Okay, so now we actually have time for some check ins and stuff I don't think we have anyone from the public unless there's someone in there in the memorial room with you. But I've just yet learning roundtable report backs from city committees, diving into the budget so we've got the public budget survey process and communications that cameras got stuff on, and then stipends for city committees we did the initial question and Jeremy's got some other materials. Um, is that that's that's it for the agenda today right okay who still plenty. Okay. Um, so she was to a check round of check ins and any. Yeah, learnings or report backs. Wrap them all up together. Um, I, I don't know I can go I started my new job and have been reading all about how and drug companies have manipulated the market and like just all about how pharmaceutical industry works and just learning a ton and it's so so messed up and there's so much happening on it like right now in just with their kind of band-aids on the bigger problem of like price caps and things like that but it's just been really interesting and obviously related to all of our work 60% of or 66% of bankruptcies in the US come from health issues and health bills so and and I'm a little frazzled because I was like one trying to work on my figure out what was wrong on my computer and might have to go get a new computer today so and I'll hand it over to Jeremy. That's okay. Hey, good morning. Well, as I was saying, a little bit earlier, I decided to truck myself into our workspace in Burlington, which I've done maybe five times this year, just needing a change of venue for my four walls at home. Looking forward to a little bit of a break next week. Yeah, I don't have too much to report. Work has been very intense lately. So kind of all my, my bandwidth, mental bandwidth has been focused on work stuff, which is good but yeah kind of cooked by the end of the day so I'm here and looking forward to our conversation this morning. Okay. I have nothing to report I've been away and in sunny Arizona for the whole week so and it was it was lovely. It was lovely visiting with my my son and family and his family and nobody gets what I'm saying before nobody gets much sleep there because there is a two year old and eight month old and in between the everybody's everybody starts waking up around four in the morning. So, so it was kind of hectic, but it was great fun. And I didn't do anything constructive all week. But I went fishing. I would say the kids, you know, get up very early I remember my daughter, she used to get up really early and I used to watch the sunrise with her. Since she stopped it long time ago. I don't remember the last time I saw sunrise so yeah, yeah. For me. I this week is the last week before a Thanksgiving break. So I'm really waiting to have next week off. I mean, it has been pretty busy for me at work that I was preparing class for my class, you know, some, I read some of the resources about what young leaders are concerned on the global issues and it is very interesting. The studies show that they are concerned about climate change racism. And one more thing that I don't remember right now, but there was nothing about social justice or anything. So I don't know if they don't know about this. So which means that we should educate them more the like future leaders, young generation about it, or they don't think that it is less important than the climate change. So I haven't decided that but it really raises some questions in my mind which I want to work on it a little bit more and to find out the answer for that. If they don't know that I think it's a better for us. So we have a chance, you know, to educate them. The other one, I don't know what to do. So if they have a kind of list in their mind, which is important and not important. Yeah, it sounds a little bit interesting for me. So that's all from me. Can I comment on that? You know, I mean from the very beginning of this committee there, there's been a, I don't know if we use say attention but certainly a problem about defining social social justice as distinct from racism. And much of the early discussions in the committee really just focused on the issue of racism and not a broader and in my view at any rate, not a broader vision of social justice because I see racism as a subset or of social justice. And I think maybe that your comment about people, young people don't see social justice as a major problem, they see racism. And I think it's, they're narrowing the field of vision. And I think that our committee actually stepped into that because a lot of what we talked about in, even in the survey was focused on racism. Not social justice, I think, across the board because there are a lot of non black folks who are also suffering social injustice, which is also systemic. And I think that, you know, part of maybe part of our job might be to broaden, you know, to try to educate people to broaden their vision about how far into our society, you know, do we have to go? Should we be looking to address large issues of social justice? Well, I always have been taught to look at social justice through the lens of a racism first lens, right? Because to me, I see it as racism is our country's biggest elephant in the room, right? And if you address the racism, other isms will follow in being addressed, you know. So like, you know, sexism and other isms can follow after because if you make it, if you make whatever policy or procedure or whatever you're trying to change system that is sort of in place to hold folks down based on race, then you are inevitably making things better for all, right? So I've always seen it, I've always been taught to address social issues or social justice issues through the lens of racism because it's relatable. People understand that. It also is the biggest fish to fry, right? So that's all always I've been taught about it. So I'm interested to listen to learn more about another viewpoint or another way to look at this. Well, if you read the book Cast, I've forgotten the author's name, she wrote under a separate song, and she actually puts racism in the category of cast and argues, is arguing the cast is really the problem. And because it, it blumps a lot of other people in with it. And she and her other examples of cast are the Hindu cast system, and also what was the other one that she used? Well, I guess the Holocaust, isn't that right? You read that book too, Shayna, right? Yeah, I still have it. I mean to give it back to you or if anyone else pass it on. Yeah, I wish I could remember the author's name, it's sort of on the tip of my tongue, but I love to read that. And the other thing is that by, by focusing on racism, we lose a lot of support from, you know, let's call them, you know, white, white folks who are also struggling and who will not, who see racism as another problem. It's not their problem. And, and, and so they're not all that sympathetic to an approach to social justice through the eyes of racism. And, but I, you know, I agree that racism is sort of right in front of us, and the most volatile issue, but I think we could make more allies if we broaden, you know, the broadened the definition. I guess one thing that I'm thinking of, and I can't speak very intelligently to it but this idea of intersectionality, where all the various isms that we're discussing do relate and interconnect and it's not as simple as, okay, with this issue we're going to fix that and go fix this issue in this one. So I think looking for those overlaps. And it's much more complicated than any one isolated issue, I think that I think I do think the class stuff is really important, especially in a place like Vermont. My partner has been doing, she, she did a kind of course that was focused on kind of cross class dialogues as an entry point into thinking about whiteness and how, you know, white supremacy kind of dominates everything about our culture. But class is a really important component of that. Yeah, I think it's tough to like pick and choose. But you do have to do meaningful work somewhere. But I guess looking for those opportunities where things kind of like intersect is what I'm interested in thinking about to talk about those names. Isabel Wilkerson takes me in my head a while to sort of grind to that. Anyway, I recommend that book. I mean, I think it's a very important and interesting way to look again at what it is that we're, we're about. This is very good discussions discussion we are having now, maybe in the future, we can add our agenda to have survey or to talk to high school students or college students about their ideas, social justice, and, you know, racism or other things we can talk, then maybe we can also do something, you know, as an advice advisory board to offer schools, right, just advise or you should do these things to educate the students or something. Because this is in the study I just shared with you, it's from World Economic Forum, and it affects current leaders, all their studies and all their conferences they bring all current important leaders together every year. And if they are talking about global leaders, which these people are kind of choosing, right, for this conferences and everything. So it shows the future of our world. Yeah, I like the idea of some more focused conversations with young people. What I would, I would kind of flip it though. And one thing you said, I'm actually more interested in learning from them than me, educating a younger person. Yeah, I understand your point. Their experience is so pivotal to like how we as older people, I'm an older person now, kind of like make space for them. So yes there's mentorship of course from some maybe experiences that we've had but I think we've got to start meeting young people where they are and getting them engaged in this kind of a work that we're doing in the committee. So I love that idea. Yeah, that's why I said we should ask them first to learn from them. Then we can just advise, right, what we can do to create a better world for them, right, not for us, but for our future generation, because they will be dealing all the problems. As you said, old people created for them. And it is not fair, right. Yeah, and so I just put in the chat to on today's MRPS school board meeting they're actually going to be talking about how they're hiring a facilitator to support their, their schools learning. And so I think we have a lot of priorities that we're working on right now, but I think maybe we could like can just connect and report back from MRPS school board members about like what, what they are doing. Yeah, I hope you don't misunderstand me I hope I'm not saying something wrong, but my daughter applied for our committee, and she was chosen, and it was announced by city meeting, and her school told her, she's in our committee, but somehow she doesn't receive anything. Oh, welcome.  So we have a representative representative in high school. So, I don't, I don't know why that was, I don't that hasn't been communicated to me that we had a new member when was this do you remember. Oh, very long time ago and it's her name is in the city, a meeting. It's YouTube, right they announced her name. Yeah, we accept. I can ask her but it's like, I don't know at least three months. I'm so sorry months ago. Yeah. And I don't I told her I don't want to, you know, do anything for you. Right. It's your responsibility so she talked to school, her school they said okay we will talk to city and your committee. I haven't heard anything. And, again, yeah, it doesn't have to be my daughter right but I know that other communities there. Student representative so we have opportunity to reach out young people. All the students in the committees they are representative representatives of city. So, we can create more impact that I think we can imagine through our students. Committee members. I'm really sorry about that. I'm going to follow up on that today. See what's going on. What is her name, Helen, again, Laura. I am great. Perfect. Thank you. Um, and just, I know I you're probably emailing about that right now Cameron but I do want to make sure you have a chance to check in before diving into our agenda as well. It's budget season so my brain is melting out of my ears. I don't really know where I am in the world or time. But staff has been taking equity really seriously in this year's planning. Like I've said it's it's been really diffused through our work plans and your tool has been very helpful in framing conversations about new budget asks. Just for a fun preview on our budget. It's, I'll get into that when we get to the budget survey process or the budget process but it's a lot. So that's really what I've been focusing on and working on. So thank you. Okay, should we review and approve the minutes from the last meeting. Thank you so much for Jeremy for taking them. And folks want to pull those up real quick. I think Michael already looked them over and made some edits and the updated one is in the most in the email that I just sent out. And we just wrapped up doing our check-ins and we're going into the minutes of reviewing minutes from the last meeting. Thanks morning everyone. I miss this was starting early. Morning. Morning. Nice to see you all. We're just doing check-ins if you do want to do a check-in or we can dive dive right into. I'll, I'll find here. Motion to approve the minutes. I motion. Second. That's quick. Awesome. Yay, process. Okay. And so diving into budget. So Cameron budget, public budget survey process and communications. If we wanted to start there. So that's not out. So I don't have any updates on that, but I do have an update on our budget. So we're in the middle of our budget Congress right now, which is where departments have been sort of told by council, what, well, the mayor really is, is where she's interested in, in looking to start the tax increase, right? So last year, we put forward a budget. We, I say staff put forward a budget that had a zero increase, right? So there was no tax increase. It was level funded across the board. We took a lot of cuts in fiscal year 21. And so we level funded those cuts. And so we didn't have a budget that had a tax increase. So we're aiming for a 4% tax increase. But I don't know where that'll end up. Obviously that's council's determination to 100%. Right. We're just trying to get in as much as we can for as little as we can. Right. That's the goals all the time. It is looking not awesome. We still do not have return to revenue that we did pre COVID. We're not sure if this is like the new normal or if this is just going to be ongoing for in recovery mode for the next few years. So a lot of what we're putting on the table will have to be council decisions. And so that that's to say that just basically coming in at base budget is going to have a pretty large increase over a nothing budget right does that. So it feels artificially inflated when we say the budget is going to be X over what it was last year, because we're just trying to return to providing services at the same levels we were before we took all those huge cuts. And so it's not it's going to be a challenging budget year. And so a lot of the programming or all of the things that we're trying to prioritize that are outside of our core services like improving anything extra. All the projects that we have all of the infrastructure stuff is going to need to go to council to for voting and prioritization we think this is where we're at right now. So I can't speak in any definite but this is your sort of where we're planning. Michael had your hand up sorry yeah go ahead interrupt me when I'm rambling. No no I was actually related to what you were saying. Is there any indication about how much the state is going to get from the infrastructure new infrastructure bill and how much of that and how that's going to be distributed. No idea yet our, we don't know. I think it's going to take a while for that to sort of shake loose and have us understand so it's very hard. Also in our planning for the future is like we acknowledge that a lot of money may be coming through the infrastructure bill right. But much like ARPA, where we think we get X amount of funds, those funds are actually very tied up in rules and regulations right so we could say we have like a million dollars coming in for ARPA but we don't really right because it only applies for certain things. So I expect that money that's coming from the infrastructure bill will be similar will be like the ARPA funds where it's tied to very specific things. And so here's hoping that all of the things we're trying to do fit into those rules. So we don't know yet are the local VLCT is Vermont League of Cities and Towns is really looking into that for us that's sort of their, their role in helping us figure out what that means. So, they'll be letting us know as soon as they do right. So all that to say really is that I am very interested to see what the budget ask for stipends will be. And then again that will really just be up to counsel what they want to include in a budget to whatever they want to increase or decrease or whatever this tax increase so sort of we're in our, we're in the thick of planning right now and I'm just not sure what what the hmm what am I thinking what are the words what the flexibility is going to be with this budget. Remind us what the timeline for it is to and the decision making because this is. Yes, let me start July 2022 right. It would yes let me pull up the timeline so that I can actually speak intelligently about this hold on. Sorry y'all there's a lot of budget emails back and forth. It's going to be surprising. I should know this off the top of my head I just don't know this. Nope, okay budget development timetable okay I found it. Alright, so we are in November now which is terrifying. So today. So the next big thing is finalizing our projected budget for department head review December 1. We would then be also trying to finalize any proposed bond items by December 1. So councils next all of their meetings through the new year will be budget focused so tonight is the last night of like regular business and then they're going to go directly into just like finance and budget for basically now on. The CIP committees are meeting to discuss capital improvements. Let's see what else we got the finalizing the budget for council consideration will be December 3. And then all of the following council meetings will be budget related the first one in December will be the city manager's budget presentation, which is basically where we go over. Staff has come up with, please tell us what your thoughts are, and what your priorities are a council. And then, sorry. No, I thought you were that was the pro presentation, keep going. Oh no there's it's a long, long process. Then in January we'll have our public hearings on bonds if that's necessary. Then we will have the community fund will be weighing in on their budget allocations in January. And then our annual meeting day is March 1. And that's when the budget is voted on. I was going to say it was so for community fund board. There they said they're anticipating level funding for that and so that's kind of what we've been working off of there. And so I think for, you know, see Jack, we were also anticipating level funding or you know, we have the funding for this year and then we're still funding for next year. And then we're making this proposal for additional funds to be spent for city for, you know, stipending city committee members. So I guess, where do those still seem right and where do you anticipate some of these budget cuts that you're, you know, discussing and yeah, where, where do you where do you see some of, are you going to ask, you know, committees to volunteer or is that going to be in staff or, yeah. So a lot of those cuts are coming from large scale projects and programming. The things that are your budget is proposed to be included to continue to be included. It's a commitment that council made and so we understand that that's a priority so that's continued in there. Funding to the homelessness task force is also included just so you all know because I think that sort of ties into things that you all care about.  Funding requests due from commission boards and commissions. November 30th is when Kelly wants that. I don't know why I skipped that let me highlight that in the minutes. So but I think, I mean, y'all have a pretty strong proposal that can go to council council can decide to do whatever they want. Right. And they can vote to have a 7% increase. I don't know. So I just would suggest that, you know, we move into Jeremy talking about what your proposal is and I can turn that in, you know, for you. Yeah, does anyone else have any other questions or reactions or any. Yeah. It's just a lot. We're still in the dead heat of COVID, you know, it's hard to remember that I think sometimes but it's still affecting every part of everything we do. So, but I would love to hear what the proposals are Jeremy. Yeah, if we're ready I can share my thinking. So basically spend some time on considering or preparing for us to consider basically three different scenarios that we might suggest as a pilot program for offering stipends for committee volunteer work. And I used Cameron spreadsheet on that you shared worked up last time it's kind of the tool to play with numbers within those different scenarios. So, to the scenarios I really only looked at in more detail around kind of running numbers and I explain why but the three different kind of scenarios I was thinking about to kind of get, get this down to a more visible number that could function as a pilot proof of concept for this idea. So the first scenario would be some kind of an income cap for anyone who wanted to serve on a committee if they fell under a certain income level, then they would receive a stipend for their service on a committee. I ended up not going that route specifically because it's somewhat unpredictable. Because again it's dependent on well who applies. And it's also, it's a lot of administrative work, because then you need to like, not that you need to verify but there is a process you need to put in place to like that applicants and understand what their income is, which is laborious I think for everybody involved. However, one of the scenarios that I did work up I think it functions in a similar way. So then the next two scenarios and I'll show you the numbers in just a second. I'll call scenario a was limiting the stipend pilot program to a select number of committees. And in my scenario I picked five. Arbitrarily I mean, my logic was, okay, here's some committees that are really kind of in the social justice kind of category of work and maybe need more representation from folks who don't typically volunteer. And then the scenario be was settling on just a predetermined limited number of stipends that are available. That it's kind of a first come first serve approach. So let me let me just show you the numbers because it'll be a little bit like it would be like you'd have to request it, like someone would have to say I need a stipend to participate. Yes, yeah, yeah. So let me share my screen. And I think also with within these scenarios, I just settled on some parameters. They're highly, they can be highly variable depending on what we feel is a comfortable number to propose to cancel. So there's a lot of flexibility. Okay, assuming everybody can see that. Okay, let me go to option a so option a. Oh my, is that somewhat legible. Okay, the option a this is the option of just selecting a certain number of committees in which we would offer a stipend. And so in this case I picked five committees homelessness task force housing task force planning commission, our committee and the transportation infrastructure committee. And then I just ran the number so within those five committees. We've got a top number of members of members, an average number of meetings, which yields tolls in terms of total number of meetings. And then I just kept Cameron's calculation here so with those five committees if we made dollars stipends available for any and everyone in those committees. You're at 42,000. If you graduate down from 50 to 3525 20 you get, you know, the decreasing amounts. As far as stipend amount I'm having, I really feel strongly 50s kind of where we should land, as I'm thinking about what a stipend needs to do for somebody who needs it. It needs to probably be able to support them if they need childcare. Maybe needs to support them if and when transportation as a factor. There's also perhaps time off from work that might be a factor for folks. So we can we can debate that number of course but 50 I would advocate that 50 is probably where we want to land with the pilot. So, and again so you can play with this. Maybe we only want it to select three committees, instead of five I mean so you can you can fudge the numbers in this scenario. This is interesting to me I really like the idea of a pilot and I don't know why I didn't think of a pilot but I it makes sense because then we can figure out if it's actually increasing or making any changes to the makeup of the committees and if it's not then it's not useful for our community right. Yeah, yeah I think it's it's definitely as a demonstration of is this a feasible program that we would want to scale up and make more sustainable. Now let me show you option B. So option B in some ways I'm more, I'm more interested in. So in math here, and you have to excuse my non math skills, but I think I did what I wanted to do. So in this scenario, what we're doing is creating a total limited number of kind of committee memberships that have a stipend attached to them. So it's irrespective of any committee. And again it would be open kind of anyone first come first serve. So I come up with a number of total stipend positions. The way I ended up doing that, and you can certainly poke holes in this but I was thinking about just our population in Montpelier, and what the income kind of brackets are for folks. So I settled on. Well, what if the percentage of stipends we offer is the same as the percentage of our population who has an income of under $50,000 a year, and that's a household income. So in Montpelier as in 2019. 36% of our population. We have an income under $50,000 a year. So I took that percentage number of 36%. And I multiplied our total number of top committee members, which is 157 multiplied that by 36% we get 57 committee positions. And then of course, what I did was I took the average of meetings per committee which is 12 multiplied that 57 times 12, our total number of meetings is 672. And so then I ran Cameron's calculation so at that number. $50 per meeting, remember, we've got an amount of 32,006 and then so on. So that makes sense to everybody because I went through a lot of numbers. So would this be a stipend per committee that they would be able to figure out how to delegate or be like a stipend overall that people could. I just, yeah, it's a it's a single bucket of money. Okay. So I just come first serve. And again, maybe this algorithm doesn't make any sense to anyone else but what's the number right amount and I just went for that kind of broader population trend around income. But again, you could move this number up and down very quickly to adjust your final kind of bucket amount. So that's what I did. These both make a lot of sense to me. Thank you so much for doing this.  I don't know yet. And so I think that's kind of why I'm more curious about option a where it's like here's so we can say here's what the full budget's going to be like this is like, we're more likely to try to get closer to this number. But I think there's going to have to be like a lot of education and roll out and stuff in order to like this will be like maybe like, long term what that would be but maybe by starting with our pilot, we can more we can use that to kind of figure out what, what are what are what are our rates. And, and what, how is this going to impact recruitment and how is this going to impact retention and everything else and then, and, you know, it's like, maybe like start with option a for like two years, and then do end up doing option B but like of like knowing a little like having a little bit more clarity around it's $50 good is it actually 36% of people who are applying. I mean, or it's like, um, yeah, and just kind of working out some of the kinks that's kind of my like got reaction but I don't. And I don't know how they seem reality to us. Yeah. I really appreciate the work here though. Lauren, can we cheat and ask you what your thoughts are. What you would prefer to see. And so am I understanding it right that like the idea is just that a would it kind of be like first come first serve to some extent if we just set a budget number and they're like there's this much available there's this stipend like we. You know, knowing the reality of like how appointments work and stuff it's like only like a couple seats a year open up so it's not like there's going to be wholesale change so you know in terms of like everyone right now is doing it without a statement so you know it might make people better able to participate or whatever if they might take it but presumably it's like you're getting more people and he couldn't do it. And like that just like set what a second is that an amount and do it as first come first serve and see how many people are taking it. And then, and then I think, like Shayna said doing the analysis of like okay is this getting new folks in who historically participate and like that, like what's the right amount to calibrate from there based on what we're seeing, although I agree like we definitely part of it needs to be. How are we advertising and how are we like making people aware of this and like just because it's there, nobody knows about it, it's not going to be helpful and so that obviously is a big part of it so I don't think we can just like, we'll have to judge the whole like what did we do to actually do the recruitment and the promotion and and all of that to make sure that we're attracting people beyond just the stipend as a, you know, way to help people make it more feasible. But I guess like third number in it. So my question about the amount is like some committees meet for, you know, three hours and some meet for one hour once a month like is it the same stipend, no matter what the time commitment or is it up per hour thing or per month there just make it make it simple and make it $50 per meeting and people will just know that you could look at you know the commitment of the different committees as you decide what to apply for. So those are my first reactions but my overall I think just like set them out, and then we can like, use it as a pilot, adjust, look at what we can learn. I like $50. It seems like it's enough that it could be real for people to make a difference to let them participate versus like 25 or $20. Yeah, I think you raise a good point that didn't occur to me is that these numbers are quite high in the first second, third year perhaps because we only have a so so many number of positions that will be open in the first year. So I don't know if there's a, we have any data that could help us use that to factor in how many positions are maybe coming up open in the next year, and that could help us whittle the number down even further. I think it makes sense to ask for a chunk of money to be used as a pilot for this. I think that's probably all we staff would need. And then we can continue as a committee to work on what that would look like. I do think that it's important to sort of walk away with today with knowing what your total ask would be. It might could be 42,000 and then just say we'll figure it out from there, but just making sure that that like, there is a number that can be defended. Yeah. During this budget process so that we can at least include it in a package for council to consider, right. Okay. So it doesn't have to be we don't figure out like what how it was going to be used but a number to start advocating for. So the difference between the two just emphasize highlight that so our, our select committee scenario option a. If we make all of those positions stipend eligible, we would need 42,000 option be is quite a bit less because we're not tying it to specific committee numbers, but just a total percentage. The percentage of a total number of committee positions that exist. And according to this first calculation that's 33,600. So we've those are two very different numbers, but could function equally as just like the pot. And when we decide how to distribute it. I don't have enough experience to offer an opinion on if that's too much, not enough unrealistic so. Yeah, I don't have it in front of me but I think the Essex one that pass was like 35 or something you know something it was around that too so these these this seems like for that one data point in line with that. I mean the initial numbers were coming back right and it was 100,000 it was a little bit like whoa that that is more than I was expecting so. We have a lot more committees than those. Essex yeah. A lot more people engaged. I'm also wondering if we should consult with creative discourses here if this is how we should use some of that consulting money to check in with, you know, like what are the pros and cons of these different options and. I think I think we should. Yeah, if we set the money beforehand and put that forward to counsel and then figure out the proposal from there. You should probably, I mean I don't. Am I acting my own self interest right near no, but you should definitely ask for the 42 just so that you have that, and then you can go down if that's required right but I would, I would start with that higher number. Okay, this is, you know, we're going to propose a pilot project with this 42,000 but here based on our basic math. Here's what it would cost to do a pilot program in Montpelier. And then it can come down to 33 depending on what y'all decide to do, you know what I mean. I think if you just say right now here's the higher number, and then you can talk it out throughout this process right. I agree. Okay, you gotta shoot for the moon and land in the stars or whatever. What, when do we need kind of like, first, the rationale for the budget request and to the details of what we might do with a pilot program for the stipend. I think the numbers. Now, right like today, I would like to walk away from here kind of knowing where the number is, and then we can work on. And by I say we, because I'm here but y'all can work on like the, the how this roll out, whatever, so that when it does go to council in December, you'll have a good understanding of. What you're asking for and why. Yeah, so I would recommend that at your next, your next meeting. You discuss this and the hip only. So discuss stipend. I don't know implementation. And, but today walking away with a number is really great for me so I can turn that into our finance department. And I would think for council for making the case for including in the budget. It's more important that we have a really good one pager on why stipends are an important equity issue and what we hope to accomplish by offering them like that more so than here's the mechanics of how it will work. I think it could be like here's some considerations of how we plan to roll this out and we're working with creative discourse or you know like whatever that piece I think is less important than like, why should we dedicate taxpayer dollars to this. In a particular initiative is the case that will be the more important for like the December timeline, I would say, and like and knowing that you are working on a good thoughtful plan for how to roll it out. You don't need all the details yet. Yeah, that's a good call. Thank you, Lauren. Michael. Do we have any information from Essex about what has been the response I mean how many people have signed up or what it's being implemented in January. Oh, it's starting. Oh, okay. Yeah. So And that's too bad because it would help. We thought they have figured out how people apply for it and what information they need and other, you know, you know how to do taxes and stuff like that so we can learn from them for that. One thing I did know, and some of the research I was doing was the other examples I had seen of this kind of a stipend program cities were capping the total amount. I saw 500. And that was for tax purposes for cities so that didn't cross into like employee territory. That was really important. Yeah, from Essex was there like once you hit a certain threshold, then you have to do all these I do a lot of other forms and stuff so. Yeah, maybe, yeah, we should consider something like that to avoid that issue. So, Okay, so we've got on our next we're going to talk more about like the memo for the city council outreach to city committees. Other things related to the stipends. In the meantime, do we want to reach out to creative discourses or hold off on that. Okay, yeah. Jeremy, could you do that outreach just as something like like knowing a little, you know, feeling like if more of the ins and outs of it, reach out to discourses to do that. That's contacts to reach out to probably Sue. And I can share that. Yeah. Yeah, she's just kind of been our main contact. And then we're also going to talk more about VHIP. There's the readings that I've shared now a couple of times. Thank you so much Michael for sharing those. And then are we just not going to talk about the public budget communications and outreach. I'll get more information on your phone Carol, I'll get some more information on what that looks like. Beautiful. Thank you so much Cameron and and see at city council tonight and I don't know, see, see the rest of you and December 1. Thanks so much. Sorry, this ran a little bit over. Bye.


We all know mobile phones are very distracting But there's a lot of misconceptions about what the actual laws are so we've spoke to acting senior sergeant Sharon clump find out more So can I use my phone while I'm done? No, no, what about what about if I'm in the lights? No, what about maps? Okay, so on your P1s cannot use the phone at all Bluetooth not even in a cradle once you go to P2s then you can use those functions But you cannot use a phone that you are holding in your hand Can I eat a pie whilst driving? Well, you could but what you have to think about is those actions could be distracting So talking about this is all well and good, but now what we're going to do is go and test it. Oh, that sounds good Here we are at the RACQ driver training facility and Keanu's about to take a lap The kicker is he's going to be sending a text message while he does that so let's see how he goes Ready one two three off you go Let's have a look what did you send? Oh, I tried to say mom and dad are the best and then too well You know when you look down the text and the text you Don't see what you're going on the road because you're always looking down at your phone And what's by the time you look back up again? You completely wait not where you're meant to be yes, and that's the point because your focus is on the phone Not what's happening around you on the road Imagine that now in a scenario where you're doing 60 70 80 kilometers per hour. Yeah, it wouldn't end too well So there you go even though you think you might be able to multitask when you're doing something as complicated as driving It's just not that easy So take steps to remove the things that might distract you in the car and stay safe on the road


Hi, I'm Emily Roberts, a developer advocate with Chrome OS Developer Relations. Today, I'm going to talk about web development on Chromebooks. Here is a quote from you, a skilled web developer. Chromebooks are awesome. And if you don't remember saying this recently, I hope that after watching this video, it will become a daily thing. Chromebooks are known for being lightweight, fast, secure web browsing machines. They are so much more. The device portfolio has grown to include tablets, detachables, all-in-one, mini desktops, and of course, laptops and convertibles. Many of these are capable development devices. So what can you run on them? Well, IDEs like Visual Studio Code, Atom, WebStorm, tools like Node, React, Docker, and Git. And you can test your web apps with multiple browsers, including real mobile browsers. As well, you can check how your mobile app interacts with your web server, all right on the same device. Okay, let's get started and get your Chrome OS device ready for development. We are going to set up a Linux environment and then install the tools you need. To start, open Chrome Settings and search or scroll down to Linux. Click, turn on. This will download and set up a Linux environment. When it's complete, you'll see a terminal prompt. Pro tip, if you will be doing a lot of development, pin the terminal by right clicking and choosing pin. Now we have a Linux environment. Let's install some tools. Head over to the Visual Studio Code website and download the linux.deb package. Double click and choose install. Once it's installed, you can find VS Code in your app launcher. If you're going to be using this IDE a lot, you can pin it like we did with the terminal. Any application with a .deb package can be installed in a similar way. Let's install Adam. The process is exactly the same. Download, install, and launch. Not every app has a .deb package, but you can install any of your favorite tools that support DB and Linux. For example, to install Sublime Text, follow the Linux instructions on the website to set up the apt repo and install the editor using the command line. When we install Node in a few seconds, we'll take a closer look at command line installation. And the same thing goes for apps like WebStorm. Just go to the website, follow the Linux download, and install instructions. I won't do WebStorm right now. Let's get right on to the server side of things. Oh, and by the way, at the end of this video, I will direct you to a page by the Chrome OS DevRel team with installation instructions for all the apps and more discussed in this video. Now, beyond what I mentioned today in this video, if your favorite tool is supported in Linux, it should run on Chromebooks. For example, I like gEdit for text editing, FileZilla as an FTP client, and Inkscape for a vector graphics editing. Today, web development usually takes more than a text editor, an IDE, or an FTP client. Let's get to some other tools so we can make some really nice web apps. Node.js requires GNU-PG2. Open up your terminal and install it with apt. That command is sudo apt install GNU-PG2. If you're new to apt, you can probably guess that by replacing GNU-PG2 with whatever package name you want, it will install that package. Now, finding the right package name can sometimes be the tricky part. Node. As we continue with this video and other terminal commands, I won't read every line out loud, but as mentioned, I will provide a link at the end that has them all. Now that the dependency is installed, let's get Node.js. Run this curl command followed by another apt install command for Node. That's it. Node.js is ready to go. Don't believe me? Well, let's try it out with prox. Use git to clone the prox repo and npm to install build and serve the prox web app. Navigate to localhost 8080 in your web browser and check it out. Pretty cool. So much mind sweeping to be done. Let's try react. Using npm, you can install create react app. Then use create react app to create a skeleton project. Here I call it hello world react. Navigate into the directory where it was created and call npm start. Now, navigate to localhost 3000 in your browser and check it out. If you prefer Angular, install that too. The steps are almost the same. Again, we use npm to install at angular slash cli. Create an Angular app using ng new myangular project. Change directories into the project folder using cd for change directory myangular project. Now ng serve, browse to localhost 4200 and check it out. Here you'll notice that I have prox, a react app, and an Angular app all running on different ports all on the same Chromebook. I think this is pretty handy. What's more, this is all local, so as long as your tools are already installed, you could do all of your development offline, say like on a plane. What about Docker? No problem. Again, we're going to follow the normal Linux installation steps. First, we double check that all the dependencies are installed. We add the Docker repository to apt and then we update the apt package list since we just added a new repository. We use sudo apt update to do this. Then install Docker. Test it out by running hello world. This is done with sudo docker run hello world. You should get a nice message showing that everything is working. Let's do something a little bit more advanced by running an ubuntu linux container in Docker. sudo docker run dash it ubuntu bash and there you go. Your output is going to look something like this. In the ubuntu container, I've taken a look at the os version with cat slash etc slash os version and you can see it's really ubuntu. Now, once an app is ready to deploy, it should be tested. Because Chromebooks have web, android and linux, you can test across multiple browsers on multiple platforms all right on the same device. Let's install a whole pile of browsers to prove this point. Using the terminal and apt install firefox for linux. Note in debian the package name is firefox-esr. Then let's also install the chromium browser for linux. Feeling brave? Let's install the brave browser for linux. I won't walk through all of these lines right now but again they are just the standard installation instructions for debian linux. We install the gpg key, we install the repo and finally brave. Now if four browsers aren't enough, let's add a few more. Head over to the google play store and install some android browsers. Let's go with firefox for android, opera for android and chrome beta for android. We now have seven browsers installed which can give us a reasonable first attempt at test coverage. We have the chromo s chrome browser, three android browsers that is firefox, chrome beta and opera, three linux browsers firefox for linux, brave and chromium and here you can see that our prox web app is running on all seven. One last thing to mention in case you have a mobile app that interacts with your web service you can do android, twa and flutter development on chrome west devices which means you can build and package your mobile app on your chromebook, test it right on the device you are coding on like any other android app, build your web component, start your web server and then test everything on multiple browsers and see how it interacts right on the device. Android studio is as easy to install as visual studio coder adam. Head over to the android studio site and download the .deb file. Then you can code your app like you'd expect in android studio with one cool difference. You'll notice that you can push directly to the chromebook you're working on. Pretty cool. Full instructions on how to set this up can be found on the link at the end of this video on the android page. So with your chromebook you can build web apps with the tools you are used to. Develop and test right on device with tools like no.js, docker and angular, test across multiple browsers including mobile browsers and even test mobile app and web interaction right on device. And all of this could even happen offline like on a long flight. So now don't you agree? Chromebooks are awesome! As promised here is a link to a guide to get your linux environment customized just the way you like. It's cross dot page dot link slash web dash dev. Thank you. Can't wait to see what you build.


Everyone in this audience can probably imagine what the silence was like on the other end of the phone. When I called my mother a few years ago to tell her that I had fallen in love with this guy from a place called Tana Toraja in South Sulawesi, and that I wanted to marry him. These people, the Torajans, are famous for their death rituals. And that if we did get married, we would have to spend a good portion of our yearly salary buying sacrificial buffalo called Tedong that we would use for a family funeral or for the construction of effigies of the dead called Tao Tao, and that these funerals could go on from anywhere from a few days up to weeks at a time. I also explained to my mother that part of these traditions included keeping the bodies of deceased family members in the home sometimes for years, treating them as still active, alive members of the family, feeding them and caring for them until enough resources could be gathered to hold a funeral ceremony. So the people of Tana Toraja, in addition to being Protestant Christians, also maintain a cultural system in which family identity, social status, and even politics are played out in grandiose and elaborate funeral ceremonies and where intimacy with the ancestors is literally expressed by relationships with dead bodies. This is someone who has passed away. This is a ritual where the people who have been interred are disinterred and the family cares for them, cleans them and redresses them, spends some time with them to reconnect with their ancestors and then re-interrs them in cave burials. Needless to say, this was a lot of information for my mother to process. And after a long pause and a deep sigh, she said, well, you know, I guess it's not that different than what we do in America.  Mom, if you're out there, I love you very much. So dealing with difference and trying to integrate difference into our own worldview is something that all humans do. And as an anthropologist, I spend a good portion of my time trying to make sense of difference, writing it down, recording it, observing it and theorizing about it. But theorizing about it in a sort of social scientific sense is very different than actually coming face to face with difference.   I've completely changed the way that I want to approach the end of my life. And perhaps more importantly, I have experienced death as a social process, not just a medical or biological one. One that celebrates the value of human life in a like a communal experience of death. My husband's grandfather, Nenek Katja, has recently passed away at the age of 101. And his body has just been moved into the traditional house called the Tankonan to await the family to gather to decide on the details of the funeral. And I'm so grateful and thankful to be a part of this ritual that treats his life as a transition from one world to the next. But more importantly, a ritual that places death at the center of the story of who we are as people. So I don't just talk about difference. I'm really experiencing and living difference and it's changed the person that I am and the story about who I am that I tell to the world. But given all of this intimacy that I have with difference as an anthropologist, most of what I do is reduced to a publication in a journal that few of the people I work with or live with will ever have the opportunity to read. So I'm in this process of reassessing my own engagement with difference. What does it mean if it's only my voice that gets heard? And that's a voice that's disconnected from the story of the personal transformation that I've experienced. Living my life with people whose lives seem so incommensurable with my own American background. So my goal and my challenge is to find ways to embrace the uncertainty that comes with dealing with difference. I'm looking to find collaborative platforms that I feel really have the potential to give us projects that promote equality and innovation by pushing us past just looking at difference, pushing us past just acknowledging difference and just tolerating it and asking us to open ourselves to the risks of interaction that come with really, truly welcoming difference. Even if those differences challenge what we believe and who we think we are. I've learned a lot traveling around my adopted country of Indonesia and some of the things I've learned the most are from people who are considered too different to be good modern citizens. So the Sama people who live in an area called Wakatobi in the settlement, which is called Saam Pella and Wakatobi is in Southeast Sulawesi are people who are part of a larger group known as the Bajo. So these are seafarers who traditionally live their entire lives on boats. They almost never stepped on land. They lived in family groups on boats in part of a larger network that spanned from Thailand down to Australia through Indonesia and Malaysia. And people in Saam Pella experience the ocean as a familiar home, almost as familiar to them as our geographies of our own hometowns are to us. And they can read the waves and the wind and the water. Essentially, the ocean becomes a place full of landmarks that represent key portions of their history or are the homes of the pantheon of spirits and ancestors that control the ocean realm. And they continue to worship these spirits in ritual practices that also recognize their Islamic identity. So intimate is the Sama knowledge with the sea. It was reported in 2005 that Sama people around the southern coast of Thailand predicted the 2005 Asian tsunami before it actually happened. But these ways of life are increasingly threatened not only by wider processes of ecological degradation, but also by a government that insists that the Sama should give up their mobile lifestyles. They should send their children to state schools and they should stop educating the next generation of Sama people to be people of the sea. Living in Sama homes with the Sama people, homes that are still more ocean than land. I've had to radically reassess my own notions about education and poverty and the narratives of progress and development. What kind of progress do we really make when we say only certain kinds of knowledge have value? That only certain ways of life are worth aspiring to and that people only have value when they aspire to fit in to those notions of progress. As a teacher, I ask my students not just to observe different kinds of lives, but to actually experience them and instead of talking about what they learn from someone, I ask them to share those experiences of transformation with others. I'm working on collaborative platforms for students, scholars, artists and marginalized groups in Indonesia for programs where we utilize social media to create new forms of knowledge, multi-valent, multi-voice forms of knowledge that challenge common stereotypes and turn up the volume on the voices that we don't often get to hear. I passionately believe that as global citizens, we can no longer afford to devalue alternative types of knowledge and I really truly believe that the greatest potential that we have for imagination and innovation lies at the threshold between the way that we see the world and ways of seeing the world that seem too different for us to understand. I want us to stop tolerating difference and I want us to start welcoming it, not to face difference with fear and judgment, but in wonder for what it will transform us all to become tomorrow. Kure sumanga.


Now, here's another lid disorder, levator disinsertion. Watch the left lid. This is in a pregnant patient with poorly fitting contacts. She has tulsis of the left lid. Now, watch where the creases where the lid starts to be tugged at. I think you can see that it's much higher than that right lid. And that's presumably because the insertion sites have slipped and the lids are being pulled upwards from a more proximal portion of their tissue. The other characteristic of levator disinsertion is the demonstration of full levator function. Measure the full excursion of the lids and convince yourself that they're the same on both sides. If you don't see that aspect, then another cause for tulsis should be suspect. Watch that crease on the left. See how high it is compared to the right? I think there's no question that this patient has some disinsertion of the levator.


Welcome to Paranormality Magazine. Each week, Paranormality Magazine explores all 40 subjects from phantoms to UFOs and every cryptid creature in between. Each week, you are treated to a collection of well-researched and investigated stories, interviews and reports on cutting-edge paranormal projects and topics they know you crave. And here in the podcast, I share stories from the magazine to give you just a taste of what you receive in every issue. I'm Darren Marlar and this is Paranormality Magazine. We begin our journey by exploring the mysteries of the afterlife, from paramedicine to the paranormal, thanks to contributor Cody Sharp. Being an emergency medicine, you see all kinds of injuries and more tragically, death, which always had me wondering, what happens after we die? And is it true that we stick around if we have unfinished business? I'm a national registered EMT and up until last October I was on track to being a paramedic, literally two months away from completing the program. However, that changed. I decided to play it safe and went back to my logistics job where I can focus more time on answering the question, what happens when we die? We as humans fear death because it's the unknown, the only thing in life that is absolute. Death doesn't have to be a negative thing, I personally think that death can be a beautiful thing. I've always been fascinated with the paranormal. Growing up in a small town in Ohio with really not much to do, I decided to read books like Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark or even Haunted Ohio to further my curiosity. June 2000 had me questioning many things when the night before the passing of my grandfather, I had a dream he passed. It was that father's day 2000 my father called me crying that grandpa Sharp had passed.  This is a question that I want to answer. I may never get that answer but that isn't going to stop me from trying to figure it out. I throughout the years always had weird feelings in certain places. I could feel the energy of rooms or places. I remember looking at a house for sale once. I was in the basement and felt a dark presence only to learn days later that someone had been chained up and murdered in that very basement. I also can feel people out like I can sense if people are evil or not. I have been told on many occasions, oh this person is a great person. Just for them to backstab the person I have warned. Is it being sensitive or being a good judge of character? I will let you the reader decide that one. So I have decided to start the sharp side of paranormal to answer these questions. I joined a public paranormal investigation with my wife last July at the Indiana State Sanatorium and from there I was hooked. The whole night was a crazy experience. While we were waiting for the groups to get together, I peeked in the kitchen between the nursing home and the residential building and I immediately felt dread and a bit nauseous. I told the one tour guide and she advised me that she had the same feeling there. Now, I was part of a group of about 15 people during our group rotations. We started on the third floor of the psychiatric hospital. I kept getting bad feelings about the place and then the most shocking thing happened to me or at least at the time it was. I was standing next to another member of the group with a shadow figure just came out of a room and rushed in between us before disappearing. The night progressed to the point where our group was in the nursing home section of the building. We were doing exercises in the dark, including the walk down the hallway solo in the dark while I was waiting for my turn, something grabbed my right leg. There was nothing close to me. The nearest person was about 10 feet away, so when it was my turn, I got maybe 5 feet before I chickened out. We then did another experiment where they placed each of us in the doorway of the rooms spaced out in the dark, but I was placed in the middle of the nurses station. That was until I started screaming because I saw a white misty figure come out of the linen closet attached to the nurses station. My wife did this day loves to make fun of me because of it and I really don't blame her. She is braver when it comes to stuff like this. Anyway, I digress. So our tour guides decided to sit me in a chair in the intersection of the four hallways which gave several other people in the group the perfect view to see a white nurse figure come out of the nurses station, walk right up to me, place its hand on my shoulder, and then just disappear. This would be my first real experience with an entity making physical contact with me. It felt cold, which was crazy because it was a warm July evening. This wouldn't be my last experience with this figure. During my follow-up visit in April, I was in the middle of an estus session when someone in the group told me they saw a white figure standing behind me. Of course, I was sitting in front of the nurses station facing down the hallway. This has left many questions. Who is that nurse? Why does she keep trying to communicate with me? Is it the fact I was in the medical field? Is it the fact I can feel their presence? These are just the questions I am out here trying to answer. Indiana State Sanatorium has this dark and heavy feeling to it. Considering the tragic history of the location, thousands of people came here to die, many allegedly buried in unmarked graves. While this is not 100% certain, it does raise many questions. Combined with the fact that many patients were abused and neglected, this leaves them with the desire to reach out. The spirits at Indiana State Sanatorium take a bit too warm up to strangers, but you need to be careful that you don't make them angry. I remember during my visit in April we were doing a dual estus session with me asking the questions. While I was asking the questions, I started taking still photographs with my digital camera and I will have to admit that it totally freaked me out when we got the response, pictures. I then asked the spirits if it was okay for me to take their photograph, to which they replied, no. It then quickly went downhill when I asked if they wanted us to leave. We got the response, yes, and then from the other person, right now. That was probably the most intelligent response I have personally experienced. What crosses the line is when people keep pushing the spirits after they have been warned to stop. This causes the whole experience to be negative and could lead to a place where the spirits do not want to interact with people anymore. We are guests in their home. We should treat it as such. This is again very similar to healthcare. I just recently went on my third ever paranormal investigation at Posttown Elementary School in Middleton, Ohio. It was a completely different vibe. It wasn't as dark as Indiana State's Anatorium. The spirits there started early making noises and setting off trigger devices. It felt like the spirits there wanted to play games and were mischievous as opposed to malevolent. Going to these locations and reaching out to these lost souls, giving them the chance to tell their story and finally be heard is what is important to me, the history of the building and the forever inhabitants of it. The spirits at Posttown loved the trigger devices. They kept playing with the cat balls, motion lights, and any other device that we deployed. I have seen groups go into these buildings and be so disrespectful to the building and the spirits themselves, which reminds me a lot of the healthcare industry. I saw other providers treat patients terribly and that's not right. Everyone, including spirits, just wants to be treated with dignity. They didn't choose to be stuck there forever, but we as investigators have the opportunity to communicate with them and share their story with the world. I feel giving those in the afterlife the opportunity to share their story might give them the closure they deserve. Author Jason Hewlett takes us on our next journey to Gooding, Idaho to spend time with the ghosts at Gooding University Inn and Resort. The attic was dark, the only light provided by the headlamps worn by my colleagues Peter Ren and Trevor Palmer and the red, blue, and green glow created by our equipment. A third investigator stood nearby filming us, but that didn't matter. I was focused on the sounds coming through the headphones I was wearing. Ren and Palmer had captured what they believed was the voice of a spirit responding to a question with a yes. I was listening intently to the audio to see if I heard the same, my GoPro dangling from my right arm filming darkness. Seconds ticked by. Ren played the clip a second time. I heard it, a yes, clear as a bell. Yeah, I heard it, I said, smiling. Ren and Palmer grinned back, excited. Then a fourth colleague, Olivier Asselin, jumped. Startled, he took a step back and pointed. I just saw a shadow, he said, right behind you. Was it caused by my light? My GoPro had a light attached to it. No, the light pointed away from me and no other lights were aimed in my direction, ruling out such a shadow, especially one that walked behind me, as Asselin said this one did. This got Palmer excited, as he's seen shadow figures at Gooding University in and resort before. They stand about a child's height, roughly four feet, and the head and shoulders are clearly distinguished. What Asselin saw matched this description. Having worked with Asselin for the better part of two years as part of our Canadian Paranormal Society, Ren and I have no cause to doubt his account. Asselin is honest and possesses great character and integrity. If he said he saw this shadow walking behind me, he saw it. Ren, Asselin and I had traveled some 800 miles and 15 hours from our home in British Columbia, Canada to Gooding, Idaho to join Palmer's Western Idaho Paranormal for a two-day investigation. We'd been at the former Tuberculosis Hospital turned hotel for about two hours and had already caught a handful of EVPs and spotted a shadow being. Suffice to say, the trip was worth it. As paranormal investigators with more than 50 years of experience between us, Ren, Asselin and I have visited hundreds of haunted locations, many with claims of being highly active. Most of the time these claims turn out to be just that, and we leave with barely a whisper caught on our audio recorders. Not so with Gooding University in and resort. The owners and past guests claim to hear footsteps running up and down the second floor hallway and the voices of children throughout the building. Shadows peek out of doorways and the spirit of what is described as an angry man has been seen stomping around one of the rooms. The attic which we investigated that first night and the basement are rumored to house a dark entity. Such stories attracted Zach Baggins and his Ghost Adventures TV show as well as bringing Western Idaho Paranormal to the locations for several years. Palmer said his team has never been disappointed with a stay. The inn was originally a college campus that was eventually donated to the local Methodist Church, which in turn donated it to the state of Idaho with the purpose of turning it into a tuberculosis hospital, said Palmer. It opened in 1947 and remained in operation until 1976 when it was all but abandoned and several of the buildings bulldozed. A private buyer purchased the site in 2002 and turned it into a hotel. New owners recently took over and embraced the haunted history, opening the facility to groups interested in exploring the paranormal. Palmer and his team have been investigating there for 12 years. In fact, the inn was Palmer's first paranormal investigation. Every part of the inn is haunted from the basement to the attic. Palmer and his team have seen shadow figures and light anomalies in the basement, not to mention captured numerous ghostly voices on audio. We have captured a couple of apparitions on camera too, Palmer said about the basement. The team has recorded the voice of a small child on the main floor, which is home to the kitchen and eating area as well as some guest rooms. Palmer said they had also caught a female's voice speaking in a foreign language on that floor as well as footsteps wandering the hallway. We also occasionally see shadow people peeking their heads out of doorways, he said. On the second floor, which is home to most of the guest rooms, footsteps have been heard running up and down the hallway, and shadow figures have been spotted. One investigator had her room ransacked when she left it unoccupied. She hadn't slept in her room yet and had done some investigating. When she went in, all her stuff had been thrown about the room and her bed had been unmade, said Palmer. Later on, we caught the voice of the man who didn't seem too happy that we were here. A lot of activity has been documented in the attic, said Palmer. Again, many an EVP has been recorded and disembodied voice heard, not to mention shadow people seen flitting about, much like Aslan experienced the first night our team was there. An investigator claimed a cat rushed against their leg, but no cat was present. Pete Kruger is the operations manager and head tech for Western Idaho Paranormal. He is responsible for setting up cameras, audio and other detection devices throughout the Gooding University Inn. This includes a full-spectrum camera and laser grid system in the downstairs hallway where shadow beings have been spotted. The camera is set to take a picture every 10 seconds, hoping to capture an image of one of these beings, said Kruger. This particular hallway appears to be home to the spirit of a little girl other teams have filmed using infrared cameras. The camera was bumped and when it was bumped, it ended up taking a picture of a shadow that was as tall as a ping-pong table or a little taller than a ping-pong table flying by the camera, he said. So that's why we have this here. It's more of a motion thing in this hallway that we hope to catch. Having so much equipment throughout the inn makes for a daunting task when it comes to reviewing evidence. In fact, it takes a whole year between investigations to complete the review. Why go to so much effort? Kruger's answer echoes the plethora of activity Palmer relayed to Ren, Asselin and myself. This place is really, really haunted, said Kruger. Our Canadian Paranormal Society team had a scant 36 hours to spend at the Gooding University Inn, so we opted to keep our work simple in order to maximize our time. Aside from a couple of late night investigations Asselin undertook, he ran an eye stuck together, working as a trio or with Palmer and other members of his team. We also kept our equipment to a minimum, using GoPro and Canon cameras for visual documentation and our digital recorders to capture audio. We stocked with simple EVP sessions and when ambient noise was too loud, used a spirit box to attempt communications with the dead. For the uninitiated, a spirit box is an AM-FM short-range receiver that scans multiple channels at the same time. The theory is ghosts can communicate using this device, which makes it controversial. In order to offset that, we do our due diligence in terms of research and ask questions that prompt an intelligent response. No yes or no questions are asked. We want answers to questions like, what city are we in? Or who was the owner of this property? During our EVP and spirit box sessions, we made sure we deployed trigger objects like motion-activated lights that light up when touched. These devices are not sensitive and pretty much must be grasped in order to go off. Our team typically keeps it simple like this, relying more on our own intuition and variables like shifts in temperature to track and record paranormal activity. We started early on our first morning, beginning in the basement and working our way up to the attic. Our trip concluded with a large EVP session involving both teams at dusk after we had completed our own series of investigations throughout the inn. I could write a whole book about our experience at Gooding and might do so one day as detailing every encounter we had in this article would be a daunting task. Between the three of us, we recorded more than 30 EVPs and had several personal experiences which can't be quantified scientifically, but they happened and some were quite profound. Starting in the basement, Asselin saw a shadow figure move across a window. His description of what he saw matched that of one Palmer and his team witnessed in the basement before that of a little girl.  It was hanging in the middle of a hallway where Palmer's team had spotted a shadow lurking about. Motion lights we'd set up on the floor around us also went off, almost like we were surrounded by spirits. Given how many voices we captured on audio, we may well have been. Then during a spirit box session a few minutes later, I asked a spirit if it could say my name. Within seconds, a voice came through first saying hello and then, Jason. A few hours later, during another EVP session in the basement, Asselin and I saw a series of bright flashes of light come from a hallway. I caught it out of the corner of my eye, but Asselin saw it through the open doorway. Two quick flashes, then a third followed seconds later by a fourth. We went to investigate and determine the flashes must have come from a fire alarm light, although no smoke or heat could be detected. We brought this up with Palmer who was a firefighter by day. He investigated and said the fire alarm was in working order and had never behaved like that before. The pattern of flashes Asselin said he saw also behaved like other light anomalies Western Idaho Paranormal has seen in the basement. The attic proved most active. In addition to Ren, Palmer and Asselin's experience that first night, we also had something reach out to us using our trigger objects. When we asked a spirit to make its presence known, one of our motion-activated lights went off. In order to confirm it was a potential spirit, Ren asked for the light to be set off again. And it did. This behavior went on for a minute or two. At one point, a different light lit up. In order to ensure we were dealing with something intelligent, Ren asked the spirit to light up the previous light again. Seconds later, the original light glowed once more. Those same lights performed again during our group EVP session at the conclusion of our investigation. We'd contacted a spirit identifying itself as Sarah, one which Western Idaho Paranormal had communicated with before. Ren asked Sarah to touch or move an object in order to make her presence known. Bang! Something moved behind where he and I were standing. Did someone knock something over? Palmer asked. No. The sound came from a spot where no one was standing. One of his team members went to investigate. A small ornament appeared to have fallen off a box. Again, no one was near the spot nor were any vibrations felt.  Ren asked. As if in response, one of the lights lit up. On a personal note, myself and Palmer's daughter Elena awoke on the first night to footsteps walking in the second floor hallway. I thought it might be one of the investigators heading to his or her room, but Elena got out of bed and looked into the hallway. No one was there, and the room I heard the footsteps walking into was unoccupied in the morning. These are just a few of the experiences we had while at the Gooding University Inn. In all honesty, the 36 hours spent there were not enough and we planned to return for a longer investigation next year. Ren has been an investigator for 30 years and explored haunted locations all over the world. He considers Gooding to be the most haunted location he's investigated. I concur, and although Asselin has only been doing this a couple of years, he doubts he'll find a location with more activity. Our experiences were the hot topic during our 15-hour drive back to Canada, with the consensus being if you want to find proof of paranormal activity, just spend a night at the Gooding University Inn. Want more Paranormality? Subscribe to Paranormality Magazine and each month get it delivered digitally or via mail in our print version. Paranormality Magazine is a collaborative endeavor featuring works from people like you who have a passion for all things mysterious and unexplained. Our goal is the pursuit of knowledge, gathering captivating stories from our own team of writers, researchers and investigators, as well as from writers such as yourself. Each monthly issue also includes a list of paranormal, horror, UFO and cryptozoology events around the country, incredible paranormal-themed artwork, articles and writing sent in from our readers, suggested books and podcasts to consume and more. Visit ParanormalityMag.com and subscribe today for as little as $3.99 a month. That's ParanormalityMag.com ParanormalityMag.com On September 8, 1920, a five-masted schooner named the Carol A. Deering set sail. The secure vessel arrived in Rio and continued on to Barbados for supplies. By January 31, 1921, the ship would be spotted for the last time on the outer edge of an area known as the Graveyard of the Atlantic. Rescue teams found the Deering's sails set and a galley full of food, but she held no crew, no captain, and no obvious explanation of what happened to the ill-fated ship. Within a few months of the ship's discovery, a bottle washed ashore along the North Carolina coast containing an ominous message. Some say the cryptic note explains precisely what happened to the infamous ghost ship, the Carol A. Deering. It's easy to be captivated by a good mystery. By land or by sea, a curious situation is sure to grab the attention of anyone keen on solving a puzzle, mainly if the puzzle includes an unfortunate crew of multiple dead or missing men, a sad fact that is morbid but true. A ghost ship is defined as a physical vessel spotted adrift at sea or found sailing with no crew on board. There have been many stories over the years of ghost lights attached to cruel ships that are seen gliding along the water, only to disappear within moments of being spotted. These timeless, spooky stories tell of literal ghost ships that can be seen but not touched and apparition of sorts. An excellent example of such a legend would be the haunting story of Bechelor Phantom, a riveting mystery of a phantom ship. Natives of the area tell tales of strange ghost lights appearing along the waters of Bathurst, New Brunswick, Canada. If you're daring enough to step foot into the icy waters of Chalor Bay, townsfolk say you can immediately hear the screams of the passengers on board a burning ship. The bulk of the reports, interestingly, allying with a hot summer night. Digging into the flesh and blood ghost ship mystery, grim discoveries that include wayward ships have muddied our deep blue waters for centuries. Sea-worthy craft have been found bobbing along the water, sometimes in working order and often stocked with rations with no signs of life on board. Ghost ships are a kind of chilling revelation that has had the maritime community scratching their heads for hundreds of years. There are many reports from all over the world of vessels appearing in the middle of the ocean or along the shore with no one on board. Unfortunately, there is no precise data on how many of these deserted ships have been spotted in the vast expanse of the sea. However, since 2004, there have been 438 ships carrying 5,767 souls abandoned worldwide. If we take our data back a few hundred years, the number of potentially dead or missing people with no explanation of what happened is staggering. In 1872, the Mary Celeste, a dual-mast vessel, was discovered drifting off the Azores Islands with no one on board. Originally under British registration, the Brigantine vessel was found by the De Gracia Sea-worthy and under partial sail. When Mary Celeste left New York City for Genoa, Italy on November 17, 1872, she was in working order, had plenty of provisions, and had a cargo hold full of industrial strength alcohol. The only thing missing when she was found by a Canadian Brigantine other than a lifeboat or her passengers, seven crew members, her captain, his wife, and their two-year-old daughter. During the salvage hearings, court officers suggested the vessel may have come under siege. Could the crew have fallen victim to foul play at the hands of pirates or possibly a crew member himself? As for the full story of what happened to Mary Celeste, no one will ever know for sure. The few undeniable details are that the vessel turned up deserted with no easy explanation and none of her occupants were ever seen again. Off the coast of Thailand, another inscrutable ship was found wandering solo, although the identity of this companion-less ship was difficult to assess as it had no identifying papers on board. Chevron oil rig workers discovered the Erie vessel on January 6, 2022, about 100 nautical miles from the start of Songkwa Lake, the largest natural lake in Thailand. The 262-foot tanker contained no registration documents and only one identifying feature, the name Jin Shui Yan Tu, written on the vessel in Chinese. No crew members, food, or cargo was found on board. In 2006, another ship was found abandoned on the coast of Queensland, Australia. Curiously, what we now know is the vessel the Zheng Seng was located not far from an island said to be rife with mysterious magnetic forces. The unmanned ship had no identifying markings and no crew. However, the 80-meter-long ship was found floating with a broken tow line in the shark-infested waters, carrying an abundance of rice. To this day, authorities have not been able to identify the ship's port of registry or its nationality. Could the crew of this mysterious ship have been sent to a watery grave by a band of nefarious one-eyed pirates? Maybe it was the work of a solitary madman looking to seek revenge on a blameless crew. Sadly, the details of this bizarre cliff hangar are as mystifying as the sea itself. With the average price of a tanker ship hovering right around $10 million, a very conservative number, what could possibly be the reason for abandoning such a pricey sea-worthy vessel? Other than the exorbitant price of gas today, your guess is as good as mine. Back to the Carol A. Deering, most of what happened to the unfortunate ship is still a mystery. What we do know is that there was some contention between the captain of the ship and his first mate, so much so that the first mate found himself in jail following a deadly threat he made to the captain while intoxicated. Oddly, it was the captain who eventually bailed his first mate out of jail, and they once again set sail. Twenty days later, while en route to Virginia, the Carol A. Deering hailed a Cape Lookout light ship off the coast of North Carolina. A tall, thin man with reddish hair held up a megaphone and hollered that the ship had lost both anchors and chains during a storm. The man advised that the ship's owner should be notified, but the light ship had no working radio, making communication impossible. Later, the Cape Lookout captain said the red-headed man spoke in broken English, and his speech and manner did not reflect that of an officer. He had also observed that the ship's crew was milling around on the quarter-deck, an area that they would not ordinarily be permitted to be in. Two days later, the ship was found run aground in the graveyard of the Atlantic, a.k.a. the Diamond Shoals, abandoned. The rescue teams noted that the steering section of the ship had been badly damaged, the wheel had been shattered, the steering equipment disabled, and the biblical box was broken. A sledgehammer was positioned preternaturally nearby. Adding more mystery to the story, it looked as if the crew were preparing for a meal immediately before their disappearance. As we stated earlier, there is no clear explanation concerning what may have happened aboard the bedeviled schooner, but history does offer us one more fascinating clue. In April 1921, a man by the name of Christopher Columbus Gray found a bottle that washed up along the North Carolina shore. Inside the bottle was a note that read, Deering captured by oil-burning boat. The new evidence sparked suspicion and outrage among the people with citizens attempting to pin the dastardly deed on the Russians. Papers began reporting about the possibility of Bolshevik, a Communist Party of the Soviet Union, plot. Fortunately, the fear was unfounded, but the people were still left with no closure to the ship's bizarre mystery. To this day, there are many theories, but nothing that makes this strange nautical case as closed. In 1918, 306 crew members went missing from the USS Cyclops. It remains the largest loss of life in the history of the United States Navy not involving combat. The vessel was due to arrive in Baltimore, but never made it. The Proteus-class Collier was thought to have been sunk by a German vessel, however no one claimed the ship's destruction or capture. Carrying 11,000 tons of manganese ore, most thought she may have sunk due to the overloading, but investigators in Rio confirmed that the vessel had been loaded and secured properly. No wreckage has ever been found and the case remains unsolved. The ocean covers more than 70,000 of our planet and protects more than 220,000 known species of life. Conversely, it is also home to more than 2 million more forms of life that remain a mystery. Is there a living, breathing, terrifying creature out there that is causing our brave, young military men to suddenly jump ship? Is the middle of the ocean the perfect aquatic lair for an alien abduction? Are swashbuckling pirates capable of taking over an entire crew of armed military men? Whether the threat is coming from above or coming from below, it has successfully kept us from solving some of the world's strangest mysteries. In that instance, it appears to be much smarter than us. And unfortunately, from mariners who make the sea their home, even for a limited time only, it's patient. I'll end our episode with this last bit of spookery. Gina Black talked to us about whispers in the dark and conversations with spirits. Let's play a game.  You might initially feel startled because you were not expecting it. Instinctually, you might turn around. Perhaps a friend or family member has recognized you. Even when you turn around and your eyes scan the unfamiliar faces and cannot find the source of the voice, it probably would not alarm you in any way. More than likely, you would simply turn back around and move on with your day. But what if there was a chilling plot twist?  This shift in perspective changes how a person may react. One might take off running from a jolt of adrenaline. Others might freeze in fear. But we paranormal weirdos might grin from ear to ear and ask the spirit to repeat themselves. If you are the latter, then perhaps we can dive down the rabbit hole together. When it comes down to it, there are two main kinds of hauntings categorized as residual and intelligent. In a residual haunting, it is as if we're observing a scene or action being projected in a location over and over. This could take the form of footsteps on a staircase at the same hour each day, or perhaps a shadow that paces in the same hallway every night. It might even be phantom music whose source cannot be traced. Oftentimes, the activity is non-responsive to the observers. Essentially, this scene is a harmless loop of an imprinted memory on the location. The other, perhaps more chilling category is referred to as an intelligent haunting. In cases such as these, the spirit will directly communicate through audio, visual or tactile responses. Tapping or knocking to answer questions is a common way to connect to a spirit. This can also be great for those without traditional ghost hunting equipment. Asking a spirit to dim the lights in a room or using flashlights as a form of yes or no questions can also be done. Other forms of intelligent haunting might include physical touching such as tapping or hair tugging. These are harmless examples of the spirit simply trying to get your attention. Audible voices are more rare but can happen in some locations. So, you're in a haunted house and you've heard your name. Now what? You should begin to ask yourself a few questions at this moment. Did you introduce yourself at the beginning of the investigation? Is there a possibility the spirit heard someone else use your name? Or is the answer none of the above? That, my friends, is when things get a bit darker. If no one else mentioned your name, is it demonic? I believe the possibility is extremely low but certainly never 0%. If you come to the conclusion that no one could have possibly revealed your name and you heard it spoken, it might be a safe bet to conclude the investigation. In my experience, more often than not, my name being spoken by a spirit was perfectly innocent. I usually introduced myself before an investigation and I always travel with others who use it. Introductions are an easy way to establish a great connection. When you get that interaction, it is simply the best feeling. Creating a bond with an intelligent entity is a rush. My suggestion is to try and keep the conversation going, keep the line of communication open as long as you can and if you are able to return to the same location, you might find the spirit may just remember you. This can come in handy because over time you can develop a relationship of trust with the spirit and the information they share may become more personal and it will be more tangible for your research. An important tip to keep in mind would be to do your homework beforehand. For example, you may want to brush up on the history of the location you are investigating. Really dig into the meat of the story. Separate rumors from facts. Just because you heard something nasty went down in a location does not necessarily make it true. Find human connections to names of people who might be haunting the space, important life events and deaths. I like to lean into the names personally. It is surprising how much more paranormal interaction can happen when you single out an entity by saying their name. You can also refer back to your research when analyzing evidence in order to bring some real credibility to your findings. Do ask light-hearted questions such as favorite activities, period pop culture questions and daily life inquiries. The time period is also important to consider. If someone lived in the late 1800s they might not understand current slang or topics. I find when I bring up activities the spirits seem more willing to keep the conversation going. Perhaps asking if they like music, singing or dancing might jog fond memories for them. Asking them questions such as what their favorite ice cream flavor was or if they drove a car may also seem enticing to them. Thinking of questions beforehand is a great idea because it can become difficult to think of meaningful content on the fly. Keeping a journal is a great tool for this. It can be a great record during evidence review as well. Do not ask how someone died. This is literally the most singularly personal experience in the human existence and not exactly appropriate for a new relationship. It could absolutely set the wrong tone for your investigation. What you can do is ask what the last thing a spirit remembers and perhaps you may gather more insight to deduct a manner of death. If they are forthcoming and offer this information by all means, roll with it. In the end, it is all about building your connection through trust and the same way you would interact with a living person. Every paranormal interaction is bringing us one step closer to knowing a little more about the unknown. Even if you only gather a small amount of evidence, try not to get discouraged. Some nights the spirits may be willing to speak and other nights they may not. If you have the opportunity to visit a location multiple times, you can certainly see what works for you and what does not. I have captured my name countless times on my digital recorder, portal device and spirit box. Every time it really does feel like I won the lottery. Everyone has to develop their own style when it comes to investigating. This has worked for me personally throughout my many investigations and if you try this formula, you might just hear a spirit say your name. Thanks for listening to Paranormality Magazine. Get more information about the magazine and subscribe to our monthly publication at ParanormalityMag.com or click the link in the show description.  We might feature you in our next issue. If you have a paranormal podcast, you can add it to our website so our readers can find your show. And artists, if you'd like your work to be featured in our magazine or on our back cover, contact us. Again, our website is ParanormalityMag.com. I'm Darren Marlar and I'll have more paranormal for you next time from Paranormality Magazine.