Please don't do anything too many... Kill yourself please! WHY ME?! Hello and welcome back to the craft box. My name is Brent and today we are doing a PvP quick match on my myth wizard. First time we've ever done one of those, I know. Here are my stats, we've got 98 damage, 35 resist extra to myth, but I mean it doesn't really matter. 15% accuracy, we have 5% chance to fizzle, we've got 28% crit, 3% block, 5% incoming, not that we'll be healing much. We've got 85 power pips and 0% shadow pips, obviously we are level 63. So yeah, kind of legendary PvP for a tournament quick match on V1 which is about to start any moment. Now here we go. So yeah, hopefully we get our first match which is good. Don't know how many people we'll be up against, I'm not good. Here's my deck setup we're using. We've got a couple of shields, some stuns, actually we don't need those stuns, we need the other stuns. Just as well, I checked that. Yeah, my whole strategy is to kind of just mass stun people. Generally it doesn't really work because people carry stun blocks and whatnot, but that's why we have Orthorus and a whole bunch of Minotars. We've got a whole bunch of Medusa because even if we have a stun block, we're still going to use Medusa because it does a lot of damage. It does a lot of damage, but yeah, we've got Orthorus as well and Minotar, they do decent mounts, trolls to finish off people and stuff. Piers get rid of shields, kind of just the normal. Got some traps and stuff and things and you know, just a whole bunch of stuff. We should be good hopefully if we could get our first match would be great. Would be great. We're in number five. Who are we versing? Who is we versing? Let's find out. Let us find out really quickly. Let's go over here, launch tournament. This one here. Oh my gosh, things are still going on. They've been going on forever. Okay, five. We are versing someone called, I don't know, we will just go to Arena and find out, I suppose. Here's our treasure cards, by the way. A whole lot of Enchants, Medusas, Minotars, Blades, kind of just all the things that you would need. Kind of doing more of an aggressive strategy like I do on my Death Wizard. It can work and it can't work. It depends on the player. This is probably a balance wizard by the looks of the pet and everything. We'll give him the flex. We go first, which is great. I don't often go first. Kind of want to use up my pips as soon as possible if he is balanced. He is. He's probably not going to do anything right now. I'm expecting a Lore spammer just by the looks of him. He looks kind of good. We're going to go full attack. I don't think he's going to hit first round. They don't usually hit first round. He's probably going to shield or something. Oh no, he's hitting first round. Okay then. It's Lore. Yikes. Lore spammer is great.  Okay, that did half my health. Yay. I love Lore spammers. Ha ha. So good. So fun. Yep. Yep. Okay. I mean, we're going to save up for a Medusa, I think. I kind of want a Tower Shield just for his next hit. He's probably going to Lore again and we're dead basically. So what we need to do is we really need to get something up. Kind of quick, hopefully. I mean, next round as long as we get a Powerpip, we can go for a Medusa, unless he stun blocks it, which he could. It's a very big possibility. Medusa's going to do a whole bunch to him. And also he should have not done that, unless he's mana burning me. Okay, weird. Really strange. Really, really strange. He's done for two rounds. I don't really want to go full for this right now. I would prefer to find something to back up against. But at the same time, I mean... Yeah, we're just going to go for it.  Got to get this stun off. We can always blade into a blade into a Minotaur, I suppose, is another good thing that we can do. This is going to do massive for us. Unfortunately, he's going to get a huge pip advantage. But if we crit, which we didn't, of course not, still going to do massive damage, I'm thinking. Unless he's got a bit of resist, which he doesn't really. So yeah, we've taken about as much health as he's taken out on us. Yeah, our ratio is about the same. He's stunned for one more round. So we need to kind of figure out how we're going to get around this. We've got a Troll just in case. We're going to discard one of those. We are going to... We can probably go for a chain stun. That is probably a good idea. Let us blade. Kind of a waste because we did do that all at once. We've still got a shield, so we are fine. We are fine. He's stunned this turn as well. Yeah, Medusa from second is really, really good, though. Like so much better than Medusa from first. Okay, we've pip failed, but it's fine. It's fine. We can hit next with a Minotaur, and that'll do a lot. We're going to... We're at 20% pierce. So if we go for a blade, we've still got a shield. So we should be fine. If we blade into a Minotaur next, we should be good. It should be GG, hopefully. Hopefully. As long as he doesn't do anything and we don't fizzle. If we fizzle, that's kind of game over here. Because yes, of course it is law. Of course it's law. Why wouldn't it be? He didn't crit, so that's always good. Let's see. Can we clutch? Yes we can. Okay, that didn't nothing. That's great. Was that too short? Didn't we... Oh no, we put up a blade instead of a shield. Whoopsie, Daisy. I know what I'm doing. I know what I'm doing. Don't you worry. I mean, he's probably going to law me again. So we kind of have to go for a hit here, no matter what. So, Minotaur, I guess it's all up to you, Daddy. Can you kill? This is our last chance, basically. Please don't fizzle. Please don't fizzle. Please don't fizzle. No! Okay. That's slightly unfortunate. It's unlucky. Okay.  That could have been a GG there. If that Minotaur did not fizzle. Law is so OP.  I want to get Law on my balance so then I can Law spam against everybody else and feel good about myself. Feel good about myself. But that's fine. I'll be back with the next match. Okay, I am back. We're going up for our next match. We're against Hunter Dragon Flame, apparently. We'll see what happens here. Hunter is down here, so he lost last time as well. So we should be good. Should be good. There's apparently 17 people in our bracket, which is quite a few. Not gonna lie, quite a few. So yeah. We'll see what happens. Second match, second luck, we'll find out when it loads. That would be good. Thanks. All thanks. Hunter Dragon Flame, he looks icy. He looks like an icy boy with his icy boy pit. So yeah, we're gonna give him the flicks to see, you know, just because we can. Why not? Why not? We go first again. Like, what is this first? Hello, I am appreciate you. Let me quickly check. I think he's ice. I'm pretty sure he's ice. He is ice. Okay, cool. So we can use bubbles. Auras, sorry. Whatever you call them. Who knows? Let's go for a blade again. We'll try and save up, unless he does something cheeky like a stomach. We'll see. Which is probably the first thing he's gonna do. Stumblock, right? Yep, of course. Of course he would. Yep, that makes sense. Okay, we're at Medusa Strat. Okay, that pit though. Hello. Hello, pit. That's nice of you to give him an infall. We're gonna discard that Medusa. We probably won't rely on Meduses too much. Kind of keen to do this, actually. I don't think we can. I'm gonna shield. I mean fortify, or should I shield? I mean fortify lasts a bit longer. He's probably gonna go for something really big. We're gonna draw. We'll see what we get. Okay, we got an enchantment, which is good. We can enchant a... I'm kinda gonna save up for an Orthorus, I think is probably the best idea. Orthorus is probably the best way to go about this. Okay, Frostbite, of course. We block though. Can we block the overtime as well? That would be great. I doubt it. Okay, we can't block the overtime, but we're still doing little damage. Plus, we've got a fortify, just as well we didn't shield, because that would be really bad. We're gonna do that. I kind of want to blade again into a Minotaur. He's kind of out of pips. We've got a big piff advantage. We're gonna discard the Tower Shield and the Pierce. This is really good. Like, this is really, really good, even though he's got a Stumblock. Like, 1,000 damage is kind of nice. We're gonna blade again. I think we can do this one. Yeah, we can. We'll do another blade. Next round, we'll try and find an Orthorus, if we can. That would be great. If we can't, then we'll just hit with a Minotaur instead. That is not doing too much. We're probably gonna be down to half health if he doesn't hit well that's up. This is a shield, probably. So we need to do a double hit here. Yeah, okay. Just as well we were going to do a double hit anyway. Because Rest in Peace, Medusa, you were short-lived strategy. All we could do... I mean, that's not really useful. We might go for a Minotaur. Um, into a blade. Probably is a good option here. We just need to get some damage on him kind of quickly. We've let the damage build up quite a bit with two blades. We should definitely do a lot. This is slowly progressively doing more and more damage to me, which is not good. He's also gaining a lot of pimps. A lot of pimps. No crit, unfortunately. Really upsetting. I used to crit a lot and then I didn't crit anymore and I was kind of sad. Okay, that did a lot for the first hit. This is gonna do at least 1,000, I would say. Oh, 2,000. Hello there. Yes, please. Okay, that weakness was a bit mis-timed. Misjudged weakness there. I mean, this is kind of looking spicy. I was gonna save up for the Orthorus, but I mean, we're down at half health. So we need to kind of think about what we're actually gonna do. I was gonna Orthorus, but he's got six pips. So we could probably not let the Asthanian to do anything just too scary. We crit though, which is good. So there should be Gigi here. Um, I don't want to hit him with the premature Gigi just in case, but like, I'm pretty sure this is gonna kill. Oh, no. Okay, we can follow up with the troll. It's fine. As long as we don't pip fail. Rip. Rip. Oh, no. That's why I didn't want to hit him with the premature Gigi. Um, I mean, yeah.    Fizzle, please. Damn it. If he fizzled, that would have been hilarious. Rip. 23 health. Damn it. That weakness really saved him. Oh my gosh. That weakness. I mean, I couldn't have won either way. It's just unlucky at the end of the day. That weakness kind of saved him. Like if I had shielded, I wouldn't have done, it wouldn't have been good. If I had done anything else, it wouldn't have been good.  It's whatever. Gigi to Hunter. He did well. He did well. We are instant porting here. So yeah, we'll be back with the next match. Okay, next match. Here we go. We're facing Natalie Breaker. Should be good. That was a weird sound. Lipricorn, hello. Oh, we're actually friends with her. That's cute. Hi, Natalie. Hi, Natalie. That's interesting. I think she's Storm. I'm pretty sure she's Storm. She flexed as well. She gave me that flex. Gave me that flex. She flexed and pretty sure she's Storm. I'm 99% sure she's Storm. Just, yeah, she's Storm. Just thought I'd check just in case. We're going to remove this. We are going to Blade. We're just going to do the same strat. We're probably going to stun her from second unless this is a stun block. Which it probably is. Oh no, Tile Shield. Okay, we can go for a Medusa next as long as she doesn't stun block, which is a very big possibility. And I wouldn't be surprised if she didn't. If she did, because that makes sense to do that. Or we could save up for an Orthra Switch, which is also looking kind of spicy. And I think I might do that instead. One, because we pit failed. And two, because, as you know, Orthra Medusa is... Is Medusa 8? I can't even remember. I thought Orthra was going to say, who knows. This is going to do a decent amount. Please don't crit on me, Natalie. Natalie, you're my friend, right? Okay, good. I'll catch her today. Okay. Okay, I forgot what Catcher of the Day does. What is the thing that it gives me? Oh, it removes my... Okay. Okay. Okay, Natalie, I see how it is. I see what you're doing. I see you. I see you. She's probably going to bulk to get that off. She's pit failed, so that's unfortunate. Medusa's looking really spicy right now. But Orthra as well is looking kind of hot and spicy. 2,000. I mean, yeah, if we go for an Orth, we can probably find a troll or something. It's probably good. Is this another shield? Just as well, we didn't Medusa. Oh my gosh, I was so ready to Medusa. Like, I'm just like, yeah, we're going to Medusa. I was actually planning on Medusa-ing. I'm so pleased I didn't. I'm so pleased I didn't. And it was because she already had a shield up that I didn't. Okay, correct. Okay. Well, this is probably Rest in Peace, Natalie. Rest in Peace, Natalie. You lived well. Long, long hard year of living. Unfortunately, your time may be near. Your time is nearly up, which is unfortunate. Unlucky for you. Lucky for me. We've got a shield still, so we're pretty good. Unfortunately, I need to find a troll, which we probably have one inside somewhere, I think. We're going to legitimately discard absolutely everything, mainly because none of these hits a necessary at the moment. Okay, no troll. That's unfortunate. Please don't do anything too many. Kill yourself, please. Why me? Natalie, I believed in you. I'll be back with the next match. So we're doing pretty bad. I'm not going to sugarcoat it, but we got a buy. So the game's like, yeah, you know what, you can be good and stuff, but you can also have a buy. So as you can see, we are currently lost, even though we're tied with... Like, I don't know how we're currently tied with Fredbear, but here's a different number than us, even though we're only exactly the same amount of points. So, you know, that's cool and stuff, but we got a buy. So yeah, we win at least one match, I suppose. Yeah, I'll be back with the rewards. Okay, so this match just finished, which was Fred versus Luke, and Fred won. Luke has terrible gear, but look what he said. He said, this game is cheat. This game is cheat, apparently. I didn't know that this game is cheat, but apparently this game is cheat, you know. Gotta listen to Luke, he tells you this truth. But yeah, here's kind of trash gear. He's kind of trash gear. Here's Storm, obviously. Yeah, only 66 damage, and I'm like, what is your gear? Why? And why only 10 accuracy? Because he was fizzling a whole bunch. And then I went and checked his gear. We came in 16th place, second to last, yay. And we see that like, what is this? What is this? So yeah, he's kind of bad. But anyway, we came in 16th place. We're gonna just look at the rankings. Wait, how did we? Oh yeah, of course, 120, yeah, that's right. So yeah, last place, understandable, because we had a terrible. Or because of Natalie. It's all Natalie's fault. All Natalie's fault. It's all her fault. Why do we only have two? Like, we did three matches. We did three fights. I'm confused. I have legitimately no idea. We should have 130. Why do we only have 20? Slightly confused. Anyway, here we go. We got a sharpen blade, Lord of Night TC, and 250 arena tickets. Not the best, but I mean, whatever.  I'm thinking we might save up for the fatal razor in order to at level 100. So we can go into PVP at higher levels. Kind of thinking that's a possibility. But again, I'm not 100% sure. If you have any ideas, things that we should spend arena tickets on on Mythboy, we'll be doing a lot more PVP on him in the future. Let me know down in the comments below. If you like, leave a like, subscribe if you want to. And most importantly, remember, craft outside the box.


Hello, hello, how are you today? Hello, hello, how are you today? I'm good, I'm great, I'm excited to see you all. Hello kids, how are you all doing? I'm sure you're having a lot of fun with your families. This is the perfect time to brush up and practice your social skills. One of the basic social skills is greetings. So do you know what greetings are? Greetings are words or actions to welcome people when you meet them. They're also a way of meeting new people and making new friends by starting a conversation. So let's learn about different greetings today, shall we? Say hi, say hi, when you meet someone say hi. And you can also say hello, how are you? And how do you reply? You say I'm fine, thank you, how are you? Good morning, good morning, in the morning say good morning. When you want to greet anyone you happen to meet and how do we reply? We say good morning. Similarly, good afternoon, good afternoon, in the afternoon say good afternoon. When you want to greet someone you happen to meet and how do you reply? You say good afternoon. Good evening, good evening, in the evening say good evening. That's what you say when you meet late in the day and how do you reply? You say good evening. Good night, good night, when you're leaving say good night. That's what you say when it's late in the evening or night and how do you reply? You say good night. Goodbye, goodbye, when you're leaving say goodbye. That's what you say any time of the day and how do you reply? You say goodbye, see you soon. Thank you, thank you, when someone does something for you. That's what you say any time of the day and how do you reply? You say you're welcome. Nice to meet you, nice to meet you when you meet someone for the first time. That's what you say any time of the day and how do you reply? We say nice to meet you too. But did you know not everywhere people greet in the same way? There are different ways of greeting all around the world. For example, in India we join our hands together and bow our heads and say namaste or pranam if it's someone elder to us. In Japan or China they bow down and greet each other. In western countries people shake hands and say hello, how do you do? I hope you had a lot of fun learning greetings. Goodbye, see you soon.


Hi everyone, welcome. My name is Carmen and I'm a youth service librarian for San Francisco Public Library. Before we begin, I would like to acknowledge that I am in San Francisco, California on the unceded land of the Ramatosh-Alone people. We are so happy that you are here with us to celebrate Asian American Pacific Islander Heritage Month for youth and family with a very special program with Elizabeth Yang and Linda Kaohun of Career Girls. Before we begin, let me introduce them for a bit. Linda Kaohun is an entrepreneur, activist, and community leader based in San Francisco. Linda is also the founder and CEO of Career Girls. Career Girls is the largest online collection of career guidance videos focusing on diverse and accomplished women. And we also have our guest Elizabeth Yang who is a business strategist who specialized in building exceptional customer experiences through inclusive leadership and social networking. She is the founder of Mung Woman Take On The World and is here with us live from Minneapolis to talk about her career journey. This special visit is part of our AAPI program series in which we celebrate Asian and Pacific Islander history, culture, and heritage. A celebration that we believe should take place not only during May but all year around. Thank you for joining us to continue understanding, respecting, and celebrating the diverse Asian and Pacific Islander history and culture from San Francisco and beyond. Check out the AAPI webpage of San Francisco Public Library to see our upcoming events, find great books by AAPI authors and illustrators, and more. And before we start, a huge thanks to the friends of SFPL for their generous support of this special series. We couldn't do this without them. And now without further ado, I present you with Elizabeth Yang and Linda Kahun of Career Girls. Thank you so much, Carmen. We are delighted to be part of San Francisco Public Library's Asian American Pacific Islander program for this month. I'm also very pleased to have the opportunity to be in conversation with Elizabeth Yang who is a business strategist, career girls role model, and the founder of Mung Women Take on the World. Career Girls is a free video platform for women from all backgrounds to be able to share their career, educational, and life journeys to inspire girls to find their own path to empowerment. In November 2019, I had the distinct pleasure of interviewing Elizabeth during our MIT video shoot. So I'd like to jump in and let's have us watch a short clip from that conversation. I am a business strategist and I specialize in building exceptional customer experiences through inclusive leadership and social networking or relationship marketing. Mung Women Take on the World, I had launched that in 2018, but I wanted something where I could have it really once a year and have it be a global celebration of Mung Women and girls all around the world and showing that there were Mung Women that were really diverse from all around the world. And so it was because of these amazing women that we were able to find 60 partners across eight countries and have that represented. So we had Australia, Vietnam, Laos, France, Germany here in the US. And it really started because I really wanted my daughter to feel like she was enough. And I wanted Mung Women and girls just to be like, you know what, I got this global sisterhood behind me. I never would have dreamed that I would be speaking at a conference in front of thousands or leading a workshop in front of 100 people. I never would have thought I could do that. But I really think that looking back when I was a little girl, it really started with having the courage to raise my hand to ask the question or having the courage to raise my hand and say, I knew the answer. And I wanted to share that with the class. A lot of times I was so afraid, even when I knew the answer to raise my hand, and I wouldn't. And I started to realize that if I really want to make a difference in the world, I had to be heard. Welcome, Elizabeth. Thank you so much. I'd like to begin by having you tell us more about Mung Women Take on the World, including some commentary on the images we saw in the video and some of the images we're about to see. So thank you so much, Landa, part of Career Girls for Future Me. And thank you to our friends at the San Francisco Public Library for just this amazing virtual program to just celebrate AEPI heritage this month. So just thank you for this opportunity. You know, Mung Women Take on the World started in 2018 and the vision was really an online global celebration of Mung Women and Girls all around the world. I just thought, imagine the power in knowing that you're embracing your leadership and celebrating with other Mung Women and Girls all around the world at the exact moment. Like, there's just so much power to that. And so that was really how Mung Women Take on the World happened. It's a global online summit that happens once a year. And, you know, I found 100% of this, and I recruit my planning team and other amazing Mung Women to say, let's celebrate just for one day. Let's just celebrate what it means to be a Mung Women and a Mung Girl all around the world. Great. And, you know, in the video and I think we're going to be seeing some images that you've curated for us to really help our audience get some insight into Mung History and Mung Culture. So let's see if we can get some of those images. Yes. Who are we seeing here? Yeah. So Mung Women Take on the World just took a little bit of contact about Mung people is, you know, we're an ethnic group that really started in southern China, right? The Miao Plan. And we are based all over the world from Southeast Asia, Laos, Vietnam, Australia, here across the US. The last time, I think the numbers were like 200,000 Mung Americans here in the US alone.  And that's really where my family, you know, immigrated from here in the US.  He lost his leg in the war and he had a family who was the main breadwinner. And, you know, back in, you know, Laos and those countries back in those days is you can probably imagine a person that is handicapped, just the amount of burden that he must have felt or the isolation that he might have felt was huge. But I share this because one of the things that I really just am really proud about my culture is the resiliency that comes from being Mung and the Mung people. And my grandfather became an entrepreneur back in the day. You know, photography was the latest innovation. And he started to take all his money to learn how to take photos.  And from the ground up, he built his business and he built his father. And my grandfather at the time helped other families that were had less fortunate, less economic being. He would pay for their sons to go to school. And he really became instrumental philanthropist, but not technically that way. That has been just a really big part of my legacy, my family throughout and really behind when we take on the world. So I share this story to say that, you know, sometimes when life throws you maybe unexpected turns, you really are really tested and you have the power to really turn around. And that is a lesson that my grandfather taught me. And he was a man with a disability that turns his life around and was able to help other families pursue higher education and pay for that. And that's one of the things that he taught me, which is that our strength lies in our differences, not our similarities. And so moment take on the world, Lisa, if you could put the next slide, that'd be great. I just want to show you what that looks like. So you might be thinking, well, it's an online summit. How awesome might that be, right? But we had, in just six months when this idea came about, I had curated 60 partners across eight countries to help me put this together.  He is in media journalism. And he talked about how so many mown women in journalism were his mentors.  Because, you know, a lot of mown men at this time would talk about being mentored and inspired by their sisters or their, their mom. But not many were talking about the mown women that were mentoring them that were not related by family. And when I first launched mown women take on the world, he was brave enough, courageous enough to stand alongside these amazing women. So you have women from Australia, Vietnam, Woz. So that's really what these 46 storytellers were. And then what you see there is me with my daughter Evelyn and my mom. So you have three generations of mown women there.  But she definitely was what seeded the start of the moment in the world. And we'll talk about that in a little bit. And then what you see there is this is me celebrating on the day of our first year summit. You have the women who are in classrooms are women from Laos. So my year in Laos is a teacher. And for the day she brought all of her mown women students to join us. And even though the languages were different, where I didn't know Laotian and they didn't necessarily know English, it was really the idea that complete strangers from all over the world came together just to support and solidarity. And it was just a really magical moment. And then there's us in Alaska and Boston, Massachusetts. So that's really what this day was, was really just really embracing each other's stories. And I know I love the work, Linda, that you do because in our stories, we really find strength. And one of the women is that mom, when I was first interviewing her, she was crying. And she said to me, mom, she said, I said, I asked her, what is one of your proudest moments? And she said, here I am in, you know, Vietnam.   Why? And she said, she's just like, this is the happiest thing of my life. And I just bawled and cried because that's the power of our stories is not going to each other. Indeed, indeed. And, you know, in our conversation, Elizabeth, and hearing and seeing this photo of your daughter, I know that she was a really important part of the origin story for wanting to create this organization. And so I'd like to know how she responded to this event. And, you know, just a little bit more of why you felt it was important for young women and your daughter to be able to understand that there was a monk sisterhood. So, you know, the mown community in Minneapolis, California, Wisconsin, the tri-states are where we have the largest mown population communities around the US. And how this started was, at the time, my job had relocated us to Boston, and there wasn't a large mown community. And one day, her and I were seven, she was seven, and we were just talking about her day at school. And where we lived, it was pretty diverse where her school had, you know, people from Russia, France, and all around the, it was a very international diverse school for the shift onto. And that night, I happened to ask her, you know, do you tell people, it's cool at your mom? And she said, no. I said, why? And she said, well, I did want what they lacked at me. And she was so adamant that her American name is Evelyn, and that I only call her Evelyn, don't call her by her mom's name at school, which was Snooki or Nucci, which means sunshine and mom. And I remember just in that moment, my heart just breaking because I truly felt that I truly had failed her as a mom and had failed her as a woman because I still get very tired of telling this story because in that moment where you feel like you failed your child as a mom, I realized that what I had to get for granted was the, the abundance that I had in Minnesota, which was being surrounded by many amazing women and leaders and just pioneers. And I realized in that moment that if I just didn't show her what it meant to be a mom, American women, or to draw strength from my cultural identity, that one day she would grow up and I was just thinking to myself, one day the world would tell her she's not the right size, she's not the right color, she's not the right shape, she's not tall enough, something's wrong with her. How's my baby girl going to take on the world that she's not? And I just said, I got to do something. I got to do something. I want my baby to be the moment and take it on the world because I have been in it too. I have been in the board rooms where often I'm the only woman, let alone the person of color in the room. And I just go back to my culture and identity and I say, you know what? If my parents could leeward to cross the Macon River to come to the US, dart over with no language, no English language, no money, I can walk into that board room. I can do an hour with them, right? If I didn't do something, she would never have strength from what really is my cultural identity. And so I said, you know what? I couldn't do something. What am I going to do? And so I leaned into my strength, but that's really where the birth and then we need to take on the world to them. And it really started with her because I just really wanted her to know how important this was to me, how big of a deal it was to apartment my baby, the work that I did. Oh, Elizabeth, that is such a beautiful story to know that is really, you know, this vehicle for celebrating cultural pride and empowering women came from a mother's love for her daughter in making sure that there was a legacy that she could draw upon and now girls everywhere can draw upon that legacy. You spoke a little bit about the woman from Vietnam. Are there more stories that you can share about the impact that the conference or mong women take on the world have had on the participants? Yeah, oh my goodness. I have so many stories that I could share with you. But what I will tell you is, for instance, finding a mong woman in China was probably one of them, this just shows you what women and girls won't care capable of because I wanted representation from eight countries and China has millions of people. It's like a needle in the haystack trying to find, hey, I'm going to find one mong woman in China to share her story. And keep in mind that China is communism. So Facebook and YouTube are blocked. So you can't even access that, right? And so I literally was like, how are we going to find a mong woman who spoke the need of language in a dialogue that we could actually understand? It was like a needle in the haystack. And I lean into my leadership team. I leaned into the mongster hood and I said, who do we, can we find a mong woman in China? And the kid cannot, brandy, the universe collided. And one woman said, you know what? I told Mandarin Chinese when I was in, you know, at college, I talked to my professor by networking, by connecting. We found one mong woman in China through WeChat and connected with her. And she could understand our dialect and we could also understand hers. And she had this amazing story of really, she had this beautiful, you know, embroidery shop. So you're looking at some of the beautiful traditional mong clothing. And in her, she said, you know, in mong. In my younger days, when I would sing, I would come to the US and tour. But now that I'm older, I can't do that anymore. And she, what she ended up doing was she's not started her own business doing tailored rotaries like this, right? And she built herself a business, a single mom. And she said to me in her store, she said, Elizabeth, I know that I humbly don't have a lot, but I have enough to live on. And what she's doing in China is she's sponsoring other mong girls who are, who are orphans to go to school. So as you can probably imagine, outside of the US and other countries, you have to pay for basic education. And so through her business, she was helping orphans go to school and just sponsoring the women, mong girls going to school and helping them. And she had no reason to, but that's what gets back. So that's just one story. We have so many others that really have been limited on the world who's been able to bring up, you know. And then, and then as we have this photo up in the slide, can you tell us a little bit more about what we're seeing? These are women who are in traditional clothing? Of course. So as you can imagine, right? So you have mong people that are all around the world from Laos to Vietnam to Southern China to here in the US. And so even within our ethnic groups, there are certain dialects of different groups. So there's mong dung, which is, you know, mong white, which is more of the mainstream mong language than most mong people speak. And then, and so if you're looking at the photo on top there with the women wearing their style, which is that silver necklace and the green shape, which is kind of the little belt around that, that generally is an outfit that that mong white would wear, right? And then you'll see that to the left where the women with the little back and on the back, that design is what we also have which is like mong black, right? It's another dialect and that's influenced a lot by Vietnam and some of the photos there. And then to the far right, you'll see these women wearing more of the really fancy embroidered skirt. And it's almost a fusion of what we call our mong green or mong lang or mong jock, and almost like a China influence sort of design. And so you'll start to see that our traditional clothing, like many, many traditional outfits are our fusions of where, where people grew up and inspired to buy. So that's just a little bit about what this is. And most of the time you'll see these women dressed up, not in everyday wear, but to celebrate the new year. So traditionally, you'll have a lot of women dressed up in some of their most beautiful gown to go to the new year and hopefully, you know, find the love of their life. And you have the men just dressed up and, you know, you bring your most beautiful outfits out to the ball, which is ball top, and just get to know each other. And the women would think, yeah, which is a traditional song or almost like poetry, you know, to just really get to know each other. So that's where a lot of the traditional clothing comes from. And then Elizabeth, sort of summing up the experience of starting the organization and having the conference. What was the, I don't know, the greatest achievement, you know, when you look at that experience for you in terms of doing the work? Well, I think I'd be outside to everyone else. You know, we launched, I launched known and taken the world. We took six months to make it happen. I crowdfunded $30,000 to host the celebration. I've never done that before. And we had 46 storytellers, 60 partners across eight countries. And so, you know, that was that it just made me realize how amazing women and girls are when we truly come together. But I think my most greatest achievement is probably with my kids because three months after I launched known and taken the world, we were sitting around dinner. And I remember, we were talking about what are you most proud of today at school. And my daughter said to me, she said, Mom, today at school, I told somebody I was known, and they didn't know what that was, but I didn't mind. And to me, a seven-year-old now embracing that was huge. And even for my son, Evan, who at the time was nine, that year he went to the New Year celebration and he proudly wore his traditional known outfit for boys. And in the past, it was always a struggle, an argument, to wear it. And he wore it. And he also wore, we had our heart logo t-shirt, and he would rock it. And then on the one morning, I woke up for an interview and he said, he said, Mom, get somewhere, I'm wearing your momentic on the world shirt. It's pink, but I don't mind. And I said, why are you wearing that? And he goes, because you have your wide interview today and I want to support you. And he was nine years old. And so to me, that's what success is. It's truly saying, I don't know what this is all about, but I'm proud of it. And whatever that is, I mean, if people don't understand it, it's okay. I understand it. And I accept who I am. Beautiful. I love that story. And speaking of stories, why did you decide to share your story with career girls when we came knocking? Well, Linda, I just love, love, love the vision for career girls. I really wish that I had it growing up, right? Just that diversity across globally and just like anything. And to me, that representation is so key to just my mission in life and diversity and inclusivity. And I really wanted to share my story because I wanted a girl to anywhere out there, whether women or girls, say, ah, she either looks like me or her background and stories are similar to mine. And if she really could do it, I think I might. And that really starts with, you know, girls raising her hand and being able to say, Hey, I know the answer. And I want to share that. And there's no shame in that. There's no embarrassment. There's no like weirdness about it. It's just, I need the answer. And I'm going to share that with you. And it really does start with raising your hand. It is that simple. And if I can inspire anyone, a woman or girl, to do more of that, then, you know, I want to stand alongside that work. And you know, Elizabeth, we frequently find that sharing a store, their story, not only empowers the listener, but it also transforms our role models. I'm very curious to see what's changed in your life since our interview. Wow, so much like, um, so this year, you know, Momentum World was inspired by my daughter. And, you know, this year I joined, um, Mone Giving Impact Network, which is the Mone Impact Giving Network, which is all about inspiring philanthropy and giving. And they serve not just Mone Women and Girls, but also the broader community. And I said, this year I'm going to make time in my schedule to do this for my son, right? Like my son. Cause when I launched Mone, Take On The World, he said, Mom, what about me? What about me? And I said, you know, I don't know what it means to be a Mone Boy. I know what it means to be a girl and a woman, but I haven't forgotten about you. And so this, I think that's the biggest work is now that I've done Mone Women and Girls. How do I continue to build and empower our Mone Boys to be allies alongside our empowered Mone Girls? That to me is really important as well. So I'm doing that. We moved back to, you know, Minnesota and now I'm just running my business full time. And I'm really focused on helping get more diverse entrepreneurs into the marketplace, heard, seen, and able to create a good living so that they can continue to serve a diverse multiple place. And so my diversity and inclusion and representation passion continues to show up in different ways. And that is the work that I want to stay committed to doing. Great. Thank you. And for everyone watching this webinar, how can we learn more about Mone culture specifically, but then also as we are in this error of more media attention paid to violence and discrimination against the Asian American Pacific Islander community? What does being an ally look like for people who want to support our Asian American Pacific Islander brothers and sisters? That's a great question. A couple of resources I know, because I'm very familiar with Minnesota, we have the Minnesota Historical Society, which has a timeline of the Mone women first that pioneered. We also have a Mone Museum, which is a virtual Mone Museum that people can just search up and learn more about the Mone culture and really be a part of documenting the stories and firsts from all around the world. And I think that's those are some available resources for anyone that wants to learn more.  And to answer your question about being allies, I think it's a really tricky conversation sometimes. And I often say that it's got to start from a place of curiosity. A place of curiosity. And you can start from a place of curiosity and ask yourself, if you were in those shoes, would those same decisions, reactions, consequences happen to you based on your skin color, based on your gender, based on your circumstances in your lifestyle? And if you can honestly say no, that wouldn't have happened to me if because I'm not Asian or I'm not Black or whatever it is, then speak up. Speak up from a place of compassion and curiosity. And you don't have to have the perfect words. You don't have to know what to say. All you have to say is, I stand with you and how can I support you? That's it. Those are just two simple sentences that anybody and everybody can do. You don't have to know the answer. You don't want to be the one solving other people's problems, right? But I think that's the most important thing that as an ally is that you do not stand silent.  And I know it's scary, but like I told my kids, this is what courage has to come in. You don't have to understand them. And it's not either or. It doesn't mean there's not enough room for both of you to coexist. All you've got to say is, how can I support you? That is the most, that is a question that each of us can ask each other to be better allies in the community. Thank you. This has been a great conversation. I'll see if we have some questions from our audience coming in, but it's been wonderful to hear your story and what's happened since we did our initial interview with you in 2019. Thank you so much. I appreciate it. Thank you, Linda. Hi. So if do anyone have any questions, feel free to type it in chat or the Q&A on Zoom or also the chat on YouTube too. So while we're waiting for questions, I have some questions. So for Elizabeth, so what are the upcoming plans for a Hmong woman take on the world? Like any virtual events coming up? Great question. So we just wrapped up our second online summit just past October. So our third one will be happening in fall of 2022. So if anyone's interested in being a part of that journey, just send me a message, reach out. But my next inspiration project is to launch the Hmong women leadership event. And that will be part of Hmong women world where I want to be able to provide an apprenticeship program to redefine the look and feel of what it means to be a Hmong women leader. And especially with just online and leadership and diversity, all digital nowadays, it's really about how do you be a leader online and show up to influence to drive the change that you want to be? You know, a lot of the younger generation that I'm seeing now want to be influencers, I need to, but they're embracing their leadership. And I think that's because especially in the culture, the definition of Hmong women leadership is very black and white. And a lot of the mainstream women have to use their names that, but I think that it continues to diversify what it means to be a Hmong woman leader. And I want to think of an apprenticeship program to show women how do you lead, but more importantly, how do you drive change in social media and being online to do that? And we have a question from Linda to Elizabeth. How has your mentoring changed since the interview? That's a great question. Since the interview, I've had people that have reached out for mentorship. And the hardest thing is that I want to talk to every single woman and mentor every single one of them. There's only one of me. And so I think what's changed the most for me is to think of all of the work that I'm doing, whether it's like fair with the San Francisco Public Library or when I'm teaching and a training on a live stream on social media or anything that I'm doing as mentoring moments. My intention is really, what is that teachable moment that I'm going to just put here so that anybody who watches this live on the replay hopefully can get some sort of mentoring moment to walk away with? And that's really how it's changed since the interview, just recognizing the power of being online that you can continuously mentor just by being online and being very intentional about creating teachable moments to share the path on. And here's another question. What's most challenging in moving forward with Hmong Woman Take On The World? Yeah, so I think the most challenging thing in moving forward with Hmong Woman Take On The World is when you start something really new, there is a lot of inspiration that a lot of women get. And so they are starting to grow through. They think aging because you should have a community for everything, or for those who feel like you want to create that space. But I think the most challenging thing is really being able to be involved. It's a lot of solidarity that needs to come together. And so, you know, also I get the question of, oh, how are you different from this group, or how does that feel different? And if it comes on this, like, either or conversation? And I kind of remind people that it's really about, wow, how amazing that we've progressed that we now have options. Like, if Hmong Take On The World isn't for you, there's another option for you. And so I don't see it as like one being better than the other or competition. I rather see it as amazing that you have options that you can find a community to be a part of, even if it's, you know, being a Hmong woman. And so I think that challenging is like, okay, great, now we have all these different communities. How do we all come together collectively, right, for the greater good? And, you know, I'm always thinking about that, because especially with no women around the world, the language is definitely a barrier, whether English or French or or a lot of Vietnamese or Mandarin Chinese. But what I have found is that, you know, if you put the invitation to say, hey, I really need someone to help me translate, does anyone know how to speak French or Mandarin or Vietnamese or whatever, with the power of social media online, people come. They come. You just have to have the courage to put that image down into the world and ask for help. Great answer. And we also have a question from YouTube. What's the one thing that you want people to know about your culture and heritage? You know, Hmong means the free people. And I think that one thing I've learned about my culture, not having, quote, a country of our own, we're often mistaken that Hmong sounds like Mongolia, Mongolia, but we actually don't have our own country. It's resiliency. It's the ability to go into a foreign country and reinvent yourself and start over and still hold the peace of your Hmong culture, but also still appreciate the culture of the country that you're a part of. And that multicultural identity is really what makes, you know, what I believe the Hmong culture truly resilient.  And to me, that's resiliency. Great answer. Another question is, what did it feel like the first time you had the courage to raise your hand in class? Oh, sometimes I think it's hard because I didn't want to get teased if things smarted me. You know, we're such a smart man. And there was, I think also a stereotype being Asian and a girl that I was somehow smarter because I was a girl and Asian. And I felt like I had to live up to that. And you know, sometimes I need answers, other times I didn't. Like for example, math is not my strength at all. But I think it was always whatever it was society or the culture to think, you know, what are people going to think of me?  And I think that really was like the big hot moment where the light bulb went off and it was like, it's not about being smart at all. It's about, I just want to start a conversation and change that dialogue, you know? But I've been starting conversations then. Yeah, I also felt the same way too of like being shy, especially as like Asian-American. I was like, I'm sure if I should raise my hand in class. But I think like having a role model is like what empowered me more to like also speak out too. So I think that was a great answer. All right. And I think one more question to wrap up. All right. So what is a piece of advice that you can share with young people watching this webinar? Yeah, at least I could pull up that last slide. That'd be amazing. You know, I would say that diversity and inclusion is so important to me. And this is like, you know, for young people that are watching, you hear a lot of adults talk about diversity and inclusion and representation and represent racism and discrimination. And what does that really mean? And I want to just leave you with this because I think we've all been to a party or a dance where everyone's having fun except you, right? And so I think of diversity as really an invitation to the party and being inclusive is really being invited to dance. And I just hope that you can remember that because that really is what representation with diversity and inclusion really is about. That feeling of you're invited to the party and you can have fun and be part of the dance. And so, you know, I just want young people who are watching to remember that feeling because it doesn't have to be complicated like racism or discrimination. It's really that simple. If you're afraid to go to a party because you have no one to go with and you feel sad because you are invited to the party or you're there but then everyone's ignoring you and they're all dancing in the group and you're the only one there and no one, you know, they're inviting you to dance. If you know that feeling, right, then open yourself up to simply inviting people to the party, which is all about diversity and being inclusive of just inviting them to dance. It's just an invitation. They can always say no and it's completely okay for that. But be the first one to extend that invitation. Wow. All right. Thank you, Elizabeth and Linda for an amazing and inspiring conversation. Do you guys have any words of farewell to our audience? Yes. Well, thank you, everyone for this opportunity to really demonstrate what Career Girls is all about. We are a platform for diverse and accomplished women, inclusive in getting them to share their advice and wisdom with girls around the world. And one of my great pleasures in life is when I get a chance to interview women like Elizabeth and witness and capture their stories. So thank you, everyone. And likewise to Linda and thank you to Career Girls and the San Francisco Public Library for an incredible platform like this happened. It's amazing. And so I just want to just share with everyone that it's really us planning to see the possibility in each other that really allows us to grow. And so just continue to support each other as much as we can. I want to give one last thank you for Linda and Elizabeth for joining us today. And I also want to thank you all for also joining us today. If you love today's program, check out our calendar for future virtual API programs. And next week, we invite you to join us for a very special program with talk story we've took on May 25th, where you can meet Pacific Islanders in STEM where they share stories, success, and tips to inspire, empower, and connect them with their community. And that's it for today, folks. Take good care of yourself, stay safe, and we hope to see you all at another library program soon.


Hey guys, Drew with GeoArm here again to talk to you about the M2M-MN02-LTE and its connection into a GE InterLogix Networks Panel. Super easy for connections here. This is only going to be wired for communications at this point. So what I've already done is I've already got the antenna screwed in place here as you can see. This comes disassembled. So I've already put it on, no big deal to get it on there, you just screw it just like that. You just put it on and then you can put the antenna which is located here anywhere you'd like. I'm just going to stick it outside the box here. You don't want to put it inside the box so be careful with that. But outside the box anywhere is fine. What you're looking at right now on the Networks Panel is a view from the side. So this would be the top of the panel up here and it would be going from top to bottom. So the bottom of the panel would be down here and there's a door that opens from the top here down to the bottom. So what we're going to do is I'm just going to show you from the side view so don't be thrown off if it doesn't look like this when you're wiring it in, it'll be probably facing another direction. Alright, first thing we're going to do here is we're going to take a look at the documentation. The documentation will show you how to wire it in. It'll give you all kinds of different tips and tricks and things like that. Definitely keep this. This is a very valuable piece of documentation. It'll have your username and password if you are going to ever use the R-Control app, you'll need that. Alright, so what we're going to do is get straight into getting this wired for communications and power. So power first, we're going to take this red wire. This red wire is going to be getting wired into what's titled AUX Plus. So AUX Plus. Get that red wire screwed down in there. There may be other wires in there if there are. Just leave them in there and wire this in there along with it because it could be going to something that's needing power. Now the black wire is going to go into the COM, which is literally right next to it. I believe if you're looking at this panel the correct way it would be right above it. So it'll be COM. Then we're going to be wiring in for communications now that we have power wired in here. This is the power. So we have positive into AUX Plus and the ground or negative into COM. Now we're going to take the communications wires, which are going to be the green and yellow wire. You will have an orange and white wire kind of hanging there. I'd recommend throwing some electrical tape or just cutting them back and getting out of the way if you're not going to be using the R control app. Just get them out of the way, throw some tape on them, cut them back, whatever you want to do. What we're going to do now is we're going to go ahead and get this wire for communications. So you want to take the green wire, which is this one here, and you want to take that and go to what's labeled R, which is right down here on the end. Go to R, get that wired in, screwed down. Then we're going to take the yellow wire and the yellow is going to be going into T. So you just get that put in place, screwed down. Now, if there are any wires that are in the T, R, T1, or R1 slot, just make sure to go ahead and get those wires out of there. You don't want those in there along with this. All you're going to need are these wires in for communication. And of course, these power wires, like I said, may be sharing this spot with others. So that's okay down here. But in this specific spot, these should be the only wires and T1 and R1 should no longer have wires in it as well. At that point, you are wired in for communications and you're ready to go on the GE Interlogix Networks panel. At this point, you're ready to give us a call. So make sure you document your serial number, which is located right here, six-digit number. And give us a call at that moment. We can get you activated or scheduled for an appointment to get activated. Thank you guys for watching this video. This has been how to wire the M2M-MNO2-LTE into the GE Interlogix Networks panel. Take care. Make sure to subscribe to our YouTube page and click the Show More tab underneath the video where you can view valuable links pertaining to this product, similar how-to videos, and our low-cost, no-contract-the-large monitoring services.


This is Dennis McMahon and welcome to Positively Vermont and today we will be speaking with Meredith Anglin, who is the author of a wonderful book called Shorting the Grid, The Hidden Fragility of Our Electric Grid. And she is a resident of Vermont and she's been very active in this field and she is produced, in my opinion, a very readable work and a very important work, but we'll let her explain that for us. So welcome, Meredith. Very happy to be here, Dennis. Thank you for inviting me. And could you tell us a little or a lot about yourself so our viewers can get to know you before we talk about the subject. Well, I always wanted to be a scientist and I came up with the idea that being a chemist would be the best kind because chemists can always make some progress. What I'm saying is I knew some physicists but they were always after the theory of everything, while chemists keep improving things. So I became a chemist. And after a while I became interested in power plants. This sort of partially happened, because I was working on pollution control from nitrogen oxides. I was also very interested in geothermal energy in the long run. I ended up at the Electric Power Research Institute in the renewables group. And then I switched to the nuclear group as I began to see the promise of nuclear. So I did this switch when nobody was doing the switch.  I have patents I worked as a chemist I worked as a project manager. I was one of the few women at that level back in the day luckily there's tons and tons of women now I'm so happy to see that. I was one of four girls in the physics class of 70 at one point. I mean, that isn't what it is today and I can only say how happy I am to see that because after all I have granddaughters as well as grandsons. So at any rate, moving, moving along with that I when I came here and I sort of semi retired I, I always I began writing more. I'd always enjoyed writing but you know at a full time job not so easy. At any rate, I also wanted to get involved in what's going on in the energy area around here because you know I always remember that I was one of the few women in the Electric Power Research Institute when I joined it. And so at any rate, I began writing a blog and the blog, somebody had read the blog and noticed that I was writing about the grid and he suggested that I joined the consumer liaison group of our grid operator. And I did and then I got elected to the steering committee of that group. And I began finding out a lot about the grid and I mean, it was like this whole new world I didn't understand any of that when I started and I'm going to say that in in in many ways. One of the reviews of my book on Amazon said the complexity is a feature, not a bug. It's a feature because it hides what's going on the people who are involved in this are delighted with it. I'm like, Oh, that might explain why I didn't get it until I had been in this consumer liaison group for a couple of years. So at any rate, so I began thinking that people that I didn't like the idea that the complexity was hiding things that people could make assertions that were not backed in fact because if you looked at it a certain way, you could say maybe it looked that way. So anyway I ended up writing this book because I wanted people to know what's going on with the grid, and maybe begin to take some action about it. So I guess that's the end of the story there. Great. I mean, live in Vermont and I understand your husband George credit to. Oh, he is. He is amazing.  He actually worked in software most of his life which is what most people who get to be some mathematics do, but he he is so organized and he was so helpful to me with this book I mean it couldn't have. I mean this book has 12 page glossary and three about 300 footnotes and notes. I mean, without his help. It wouldn't be the book.  Luckily I've been married to him for over 50 years so I have him in my life. That's wonderful. I want to tell you that it really grabbed me from page one. And I just want to, there's a lot of quotable quotes here. We're not going to have time to go through all the notes that I've named, but what really was shocking and of course I apologize for any of these funds that refer to electricity. And what was kind of shocking was on page one you compare this to the financial crisis of 2007. And the impact is that can you just give us a little teaser on that. Well, I did the financial crisis of 2007 one of the hallmarks of it was that everything was very built up and confusing. And so you really couldn't see what was going on I mean. And if you had simply said oh they're making a lot of loans to to people who really can't pay them back that's something you could say oh that's not good. But what they had was collateralized debt obligations and credit default swaps and layers and layers and layers of acronyms so that a person walking around who was used to the idea that they, you know, you get you apply for a mortgage and you show your background and you get a mortgage and then you buy your house. They will not have any idea what was going on and I felt that in the book. The big short was really about a bunch of people who had figured out what was going on through the through studying what what all these different things were and who who was putting them out and what kind of backup they had. And I thought you know that the grid is like that to nobody nobody knows everybody just goes around you know oh yeah it's fine because they have built up many many layers of of confusion, in my opinion. Let's let's begin at the beginning what is the grid. The name of a science fiction movie but what is the grid, the grid that I'm talking about is the electric grid and it consists of generators of various kinds which could include photovoltaics or whatever that put electricity on the grid. Then it has substations, then it has, you know, it has a balancing authority you say well I never heard of that one. And of course it has wires connecting things you know transmission lines distribution lines in your own own area transformers to take the high voltage power and put it to a level of power that can be used at your home, all these things. What's the balancing authority I think this is where it starts that people don't know what's going on the grid is the your electricity has to be in balance when with the electricity produced at all times, instantaneously. Now, when you turn on a light. In general, some power plant picks up at speed a little bit takes a little more fuel to run it or whatever, in order to make up for the light you turned on.  So, there's a flow of electricity, a curve over the day at four in the morning, there's not much electricity being used compared to four in the afternoon. And, and the person there's a group, the grid operator is in charge of managing calling power plants online telling power plants to go offline in order to keep that balance going. And if I saw in New England is our grid operator, and it has many different roles, but one of the most important roles and a role that's on every grid is balancing authority running the control room that says power plant you go on power plant you. I'm sorry. The demand is dropping you go offline now power, you will look we actually need you but your your lines over there they're getting they're getting overloaded so you've got to go offline until one of the other power plants in your area also goes off on okay okay now you can come back on again. And that is this huge room and I so new England with four, I think six operators working all the time to sitting in in other positions for backup to them. Some of the things that are surprising about that room. They've got a big TV screen. He said what what's with the TV screen and are they bored. No, if something happens, sometimes that is reflected about five seconds later or 10 seconds later by a drop or in electricity man, you see. So, it's an amazing place. Oh, they have, I want to say that that's not the only one they have, they have a backup one in another state, and they switch back and forth between the main balancing and the backup, at least once a month so they know that it actually works. So what I'm saying is this is an amazing thing that balancing authority, and it's an important thing for every grid where things get dicey is what are the rules that the balancing authority uses to call this power plant instead of that power plant and that a lot of my book is about those rules. There's just the one word that we're going to be probably appears in this book many, many, many times is RTO tell us what an RTO is, and how Vermont is involved with that. Okay. Unfortunately, this has to go with some history. In the old days. And throughout most of the much of the country now utilities were vertically integrated that is, if I'm a utility I own a power plant, I own, I own, I own distribution, I have a group that stands by to deal with billing issues, and, and I have some share payment to transmission that goes between states. And what I do is control. I have to ask my local state public utilities commission or public service board for permission if I want to start a power plant. I mean, if I want to build a power plant retire power plant, build a transmission line by a part of a different transition line. Well, it turned out that during the time when everything was being deregulated. There was an idea that if we deregulated utilities that have been to have them go into the PUCs, but rather had regional organizations, everything would be cheaper. And those regional organizations are the regional transmission organizations. And they have a lot more power than the local PUCs had the local PUCs could say do this or do that. In some ways that regional transmission organizations don't have much power in the sense that they can't have a, they can't ask for a new power plant to be built or a new power plant to be delayed. They're supposed to do everything through a series of auctions people are supposed to different power plants are supposed to bid in and then they get chosen. And then, and then, and the thing is that it wasn't working. So what they do is they add another auction to make up for the problems of the first auction. Let me give you an example of that. And I feel like we're different. So they have an auction for kilowatt hours so that you know people bid in and and they say I can give you kilowatt hours at this price and then the least expensive ones are chosen by the balancing authority. So they bid in problem because there was no promise of payment of any particular amount it was whatever cleared at the auction. And so if you own a power plant that was only on part of the time like it from two to four in the afternoon most days or something. From four to six on winter evenings, you didn't know if you're going to get paid enough to keep that power plant in good shape. So they ended up with capacity auctions where you bid in and say, I'm going to keep this power plant in good shape and you have to pay me for the fact that I have capacity and reserve for you. Okay, so they begin paying capacity auctions and that got a little bad because you can have a gas fire plant and it bid into the capacity auction and it gets its payment. And then on a cold winter night where everybody's using gas for their homes. The balancing authority says you online and they say sorry about that we can't get any gas right now. So, then of course, they tried to sell this with yet another auction called the anyway. So you see, if I give you a fairly, I hope I've given a good overview of what the RTO does. Well, one thing I want to, there's a lot to this and again I want to stress that it is highly readable, highly exciting in many parts. And, you know, it's very revealing. And the other thing I want to say about your book is immensely fair. You know, you give both sides or all sides and certain issues about fuel preference and policy and things like that and also about fairness. I want to ask you about RTOs operating not like any government agency the relative secrecy that goes on when power decisions, whether they be split second or whether they be long term policies are made without the knowledge or a quote interference quote by the general public, the people who pay for this can tell us a little bit about the lack of transparency. There's two organizations in the RTO. The first one is the ISO New England that runs the balancing authority and ISO New England. What is ISO? Independent system operator New England. They're down in Holyoke, Massachusetts, as well as other locations, which I'm not sure they disclose before they're back up, a grid operator thing. And then there's a knee pool, a Northeast power pool, and knee pool was set up about the same time the ISOs, but it's very different. For me and me pool, you have to be pretty much a participant in the markets. Well, so they have, they have six sectors and sectors include transmission operators, traditional power plants, alternative power plants, public power, public utility such as municipal utilities, and one of the six sectors with 16% of the votes is end users. End users are totally outvoted. Plus, the end user sector is not like you would expect it to be AARP and stuff. It's also where the Sierra Club, the Massachusetts Attorney General, and so forth, they are in the end user sector. Now the thing about the knee pool meetings is you have to be invited. You can't say what happened at the knee pool meeting. They had a big flap when a reporter wanted to join. They said, okay, you can, they even repeal to FERC to keep the reporter out. I mean, the lack of transparency is almost overwhelming when you begin looking at the thing about knee pool, by the way, is their group decides who has to vet the board of directors for ISO New England. So you see that ISO New England is fairly independent, tries to do the right thing, tries to get balancing authority, working right, you know, all that stuff. But when you get right down to it, knee pool holds the big cards. That's my opinion. I mean, somebody else may say something different, but as far as I can tell, the knee pool holds the big cards. Let me also say, and I think this is very important, the people involved are very good people. They're very nice people. They're very kind people.  And I just want you to know that it's set up for the secrecy. It's set up so the different groups that I was naming, Life Transmission, can go in there and fight for rules that will help their companies. That's why they're sent there. They're paid by companies to go there and help make rules that will help their companies. The trouble is, it's all, it's not something you or I can find out much about. And one of the mentioned FERC, F-E-R-C, tell us what that is. Okay, FERC is going to be important nations. It is an important agency. It's the most important agency that nobody's heard about. The Federal Energy, oh my gosh, Regulatory Commission. And it's based in Washington and the way it's set up is that it has five commissioners, three are chosen by the president's party, and three are chosen by the opposition party. I'm sorry, two was chosen by the opposition party. It has to have a quorum of three commissioners before it can make a ruling. And it turns out that everything keeps going back to FERC. So for example, Neapol may say, I want to have these rules put into effect. And ISO may say, ISO New England say, I don't like those rules. We're putting in different ones. It'll be more fair to people. And then so what happens is that Neapol and ISO New England file their proposed rules to FERC at the same time. This is called a jump ball filing. And I've got several of them described in the book. I mean, in some ways it's an exciting book to read who's going to win the jump ball anyway. But the thing is FERC is the one that decides. And actually I think FERC is more open. It has more open meetings and stuff than Neapol does or ISO New England does. ISO New England, well, Neapol is the one that really was very upset about a reporter showing up at their meetings. Well, there's a great deal of material here. And again, I keep saying it's very readable. And also there are some portable quotes that you have here, which we're not going to be able to get into because of time. But I'm sure people are going to see when they get the book. But while we have some time, let's talk about renewables and the role that plays in some of your opinions on what's going on now with that in terms of your book and in terms of what you do. Well, let me start out by saying that when I started working in the utility industry, what I really wanted was to be in the renewables group. And I did get into the renewables group at EPRI and I felt really good about that. And then I realized that renewables were, I don't know, they can't make much power reliably. They're just not a very reliable source. It was very kind of upsetting to me. I was young. I mean, it was a long time ago. And I was very idealistic and I didn't. Anyway, so I began realizing that nuclear was also good in terms of things that were important to me, which is basically air pollution. I grew up in Chicago, very polluted city and air pollution, preventing air pollution has always been very, very important to me. So in terms of what you asked about renewables now, what happens now is that a state can decide on a renewables mandate and say, well, we're going to get 80% of our electricity from renewables in five years or in 10 years or whatever. And they can put that into place and they don't have to worry about the grid they feel because after all ISO is running the grid. There's auctions. Everything's going to be great. But as a matter of fact, renewables are very hard on the grid in a whole bunch of different ways.  And one of the few projects to look at this said that you have to have 1.1 megabytes of installed fast acting backup for every megawatt, I'm sorry, megawatt, 1.1 megawatts of fast backing backup for every one megawatt of renewables you put in. And why you need this fast backing backup?  So you need something that can come up very fast. And so that is why you hear a lot of people saying we need a flexible grid. No, you don't need a flexible grid if you don't have things that go on and off. I mean, you need some flexibility in a grid because as I say the demand goes up during the day and then it comes down. But traditional power plants have always been able to track that pretty well. You need fast acting power plants to back up the renewables. And I find that very, you know, it's not something I'm delighted about. But because what it means is every time you build a renewable, you empower a fast acting gas plant to back it up. Because there's only two kinds of plants that can back it up right now. And that is a gas plant and a gas fire plant, because they're internal combustion engines so they can start quickly. And they, and the other kind is hydro. But of course, we don't have, if we keep building more and more renewables we don't have enough hydro to back them all up.  As a matter of fact, more hydro is being taken out than being built nowadays, because people don't like it for a lot of good reasons. Well, we're talking wind and solar and, and seem to be attractive alternatives but I know your book really gets into this on a very fair basis. We talk about your background. There's a lot of portable quotes here and I just want to read one renewables and batteries are overhyped and are beginning to be overbuilt both can be helpful to the grid, even together, they cannot be the grid. So, yes, that's right. That's what it boils down to. They can be helpful, and they can be, you know, but they can't be the grid.  I mean, for example, if you think about, if you think about coal trade, or you think about a gas pipeline, you've got to move all that fuel from point A to point B sometimes across the country. Do you know that the power plant, the Merrimack station coal plant, which is a very nice little coal plant, I mean, not a fan of coal plants but it's a very nice very well run one. It gets, it gets coal on barges from Venezuela, among other places. I mean, you're moving a lot of fuel for these fossil plants and that's one of the wonderful things about renewables. But unfortunately, renewables go on and off so quickly that they did bake in gas fire plants to back them up, they just make it in. You say, Oh, we're building so many renewables, aren't we proud of ourselves. So if you don't want blackouts, you're building gas plants too. And people just don't know that. And anyway, so, yeah. I'd like to say that all of these things like the popular value of renewables, the downside in public opinion about certain types of things and, and all of this stuff. Part of the entire picture and really explain it very simply. And you use some terminology that I'm sure that somehow somewhere it shows up in everybody's electric. You know, it's great how you put it together. I just want to talk about one little word. One of those exciting words, greenwash. Oh, greenwash. Well, okay. In my opinion, there's a lot of it going on. So greenwash means that you do something which helps your company, but somehow or other you describe it as being done for the good of the people and the good of the environment, and how could anyone object to you guys doing this. And let me give you an example of greenwashing. So you have some company, and it says, We're still proud of ourselves. We run on 100% renewable electricity at this company. So you imagine this company surrounded by wind turbines. No, no, no, no, no, no, they're getting their power from the grid just like anybody else. Their power is a mixture of gas and oil or gas and coal and gas and renewables or gas and nuclear. Anyway, why are they saying they have 100% renewable electricity. What it turns out is that when a renewable plant like a wind turbine makes a kilowatt hour of electricity, it makes an invisible object, which is a renewable energy certificate for one kilowatt hour of renewable electricity. It generally sells the electricity one direction and the certificate another direction. So that company which says, we're 100% renewable electricity you should love us.  It's still getting. And from the company's point of view, it's a perfect situation is it can it can cover itself with honor and greenwashing, we are so green. And at the same time it has very reliable electricity. It doesn't have to worry about what the wind dies down. So, anyhow, I just that is greenwashing, and it is, it is all over the place.  So, in any way, well, there's, there's a great deal of really practical advice in here and practical information that anyone who is a, what do they call it late payers or consumers or whatever, who pays electric bills uses electricity wants to for power or needs to for power for economic development is just a lot of good information in here. And I just want to before we conclude I want to ask, where can people get this book. And more importantly, how can people get help with you have a website or things of that nature. Okay, my, my website is Meredith angwin.com. And there are several places on the website it has several pages page about books a page for blocks and a page about my biography. There's several of the pages have a sign up sheet, so that you can get my newsletter.  And, and then the, the book is available through Amazon, shorting the grid, the hidden fragility of our electric grid. It's available in three forms to Amazon it's available as a softback which is when I said you, it's available as a hardback, because somebody told me that that no library or no school would buy the softback so it's available as a hardback I know I don't actually expect people to flock to buying it. And it's available as a Kindle, and as a Kindle it's very very affordable. I made that choice very deliberately so that people could get it as a Kindle. If you don't like Amazon and some people don't. You can, you can buy the ebook is a nook, and you can also buy it as a Kobo which is actually very popular outside of the United States you can get nook or Kobo. I also want to say that if you, it's not carried in the stores, but a book's a million Walmart and your local independent bookstore can all order the book from Ingram spark they all deal with Ingram spark, and the book is available from Ingram spark. So if you wanted to if you walk into your local independent bookstore assuming you could walk in which isn't true nowadays, but you could at least contact them and said hey can you get me a copy of this book, and they should be able to because all the bookstores deal with Ingram spark. That's great. And I see it was just published on November 6, 2020, we're recording this on December 7. And yes, positive even one deals with old stuff. This is, this is really good. I want to quote something that you say here near the end or actually right at the end, and if you can start important. Yeah, I'm calling you. If we are not concerned with the grid. We will not have a safe and happy country to leave our children. I can't say it any more starkly than that. We must take the grid away from the insiders, or our children may be outside of in some very unpleasant ways and that's the last hour of their people. And it is quite shocking again to pardon the electrical puns but why don't you expand on that as we conclude today. Well, I'm spending on that because I have, I have grandchildren, and I'm distressed at the grid, having these layers and layers of auctions of confusion and and close meetings and I remember one time I was in a meeting and and someone was presenting and say, Well, we went to our stakeholders and I kind of raised my hand said, I'm not a member of Neapol, but I'm one of your stakeholders because I buy I buy electricity from you. And so at any rate, from the grid rather so you see the thing is that there are places that are going to to rolling blackouts to to with a grid operator just shuts the power off for a while and turns it back on again. And so, and California has had them. We are in danger of having them. A projection of what will happen in 2025 a couple of scenarios were done by a grid operator 23 scenarios were done. 19 of the scenarios had rolling blackouts in the winter. So the grid operator will say we're not predicting these are just scenarios but I mean it's like the overwhelming percentage of scenarios had rolling blackouts in the winter. In my opinion that makes people outsiders in terms of their lives they can't predict things anymore. They can't, they can't plan for, you know, what they're doing when because they don't know if they'll have electricity then. And plus which it endangers people a lot for example, grid operator won't tell you when the rolling blackouts are going to happen because it would encourage the criminals to come into the area where the blackouts are having electricity is a safety issue. It's a safety issue about about people's lives about people's warmth about sick people and their ability to get care. And it's a safety issue about keeping, you know, keeping your house safe from from from people who might want to rob you. So I guess the thing is, I just feel that I don't want the kind of rolling blackouts that may happen in here and are already happening in California. And you know they say well it's hot well man it gets hot in California all the time. They're not having rolling blackouts because it's unprecedentedly hot. We didn't, we wouldn't have rolling blackouts per at a high percentage of the possibility five years from now, because people are expecting will have much colder winter five years you know it's about how the greatest manage we have to realize that I'm sorry I get very worked up about this. That's great because you know, it might not sound like an exciting topic but again your book really brings it into perspective and also brings a lot of the urgency to it. And so it's more than just a good reason. And I want to thank you. This is Dennis McMahon or positively Vermont. My guest today has been Meredith Angwin, the author of a recently very newly published book about your electrical system shorting the grid, the hidden majority of our electric grid, a very interesting work by this for a month or so I thank you very much for being a merit and thank you all for watching positively Vermont. This is Dennis McMahon.


December 3rd of 2014 I was riding a bike along with several of my partners this particular day was a from what I remember was a pretty nice day in December we get a call from my sergeant he's like all right there's a there's a march going on and we're gonna be involved in helping with this thing and so we ran back to our garage and got prepared to go out we were responsible for kind of the lead of this this march so we're on mountain bikes and doing our thing again it was just such a beautiful day and we end up getting released to go back to our our normal assignment and you know we we turn around and we start heading back to the downtown area and you know I don't remember the accident I do remember my partner in the ambulance which I didn't realize I was in an ambulance but I remember him giving me encouraging words and and let me know that I was gonna make it I remember here in the you know the acceleration of the the ambulance and the sirens and all of that my left arm was completely crushed lost my spleen this leg it was bleeding out pretty bad the artery was severed but they were able to save the leg crushed ribs big old rod and in my femur and got hardware pretty much everywhere I kind of went into my own world of what I thought was going on and kind of a dream world I know people have different views you know I didn't see a bright light I didn't see things like that it was a battle from the very beginning I truly believe that in what I was going through I had an opportunity to to give up I was asked numerous times in this dream world you know to basically give up and I told him you know you're gonna have to kill me I'm not letting go I chose to fight


It's been just over a week since a car struck a Bemidji bus field with students causing it to lose control and roll into a ditch. Our Josh Peterson spoke with one of those students and her family and shows us how only time will tell, how only time will help those injured heal. It was just another morning on the school bus until things took a tragic turn. Eight-year-old Yasmin was one of the many students on the bus headed to northern school. Yasmin and her friends were playing Pokemon when they felt the impact of the bus being struck by a car forever changing their lives. We had a big bump and I don't know if we rolled over because I wasn't paying attention and I got through every, I got thrown everywhere. Yasmin loves school and enjoys math. She also loves to dance, seen here in this video taken just a few weeks ago showing Yasmin as a talented and creative kid. For her parents, when they heard about the crash, they thought the worst. It was very scary looking at her, you know, injury. I was just, you know, thinking of the worst. As the bus rolled, Yasmin was thrown from her seat, broke her collarbone and hit her head causing deep lacerations to her face requiring 36 stitches. But Yasmin's road to recovery is only beginning with her expected recovery to take two to three years. Yasmin says that she is still very sore from the crash. My face, my back, and my collarbone. Before anyone was at the scene to rescue the students from the bus, many of the kids were scared and screaming. Yasmin says she thought the worst. I felt like I was gonna die. It's been over a week since the tragic accident happened and signs of the crash still remain on the side of the road. But for Yasmin's family, raw emotions and anger still remain.  And I'm sure that person wrote in and out that road numerous times. I'm just really angry. For an eight-year-old child, recalling such a tragic event can be extremely difficult. At times, it is hard for her to reflect on what happened. Yasmin and her family are very grateful to all those who helped at the scene. For Yasmin, she is looking forward to going back to school and seeing all her friends. In Red Lake, Josh Peterson, Lakeland News. The driver of the car that hit the school bus, Thomas Lee Nielsen, was given a citation about both Trammy County Sheriff's Deputy. Sheriff Phil Hodepp says there could be additional charges in the coming weeks as law enforcement finalizes their investigation. If you've enjoyed this segment of Lakeland News, please consider making a tax-deductible contribution to Lakeland Public Television.