Are indeed proud this year to be able to honor William Poet and printer as our 1991 recipient. Bill Everson has lived in Santa Cruz County for many years. He's generously shared his artistic talents with literally thousands of Santa Cruz County citizens and his well-deserved national reputation has enabled Santa Cruz County to be known far and wide as we all who live here know it as a wonderful place for talented and abundant artists to live in. Tonight we're going to honor Bill Everson. We are going to have two colleagues profile aspects of his life and work and finally we're going to be honored by hearing him read to us from his works. So we'll begin with the honors. I'd like first to welcome Marilyn Hansen who's representing Senator Henry Mello. Marilyn. Senator Mello couldn't be here tonight. He's on call for budget hearings in Sacramento which he knows all very important to all of us. And so he asked me to be here to present a resolution to William Everson. It's my great pleasure to do this. The resolution summarizes in very few words a life of a man of many, many words a master poet and hand printer of great distinction. Thank you. Next in line is Sally Johnson representing assembly member Sam Farr, Sally. Assemblyman Sam Farr also couldn't be here but he wanted very much to commend William Everson on his ability not only to create words and inspire us that way but to imbue our community through the students he's taught with an aesthetic that was all his own. Thank you very much. And I'd like you to welcome Gary Patton, county supervisor of Bill Everson's district. In words that we can all read in one of William Everson's hand printed poems which is in the case right opposite the elevator on this floor in the county center. He said this about two redwood trees located in Kingfisher Flat and Davenport in the land where he lives.  It seems to me as we celebrate the artists of the year we celebrate the purpose of art for all of us which is to help us in our lives indeed like the redwoods to shape our fuel to the fires which we confront so we can burn bright and we do so like the redwoods by sending our roots deep so that we constrain upwards always to the high embrace which is the name of that poem. I am delighted to honor William Everson whose roots go so deep and whose embrace go so high. I have on behalf of the Board of Supervisors a proclamation honoring William Everson as the 1991 artist of the year in Santa Cruz County. I'm hardly a representative of our congressman Leon Panetta but I do have a letter from congressman Panetta congratulating Bill Everson. And finally I'd just like to show you the perpetual plaque to which Bill Everson's name has been added which is on permanent display here in the county building listing all our artists of the year. Bill you don't have to take this away we'll keep this one. Next we'll have our profiles Mr. Everson and first I'd like to introduce Gary Young fine printer in Santa Cruz County and also a connoisseur of poetry. Gary. Twenty years ago I was an undergraduate at the University of California here in Santa Cruz. I was going to be a poet and I was on fire with the idea of it so you can imagine my excitement when I learned that William Everson was going to come on our campus and teach. I thought here's finally someone who will be speaking my language. I remember the first time I sat in on his birth of a poet class I was shocked to discover that he was speaking a language that I didn't know. And in these twenty years since I listened to him speak then I feel that I'm just now learning the art of translation. I know that I'm not alone there were many of us who never accepted credit for that class. I I worry now that maybe this was affecting your your salary at the time Bill I hope that wasn't the case. But I felt very strongly I did not want to contaminate what was happening in this class with the protocols of class cards and all the rigmarole that the university asked of us. I wanted to listen to Bill speak on my own because what he was talking about was so profound and so moving that it paled the rest of my university experience. And I felt that getting credit for listening to Bill lecture would have been like getting credit for watching the clouds. I went away for graduate school and while I was gone Bill started printing and opened the line kiln press and his vast knowledge of the black art to students. I was never a printer under Bill but I have I count many of my dearest friends were students of Bill so I feel that I've gotten the reflection of that as have many. Bill's father was a printer grew up in a print shop went back to printing at the conscientious objectors camp during World War two and from the very beginning turned out masterpieces there's no other word for it and I think it's fair to say that not since Blake have we had the perfect marriage of poet and printer that we have in Bill. We are very fortunate to have an opportunity not only to hear him read tonight but to observe his printing. Someone as spiritual and as sensual as Bill it seems natural that he would become a printer there is really nothing quite as voluptuous as holding a type stick in your hand that's heavy with a poem and Bill has shared that with a whole generation actually two generations starting during the war and then again at the University of California. His books I think particularly of the privacy of speech and his Psalter which is generally conceded to be one of the most beautiful pieces of printed art of the century or any other century. At Santa Cruz he led the students there in the creation of masterpieces American Bard and in Cyprus and Granite. Five years ago the printers chapel a group of printers which I am a member most of whom were students of Bill's had a show here which traveled to Chicago and to New York and Bill was kind enough to write an introduction I would like to quote a piece of this forward. When I came to Santa Cruz in the early 70s I was aware of the quickening body of writers sprung up almost overnight around the University and I was happy to join it but that was not the reason I came. I came because an ancient hand press stood unused in the foyer of the University library and cried out for consummation in a noble text. The articulation of the word the physical articulation of the word has been the root of Bill's profound influence here and I can only join the many others in thanking him for that. The next profile will be given by Jim Houston Jim if I may have just a moment I would like to recognize you as a previous recipient of our artist of the year award please give a hand to Mr. Houston and we have several other previous award winners who are here tonight to honor Bill Everson just a moment. I don't know where they're all sitting I'll point out the ones I do first of all Lou Harrison Chuck Hilger in the back by the door the Cabrillo Guild of Music is represented by Tom Fredericks and Ellen Primack I don't know where they are in the hall back in the hall and the cultural council of Santa Cruz County is represented by Lynn Magruder she's in the back corner there and finally Tandy Beal said she's out of town and can't be here tonight. So now Jim Houston yeah okay thank you Bill Everson has distinguished himself in so many admirable ways and it's it's really hard to know where to begin talking about his life and his work as we all know he's a poet of international renown widely read and widely awarded as Gary Young just described for you he's a he's a world-class printer who's who's inspired a whole generation of younger printers to carry on the flame of his of his of his heritage he's a scholar and he's a literary historian our foremost expert on the life and the work of Robinson Jeffers and like Jeffers he has been a celebrator of landscape and seascape and thus he speaks with a particular resonance to those of us who here on the West Coast because this is his region in the hillsides of the long coast range and in the valleys and on the beaches and in the beaks and the cries of the shore birds he's found some of his richest imagery what I am most compelled to pay tribute to in the few minutes I'm going to take here is the enormous spiritual achievement of this man since I believe that is the source of all that is followed I first met him as Gary Young did about about 20 years ago soon after he came down here to take a position as poet in residence at the then recently established Kresge College at UC Santa Cruz I soon realized as I know a number of you here tonight also have realized then I had met a spiritual father this recognition had to do in part with Bill's charismatic presence and personal power it also had to do with the fact that he is as I am a native Californian with strongly felt roots in his home region perhaps his great patriarchal beard had something to do with his effect on me but more profoundly as I came to know him I saw that here was a man of conscience who set a very high example and here was a writer who had done something that is if I can use one of his favorite terms archetypal he had found a way to join the life of language and the life of the spirit as a vocation and as a calling and this spoke to me in a very deep way why did it speak to me well as it happens I grew up in a in a devout and churchgoing family I won't say which church the important thing is that all our religious activities consisted of words prayer scripture reading exhortations sermons and songs our communications with God were made of words and I know this had a subliminal and lasting effect even though I left that particular organization behind by the time I was 18 the role that language could play stayed with me the idea that words can somehow move you a long good path toward salvation that words have an integral part to play in this process the gospel according to st. John begins with a sentence that spells it out for us in the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was God more than any other writer I have known William Everson has gone the distance with the implications of this sense pursuing the connection between language and the sacred and and our participation in that as writers and or as supplicants as seekers a lot of literary work in a lot of work you will find an implicit sacred dimension Bill Everson has been marvelously explicit making his own quest his major subject giving voice to his own dialogue with God as he has explored the hazards of holiness in the mid 20th century the struggles of the flesh and ultimately the sanctity of the flesh as well as the sanctity and the violent mystery of our Western landscape he has given us an abundant and luminous body of work that is I don't want to use the term religious here because that always sounds to me too institutional but a body of work the charts his own singular spiritual journey a journey carried out in the heart and also on the page before he moved to this county he had spent 18 years in the in the Dominican order during which time he became famous as brother Antoninus and distinguished himself as one of the foremost Catholic writers of our era he left the order in 1969 he settled in swan Davenport in 1971 and since that time he has become famous again or in another way as William Everson it has been an amazingly productive period by anyone's measure since he's been here he has received a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts he received a lifetime achievement award from the National Poetry Association a body of work award from the Penn Center USA his monumental tribute to the poetry of Robinson Jeffers granted in Cyprus which is on display right outside here in the corridor was named one of the 70 best printed books in American history that is in the history of American printing in addition during the past 20 years he has published 18 titles or 20 or 21 I can't keep track of them all the masks of drought from which he's going to read tonight Arc type West his landmark study of the West as a literary region the veritable years which won the Shelley Memorial Award from the Poetry Society of America and he continues to write he is currently in the midst of a long family chronicle and verse entitled the engendering flood the first volume of which just came out last year it's really an inspiring combination of creative energy and spiritual vision that has enriched all of our lives and tonight we have a chance to let him know how deeply we have treasured his presence in our midst for these past two decades it is my great pleasure and privilege to introduce to you the 1991 Santa Cruz County artist of the year and one of the great American poets of the 20th century William Everson I'm too much of a hammer even if I've stumbled into the mother of all the words of ceremonies but I'm glad to be here Christ the other prophet is not that on it in his own country he ought to know the other comes to the prophet there's no equal except in his own home town there's not a man that's just so close to his roots but he seems invisible to his own area in his own time life goes on around him he absorbs it all sleeps on it dreams on it and then speaks I want to thank you for making this possible darn sir Christmas Eve night of night and big creek is on the move that the equinox tempting rains toyed with us teasing an offshore at sea Christmas Eve night of night and big creek is on the move at the equinox tempting rains toyed with us teasing an offshore at sea the undisciplined standby blocking the river not the great face salmon sculpted the trough it means no long genetic dream asthmatic slumber of the unfulfilled weight in the moment of the first time the river tongue in the seas of all the strength in the swamp first incremental prostitute vegetation the party purging the veins of the cleft mountain then a month of drought he imposed itself the turbid summers condy and serility drying the glaze sucking the flow back into the hill that just the mountainly grudge what it gave call back his gift summoning them home and high-large yes he patterns of his great advent broke dry December harsh on the hill no sign of crowds on the steely horizon but solstice brother aspect in North West where he shook the last lives there the government hailstones rattling the spindles under the little little crowd then the wind swung south and the Nimbus struck 1000 miles storming down the English coast 48 hours of bitter vertical rain water falling like the spurge of God the squandering of heaven as if forever on the mountains and the dawns as if forever on the river forks and creeks as if forever on the vast watershed it's here declimities it's seaword pitching slides thirst shunk on the slopes of the parts ridges even the dark harsh pulsation of night the creek gorge didn't turn during his logs hit one another shoot that blood rather than wait to the sandbar on the sea ripping a chain channel out of it out to the future the space beyond time on the eve of the coming and Christ the principal in the purpose splits the room in his shadow of birth got off impressive wings it's under the sheer knife thrust of the hatchet stroke of his own blade then the shot slap high up hurtling shape hitting sick mansion awkwardly great job shot knocked out of the sky awkwardly tears touching it but touching it twig but I can in red nails his fierce front enters close in on him snarling like cat standing through the takes off I'm certainly fighting these pursuers like things will feel at peace following him out abruptly the catch in his client morning sunlight calmly descent three days car sores on but poor thing with a horizon some dark approach your forecasting his presence or a movement out there from the larger life the nation of the world maybe my own dark thought a sudden impulse impunge in the spirit moment the intruding to be hurried for it unable to challenge that person or something more somberly bloody some reflexes a life force in consonant with the whole and hence sub trucey but none of them and you know one way to know but something was meant in the visionary dream a movement from beyond the cosmic hole was registered here in the winged fashion the snarling beats counterforce challenges but you know they'll never know become it was swept from consequence evicted from shattering out what winners are now the dry all the long season with carol frost gips to knock the coast like flange nettle bent like the sea above the tree top twisted branches that start quite light you know shriveled creek bed rock of the air run naked roots obscene the grinds who flaking rock the state of torrents and early last evening a thin drizzle gaining toward death or dark drop it low hanging clouds there's belly on the rain plan all night long the thirsty slopes drank straight falling water soaking it up killing those tilting deep shelving scenes blue veins in the mountain zigzag surfaces a fracture chair dawn plan and the rain fell to run up the end you rise with the light sally down to the stream this touch fresh water for a kind of blessing you find instead a river of ink all the horrid of tributary tea treat those catchers of relief gift the strip of elder and the sweat of fur accurate shifts of every panel and moral the revelant mirror and leaves of the bottle all that all in spun opulence thoughts goes down and ruthlessly squandered four months back you rock where it fell now crawls to the sea at liquid vial you look up at last any wondering way and exclaim softly right and out his men's ring something in your voice a tremor there tells of the needs of a womanly pulse the deep sensing it's in a very pan it's soft like this looking I see indeed it is true these like dead cells long held back in the fridges room again now the flow under the rain of deep fencing just right if we knew them for me it has run off but my heart purges touching you and creeped out in the same impulse I'm healed the frost woman and water in the blood flow blackbird sundown high ridge ranch back of the barn the viral clicker the red-winged blackbirds in the late afternoon they cluster on the fence post please them barbed wire telephone lines any proximate person living in the populace gleaming the fading light didn't scarlet on the glistening black intensely alive they falling construct chatter the twangy blackbird town jubilant in the bird's out evening a sudden hunt mr. tension the sound silence drops to stun terror and all explodes every bird for itself up down out in the way well over the ridge the shoulders of flight massively outstretched a hunched body tense with hunger grab a little need the great horned owl flies impeccably in wide-staring eyes picked on her pray instantly every bird recovered bringing back to the defense they converge on her they rack at a protest a squall of invitations when deterred she stands the iron plunges into this oat thicker behind this one the defenders the meadow beaks the stabbing and yanking its glorious snatched feathers dragging her side and tries to immerse her half dead flesh and ripped in each fit the malignant face swinging right and left but she looks down at the yard bearing down her confronted again the red wings close on her railing and scrolling they're punishing beats a fury of reprisal she shrugs them aside contemptuously and pauses the moment ugly, unbridled, triumphant and then she takes off and red profile humped in departure infinitely unhurring she clears the corral skims the fence and it's gone and if they're going to dust drop a moment before right late night glimmered now darkness swoops on the land red wings circle and descend seeking down Bruce pulling their shattered world back together setting into the ilk stick at 15 charge three out in the woods the teeth three hours and eight fruits one fruits twice to start the two must be the harsh she does not reply the silence is the answer to the harkening dead listening for pipe and pipe is no more we're going to raise the darkness just like a wing the earth kill titans the qualms and talons the west gray breed that kind of critic said that he was invading all the young summer the gray breed prospered the new breed ladies early enjoying the pace took over the canyon they still are trying black bright sporting this razor sharp profile they proved ever crowning whatever it costed must pass inspection all abuse holding trucking and cuttings in big feet it's better about the canyon than we enjoyed that on stream by the meadow our creek side neighbors shot them with guns and hung the seed bodies in the apple trees to scare off rubbish here under the towering quantity of red ones we let them live and suffer their dollars and indeed at very brave and discreet them after the gloomy three southern winter the jaybird would be right that feels a definite need i have in fact done so far in complicity as to scatter crumbs on an old stump with those in it swooping rude iridescent streets hanging through the slant shafts of the sun between column and wood they rock us but by those my guilt will be mine if the cats are not amused talking to the yard they endured that unreach nastily they bombed from behind the car slathered and there's our thing often they scam the sky the trees the hedging zickers possessed of a trouble rage the passion apparently helped hopeless given the jay's street opportunity but mercenaries never the less corrosive desire clenched to the heart against the wrong deprived accounting the great day of feline reproduction meantime the jays cursed back and streaked in hearing the early afternoon the arolesian band is trickling jay got down from the trees to pick up a cricket and he's in the grass pumping in at his long legs for a quick takeoff he speared his game with nice precision boiled in his beak the hapless insect wigglin strode intrigued jay let it squirt then flipped in his eye pounce stabbed twice aren't fully fine but all unnoticed in the wild summer day the black tom got his wits together a swing under the hibachi stand the stealthily forward failed twitching suddenly the jay sensed him wanting like to explain to those long legs that he did out the crickets the old boy in his beak too late too late right in the east the black tom caught in full stretch in the rush and put off the ground enjoying your way one terrified squawk and the cricket spinning and broden can't hit the grass together and feathery tuffa the end the mad scrambling end and the clutch triumph but closed as a long life gamble not yet not yet expressed under the paws of the gate jay's head struggled out preaching piteously jay breed responded converging from thicker than scrub and it's all stands a redwood in the stream side of it they closed the end the long flight angles plain down not jockeying now for scutted promise that's looking for life the only life they know the pejorable breed weaning above the taxpayer they dance like green devil the black tom fiends up at them his neck trained his white teeth gleaning behind his red lips his eyes the yellow fire under his feet the caught praying lord seriously the long women the life to life that's probably what the cat tried in from the western woods first little squeak leads to the living he snatched the plate from her brother's paws distracted by jaybury but she too dolly she too toyed at that pleading life and her bigger sister breeding wings snatched it away and with one pinch of her jaw crushed the black chested head into the all fell still the fierce clamor hushed the yard deeply silent and friggin pants the jay's looked down stunned shaken then the parent bird gave the shot tuff tuff a drunk signal termination and they asked the car the cats ignored what they caught that the tuber remains small wing flurry of the spent cyclone scattered in the grass and for me something within was held suspended extravagant episode suddenly quenched like an engine either slashed on my heart i picked up the several resplendent wings and stretched them to let the light fall through translucent blue in the wild setting and the elegant tail that had put it in death and knocked one and the final gesture the elegant flaw flipped through the sky i took the new minister of these inside the house to dry on a leg well placed the iridescent mess he throws in the room revealed from behind the screen of nature the life of john the front was the vibration that trails through the rooms as they wrote more than and clings yet to my hands like mountain visitors a stick of blood like my fingernail pasting i imagine it's all at the moment there's no more outside in the mind of the day the black tongues between the teeth of the body stand and pick up his coat touch the swagger can't sniff it out of the fetch of the jay invested his movements with this is part of what animal cunning is like the feline lip he's not clean as a mingling whistle the other thing we just do is other than the grass like room in the fern whatever death is the jay bird learned it with the black tongues in the room toiled in his contradiction on the imminent satisfaction of the life otherwise blank as his seamlessly scan the jayless sky and not going here it go down i'm reading my way straight into the book i usually do it while i'm talking but tonight that seems better to read the poem steelhead incipient summer scorched at the sun and the great steelhead shows up in our creek his eyes in the pool the shallow basin of a thin rock we're at impossibly waiting ten days go by in stilling anger the presence is inscrutable lost it didn't lose it might have been a mistake stilling anger the presence is inscrutable no one around here recalls such a thing steelhead man locked in summer for the tag end of april season the last of them under a like all salmon rising in winter to diet spawn steelhead commonly rigged back to speed climbing the river path year after year continuing continuous the track the journey joined in in general the will the life thrust the twist this aberration what is this meaning and why here deeper hideout above and below where salmon and steelhead like it to spawn await their time those same deep holes our perfect places to light out the drought were such his purpose but i don't know dangerously exposed in winter pain water he lies alone and waits and passively waits even last night i was simply arose broke my way down to the scarred slopes to a shallow pool i knew it for his the moon give us back right to see by sensing him there i made vaguely out alone on the bottom like a sunken stick no like a god's done monk prostrate in his cell in an eminatic shape creeplessly intent daunted i left him alone in that hapless place and cut back to bed to go down in the dawn seeking him out of the midnight dream holding him there in my mind's eye still pointed upstream smelling the high headwaters were all about him the dance of light sweet raptors for yonah give you with the light the balls fly double and the star in a spasm of joy the mayflies breathe above on the bank our lap is orbit massively in heat here's your elk on rubber the elk on the hill and will not heal well under the weir the tangents crazy gnome of these waters ponderously grapples his list of consorts all feverless late only myself stooping to thalamus is meeting here knows the tightening there is what if time pretends i dare not yet but much or little brief or prolonged in this reckoned and present i am favored in my life honored in my being and women in my faith and heretic gesture he sounds the death tank of all abnegation witness to the world segregated wrenched out of contact bearing the ups the suppressed restlessness of all this juncture consumed in the abstract dimension this bloodline for the warriors out of time out of season out of place and out of purpose in the electrical fire he burns in my dream and falls me from sleep i'm hardly surprised if i'm by the water this gallery remains where the rafting is flying toward guilt of thin devoured the life sustaining flesh and left in the clay the faint skeletal imprint as fossil etched in stone spans time likeness the glyph of god cutting the fire at break brace yourself for this one mowing the east field under the ridge i wade the wind event ribsized out rusting in the barn swings in the sun ancient blade of my wife's great-grandfather don't drown from the dust of seven years i have set in the grass they don't make this they don't make them like this anymore this little girl cackled a smith punched about the spectrum grindstone counting across the harbour line and the flare of spark pause that on the blade wiping off rust in sudden silence the wedding ring the wedding band he wore on his finger chimed fine steel tackling his head cocking his head like a listening road he slashed up a file and wrapped again hear that how many are spying that turn when she shivers his bike's harsh laughter the old timer's got a name for it something he cut the power stepped down from the bed they call it the moon and death and that hunger vibrates up to crooked stockage when the grass reels i feel his hundred night's arms stroke on stroke rising it sings in my shoulders my collarbone rings to the pulse of it the ravenous steel and i swain with it made one with it wheeling among the standing firm goat footed tramping tall bracken ruthless the radiant flowers iris wild orchid leper dilly the flesh and shimmering splendor of life and then the honing that stone and steel kiss each other they crave itself they lick their lips greedily together like reckless lovers whereas the whore knows the man i have to pull them apart mad size this is in the bed the snake denying loans in the air all the grunt of lovers biting each other stroke on stroke coupling through the health it makes the sex growl in my groin to calm him down wild iris billy alone in the shutter all the women in my life sprawled in the weeds drunk in death the rattlesnake august the ravenous winter week on weeks unedging the hills in this phosphate grip summer broke dry the tightness of heat punched the sterile coast a pierced parking no fraud intended to lie the shred of fire stung the wrestling hair like midsummer moon leaves later draw her then late one dusk our labrador bits logged home half lane leading a little under the jaw that we thought nothing of it likely stuck on the thorn morning found her prospect the head swollied hugely swollen the throat hemorrhaging blood snake bite said the vet and she's too far gone tonight she will die we stared at each other rattlesnakes in big creek canyon unheard of but the vet shook his head just got them dropped us forces him down from their mountain damage this creek water with no places this year no snakes ever then seen him before and they're not done yet now with night dropping we sit in the last late unnatural silence waiting the friendly scratch at the door we know they're not come this loss is a wound tearing the sensitive fabric of our life and it aches in us we think of the snake out there in the dark lurking the vibration of evil toiling under the roots of trees alive beneath stones listening I see tears blind your eyes tonight I know you'll tear my snake to them down from the wall and burn it bitterly your lips moving your eyes blue eyes I do not begrudge it your way is the best for two themes contend here the loss and the members double gang of the twisted heart we brace for disaster a vast conflagration a holocaust born on the eastern path sweeping down to the sea burning house sites and bridges driving it driving the coastal population out under the roads it is yet to happen rather the subtle dissimulation riding secretly into the warm nest to spit them in because suns watch destiny clear on the top and the fire must send something displaced did it man's life take the friendly take his friend and companion whatever he loves but be taken let's go leave the table step out under star smelling dryness in the air and death the presence of death worship in the dark where are you buried by heat possessed of the thought desperation the serpentine inch living down from some cool commodious hole higher up he descends speaking water water raw slate plays third for he too loves life he too craves comfort smells it comingly out when theta cost rakes his lips and stabs back see all this shimmering graceful presence with swaying below the creek bank halfway down don't make ruffle wood come winter i bring the blade wiping it handing it gingerly sighs and acts as i understand but the chainsaw what governs them the mechanistic fury the annihilates god i hear him moaning there drawing the lovely elders down calling them i feel the hunger of death calls in his lines crumble in his shoes i smell his breath stepping the squat metallic beast on the ground i get to start it then once then twice definitely roar them engine grabs cost grabs again then sells into it a rotation snore holding it forth in tense hands i approach the tree putting my way to the vine tangle cautiously stepping as i move the leaves of the snout rose ahead snuffing for pray i place the blade choosing the woman's smooth bark the naked skin i figure a thing finger crooks and the chain leaps forward shoes right flat so i'll just pour it up to my feet bridge whispers under jagged gash like gore like flowing blood cutting in close i lean on the steel the blade whining the tree starts over then hangs there hovering on his axis death in its lane the woman is rushing the wind over here in the spring the swimmer in the creek i scramble aside watching it topple with a shattering crash that hits the heaviness that's happening here welcome to cross the dragon led with twist crazily but dropping rock dropping skyward i stand there staring the hushed off whispering in my hand asking asking next number two sheared through the trunk it drops without a hitch they push over comforted now i turn to the third the shrill soft wine steel teeth carrying i'm very down on it forcing it to blade snarling at last it goes over as it crosses it crashes across skinning the others the left foot's wide and spins towards me startled i step back one half step back into nothing bringing myself i lunge forward i did for balance but the blade stooped suddenly i feel a terrible insinuated plucking up my knee picking up my flesh it is a chain the nipping incisor the chipping teeth just over my leg the blue thing hovering floating there all this passion suspended in check eager to count the fall now he's the beast up falling back blade roaring i hurl it aside and go down the anzong granite contains spewing sparks the engine chattering right on my back i struggle up and fall over i cut this weight then i look down crystalline terror i see the nick of sharp sharp teeth it has to cross my knee the dreadful angle of the on the blue denim white black thread done i pull on up my jeans looking for blood the target area all decaps make and try how to scratch the sense of release delivers me then the dizzying faintness something clutching my throat taking i get to my feet leave the beast when it lies and hobble home pouring myself a stiff one i belted down her off looks like it hits like a fist still after then i hear the shivering glass chip my teeth all evening long using along the family away the house empty i sit my whiskey in the field of it the rock leg hoping for something no longer there something gone all evening long the wrong next day i hobble it out on my pitiful stump something is finished something cleanly done sprawled on the creek bank the trees lie untouched i have no appetite for the saw i might have died there under those all there's a blood to death before i helped him but that is not in the mind what is there is an absence a simple loss the back of the leg perfectly sound they hobbled up not the gilster the members swung from my hip not even like a pig and i think there's three graves finally under hanging rocks up scott creek canyon we clearly might graze all pioneer women peaceful in the sun but if i'm them according to legend the man's leg is buried going off long ago by a south physically protecting her cub and solemnly interred in the quaint pioneer faction destination the name member reposes in the mind's eye it glows in the ground inseminating the female presence of instinct with seed like a seer like a seer it's just all a sputant in-depth or it's a storm-struck hobbyist but if i get it under the female fury they're swinging flat and using like that my fingers broke down feeling fumbling but while there's no longer there only the absence only the emptiness the blank truncation the falling of the three elders the terrible stone thank you very much using buck shots through the lungs and made it out of the brush and halfway to the stream before he fell the legal hunter never followed through what dropped in the middle died where it lay i'm noticed by any same two red bulls since in that field the following day a great black bird rose up when we came which clumsily off the wings made for soaring baffles now in this ham named earlier this deep forest field late that night the coyotes found him he heard from afar the yelping chorus clamoration of the feast my high son whipped me to the winning of time the brevity of life and the next morning a great bird was back with a dozen others the vulture in horn ghouls out of hell they perched on the carcass hanging each other out at the plucking the rhythm at the plucking helps me in the gobbling the rhythm of the gas our abrupt arrival sent them hissing and lost the circle in the light teaching and balancing on the tall fur tops the teasing to abrogate their ancient place that their ancient prerogative their ancient place their ancestral place at the sharing of the kill two days later the sentinels stood over the tarn and scattered remains bellowing the gobbler's lee lowing solemnly implementing the passing away of all slot of hoops kind mourning the death of their similar comrad little cousin of the woods we paused there disbelieving and spoke to them as best we could they stared back uncomprehending not to be consoled chagrin we trudged on the following weeks found nothing much but a tuned shin bone and a scrap of pies no birds in the sky no movement in the woods nothing but the sparse pasture the two and the two red bulls classically cropping the length cover and emptiness in the air then the changing here got a leaf plowing these are noxal rains replenish the earth in the body pin of the buck the first green grass thickened the bronze and we said the cycle is complete the episode is over but the silence that hung about that place was haunted the presence of something anciently ordained where we unwitting acolytes with the birds and the bulls the great listening mountain of love for a witness the sacrificial host between the river and the woods has no smell has no smell oh we can't open the door okay thank you Cliff Ross since his love oh thank you and I had breakfast with you and Cliff on your birthday a couple years ago but there's a wonderful reading excellent thank you thank you Bill thank you again yeah you got Bill I was a student of yours a few years ago and because of your class I made I published this book myself and I wanted you to have a copy of it oh thank you


Thank you. That was a wonderful talk, Jonathan, and a great introduction to the one I'm going to give. Mine will not be nearly so coherent, but I hope it will be thought provoking. I have no specific disclosures. I do want to acknowledge in my multi-center studies, there's a cast of characters that's enormous, but where I have recently landed in the Longwood area, there are some particular individuals who I owe great debts of gratitude for, for the collaborations that we're pursuing and what they've taught me. Now in this conference, it sounds like what we'd like to be, see ourselves as, is archers. This archer theme struck me, so we'd like to see ourselves as glamorous archers who are zeroing in with great romantic accuracy on the target, whereas we are actually struggling. And I'm afraid that what I have to say is not going to help because I do think that the issue, the fundamental issue, is when we have all this information, as Jonathan pointed out, I like the term incidental. What do we have to look for and what do we have to disclose? I do think that we need to be clear in our minds whether we're talking about disclosing to an individual, to a consumer, to a layperson, or we're disclosing to a medical doctor, and you'll see what I mean in a moment. I also do think, as I alluded to in my comment before, that there's some low-hanging fruit to be gathered here. I love this diagram that Dr. Manolio put in her paper, and it reminds us that we can really talk about some of the rare, highly penetrant, tightly linked disorders before we have to talk about more of common variants which are more controversial. Now in answer to the question, what do patients or consumers, what do they want to be disclosed, I think the answer is very clear. It varies. And it varies, let me just give you a couple of examples. It varies from George Church's PGP project, which is this open access to data where people are volunteering to have their entire sequence placed on the Internet along with their health records, multiple traits, cell lines used for all sorts of research, and this IRB has approved it for 100,000 volunteers, and they've already got 16,000 volunteers, of which 2,000 and some have already put past a genetics entrance exam in order to demonstrate that they can handle the information, and over 1,000 have put their medical records online, and they have 500 genomes in the pipeline. I take this at one extreme. We also have the example of direct-to-consumer testing, which I think is, of course, controversial in many arenas, but for me it's this incredible natural experiment in incidental findings. I mean of the over 100,000 individuals who've ordered their own genetic markers through various companies, most of them had no idea what it was they were going to get. So most of them, they might have had one or two things they were interested in, they might have been interested in ancestry, but when they actually got it, there they were faced with either findings that were not particularly impressive or findings that were actually new and incidental to them. We have a study called PGEN that we have been funded by NHGRI, where we're going to be doing the first, before and after interrogation of customers and two companies with their genetic data in hand that they allow us to have in order to try to understand what it is they thought they were going to get, what is it they actually got, and what is it that they understood or misunderstood about what they found out. And this is particularly relevant now that some companies have started to give actual Mendelian disorders as well when company is now giving BRCA variants and so the door is opening to exome and to sequencing from these companies another reason why we need to get our act together or else I think we will be somewhat bypassed by the commercial sector. Now can we even define clinical action ability? I'm with David in really arguing against this term has much meaning and I think the answer is probably not. I hope so anyway because I'm debating Jim Evans tomorrow afternoon at the primer meeting and he's going to argue that there is such a thing as meaningful action ability and I'm going to argue that there's not. But this slide which is courtesy of David Kaufman and some focus groups that he has run, this is not my work. I think really puts it very nicely. So he describes a narrow definition of clinical utility which is the information can really help you treat or avoid disease, a much broader definition of clinical utility where you can motivate some behavioral changes, maybe it's one of a number of things that help you motivate change. You can just learn more about your own condition. You can monitor research and progress, maybe you donate to progress. You can participate in related research. You could be useful in the future with things. But then it goes on down to what we and others have been calling personal utility, empowerment, giving a feeling of control, responding to your curiosity, feeling respected by the researchers, involving your family, helping you to plan or live more fully and then other sorts of reasons that are even beyond those. Feeling a sense of ownership, your results belong to you, participants simply want to know what it is you know about them or feeling like the results are kind of compensation for participating in the research. Now, in these comments, I'm going to switch back and forth between clinical and research only because our thinking about incidental findings has been more advanced right now in terms of clinical, I mean in terms of research issues than it has been in terms of clinical issues. So as many of you know, I've been leading the reveal study which has been funded for about 11 years now in which we've used the paradigm of ApoE disclosure for Alzheimer's disease to drill down and learn a lot about what it means to disclose susceptibility information. And Mark, I certainly hope there are going to be categories of variants and that this can serve as one of the sentinel categories. Otherwise, I've spent 10 years working on one variant and that's just a long time if it's not in some fashion generalizable to the rest. And what we've seen is very interesting, we didn't even know if anybody was going to want this information when we clearly explained to them how probabilistic it really was. But in fact, 24% of the people that we specifically and systematically approached actually put out their arms and volunteered for the study. And of course, it was a much higher percentage of the people who sought us out, people who really wanted to know. But we were also reassured by the number of people who did not want to participate because people were understanding that they had a choice and making the choice that they didn't want to know this probabilistic information. When people did, of course, it's the ones who signed up, when they actually did get their results, they were very happy to get their results. And as most of you know, the flagship paper actually showed that there was not really any increased anxiety or distress associated with the disclosure of ApoE in the people who wanted to learn it. But it showed that they were pretty happy with this and we'll drill down on that in a minute. We also had a measure of their value that they ascribed to this experience called willingness to pay. And it's just an exercise where you sort of ask people, what would you pay for this? And we asked them after they had gotten it, after they had learned what they had. And it turned out that people were not actually learning whether or not you were E4 positive did not influence the value that you ascribed to this probabilistic variant. The only two things that were associated with what, how much you said you would pay were your income level. So if you've got some discretionary money, this is one way you might choose to use it.  So people who really wanna know and people who have money are gonna find ways to find out.  Now we also feel that we challenge this prevailing notion that when people receive probabilistic genetic information, they won't do anything with it. We've found early on that people tried to do things even when we told them there were no proven treatments for Alzheimer's disease. So they're more likely to change their vitamins, exercise, and medications. We found there was a dark side to that too, because we found that they were more likely to order unregulated supplements off the internet. And when there was no regulated treatment for preventing Alzheimer's disease. And we were the first study to show that people were more likely to purchase long term care insurance if they learned they were E4 positive. Something that gave the long term care insurance adjusters conniption fits. But we also found some curious things about liking and understanding their information. This was a paper that I was particularly proud of the title. Because the title of this paper is, I know what you told me, but this is what I think. And it sort of reminds me of my teenage son. But in this paper, we've discovered that people who accurately remembered everything we told them about their risk information. We tested them, and they accurately remembered it. Turned around and said, I know what you told me, and I agree with my risk that you told me, or I know what you told me, but I believe my risk is actually lower or higher. So people seemed, and this was correlated with their risk as they walked into the study. So people have an anchoring effect that's framed by many different things. And their family experience, their perception of the illness. And this is something that they walk in with. And it may not be so fragile as we have once imagined for us with genetic information to actually move that dial one way or another. We also looked in depth at people 12 months after they learned their genetic information and their risk information. And we found that in fact, the pros that they had selected at the beginning of the study, that they were interested about information for preventive measures, that they were gonna make arrangements for long term care, and so forth, actually degraded over time. And that was an interesting phenomenon. They became a little bit less enamored of the pros. And they also became a little bit more enamored of the cons. So there was a kind of mediating effect in which they realized that the information they had had some limited value. And we think that's a good thing. That's a natural thing in terms of information. In terms of the comments about social networking, people tell this information to all sorts of people. We were amazed. People, we've warned people, don't tell anybody, this is confidential. People could put it in your medical record. They told all sorts of people. And 12% of them told their health professional, even though we'd explicitly warned them in the consent not to do so. We've put over 1,000 people through four different randomized clinical trials with ApoE and Alzheimer's disease risks. The third one, which we're just analyzing the data now, was actually specifically about incidental results. We surprised one arm of the study with the fact that ApoE4 is also a risk factor for cardiovascular disease. Don't ask me how we did that with the IRB. It's a different discussion, but we did. And it was quite interesting. Not only did people not have greater or lesser distress, but they had a rational response to the incidental finding. Whereas when they hadn't learned about the additional risk of cardiovascular disease, they did not have much of an increase in terms of their exercise. Remember, we demonstrated that they had a little bit before between E4 negatives and E4 positives. When they were in the arm that were told about E4 and the risk of cardiovascular disease, they increased their exercise, or at least reported to us that they did so. We all know that real behavior is hard to change. And this is a rational response to incidental findings, and they were not dissatisfied to receive that information. I've had the opportunity to work in a small way with the gene partnership program, which I'm delighted to be affiliated with. And you've heard a little bit about that and the sort of idea that people can actually exert a preference and tune in or out the kind of information that they want. And working with Ingrid Holm, who's received several grants from the Genome Institute vis-a-vis understanding preference setting, we have some really interesting preliminary data that I thought I'd share with you. First of all, we recapitulated what Kathy Hudson and others have found that people really do want the results of genetic research. And they want it in a large majority of cases, and they say that they are more likely to enroll in research if they get it. Again, we're cognizant here of the difference between research and clinical. I'm going to get back to clinical, but this recapitulates what we found before. But look at this. If you separate people into those who basically say they want all the results and separately, basically people who say, I don't want all the results, I want to choose my results. Remember, a majority were in this group. And then when you drill down and say to people, do you want results whether the information is well-established or not well-established? They say, yeah, I want it all. Do you want the results if you're a lot more likely to get the disease or a little more likely to get the disease? They say, yeah, I want the results. Do you want it preventable or not preventable? Fatal, not fatal. Childhood onset, adult onset, pretty much, 75% of them across the board, sometimes 80%, 90%, regardless of the condition, say, yeah, I want the results. If we're going to go with preference, we're going to be giving out a lot of information. I actually have a theory about this, which I'm calling the diagnostic misconception. I wish I'd made up that term, but I didn't. And I hypothesized in this survey that people who said they wanted to receive all this information were more likely to believe that that information would directly help them. In other words, if you're in a research study and you're going to get information back about yourself, you actually don't believe the researchers would be so foolish as to give you back information that didn't make any sense.   And I call this the diagnostic misconception. Let's switch to clinicians. We just talked about the participant or patient perspective. What about clinicians? Well, I also think it varies. And I'm going to show you for the first time some results that we've never shown in public before. I queried a fairly arbitrary list of individuals, several of whom are sitting in this room, with a spreadsheet that Howard Jacob and I designed in which we basically listed the top 88 conditions in gene tests. And we said, please pick the ones that you would feel you would recommend to a molecular laboratory to return to the referring physician that you feel should be returned.  And take a look at this. If in terms of returning to adult patients or to the physician of adult patients, there was 100% concordance for 21 conditions. I'm going to show you what those are. But there was 80% concordance for 65 conditions in adults and just as many conditions in children. And once you got up to a 70% concordance among these 15 experts, there was like 90 of the 99 conditions they recommended to be returned back. So now this is part of the low-hanging fruit I'm talking about. These are gene tests. They're generally Mendelian conditions. And these are the 21 conditions that these 15 somewhat arbitrarily selected experts actually all said should go back to adults if there was a known pathogenic variant. And the ones with an asterisk, they actually said should go back to children too. And the last couple slides, I just want to show you the differences in patterns because if we think we're going to get in a room and come to a consensus about how this should be done, I show you this slide to caution us. Here's, these are just three of the individuals. I don't even know who they are. But this individual basically created a pattern where they wanted to return about 40 of the conditions if it was a known pathogenic mutation. About 40 of the conditions if it was a truncating mutation suggestive of pathogenicity and hardly any of the mutations if it was a missense mutation that was predicted in silico to be pathogenic. This individual had a very different pattern of treating those three things and this individual basically would return them all regardless of the type of variant. Same kind of variation occurred when dealing with children. So you can see in this quick overview of data that I had either generated or had access to that there's a wide variety of ways in which patients or research participants for this discussion I'm lumping them somewhat together feel about return of results and how clinicians or researchers feel about giving them back. This is only gonna add to the difficulty we have in trying to come to consensus. But I will say that I believe the reveal study and other people studies so far have shown that there is very little harm in disclosing information back to individuals and that the myth of information as harmful may be doing quite a bit to retard the dissemination of information in genetics and we should perhaps take a new look at that as one of the downsides of genetic exceptionalism. Thank you very much. For this talk, so I'll lead off. So I think in your use of the term harm you're probably looking at it from the perspective of what a patient would perceive as being harmful. One might argue if you were a payer and you looked at behaviors, some behaviors which may in fact incur costs without necessarily an attendant benefit that that could represent harm and one of your colleagues Zach Kahani has talked about the impact of the incidental loam about activities that take place when something is found that really probably should be ignored. So could you comment a bit on that? Well I absolutely agree. I think harm to the individual versus harm to society, harm to the medical care system, waste to the medical care system, that's a different issue. Now in one of the grants that we'll be starting in the next month or so, actually in the next week or so, we have built into this to look at the outcomes associated with return of incidental information and sequencing including some measures of economic cost. Though in the timeframe that we can do the grant I'm not sure that it's actually fair. Both for the potential health savings and the potential health costs you probably need a longer timeframe. But I absolutely agree with you and that's why I raised Mark that comment before about sort of looking at it two ways in terms of what we should imagine regulating in terms of information being very different and what we might imagine regulating in terms of reimbursement. Erin? Robert in your survey of your group of experts did you address the logistics of reporting out 80, 90 conditions because although you're right there's evidence that there's not a lot of harm to it. I think one of the thoughts for clinicians is logistically how is that even feasible and what are the additional harms when you're trying to report out 80 diseases at once what gets missed and just how is that accomplished? No, we remained artfully vague about a lot of things. We sort of assumed that sequencing was perfect. We assumed that you could even find chromosomal abnormalities, indels and so forth. We stipulated all this as sort of a given. But do remember that these are all individually extremely rare except for the heterozygous recessives that others have talked about. So you would presumably have a very small set maybe less than 12, even if you counted carrier states that you would give back to any given individual. Right, but that assumes a very, you know, using maybe a curation set like what Dr. Berg proposed which is very, very narrow and may not be ultimately what gets reported out when you consider pharmacogenomics and common complex diseases and things like that. Right, my point is more of it, we just have to start somewhere. And it seems that the items that are tightly bound to disease that we think actually might be meaningful in what is essentially a public health screening context would be the logical place to start. And I think it corresponds to some degree to the Ben 1 and Ben 2A, things that the group has reported there. I'll take one more question from Paul and then we'll go to the next one. Robert, Paul Billings from Life Technologies. I'm gonna make a kind of a Bruce Blumberg first comment which is that your 15 physicians are probably not that demographically diverse and they're kind of a narrow group. But I'm curious, did any of them talk about the existence of let's say an orthogonal test or a confirmatory test as helping them gate their activity along this one? Several of them are in the room and can respond but I did not hear that. I think several had spent several hours on this, struggled with it, but in order to make it meaningful it was almost no discussion. It was done individually. There was no consensus. There was no telephone call. Everybody had to make their own forced decision yes or no. Thank you very much.


mentioned first of all that there will be two competitions running today. The first one is for the heaviest spring cot and the second one will be for the first spring cot both sponsored by Stirling Council and Kingston Distillery. I have a very great task to perform first and that's to present the fishing cuts to four members. The four fishermen who have contributed overall last year to conservation on the river and shore good sportsmanship. Can I call forward please the following Michael Leo, Jamil Ahmed, Peter McMachan and Hugh McCann. Can I just conclude my small piece at the beginning by thanking the sponsors who've made today possible. We have Deasting Distillery, Moor, Campbell Shortbread, Angling Active and of course Stirling Council. So ladies and gentlemen without further ado let me hand you over to our Chief Executive Stuart Carruth, who is also a very keen angler. Stuart. Good morning everyone to take the opportunity and an event like this to to thank the fisheries team. They work very hard at building relationships with all of you and having spent time out on the river with the team I know how much hard work they do in making sure that the river is in as best possible condition for you guys to fish. So can I have a round of applause for the fisheries team of Stirling Council. I also want to just talk a little bit about conservation. We're all very much aware of the decline in salmon stocks across Scotland. That makes conservation a really important thing and I know that the beats here in 2010 was the best beat for the number of fish caught, I think it was about 1300 caught and to make sure that that continues a lot of things need to be put in play, not least the work on conservation and we're going to get some conservation caps later in the in the morning. So again really important that we make sure that we all do what we can in relation to conservation and salmon and I just want to just say last thing before I hand over to Adam Henson and that's tight lines for 2015. Well good morning everybody. It's a huge honour and a great treat for me to come to Scotland and to come to the opening of the river and some of you may know me off country file, the programme on Sunday evening and we're getting around seven million viewers regularly. We're in the top five BBC programmes which means that the UK people are very engaged in what's going on in the countryside, not only those who live and work in rural areas but those in the towns and the cities as well and they need to know about things like this, the celebration of the river and the work that's being done on it and it's wonderful that the community has come together and the school children are here and the fishermen and the council everybody working together for a sole goal of the of the health and welfare of the river and the surrounding communities and so for me to come and help opening it is as I say is a real a real treat and I'm a keen fisherman myself. I used to fish as a boy but mainly trout fishing and I used to time my own flies but I've only ever tried salmon fishing once and I was failed miserably so hopefully that'll be more good fortune today but I as we heard from Stuart I think that the conservation behind fishing is absolutely essential and you people are the eyes and the ears and most importantly the voice of the river and you need to speak out and you need to get the message out there what you're doing and what you're trying to achieve and there's lots of ways of doing that with local papers and magazines but also with modern technology with Twitter and Facebook and Flickr and those sorts of things and get on your soapboxes and shout about how wonderful it is because there are powers outside our environment that can damage what you have and we've been fishing these rivers for hundreds if not thousands of years and we want to be fishing them in the future for hundreds of years beautiful and instant whiskey that I had to sip of earlier half of it and we'll be closing down the river blessing the salmon as it goes and then we'll go straight back into the distillery made into whiskey again so it's nothing is lost oh heavenly the teeth is open for the salmon season of 2015 as a boy I used to do a bit of trout fishing but I've never tried salmon fishing so I'm very excited about today and for me it's a great honor to come up to Scotland and help open the river teeth being part of the parade and calendar this morning was just amazing a wonderful feeling where there was the school children the anglers and the county council all coming together to help promote the area and promote salmon fishing of course anglers on the river are the eyes the ears and the voice for what's going on out here and conservation on the rivers is absolutely essential and it's wonderful that sterling county council are doing so much to promote that and working so closely with the anglers to make sure that fishing carries on in this area for not just the next 10 years but hopefully for hundreds of years ahead of ourselves thank you very much to Angling Active who are just off Junction 10 of the M9 they've lent me all this kit to try and catch the king of fish just hope it works okay well we're here on the banks of the the castle pool at Blair Drummond a beautiful spring morning and the river teeth here and the castle on the backdrop and as Robert Bunge would say who could ask for moan man and I've been spending 10 minutes with the Adam Henson here and his business partner Duncan to show them the delicate art of spearcasting and I have to say within 10 minutes they're casting like champs so they've done really well the morning session is going to be a teaching session and the afternoon we're hoping to maybe put them into a fish or two but anyway it makes no difference it's the start of a new wonderful season and here's hoping for everybody concerned it's going to be a better season than last tight lines to everybody wonderful we've had depleted runs over the last couple of years and it seems to be something more at sea than what's happening in river although we've got problems within river predation navy and predation and marine predation predation which is a difficult subject but if we look after what we're doing in the rivers then you know it's up to national international governments to look after what's happening at sea we do our own bit and our own bit is certainly to conserve and protect the spring run we've got a very diminishing run of spring fish and we've got to look after them and I would urge everybody to follow the guidelines and to put every spring fish back until June then by all means get a good run of growth take one for the pot no harm in that but we must conserve the spring run that is paramount to the continuance of our sport my name is Stuart Carruth I'm the chief executive sterling council it's a great great day the opening of the salmon sea fishing season on the river teeth and I think one of the reasons why it's such a great day is that it really highlights the work that sterling councils fisheries team does right through the season but also off season as well I was fortunate to spend some time with the team just towards the tail end of last year and really got the opportunity to see them working with the anglers anglers building up relationships with them but also the conservation work that they do on the river making sure that it's in its best condition possible to enable the the angling the fishing to take place and I think at a time when our salmon stocks seem to be in decline conservation work of this type is absolutely critical for the future sustainability of salmon so just to conclude it's a great been a great day all credit to the team for the work that they do and just to say tight lines for 2015 today was opening day on the second of February on the river teeth at calendar for sterling council fisheries today we've seen around the 200 people mark which in a cold February morning for a small town is absolutely fantastic for the local economy you know the local businesses put on some stuff for the anglers as well which is always which is always a bonus the fishery is not just a fishery it's a it's a way of life to people up here and if people we've got a lot of visitors come and visit this fishery for outwith the sterling council area that all brings revenue and not just for the council but for areas around about for the local businesses conservation is very high in the agenda at the minute because what's happened in 2014 it's been very well publicized that it was the worst year on record for salmon catches sterling council leads by example when it comes to conservation the measures we have in place are some of the very best in the fairly united kingdom where a compulsory catch release until the first of June we exceed the scottish government recommendations we have a five carcass tagging system in place it runs throughout the season scottish government have now accepted that and are looking at that as a way of giving anglers quotas we also are a hundred percent catch release a hen fish in 2000 in october so for us the anglers have really came on board and if it wasn't for their continuous hard work we wouldn't have the fishery we have today here we have the uh the tall bit memorial trophy uh in memory of david who died several years uh and this uh it got a picket bar guy so i'm thinking something else get sorry um this is for the heaviest fish caught all year and the prize is presented to michael wooty on behalf of michael on behalf of science i mean we can't be here today because he's off doing he's unfortunately he's in the category in fish today a few words and i'm very pleased to accept this fabulous trophy on on his behalf and i would really like to pray tribute to mr and mrs table but this is keenly fished for every year and they've always been great supporters of the of the teeth fishery so on behalf of silent on behalf of myself and really everybody here thank you very very much indeed it's got a photograph of the fish it was 25 pounds and for those of you that have not really seen a fish like that that's what it looks like oh mr henson i know that you're staying up in the bulk of the plane and i've got a long standard love of that plane and indeed where where you are staying this evening but it's interesting to just to tell you that that 25 pound fish probably went right up there past the landing poles into the into the into the royal pasta hotel into the groin and into the large and spawned up there so as as well as the the council workers fishing people good good radio let's also think about the hill farmers and the gamekeepers and the stockers and all these people are there who look after the nursery areas and these nurseries are really really important because if they're working hard along with volunteers to take obstructions to access up the burns and all the rest of it and the whole system is is going to work and i hope that you sad with the your connection with the bbc will come up and showcase the transects there are three rods didn't know about me for the first fish caught myself and debbie went down to play draw the walk and with a lot of discussion on the way we'll say we'll give it to the best caster the person who's improved the most they make you please announce the results a lot was down to tom onens i don't get some system here that he's never cast a double-handed rod he's never used it i can't believe that because he's outstanding so there's only one winner i don't need one oh very much it's a great honor i've set to have this lovely lovely price and dunk and i were comparing the bits of grass that we were catching we left into it for a little while and i went off for a bit of private tuition to try and you know master the space cast me came back and he had caught something quite large which was his own face he acted glasses on so he protected his eyes and everything was fine thank you very much you don't need to keep that


If you have not started cyber stalking your potential clients, your current clients, and for you meeting planners out there, your members and delegates, then this week's Two Minute Tip Tuesday video might be just for you. Stick around. Hey friends, it's Leanne and you've heard me talk about the value of connecting with clients and potential clients and for meeting planners, even their meetings and delegates on a more relational level. And when you look at their social media profiles, be it on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, you can start to learn a little bit more about these people as persons and not just as commodities. And when you start to learn more about them as a person, then you're able to tailor the things that you're providing them, whether it's a value proposition or even as a meeting planner, the way you're delivering the content and the format of your programming. So it really speaks to some of the things that they're interested in. Today we're going to look at how to dig deeper into someone's LinkedIn profile to figure out what it is they're really interested in. And then you can use those nuggets of information to either tailor your programming or tailor your sales pitch. So here we go. So what we're looking for here, it's a bit like a treasure hunt or playing detective. You're going to be snooping around and looking for clues and starting to weave a story together about what this person is all about based on their social media activity. And the platform we're doing today is LinkedIn, not because it's my favorite, well actually because it is my favorite, but there's a lot you can learn on LinkedIn, especially on the professional level about what your people are interested in. So let's start from the top. Remember if you are connected on a first level with someone on LinkedIn, their activity is going to show up in your feed. But that doesn't mean you can't view the activity of someone who is a second or third level connection. It just means you need to dig a little deeper. Now if you're wanting to connect with someone and create a first level connection with someone, I did a video actually just last week about the do's and don'ts of sending LinkedIn invitations so you can find that video in the description. But if you'd just like to take a look at their profile, you can do so. So what you do is you go straight to their profile and if you start to scroll down into their profile, you're going to start to see their activity and some of them also have written articles and you can view some content that they've written, but you can take a look at all of the activity they've done on LinkedIn by pressing see all activity. If someone is very active on LinkedIn, chances are you're going to find something of common ground in their activity that you can relate to. And again, for meeting planners, maybe they're starting to suggest or talk about certain things that you can now address at the conferences that you're planning for them. But if you're not finding anything in their activity, there's still another route and this is where we're going to next. Go back to the top of their profile and now you're going to scroll all the way down. Down, down, keep going down. You're going to find their other interests. When you click see all, it'll pull up the things they're following, including influencers, companies, groups, schools. And once again, this is a treasure chest full of stuff you can now use to create value for your clients and prospects. And for meeting planners who are researching delegates, you can find common themes between your delegates, who they follow, and potentially even some keynote speaker or breakout speaker suggestions for you. If you are currently using LinkedIn as a research tool, will you let me know the things that you're discovering or some of the ways that you're using it to find the information that you need? Share it with the community below here. LinkedIn isn't the only social media platform that you can use to research people. There's other platforms as well, but I find LinkedIn is most rich in professional content and these are things that you can turn into professional value for those folks. If you haven't already, follow me over on LinkedIn or find Stephen and I's LinkedIn page. We post articles up there for meeting planners to use in their daily work. Thanks for watching this week's Two Minute Tip Tuesday. Have a great week. Bye for now.


K mintyeosaunak nimlini groove-turi nug Grova Lower h NPT Eja uti bandina pata付umuki fama na kaka deductoty wendida ilinimisha kaka uzi M roar katani ligat kupiyu kanochia Millna mo that mo program manager for Mauna Africa Center for Transformation. This organization was started way back in 1999. It started as an informal organization, a cultural group that was focused on engaging young people through their talents, their skills and abilities. The aim was actually to create an alternative form of employment to young people. Over time, the organization was actually grown way back in 2020. In December we decided to register it to be a non-governmental organization from an informal to a formal organization. Currently we are mandated to work in five counties within the country, the Republic of Kenya. But our implementation here is actually here in Dandora as our starting point. So we are legally registered by the NGO Coordination Board as a non-governmental organization. My desire to found as a co-fund of this organization was actually to, I grew up in Dandora, seeing the challenges that young people were going through, which relate to almost the same kind of challenges that I was going through. And as a means of just trying to create a solution from the problem that has been persisting in Dandora is like what best can we do? So I was sitting down with a friend of mine who is called Emsika. He was one of the musicians for Kalama Shaka. So he told me why don't we come and sit down and recreate Maono Africa Center for Transformation as an organization that is going to deal with young people. So I came on board after the call from my friend and I told him I'm going to recreate it to be an organization that is going to focus so much on the talents, on the abilities and the skills of young people in Dandora. The motivation is actually to form a way of employment within Dandora, a way of income for young people in Dandora because we came to realize that there was a lot of idleness in Dandora. Young people are actually engaging in a lot of social destructive activities, engaging in crime, engaging in drug and substance abuse, engaging in girls, engaging in early marriages, early pregnancies. So we said no, this cannot be right and it's like when you are looking at it, it's like what is causing all these things? It was all because we were not able to get a form of employment and even the ones that had even been educated or even the ones that had even gone through the formal schooling could not at the end of the day still secure a meaningful engagement or a formal employment. So he said okay fine, Dandora is a place that is well known for talents and skills. Then why don't we create something that these young people will be able to earn something from what they are passionate about. And that is how Maono Africa came about. Maono is actually a Swahili word for them, a Swahili word in English it translates to vision. We seek to know how our hero got into this Maono project and why it matters so much to him. Dandora has the two sides of it, the ugly side and the good side. Having been born and raised in this place is like it's an experience that maybe I wouldn't want to I wouldn't wish any other person or a young person to go through. At the same time I would also wish some way to go through because it brings the element of the good and bad. The bad is that you can easily get into crime, you can easily get into these social destructive activities, cases of school dropout is very high, cases of violence within the community is very high, cases of crime is very high. So that is actually the downside of Dandora, of growing up in Dandora. We don't have role models, we don't have mentors, we don't have people we can look up to in terms of progressions in life. The other good side of Dandora is it's a place, it's a home of talent. Ya, so many young people, so many big names in the entertainment industry have actually come out from Dandora in terms of the football, in terms of music, in terms of dance, in terms of modeling, any forms of creatives, good names, big stars have actually come from Dandora. So that is the other side, the other good side of Dandora. It's also molded to become that kind of a hard kind of a person. Apawana semangaku na mamayako, the wrong language to use, but it builds you. Ya, if you look at it from the positive side, it builds you. But the question is how many young people are able to go through that process and come out to be better persons. So if you look in terms of statistics, very few can actually go through. And why is that? The question is, some of these young people are not able to be given the life skills that they are able now to be able to understand that this is my challenges or my problems is just a process of life so that which molds me or prepares me for something great to come. Ya, Dandora is known for the very good reason because if you look, if you google out to find out what Dandora is, what comes to your mind is the dam site. It's an area that holds to one of the biggest dam sites, maybe probably within the east or central Africa or the biggest in Nairobi so to speak. And the dam site has actually come with all the bad things. There has been a lot of fights, a lot of attempts to take the dam site from Dandora. So people who know Dandora, they do not know Dandora for the very good reasons. Ya, many people fear coming to Dandora because they know Dandora for the crimes. They know Dandora to be a place where by a lot of lowlinessness it's like a jungle where it's a place where there's actually no order. But what we're trying to do as an organization is actually to bring the media, to bring the positive aspect of Dandora because in every place that there's something bad there's definitely something good that can come out of it. So we are focusing so much on the gold aspect of it trying to find out what gold we have in Dandora and that is what we are trying to bring out to the media so that the world may know but apart from all the wrong on the bad reasons or the knowledge about Dandora there is actually something good that can come out of this place. Among Africa we are a creative space. Our focus or our strategy is sports and art which we are using as a strategy or as a means or as a tool to bring about social change and social development. So we are reinventing the roles of sports and art in addressing some of the challenges that young people are going through within Dandora. So Dandora is just the starting point. We are reinventing the use of sports and art in addressing the issues that are affecting young people within Dandora and we actually focus on Dandora as just a starting point. We are planning to roll out this program within the five areas that we are mandated to work with as mandated by the India Organization Board. So sport is just one of the key activities that we are using. Some of the other activities that we are having is like education. We are focusing so much on issues of retention, progression, transitions of young people through the education ladder to the vocational skilling. We also have the health program where we focus on the four key areas within the health. We have programs on HIV and AIDS prevention. We have programs on mental wellness where we are using dance as a strategy in addressing challenges that come with mental wellness. We have programs on gender-based violence and sexual reproductive health and rights within young people in Dandora. The other programs that we have on board is the livelihood programs but we are focusing so much on how do we bring the social enterprise out of it. Some of the dance that young people are doing how are they able to get a living out of it. So we are trying to professionalize the sports and art that we are having within our center. So the last activity we are having currently we are partnered with Freedom Fund.  So we have been doing a lot of awareness, creation just in incentivizing the community and people around on the challenges that comes around with the issues of child domestic work exploitation and abuse. So the other key element is we have mainstreamed all our activities to include a person with disability. Most of the activities that we are having be it sport, be it dance, be it modeling we are having young people who are actually able differently and they are able to participate in our programs. So it's one of our core value the element of social inclusivity. Maono, a center for transformation uses art as one of its main tools to change the lives of young people in Dandora Slam. My name is Prayan Washira Papi and I'm a member of Maono Africa Center of Transformation as a dancer and Maono Africa Center of Organization like this covers a lot of aspects according to arts and craft. We have acrobats, we have the dance, we have the models so this space is used to nature talents the kids out here there is this notion when somebody gets to say you come from Dandora people are thinking about crime and most negative things so here we try to at least capture one or two or three with our motto saying each one teach one when you get to at least be in this space you get to at least go and teach somebody else what you learn so apart from the dance and other activities we cover other aspects like mental health we cover gender based violence where we come and get to there is people who come here and do some advocacy on it I knew about Maono back in 2019 they were doing mobilization wanting people to come to this space getting to know what are the core values and things they are mission which is to empower the society so when I got to know about Maono I was not really interested because many organizations are based for girls and not covering boys in the society so when I came and discovered this center it's more center to transform me I was at least indulged to be working with them my name is Daisy Omboy I'm the current Miss Maono I'm 17 years old the first time I met Maono was last year I didn't know how to model I didn't know about anything I was just in drugs so I was just passing through and then I saw some dancers Ken invited me in to see what they were doing so the question was so when I went Maono me changed here to life so I knew about Maono I knew about Maono so when I met Maono I knew about Maono so when I met Maono I changed here to life my name is Roto Mazi but my stage name I'm known as Rutra or Tiwa I'm 19 years old and I'm a dancer in Maono yeah I met a crew because Maono is located in Fist 3 in Dandora Fist 3 so that crew is in Dandora Fist 5 so we didn't have space to train so due to that I was introduced to Maono by one of my friends so I joined it here supported my education nile maliza shule 2021 so he me kwaikini support na Fist Pia Pia easy unapua information about GBV unapua 2-year education about girls kuna organization na kuja na patina na Maono so we as dancers we get more information about what's happening outside here and we appreciate it they actually quite many I don't know to name names I think you have just talked to this lady called Daisy you have talked to her she is actually one of our models now currently participating in the Miss Nairobi through the delight fashion in town she is a lady who was referred to us like a year and a half ago and I remember the first time that I happened to have met her she was this kind of a lady who lives in her own world having pierced almost her body throughout she had dropped out of school and she was coming from this kind of dysfunctional kind of a background of family setup so through our intervention we are able to bring her in within our facility or our center we have been able to talk to her many times we have been able to take her through many trainings like they usually have the girl power talks each and every month we have been able to connect her or to refer her to other trainings the life skills training and I can say that today as I talk to Daisy she is definitely a different person from the person that I actually met sometimes back somebody who now have some value somebody who now cherish life somebody who looks at life from a different lens from a different angle her desire, her passion to make to succeed in life has actually grown from actually from the moment that we met and to me that is what the Maono Africa Center for Transformation is all about we are actually here to transform life we are not working so much in numbers but we are working with a human being at a time that one person transformed is already an achievement for us actually dance comes like our main groups were the dance and the football team we started with the football team but now the dance came in and when the dance came in is like there is a whole vibe now these young people want to identify with the dance and music so it captures the majority of the young people that you are having within our facility majority being young girls and young mothers even now these people who are beyond our target age group actually want to participate in the dance so any program that you want to implement or you want to role within dance has been like the catch the carrot, the bait of it so once they have been able to come within our facility maybe through dance then we are able to start implementing the other programs within so they can come maybe for a dance we tell them okay fine it's not just about dance this kind of talk before you engage in dance then after the dance we can also have a sitting with them and also have this kind of talk with them and through that I have seen a whole transformation out of it because we have even been giving them even giving them even teachings even about dance so elements of discipline has actually come to play in their lives elements of character development has actually come to play in their lives element of them being able to express being able to talk is becoming part and parcel of their lives so dance has been a key we are looking forward to seeing how best we can professionalize it we can make it grow we are creating a dance academy out of it also as a means of sustainability as a source of income to the organization so so far we have done so good with us the journey has not been a small ride for Ken but does that detail him from his passionate vision some of the challenges we are going through one major key challenge is actually funding because for us to run a successful program we need funds for us to be able to reintegrate some of these young people back to schools we definitely need funds so funds become one of the greatest greatest challenge that we are facing as an organization then the other challenge I think is also maybe is sometimes the frustration that comes with young people of acting like a pendulum today is like a young person has been able to transform then the next person then he lapses again to the former state simply because you are not able to have that full like implementation kind of a program to this kind of a person so because maybe I have rescued a young person then is like I have taken the young person from the drugs but the family still undergoing a lot of programs so sometimes helping a young person without helping the family becomes a challenge so they hold some kind of a challenge to come maybe helping the child as well as helping also the family so it becomes so easy because the child will find comfort in maono but back at home he still undergo the same challenge so that is the kind of a challenge that you have been having despite all the challenges experienced Ken the maono founder proudly tells us of his achievements I am a fan believer in God, I am a Christian so I usually make sure that every day I get my my dose from the word of God that is one, two, I am most motivated in seeing a life change as I said from the word go is like I am not here to change the world I am only here to change one person that one person changed that one person transformed will be able to change the world so that has always been my motivation every day when I wake up in the morning I say I am going back to Dandola but I am going to bring to transform a soul I am going to transform a person so that is my key inspiration you will see lives change you will see souls change you will see Dandola the positive side of Dandola is going to come out so in 10 years time we want to see maono grown I am coming up with talent academies for balls soccer that is for dance for modeling for acrobatics and all that so just to make sure that young people are able to hang from what they love most what pains me is like seeing a young person now that is getting into the border the individual, the motorcycles as forms of employment to me those are not meaningful image of young people I want to see a young person who is passionate in dance is able to hang from dance I want to see a young person who is passionate in modeling able to hang from modeling that is my my desire in his closing remarks I would really appreciate the founders who came along and bring us on board they really trust us we are the front line when it comes to society forums when you get to mobilize do some outreach we always feel like we are getting to impact the community in a positive way but now they know about Moana in our community so I really thank them because I have seen people or rather my friends who came in in the space where they were using drugs and right now at least they are sober we are a scientific volunteer organization we work together we do drugs in September but we do not change what is happening I have learned that we have to work together we work together we work together we work together we work together we work together just because of Moana Ken, he is the manager Ken Etovili he has been like ok he has not been but he is like a dad to me he does everything to me I just see myself among his daughters so I appreciate it for supporting my talent I have been at home and I have come through so I have a good idea so I am a hero but I am not a judge but I am a hero and I have a good idea I have a good idea I have a good idea I have parents mothers I have come through so I appreciate it thank you I am not working solo I partner a lot because I know I am not able to do all these things I am not an expert I am not a master in all these things so my friend is so much in networking and partnership so where I see that partner is good in mental wellness I will bring the partner on board where I see the partner is good in sexual reproductive health and rights I will bring the partner in where I see the partner is good in soka I will bring the partner in where I see the media is good in terms of blowing up what you are doing I will bring the media in so our strength is so much in networking and partnership so we actually desire to continue the collaborations and we also trying to open up that space for more partners to come on board I would like to thank one of our key partners is the Freedom Fund whom we are currently working with in the implementation of the child domestic worker exploitation of abuse also want to thank NKARE foundation Petra she has been quite key with us together with Claire we have been working very closely with them in many areas that are not good in I would also want to thank many organizations that you work with here in Dandora we have Shofko Kennedy Dede has always come in to assist us as an organization to assist some of the programs and activities that you are doing so I am happy with the current partners that you have been having they know what you are doing they have seen what you are doing and they are willing to continue working with us as I am ending this we are coming up with a program maybe in next year that is called a Maono Wani experience so the Maono Wani experience is a whole integrated program that will make sure that after the one year we are having a found kind of a person who has been transformed by the experience it is a whole training for young people so we will be able to recruit a number and the work with the number throughout to the end of the year so after the end of the year they will be able to graduate will give them our certificates will have going to transform them to be our PA educators to be the TOT's and to be the people who will be doing a lot of the work within our spaces and just maybe also maybe one thing I think I have not said we also give the young people a lot of opportunities within our office space we are doing what we call a job shadowing for the young people so each and every day all the young people that we have within our center we have allocated a day for them and that day is once if it's your day if it's a Monday you will come to the office early in the morning and leave way back in the evening and we will teach you a training or give you that opportunity to be able to know what an office setup is all about what to expect in an office what to expect in an office