Southern Maine, which a lot of people, including me, think is the key to the economy in this area and can be an even bigger factor in the economy of Southern Maine. So we're very interested in what happens to the University of Southern Maine and whether it grows and we think it can be a very, very significant educational institution, not just in this area, but maybe in New England. I agree. I absolutely agree. When deciding to take this job, I looked at the University of Maine and the University of Southern Maine, so Orano and Portland Gorham, as two places that are more likely to attract additional populations because they're not as tied to the local demographics as some of our other universities are. Those universities are gonna have to step up to a great extent their outreach, those smaller universities. I agree with you that Orano and Southern Maine are real growth opportunities. Again, how can we afford to make those opportunities better and stronger in a system that's in the oldest state in the nation and one that has financial limitations? And so to find the way to do that is going to be very important. Having said that, there's some massive investments that are being made in both places. At the very moment, I'm speaking to you, a new engineering building under construction, a major engineering building under construction up in Orano. You see a dormitory and being built in Portland. You see an additional parking facility moving forward. You see a student center moving forward. You have people in the community who want to move the music program from Gorham to be celebrated in Portland as well. So these are major investments that are ongoing at those places, but we're also making investments out in Farmington up at Preskyle, at Fort Kent, we just completed a building. Augusta now has, I think, about 65 students living in residence over the last couple of years. There are investments being made that we are hopeful will allow us to be even more successful and meet the needs on a broader basis. In the system that I lead, Southern Maine currently represents about 25%. Orano represents about 50%. And the remaining universities represent about 25% of our capacity, or at least our number of students. This is way off the point, but if the University of Southern Maine, I look at, I follow sports. So I look at around the country, some what used to be state teachers colleges and now regional schools for state university systems. And some of them have a good basketball. If the University of Southern Maine wanted to set out to build a basketball program, I use that as an example. A lot of people say, what's he talking about? Sports and university, but you only need a few basketball players. It could be a big draw. I mean, you could actually have a division one basketball program at the University of Southern Maine. Now, I did mention that long ago when Harold Alfon was alive, I said that. And he said, no, you can't do that. I said, why? Because it would compete with the University of Maine basketball program in Orano. You cannot do it. No, I hope that never happened. So, but anyway, it has great potential for a lot of things. You know, we have sports programs at our largest university, which is division one and division three at our smaller universities. And I think each of those universities has programs that help attract students to receive an education, which is first and foremost what we need to do. Whether it drives people to the Alfon arena, ice rink up at the University of Maine, or whether it's represented by a great division three team at Southern Maine, I think is less important than that we give the opportunities to the students to experience what they want to experience. And lots of students leaving high school want to continue their athletic career. They may understand that they're not going to be in the NBA or the NHL or the NFL, but they want that extra time to have that experience that people in your family had when they came to America. Yeah, interesting. Some years ago, a couple of high school football coaches got hold of me and we started a little organization to bring football to the University of Southern Maine. And we'd spent a lot of time, we spent two years at this. We raised money, a lot of people pledged a lot of money because the high school football coaches said, we got all these kids in Maine that are not going to play division one football and they're going to Plymouth State and they're going to all these schools outside of Maine. And you got Maine Maritime, they attract kids just because of the football. And we couldn't get it done. We couldn't get it done. It's a long story, I won't get into it here. Shortly thereafter, the University... I didn't come for a gripe sesson. No, no, no, no, tell me all. I want you to listen to my problems. I'm listening to your... I want you to listen to my problems. And you know, and the University of New England did it and succeeded at those things. So if it wasn't your fault, you were in Connecticut when this happened. So you are not... Just remember that athletics, by and large, we lose money and that's a reality. And I think what you have to do is have the best athletic program for your university that you can afford. And in a state, you know, replication, we're all still drawing on the same talent set. And it's just not a lot of people coming out graduating from high school. We're talking about 13,000 people graduating. We get about 30% of those students coming to our universities. The community colleges gets another large percentage. The rest of it is divided up. And a large number of those students never go to college. And I think that that's where we need to spend some time and energy is to have students understand that yes, there are jobs that you can get today, but those jobs are gonna be done a different way five, 10, or 15 years from now. And that if you don't have the experience in the education to run the technology that runs the job that would pay you $15 an hour right now, then you're going to be out of work. And so there's a different message that I think we have to get better at delivering. And that is that change is happening faster than we could ever have imagined in the world. And that change will create jobs and it will displace jobs. And lower income jobs requiring less education are the most likely to be replaced. And so we owe it to every high school student in Maine to make sure that they understand what an investment is and what a chance is. A chance to get a $15 an hour job for the next two years and therefore miss the opportunity to get an associate's degree or baccalaureate degree or a doctorate, you're taking a chance and you're not making an investment in the long haul. And so what we've got to be able to do is to justify the investment being made. And some cases we do that well, I think in other cases we do not do that well. And we have not necessarily met the marketplace as well as we should. I just listened to carefully to what you said. That was a great statement. One, I hope you make to the legislature. I walk softly at the legislature and I know people know I'm from out of state and I want to remain here. I think the reality is that the legislature in fairness and the governor in fairness are doing the best they can. We need to grow Maine's economy. And if you agree that we need to grow Maine's economy then you have to invest more in our university system. I agree with you completely. I really appreciate your coming here and talking about this because you're really talking about the most important issues in our state education and particularly higher education. We have a state where our culture doesn't feature that. Where would Maine be over the last, or where would it have been over the last two years without the nurses that we've produced in all of our nursing programs in this state? You've done a great job and now we've run out of time. All right. Thank you very much, Chancellor, for coming here. Thank you. Appreciate it. It was very interesting. Nice to be with you. I think that we can talk.


Hey guys, we're the Stokes Twins and today we're gonna be answering the web's most searched questions about us Do the Stokes Twins have parents? So twins have a very special condition to where they don't need parents They actually give birth to each other, so I gave birth to him and he gave birth to me Oh, he's older so he gave birth to me first. I was born first and I gave birth to him Okay, no, but we actually do have parents and I'm assuming you guys ask this question because we don't really show our parents In a lot of our videos, but yes, we do have parents and we have a mom and a dad What are the Stokes Twins names? So I feel like a joke. I feel like this is a joke. My name is Alan But I feel like people think it's a malon So maybe that's why they're asking because it's supposed to be I'm Alan Stokes like on Instagram But my real name is Alan and my real name is Alex So it's Alan and Alex and I don't think that's why I feel like the reason why is because our YouTube account is called Stokes Twins Oh, so yeah, and then same over a TikTok account Like it's also called Stokes Twins and the only account where we don't have joint accounts is Instagram So if you think about it, like people don't know our names because it's just Stokes Twins and it's Stokes Yeah, Stoke Stoke so many people call us Stokey like as there's two S's and Stokes beginning and end How did the Stokes Twins become famous? So, huh, that's a long story. Well first off, I don't really like that word But I guess how do we get started off on social media about two years ago We created like an Instagram account like separate Instagram accounts and we kind of posted a few pictures that just I don't know I guess went viral and then from then on it's just caught like a lot of traction And then our followers were telling us to start YouTube and then we were able to move out to Los Angeles like six months after that And then a year after that, which was six months ago That's when we started TikTok and to this day We don't know why but TikTok is our most followed platform. We have like 11 million followers on TikTok I'm like I still don't like quite understand how like we have 11 million followers on TikTok. What are the Stokes Twins ethnicity? So we're half white and half Asian. Waysians. We're Waysians. We're Waysians. Yeah, our dad is white and our mom is Asian It's Alex Stokes dead. I don't know people are actually starting this off I think this is probably when people were searching up when he had a surgery. It was like a couple months ago Yeah, so my appendix bursted and I had to get like surgery on it and it was like a huge like two months The only process and yeah There's like a lot of complications in between where the doctors were saying that he could have died if we waited an extra day to Go to the hospital. So I guess that's why people were searching that up. I'm not dead. I'm right here It's Alex Stokes single so my girlfriend found out that I cheated on her But we're on the bigger and better better things now. Oh my god, Alex. I'm not doing that. Why do you keep messing up?  It's Alan Stokes 38 Okay, so I've been seeing a lot of comments recently saying too bad. He's 38 Well, that's literally twice my age and I don't even know why it says that but obviously I'm not 38 What is Alan Stokes's phone number? Okay, nice try, but obviously I'm not gonna hand out my phone number But I have been getting like a lot of no-caller IDs and I ran people calling me So I don't know if it's if my number got leaked recently We actually got one like an hour before we started filming like two random phone calls It's someone going like hey, do you want to hang out our numbers leaked our numbers leaked How did the Stokes twins meet so I actually DMed him. Oh, so you said in my DMs Yes, I did and I said hey and I was like since we have like the same last name same parents same everything We just thought it'd be easier to start like collabing and making videos together Oh, and the fact that we look alike too, so that that was perfect that could really sell the fact that we were twins So that's how we met yeah through the end are the Stokes twins related to Brent Rivera So this was like a running joke going on about like a year ago. We would say that and tease them Sick of it. Yeah, like super annoyed by so we just kind of like stopped the joke and that's a discontinued joke So nobody are not do the Stokes twins have a sister. No, we don't we're just the two of us Are the only child only children how tall are the Stokes twins? So we're both six one Well, I'm like six and a half feet. He's like a little bit. I'm like I'm like half an inch taller than him But the point is everyone always thinks we're so short because I guess we don't really know how to take our pictures It makes us look really I haven't figured out if you're taking a picture from like up down Which is what we normally do it makes you look like you're five feet tall So whenever people meet us in person they always go like whoa, you're so much taller in person I'm like, I wish I looked taller in my pictures every single time. How was Alex Stokes so old, okay? So I'm actually gonna search this one up because I don't know why people keep asking if I'm dead like how old is Alex Stokes? Why does this say I'm 83 years old? I've 16 years wait wait hold on so what does it say I was born 19 19 to 2003 so Apparently, I'm dead. That's why people are asking why I'm so old. Oh wait That's why everyone keeps looking up is Alex so dead. Yes. That's okay. That makes sense. Does Alan Stokes play piano? Yes, I do I play every day actually that's something a lot of people don't really know about me. Can the Stokes twins sing? Yes Stokes twins like BTS. Yes, of course we like BTS, but I just wanted to point out that I noticed that in a lot of our videos Especially through the video that has nothing to do with BTS. It was how my twin brother almost died I was reading the comments when people were saying Stan BTS Stan BTS. What does it have to do with the video? We're not wearing anything BTS. I'm talking about how almost died and there's people in the comments talking about BTS Are the Stokes twins twins? Do we not look alike to you guys anymore? We try to do our hair the same too So oh it's because I'm 38 or 83. That's why we can't be twins. We can't be twins But no that would make me older than you though, but you're older, but we are twins for identical twins So yes, we are okay So we just realized something very interesting that these questions were literally the most searched questions from you guys That means you guys were the ones searching up and asking these questions It literally means that people are actually taking time out of here today and like thousands of you guys are actually searching these up for Yeah, for it to even like show up to the top So we have a challenge for you guys Why don't you guys go on Google and search up are the Stokes twins running for Presidents and make that the most question about the Stokes twins But go that would be that would be kind of cool president vice president But go and search that up on Google are the Stokes twins running for presidents I didn't know people actually like searched up these questions about us like my dad like you can just check up on us on Instagram Like I'm alive like some of these questions are really like I don't know they were definitely interesting But anyways if you enjoyed the video be sure to give it a like and subscribe while you're at it And we will see you guys next Sunday


In my discussions with people who are struggling with their commitment to Christianity, one of the themes that comes up repeatedly is their frustration with the idea that none of the major doctrines of Christianity seem to be rooted in the Jewish Scriptures, that when we read the Jewish Scriptures carefully, we don't find any of the basic doctrines of Christianity. For example, the Jewish Scriptures speak about God in a way far different than what Christianity has come to believe historically. Christianity speaks about God as understood as a trinity, as a divine being with three parts, and that one of these three parts will come to earth and take on human form. And people that read the Jewish Scriptures simply don't see this, that when we go through the Hebrew Scriptures and we try to find passages that actually speak about God and the nature of God, we don't see God described as a three-part being and who will come to earth and take on human form. A second theme that comes up is the question of the Torah and its commandments. We find in the Jewish Scriptures hundreds of times where we're told very clearly that the Torah is the source of our spiritual life, it's the source of spiritual blessing, the commandments are more precious than gold or sweeter than honey, and that the Torah and its commandments are eternally binding to be observed forever throughout our generations, and this is repeated many, many, many times. However, in the Christian Scriptures primarily through the teachings of Paul, we are taught that the Torah is a curse, and therefore one day will be nullified to be replaced with faith in the Messiah. And this is simply a concept that we don't find in the Jewish Bible. We don't find anywhere in the Jewish Scriptures that belief in the Messiah will replace the observance of the Torah. As a matter of fact, the Bible says clearly and specifically in many places, including for example Ezekiel chapter 37, that once the Messiah comes, people will enter into a more complete and perfect observance of the commandments, not that the commandments will be nullified. A third issue is what we do when we fail to observe the Torah. What do we do in wake of sin? And the Christian Scriptures basically teach that the only way to be forgiven for our sins is by believing that the Messiah died for them by suffering on the cross. And again, this is simply a concept that we don't find in the Jewish Bible. We don't find the Jewish Scriptures telling us repeatedly, over and over again, clearly and consistently, that the only way to be forgiven for our sins is by having the offering of God's Son, who will die on the cross in place of us, and that by believing in him, we can be forgiven. However, what the Jewish Scriptures do teach repeatedly and clearly is that if we sin, we can be forgiven for our sins if we turn from our sin and we turn back to God through the process of repentance. Finally, what do the Jewish Scriptures teach about God's chosen people, the descendants of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob? What the Christian Scriptures assert is that the Jewish people will ultimately be replaced one day by another entity, by the church, by those who believe in the Messiah. And that's essentially the thrust of what Christianity has taught for more or less 2,000 years, that the Jewish people, because they rejected the Messiah, Jesus, the claim that he was the Messiah, had been replaced by those who have faith in him, and that the church now is the true Israel. However, the Jewish Scriptures repeatedly teach us that the chosen people will be the actual descendants of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and the Bible repeatedly teaches us that God will preserve his covenant with us and preserve us as his chosen people forever, and give us the land of Israel as an eternal possession. And so we see here four major teachings of the church that are simply not to be found in the Jewish Scriptures.


Russians deploy coastal missile systems to Bryansk Oblast to launch attacks on Ukraine. The Ukrainian National Resistance Center reports that the Russians have transferred the Baal coastal missile systems to Bryansk Oblast in Russia in order to launch attacks on the Ukrainian cities. The system is a part of the 11th Separate Coastal Rocket and Artillery Brigade of the coastal troops of the Black Sea Fleet. Its permanent location point is in the settlement of Yutash in Krasnodar, Krai, in Russia. The division targets ships. Due to the lack of corresponding missiles, Baal was equalized in range and the capacity to attack ground targets with the Bastion Coastal Missile System, which uses Onyx supersonic missiles. For this purpose, the system is armed with KH-35 stroke 35U missiles, which are provided with new features after modernization in 2021. Their effective range was increased from 260 to 500 kilometers. The National Resistance Center said, Baal is a Russian coastal missile system equipped with an anti-ship KH-35 missile. The system is designed for controlling the territorial waters and spillway zones, protecting naval bases, other coastal facilities and infrastructure, and protecting the coastal areas with a higher risk of hostile troops landing. The Baal Coastal Missile Complex uses KH-35 and KH-35U missiles, with a range of 120 and 260 kilometers respectively. One such system carries up to eight missiles.


Why now? Are you ready for this kind of commitment? These are just a couple of questions that non-Trad applicants must address. Stick around, let's chat. Hi, my name is Dr. Josie. This is Write Your Acceptance. I work with pre-medical, pre-dental and MS4s when they are ready to elevate their message and apply with the strongest application possible. I have students with full rides to Mayo Clinic because of their personal statement. I have pre-dental with the Dean's Scholarship. I have students with low MCAT scores who get in and have multiple acceptances because of their messaging. I know what they're looking for. Let's start chatting about non-traditional applicants today. Let's get into it. So I won't spend too much time on the two buckets, but there are two main differences between non-traditional applicants. There could be the student who applied with a non-bio major, an English major. Let's say they pursued public health and they took their science pre-rex and they are kind of taking a couple gap years. They're still in their kind of early to mid-20s and haven't yet started a full on second or first career. Those students will for the most part have a similar trajectory or strategy with their application. They might bring in different aspects of their major and academic kind of awareness as to how it rounds out their candidacy. That often enough when you do it very strategically is great and really lends itself to helping you stand out. I've had students bring in their theater background and start with a pivotal scene from a play in their personal statement. I've had history buffs talking about a specific court case and so there are definitely ways to kind of you know really bring other aspects and flavors to your application as a kind of that aspect of a non-trad, right? But we're going to focus our energy today on the non-traditional applicant who has had a full on career and is returning to school, right? And so I definitely kind of have a few tips for you to consider. First know that medical schools are assessing you on 17 different competencies, right? But they're looking for diversity. So you want to make sure that you are bringing and highlighting and stressing in your application how you are different, more capable, how you are wiser, how you kind of come with a wealth of knowledge from a previous academic or professional life and you're bringing that to your lived experience as a medical student and beyond, right? So whether it's linguistic, cultural, demographic, psychographic, this is a new buzzword I've been seeing kind of cropping up there. How do you kind of really what do you bring to the table and how do you leverage that to not only stand out but to contribute to a matriculated class? Tip one and this is the tip before you apply, right? How do you prepare for application in the most strategic and sound way? So first you want to kind of think about do you need to return to school to community college to a post back to basically stitch up together your prereqs, your science requisite courses, right? Do you kind of have to, how many months do you have to prepare for the MCAT? And when do you plan on taking the MCAT? Do you want to kind of ideally put that together with when you're taking certain science courses so that you are kind of, you know, remedying any content gap knowledge as well as practicing for the exam so that you are taking the prereqs that you need to take and that you are prepping and well equipped to take the MCAT as strong as possible. Also get help when you've been out of the game out of college, you know, for a few years, you may want to consider seeking a mentorship and advisor, especially if you don't have really kind of a relationship with an institution or you know, your bachelor's institution is not somewhere kind of you've continued a connection with. So there are free services that you may want to look into. Amwa, I know, have had students that I've worked with on messaging and application that have kind of received free guidance from there. National Association of Advising for Health Professionals, I'll link the website below so that you can look at that and seek the guidance that you're looking for as well from a kind of macro advising purview. Start requesting letters of recommendation that reflect your lived experience. So maybe a couple of letters from people from, you know, colleagues and professionals, supervisors in your previous career. A couple of science professors, faculty members that you've taken recent science classes with. If you are applying to MD and DO, make sure that you are kind of, you know, shadowing and observing, working with DO physicians. Maybe that's a letter of recommendation too that could really kind of help you reflect your commitment long term to the field, but also to that specific approach. I always tell students to request a letter of recommendation from someone who's seen you in action with patients. And so if you are volunteering or shadowing a DO or MD, you know, maybe that is someone who could really be a letter writer that helps you show you in action. Another tip before you apply is really tailoring your school list to the school's mission. So are you committed to education, preventative health, innovation, because you were an engineer in your previous life. So think about what the program's mission and focus is and really kind of tailor your school list, your program list. So you align very nicely with those specific programs. Step two, how to stand out and confirm your why. So for students who are non-traditional and kind of returning, you know, to school, to pursuing a new degree, they will be asking you yes, why medicine, but also kind of inquiring as to why now. And have you really thought it through about the kind of level and rigor, you know, level of commitment and rigor that this next step will entail. I would implore you to consider your wealth of experience and knowledge as an asset. So really think about when you can, you know, in moments like the personal statement, in certain activities, the most meaningful where you have a little bit more space to stretch out rhetorically and speak a little bit more, really think about and secondaries of course, bringing in your wealth of knowledge, your specific background and lens of experience. You've had more concrete experiences with more time in the professional field, obviously probably older. So you've had this kind of, you know, wealth of knowledge, bring that through concrete experiences. You have a sense of awareness of not only self-awareness, but also awareness of your point, your position in the world. And so you really want to kind of bring that in and highlight that. Think about your values, what you bring to medicine, what you will contribute to medicine that is unique to you and your kind of, you know, patchwork of experiences. So really think about your values, your commitment, your purpose and how you kind of honor and convey that through anchored specific details. I had a student who was a firefighter and who started their personal statement with kind of narrating a particularly hectic day and how they took patients three times to this one ER in that one morning shift. And so they talked about the seconds and minutes that they learned were so critical in emergent situations and how the handoff, it was kind of a series of handoff imagery at the beginning of the personal statement. And it was compelling and beautiful in its delivery, but painful to kind of almost read like you were really listening to the anguish of unfinished business. And so I've had firefighters, I've had nurses. And so, you know, you kind of connect with patients or you connect with individuals in these crisis moments. And so you have maybe perhaps a lot of patient facing experiences. However, I've also worked with lawyers turned doctors and teachers turned physicians who start volunteering and start kind of, you know, building up their clinical experiences and bring that wealth of knowledge, you know, they're kind of teaching an education background and legal studies expertise into kind of the clinical experiences that they were amassing to build out their application. So I'm not going to say always, but I would say it's kind of a hard pressed usual that any student that I work with that has had a full on first career, that they address that in the personal statement. I'm not going to say always just because then, you know, someone will send me a personal statement and it's amazing and it's a non-trad and they didn't kind of talk about their engineering background or they didn't talk about their first career in, you know, XYZ. But for the most part, those students I've worked with, they really focus on positive attributes of their first career and how that kind of, you know, lends itself to their why medicine, how it's nourishing their why today. Are you a non-trad applicant and are kind of wondering what direction to go with in their application? Comment below if you want to start chatting. This is tip 1.5. And for me, the stories that you select are key. This is kind of in many ways a tip that I would tell every student no matter their background, right? You want to carefully and strategically select the stories you're going to tell in the personal statement, in your secondaries, even in your activities section, because you want to make sure that you are really focusing on not only what you're saying, how you're saying it, but also the subtext. What are the takeaways that you're going to talk about? What are the lessons? How have you deepened your wisdom, deepened your commitment to medicine, advanced that commitment and solidified your why medicine? And so you really want to think about which stories am I going to tell that will have very takeaways so that I present a multi-dimensional aspect of my why medicine and why now. For all students, like I mentioned, you want to kind of unfold a unique kind of mapping as to your kind of why medicine, your journey to this point so far. To my non-trads, you really want to dedicate some time on commitment and why now. So timing and purpose, right? If you want to learn more about how I work with students and how we go from personal statement all the way to interview prep, comment below or you can link with me on my calendar. The link is in the description. You also have my webinar that you have a kind of a more of a deep dive in the personal statement. And so you'll have all those links in the bottom. But if you want to chat with me, get on my calendar for our strategy call and I'll see you soon. Have a good one. Bye.


How are you guys going to want your eggs? Sure. I want my eggs. I just want one egg. That's it? Yeah. I want it. Probably scrambled. Okay. How's the old stove doing? One egg scrambled. Keeping the coffee pot warm. Really warm. But I'm still amazed. How cool that is. That is awesome. It's really hot. It would warm up. Yeah, that's great. I got some old cast Ones Donnie that have the book to hang somewhere. As long as I didn't get rid of them. That's what you were after, right? Yeah, right. You know, we're looking at one right here. The stove all the time. The other thing too is like it's good. I like the cast on brand names. It's clean and absolutely dry. You can always hang on the inside. Yeah, I like the cast on. Yeah, I bet you don't go through my clothes once we get to some place. I could be wrong though. I don't know. It didn't happen. You'd be warm one way or another. Yeah. Some of that hemlock up there could be mixed in there. Yeah, I would throw a piece in there. Yeah.  And he says hemlock burns so much hotter than honey or anything else. Old guy once told me that that honey hocus, it burns like coal. Really, when I used to go when I put it in my first trailer, when I was really young, there was a lot of wood here.  And the guy stopped and he wanted that pile which is the worst way. He just made money into that hocus. Yeah. And that's the only time we really heard anybody talk about it. Yeah. My grandpa always used to talk about pointy. Oh, yeah. Sort of that. Axe handles and stuff. Right, yeah. Right, yeah. It's kind of the same. Yeah, that's working. It's not specific. Wow. What a difference in temperature. You can use that.  Well, to me, this is really more than a camp. I know it. You know, I, I picture in my mind a wielding this camp would be more like the one down below. Yeah.  I know, we might have to change the name list to a luxury camp. Ha, ha, ha, ha. When it came out, looking like the design I had. Oh, yeah. It's proud of us. Good scrambled eggs. Not that bad with it. One thing we do have is we eat pretty good. All right, we are back in the northern most rainforest in the world. North Main Rainforest. We got quite a bit done this morning. Kenny and I finished the porch as you could see. The dry boards are all fresh ones. And we threw this grate in. It's floor grate. I'm pretty excited about that. My dad used to be, Yeah, show my works. My dad used to be a trash man and he saved that from the dump. Geez, probably 30 years ago. My mother used to give him a hard time all the time about all the stuff he brought home and never be used. So mom, if you're watching this, they finally got to use something from the dump. Yeah. But there it is right there. Super rugged. Nice add-on to the camp. And Daughty has been working on something I haven't seen yet. I don't even know if I want to go see this. It's Fort Knox out back here. I'm building an outhouse. And I didn't want to put it on post. So as you can see, if you peek around this corner, this is the foundation to the outhouse. Oh my word. And if the compost and toilet ever quits, we'll just cut a hole in the floor and fill this thing up. Yeah, that'll fill up with debris. Yeah, that'll fill up. Yeah, yeah. So it's going to be a walk out right from that door on the end of the house straight out. And you got it high enough so you can start a fire underneath. Yeah, yeah. You can keep your butt warm. Right. So it's quite something. I'm using up all this junk lumber for sure. What do you think of the porch? I think it looks great. I'm pretty happy about that. Yeah, and then all day long we're going to keep the wood stove cranking to dry out. Yeah, Daughty's been out in the rain so it's going to be nice. How nice is it, Daughty? This is wonderful. Walking into a nice, warm place. We've got lights. Yeah. This is wonderful. You can even whip up a cup of coffee. There's a hot piece. There's a hot still some on the wood stove. Imagine that probably boiled dry, don't you? I hope not. Oh no, there's still some in there. I need to put a hanger right there. We're going to get a lot of use out of this. This is stainless. It doesn't even get warm and it's adjustable. You can slide it in or out as close to as you want to that stove pipe or the stove. And you can slide it up and down. So if you want something just barely cooking you can put it an inch off the stove. If you want it just to stay warm you can lift it up eight inches off the stove. But it's really cool to have something to hang there, that arm. The convention by Ken. And then Ken's going to really stick it to us on the attachments for this thing. Donnie and Ken have been designing some attachments for the side for gloves and for other various... What were you guys talking about? Putting a grate on the side? Yeah. Drying some dishes and some gloves. Wow Ken, that looks awesome. Get rid of all this hemlock. Yeah, that's good.  You can't get over how that hemlock puts on the heat. Oh, that's what I burned in my workshop. I've been burning it for years. It rips. You got to be careful. I got one of them Vermont things that tells you the heat coming out. Oh, that's what you mean. It could be 750 degrees in 10 minutes. Wow. It says it's too hot. It's made for creosote, like to let you know... What range does it make creosote in? It was under 300. And I don't know why it says danger over 750. Does it make it over temperature? I don't think so. I think creosote is much better. Not burning hot, burning everything up. Yeah. But yeah, I think it was like 350 or under. They wanted to go hotter. The best range was like 450 to 500. And that was supposed to be 12 inches up off the wood stove on the metal plate. What are you building over here? Believe it or not, this is probably the ruggedest outhouse in the North Main Woods. We're going to put a composting toilet in it. I'm going to have a ramp, a walkway come out of here.  If the composting toilet doesn't work, we'll take it out, we'll cut a hole right here, and we'll fill this whole bottom area. I think things are going to be great. So this thing is a dance floor. It is. It's a rugged piece of... Two by tens. I used whatever we had left over. Two by tens, two by eight. Whatever we had left over from the building. You got room to start a little fire in there? Oh yeah, you could probably sleep in there. So we'll see how it works out. I remember you saying, now I don't want a little outhouse that you can't hardly turn around in. That's right. So you've got one. Nice. You can turn around in. We got enough for the walls? Or are we going to go home and make the walls? No, we're going to... Obviously I've got some two by fours. I think I've got enough two by fours to frame the walls. Sweet. Yeah. Nice. But that's probably going to be on my next trip. Yeah. But we'll get the base in, and it's pretty level.   What's that? Is it going to be open? Open? Open outhouse, or are you going to do some walls? I never thought of an open outhouse. That might be kind of nice. I like it. Yeah. We put in a big window. We ought to have a window in it. Oh yeah, big window. Picture window on the side. Yeah. Which way are you facing? Which way am I facing? To poop. Oh. That way? We're facing towards this building. Okay. But we got to have a window. Let's put a window that way. We got a half moon window, actually. Yeah, that'd be cool. We saved a window from this building, didn't we? Oh my God. We couldn't use that anywhere. No, the one. Oh no, we used it. Yeah. Oh, we do. You know, we do have a window. We have that half moon. Yeah. Which would be great for an outhouse half moon. Yeah. I got a window at home, too. A small one? Yeah. Yeah, we can put that in here. Yeah. So it's going to be, it's going to be vented.  Rather than up through the roof. Oh, cool.  Yeah. So we're going to get this in before the snow flies and the snow flies anytime now. Which way are you doing the roof? I'm going to pitch it back this way. Yeah.  So you've got a four inch wall. It's in 33s, what, 37? So that unit is going to stick out right about here in front of the unit. So not much room to dance. No. You've got a little bit on each side, maybe. Wow. So, oh yeah, this is quite something. I've never seen one like it. No, I never have either. No. Probably never will again. No. But take quite a while to fill this up. You know, we have to resolve to that, you know. Leave a hole so the slot can slide out. I mean, once we fill that in, we could just move over on this side. Fill this right bum full. It's a big box. What do you think about a roof, a walkway going from there to there? You're going to do a walkway? Oh, a roofed over. Yeah. That might be cool. Yeah. Yeah, we don't want the walkway to have to shovel that. People are going to come by and say, what the heck is that thing? Yeah. I had 10 receptacles, right? Yeah. Seven switches, 250 feet of wire. Yeah. And whatever for a box. Whatever, yeah. Whatever for a box that we need over here. Right. Right a box with a question mark. You know, I was right there. I can't find that adapter. It goes from outside inside. Joey. I got these pickles. I got these pickles from Joanne. And she lives on Campobello Island. And I went up to visit them when I was up there last week. She and her husband, Gary, who has a nice garden. And he raised a cute car. They watch your channel. They love your channel, along with many other people up there. So she said, oh, take this to Joey. I said, she asked if you like spice. I said, yeah, he likes some spice.  And so she said, well, I made these pickles. They're a little bit hot. And they call it Lady Ashburn. And I said, Ashburn? Maybe Ashburn would be better after we don't. So we're going to try these pickles tonight. Let's give it to him. Yeah. For dinner or after? Oh, with dinner. I'm looking forward to it. I haven't ever had anything from Campobello that wasn't great. Oh, I know. You know, Bertha Square. So she's got a lot to live up to. Yeah. Yeah. And I know it's pretty happy to eat that apple dapple that your daughter made. Yeah. That apple dapple cake is good that Darcy made too. Yeah. There's a lot of good cooks out there. So we'll give it a try. Get this con. Today was the first morning of Joe Holland's breakfast. That was pretty, pretty happy to eat. That was pretty good, huh? Yeah. You drove that right in the interview. Well, Ken, tell us a little bit about this wood stove. Yeah. It's nice and warm right now. Tell you about it. I guess we ordered some sheets of quarter inch steel, some angle bar, some flat bar, and cut it all up, welded it together. Got some really good ideas for my brother-in-law. He built one pretty much like it back in 1985, and they're still heating their home with it today. Did you see a welder? Yeah. He took the welding in school. Yeah. Yeah, he's actually a lobster man. That's who gave us the crab meat and crab sandwiches. What's his name? We got to thank him. Bill Kirby. Well done. Thank you, Bill. Bill, thank you so much. That crab meat was amazing. It was awesome. Yeah, it sure was. He's actually come to find out him and my sister, both big fans of the channel, too. Oh, no way. That's awesome. So how many hours do you think you got into that stove? You shocked me when you sent me that message and said it's done. You were about two weeks early. Yeah, well, I don't know. I never really kept track. I did get the GoPro from you. I should have took some video of it, because some people that don't do it would be interested in how it's built. Sure. But without a press break, you just take the two pieces, corner to corner, fill it in with weld. That way you get as much welding as you can. Just make sure everything's square and rugged so it doesn't warp over time. Yeah, I like how you got those angle rubs welded together. Yeah, like I said, that was right straight out from my brother-in-law's stove, because if that lasted since 1985, this one should last for many years. Oh, yeah. You can get some good use out of this in the winter. It's the prettiest stove I've ever seen. I love that front tray to catch stuff falling out. You never make those big enough. No, usually not.  But usually it's just flat. Yeah, so I love that. So when stuff falls out, it catches it. Yep. You can put stuff there. The piece that's going to pop at you when you get the door open or something. Yeah. And of course, Donnie's dream on there is amazing. And then this rod is awesome. It's as hot as it is. You can grab right a hold of that. It's still cold. And that's a fully adjustable up-down, inner-out. And then we're going to have a couple other attachments on this side, I think. Yeah, the dish rack type style. Yeah, which will be pretty awesome. Do you use a stick welder or do you use a big welder? When I built this, I used a big welder. Okay, yep. It's money quicker. Do you get it? Or does it quicker? It does, yep. Ah. Does it, does it, I mean, the beads on it are just perfect. The roads. Yeah. I mean, is it easier to use a Miko? It is easier, yep. Yep, yep. Yeah, because with the Miko, you keep the same distance from your piece. You do it with a stick, right? You have to keep pushing in. Right. It's a little bit harder, but if you know how to do one, it's easy to do the other stuff. Yeah, those welds are absolutely perfect. Yeah, they're gorgeous. A lot of people are going to enjoy this. And the cool part about it to me is it's the centerpiece of the camp now, and even when it's done, it's going to be the centerpiece of the camp. Everybody walks through that door. It's going to be one of the first things they see. We might have a moose that or a big buck over there up there that they'll see that too, but it's always going to come back to the wood stove. It's definitely doing its work right now and trying this out so you can get the insulation out. Yep. Do you still have the viewers how much insulation you've got to put out? Yeah, we've got a whole room full of insulation behind there. We've got to hang. And we're just dry making sure that the lumber that we use for the camp is bone dry before we put up the insulation and block it. Otherwise, you'd have some mildew or mold problems. I don't think you'd get to rock, but you'd have mildew or mold if you blocked in a lot of moisture like that. Yeah, you've got a mound of, you know, kind of sown. Every wood is sown. Oh yeah, every wood's got sown. You get 10, 14% is considered dry. So we want to get this down to 10% or so. And I got a meter behind me that I can check it with. And we've already dried it considerably. This is just the first day, the day and a half that we've run the wood stove. And it's definitely dried considerably. You could just tell by looking at it, smelling it and feeling the air in here. It rained six or seven times today outside, but in here it's been bone dry and nice and warm. Well, it was raining when Donnie went outside to work. Every time Donnie went out to work? Well, I got some fresh corn, and I picked up a kind of a marinated pork tenderloin, which I just, I usually cook it in an oven, but I got my little camp stove oven, but I didn't bother tonight, but I sliced it up and put it on the stove and pork gravy with it and mashed potato. And we got two hands pickles to try. Sweet. We'd like to try them. They're hot, I don't know what to call it. Yeah, they're lady, lady. Ashburn. Ashburn. That pork tenderloin you can cut with a fork. Yes. That looks terrible. Pretty amazing. Oh, that looks terrible.  No, I don't know. You haven't tasted it yet. No, that's true. Do you want to try these pickles? I definitely do. Those sound right at my elbow. You like that? Oh, they look like it. She says they're not that hot. Really? Great. Thank you. Oh, wow. Good? They're all that sound good. They're edible, Ken? Oh, yeah. She's a good cook. She can make some pickles. That's for sure. Wow. Joe in? Joe in. Yeah. I'm going to take this off just so it doesn't burn out, Ken. My grandson happened to be in the house when I was there. And we got talking deer hunting. He's a deer hunter. He's probably, I think 14. Oh, well. He watches your channel. Wow, the pickles are good. The pickles are good. Holy cow. And he says I watch your channel. We must have recognized you from it. Oh, yeah, I did. We got talking deer hunting. I said, at 12 years old, I shot a buck that was 200 pounds. Wow.  Wow. What's your personal best on it? 186. Get close, huh? Yeah. I don't like the one that shot last year. I'm going to go on his property last year. 6 points. 187 pounds. He won. Lucky to be 120. He wasn't even 100. He's got a spot. I couldn't believe it was the smallest 6 point I've ever seen. No kidding. He said it ran right up to him. He looked at it and said, now that's too small. But I go and then it turned around and ran right back at him again.  So he shot it. Picked it up, put it in his back pocket, walked out. They had pickles there. They're not too spicy. They're not at all. They're perfect.