Wicked, which is about to celebrate its 10th anniversary on Broadway in October. But I thought this would be interesting, since most of you are creators and writers, to go back in time to more than a decade ago as to how that monumental success began. I will just start off by saying that I know that Stephen Schwartz was on this beautiful beach with several friends, and one of them was reading a book, and Stephen asked, what are you reading? And she said it's a book called Wicked. It's the backstory of the Wicked Witch of the West. And I will let Stephen take the story from that point on. Yeah, that's close. In 1996, I was spending most of my time in Los Angeles. I was doing animated features. I was very happy doing that, and had decided that I was having a much better time and being much better treated than working in New York, particularly on Broadway, and that I wasn't going to do theater anymore. And towards the end of 1996, I went on a brief sort of weekend vacation with some friends of mine who were working in Hawaii. And we went on a snorkeling trip in Maui, and we had a boat on the way back. One of these friends, the folk singer Holly Neer, said, making idle conversation, oh, I'm reading this really interesting book. It's by this guy named Gregory Maguire, and it's a book called Wicked, and it's sort of the Oz story from the Wicked Witch's point of view. And it happened again.  I just thought that was one of the best ideas I'd ever heard, and so right for me in so many ways. And so the next day when I flew back to Los Angeles, I called my lawyer and I said, okay, there is this book called Wicked, and somebody has the rights because it's been out for a while. And I think I need to do this, so I'm going to go out and get the book. And you need to find out who has the rights, and then a whole and very elaborate journey then commenced.  It turned out that the rights were held by Demi Moore's production company, which had a deal with Universal, and that they were in the process of adapting it as a movie. There was a screenplay being written by Linda Wolverton, who I happen to know from Disney and who I think is a really good writer. Non-musical, though. Non-musical. And they were on the second draft of the screenplay. And so I tracked down, I got a meeting with Suzanne Todd, who was running Demi Moore's company at the time, and with Linda and tried to talk them into considering doing it as a musical. They were not interested in doing that. And then I sort of worked my way up the food chain and eventually got a meeting with the gentleman who was then running Universal Pictures, whose name was Mark Platt. And I had very little hope prior to this meeting because of the attitude, particularly at that time, of movie studios towards musicals, because why would they do that? Because you can't really make too much money. I see Carol Hall sitting there who was one of the only people I cited her movie as a reason why they should consider doing a musical, a Broadway musical. Anyway, I walked into Mark Platt's office and before the meeting commenced, he sang Corner of the Sky to me. Because it turned out that he had been in Pippin in college. So I consider this a good sign. And basically made a pitch to Mark saying, look, I know that you're doing this as a movie. I don't think it's going to work as a movie. Here are the reasons I don't think it will work. I think it needs to be a musical and therefore a stage musical. And I really want to do this and think I kind of know how. So please think about this. And then there was a very discouraging year that followed where it looked as if that was not going to happen and then maybe they would pursue it on parallel tracks. And basically when I left the office, Mark gave me a folder of all the movies that Universal had ever produced to see if there was anything else in there that I might like to do as a musical. And then I started to despair and I started to make lists of other villains that might maybe make the center of a musical. There was Iago and there was the Wicked Queen from Snow White and everything and none of them really seemed to have the same excitement as The Wicked Witch. And then finally I got a call from Mark saying that he had thought about it and he had come to feel that the arguments I made were compelling. And it turned out that in fact Linda Wolverton was not interested in pursuing it in this way. Yay. Yay. And so I started to think about whom I might want to work with. And then very fortuitously a producer at Disney whom both Winnie and I knew, Jim Pettincost, who was the producer of Pocahontas, had lunch for us at Disney where the two of us met to talk about this project that Jim pitched. I can't even remember what it was because all we did was talk about Wicked. But when we had that wonderful lunch, that important lunch, you were in your middle of your despair. You hadn't gotten the right yet? No, because what happened, it was just a weird moment where you brought up, like if only we could think of a good idea to do for an animated... Oh, Like Wicked. Like Wicked. And I was like, oh my God, you know that book? And then I heard the tale that you had not been able to get the rights to that. So I remember very well because then months later you called me and said, I sit down because I think we... I've gotten the rights so I think you might want to read the book now. Because I had never read the book. I had literally seen the cover of the book and thought it was so arresting that I bought the book. And I too had done a right search. This is weird. We didn't really know each other then. But when I heard that it was being already made into... That someone had already started a screenplay. First of all, I didn't have the insight Steven had that it should be a musical on Broadway. I didn't understand that then. I was just looking into it as a screenwriter actually. When I heard they already had a screenwriter, they already started. I was so depressed I didn't read the book. Sorry. But a weird little-known fact, and it's just funny, is the book which the original novel had this green girl with a dark hat, very interesting looking girl with a slightly green face, but it was half hidden on the cover. And I had that on my bookshelf in my work room for a long time. It sort of peered out at me. And literally later I started to think, wow, that's kind of interesting that I had it right prominently displayed on my bookshelf for like two years before I started working on it. Stranger than truth. So now it was 1998, we think, right? Yes. Towards the end of 1998. And we had gotten the go-ahead. And I had met with Gregory Maguire because he had to give his blessing and drove up to where he was staying in Connecticut and walked around with him and told him sort of what my thoughts were. And he did give his blessing. And then we began. And we started by trying to do an outline of the show. What would the basic structure be? And I think I had done something. Well, he had written a preliminary outline. But also, I think it bears mentioning, it's very important, you had a vision from the beginning of the way you wanted the show to begin, the curtain at the end of the first act, and the very end. He had a very strong vision. He'd been thinking about this for a while and is incredibly smart. And so what he pitched to me originally is what we have, which is the show would begin with this celebration that is not unlike Ding Dong the Witch is Dead, but it's not that, but it is like that because it's happening in Oz and they're celebrating the death of a witch. The end of the first act is going to be this moment when she first flies on her broomstick. I believe that's what you said. The end of the show, although it's changed from how we both originally started to envision it, but the end of the show, I think you said to me immediately, can we say spoilers in here?  Obviously in the movie she dies. It's ambiguous in Gregory's book. So he was very clear this was his vision. So I was really on board with that and was feeling it too. So in other words we had those three very key structural tent poles that we then started outlining from. And Winnie is so great that she did this. So she brought the first outline that then we did together, which is now dated November of 1999. So it took about a year really just to get to this because the book had so much plot that it was really difficult to figure out what to use and what not to use and what to change and so on. But what I was just glancing at this as we were waiting to begin and what's really interesting is that even though everything changed, kind of those three things never changed. The specifics of how they were executed and who was involved and who wasn't changed. But that was always the structure. That it began with the celebration of the witch's death. That it then flashed back. That at the end of the show you would come back to that same celebration but see it in a completely different way and learn that a lot of what you thought was true was actually a masquerade and a charade and that there was a lot of stuff going on that you didn't know about but at the end of the first act would be the witch coming into her power and flying for the first time. And there were a couple of other things that we knew. Well, the roommate thing. Yes. Well, that was in Gregory's book. That was something that spoke to both of us right away, was that the bad witch, the wicked witch and Glinda the Good Witch had been reluctant roommates at college. And in the book, and we just thought that was hilarious and brilliant. The other thing I should say that I think was really key because it was something that I had not thought of before. And when I first envisioned the show before I started talking to Winnie about it, I had seen it as a show kind of like Funny Girl in that there would be one main character and she would drive through the show and that's who you would follow. And then when I started talking with Winnie about it, Winnie had the insight of how important that the relationship was more significant than this one character's journey and that it was more like a Rodgers and Hammerstein show where you had to balance two major characters and the journey they would take together and how their relationship would change would be the center of the show. And the other thing that I thought was really, you said it at our very first meeting and I never forgot was that you felt it was very important that Elphaba the Wicked Witch actually do something that was wicked, that it not be that she was just this misunderstood good girl and the others were bad and you simply flipped who was black and who was white but that we wanted it to be very nuanced and we looked for an incident, a thing that she would do that was actually wicked and that's where the idea of a relationship between Glinda and Fiero, which is not in the book, they don't have a relationship in the novel and that's where that came from and that therefore Elphaba knowing about that relationship but taking the guy anyway was a betrayal of her best friend. I wanted her to have behaved badly in some ways and obviously we've all behaved badly, some more badly than others I guess but in other words we've all done things that we know weren't what another person wanted us to do but we couldn't help ourselves or we felt that it was more true, that whole thing about it's more true to lie in a certain moment but anyway yeah and then I think just to say that something we've said publicly a lot but I'll just say it since we're on the subject is that another element of the Glinda part rising up had to do with Kristen and from the very beginning when we were very first writing it Steven had said to me there's this girl named Kristen Chenoweth and I was living in LA and I wasn't really a part of the New York theater scene nor am I still really but I did not really, I knew who Kristen was but I'd never really seen her on stage I don't think I knew she'd wanted Tony but I didn't really know her well when Steven was able to get her to come to an early reading that we did I was so blown away by her enormous gifts that I determined, I mean we both did I don't mean to say use the I we both felt very strongly it should be her now that's like saying that you sort of buy a Ferrari but you just take it down the driveway and then just bring it back you know if you have a Ferrari you have to take it for a spin and so then it became very important how is her part going to arc what's in it for her you know flat out you know here's a rising star just why does she want to do our part that's something you know people don't always talk about that but actually Martha Levy I think referred to that last night I was very taken with that moment in her in her conversation I'm always thinking about that stuff I don't know if that is something that people want to talk about why would an actor want to and motivating and a truly and I don't just mean a star but somebody who's really got a lot going on in that department making sure that you're showing them off not the other way around i.e. they're going to come in do my show and make it work no no no the thinking would need to be I'm going to write a part that so shows them off and so shows all their colors that they're going to not be able to resist to play it that's more the thinking that I like to be in and then just quickly and then we can start answering questions etc so the way we developed the show then was once we had an outline that we felt we had gone over and over and over again and now we're starting to go around in circles a little bit and therefore it was time to move forward then we started to write and Winnie, for me as a songwriter I always like it if the book writer goes first and gives me a few scenes so I understand the tone and how the characters speak and so on and so forth and Winnie wrote the first couple of scenes and particularly I remember when I got the first draft the opening from you and there were all these strange words that we came to call Ozisms and that Winnie was inventing a language in a way a way of talking to help separate Oz from our world and so that was very influential on me I thought well then I have to write lyrics that way too and anyway eventually we got ourselves to to a first act and we were working with Mark Platt who became producer of the show and we would keep running things by him and discussing things with him and then finally it got to a point where we felt we needed to hear it read and that was probably about another year down the line I would say and remember the first time we heard it read we only had Act 1 we had Act 1 which was we had an Act 1 that was as long longer than the play the show is now and I remember and we had been again we had started to go around and around in circles with it and we finally thought like you know what we have to hear this read and Mark was very resistant to that idea and he was sort of terrified and I had a conversation about it and so finally I called Mark and I said so we're going to do this reading and if you want to be the producer and pay for it great if not we're doing it you're cordially invited but we're doing it so then of course he said oh well then of course we'll put it together for you and we just invited some actor friends of ours this wasn't the Kristen reading it's just Act 1 it's two hours long or two and a half hours long and the thing that I just want to say for all of us that was so key what Stephen put Stephen's wisdom was he invited I guess you invited about 20 would you say 40? No less than that I think it was less than 20 I think it was about 12 sort of smart friends people he felt were very his smartest friends and I think I had like two friends there and I have a lot of friends but I was scared but anyway but what he did which was so amazing to me because I've never done something like this before in other words my thinking and this is why I want to share this with you would be I have to wait till it's done done right but what this did was it catapulted us into a lot more knowledge and into really understanding what we had and what we didn't have yet so after the reading was over this is just the first act he and I sat in the middle of the room me against my will and Stephen willingly and just asked people Stephen just asked people questions what didn't you get where did you lose interest and we took notes and that's a real ballsy obviously move but if you can do that with enough privacy so that you don't so that you're not talking to people who are just totally going to lead you astray that you're talking to some trusted people who you think have good taste you know that can be so that was just galvanizing for us yeah and people tell you it sort of becomes like a bell curve like there are always outliers who tell you things that are not particularly useful or have their own sort of odd point of view yeah someone just hates monkeys whatever yeah I mean I had someone like that a very very close personal friend who was just like oh those monkeys get rid of them and there was no way we were going to do that but in the middle things start to emerge and one of the people who was there I remember said to me whenever you have those two girls on particularly when they're together in action you're in gold and every other time you're in trouble and so we wrote this little thing that said it's the girls stupid that was our mantra and we would show it to each other as we were working and then the other thing that we really learned was that people brought in with them the movie they did not bring Gregory's book even if they'd read the book they didn't really care if we changed it or what we did they did not bring the original series even if they had a prized collection of them at home and had read all 170 of them but they all brought the movie and what we realized was we could not contradict the movie any place we had gone too far away the show fell apart so we realized two major things we had to focus on the relationship between the girls and that we had to treat the movie as if it was a documentary that's what really happened that's what really happened just to add to that when you think about that it has to do with the whole idea if you do improv and don't deny someone else's reality if anyone hears the improv person because the audience doesn't like to have their reality denied and you come out and you start to crack eggs and pretend you're flipping eggs and somebody says why are you whipping a horse and it's been so clear that you were just making eggs it's very unpleasant for the audience and they just zone out it's like well if you're going to do shit like that why should I pay attention so in other words it doesn't just apply to the Wizard of Oz although it does so much because this is such a treasured this is a movie that is our national treasure it's a national masterpiece it's our great movie and it's a movie that really spoke to our generation although I think it does continue to speak to generations but we grew up watching this movie at prized moments at home on little TVs that only had five channels it was a very important event to watch the movie together as a family or to be terrified by it or whatever so we did have to be very we brought our own feelings of respect and admiration and adoration I will say for the movie but we also brought that thing that he just described but all of that I believe is something that speaks to whatever you might be writing in terms of understanding what you like not denying what you care about or what matters to you because often what matters to you is really what matters universally when you're tapping into something that you really care about very very often that's when you're really speaking to a bigger group if you know what I mean Steven and Winnie I'd like to pick up the story as it's getting closer to Broadway I know that you insisted that the show open out of town not on Broadway and the production was in San Francisco and I believe you also insisted that after it closed in San Francisco you would have a certain amount of time why did you decide what did you think you did that was something that I actually we wanted to do a regional production and our director I actually wanted to do a workshop and then a regional production and then talk about going out of town and our director Joe Mantello felt that for his purposes to some extent a workshop but particularly a regional production was not valuable because he felt that he needed to get the world and the production and that to just have sort of limited resources was not helpful to him in figuring out how to put the show on the stage so he wanted to start right away with a with an out of town production and I said to the producers that I would only agree to that if it was not a typical situation where you open out of town and then you kind of shut down for a week while you're transferring to New York and then you go because what I had learned in my experience was you can't actually do really major structural work while the show is running I know in the old days they seem to change shows out of town extensively all the time but for whatever reasons now I've just found you can't do it Well we made some changes out of town You can make limited changes within scenes You can do pretty cosmetic work it's important work but you can't do big changes because by the time something is then you have to stage it and then it has to be orchestrated and then the computer has to figure out how to move the set and three weeks have gone by and you can't do it so I just said to the producers if you're going to do this we must close down for I think it was I think we had well we definitely had July and August because it started at the end of August the rehearsal I think it was three months that we said you have to close the show and let us write and then go back into rehearsal and otherwise we won't do it and so the producers agreed and it cost them one million dollars for that three months because they had to keep everybody on retainer but it did make the show they will tell you that that was the best million dollars they spent but the point being they were not cavalier about it it was a decision can you mention one thing that you learned from that San Francisco production well yes, we've learned a lot of things from the San Francisco production one of the major things in the intervening three months was that the character of Elphaba and her relationship with Glinda had gone out of balance that Glinda had to some extent taken over the show and there were aspects of the Elphaba character that were not coming through and so we her intelligence, her rebelliousness her wit and so we spent most of that time working on that character writing new lines for her writing new things for her to sing trying to kick that character back up into balance is that when we wrote the new no no no, that's not what we wrote but I did a lot of intro stuff for her that she was not singing it was all how she started out in the show, it was virtually that it was very little and it lacked one stuff I wrote stuff for her in Act 2 like intros of songs and things to clarify like the intro to For Good oh yeah a lot of it had to do with how she started off like getting her off to the right start at least for me, book wise and it had to do with that but then a huge thing that happened in San Francisco was the funeral scene because we had well that was big it's here, it's here on the outline so it had to do with how we told our story and we had a huge funeral scene for the goat who was presumed dead and a funeral is stately and long usually so was the scene and it was it came in the part of the first act where things were starting to get exhausting anyway because we did a long first act and it was before they went to the Emerald City which in a way everyone's waiting for and it was just endless but it's hard to know at the time and of course this is something you all deal with it's just so hard to understand at the time that you don't need something one of the things that happened was we kept going back to our storyboards I remember that there were these two cards there was an event that happened with Moribel coming to Elphaba in the funeral scene and then there was an event where she came to her again and said you're in the Emerald City and we looked at her and we were like that's the same card there's something is wrong here so we can't be doing both of these and um you take two things I mean that's why outlining can be so important especially in a musical but really in any part of life if you do you understand what he just said like if you're seeing these two things and it's basically a very similar event it's the same beat why aren't they happening together and by the way to some extent then of course it can get too much but to some extent when you take two scenes and make one scene out of them that does the work of all of that in other words all well then you have a very dynamic scene because one of the things I personally love is to do that and you can't do that often in your first draft or even in your third draft perhaps when you're teaching yourself the story but in other words when you have a scene where a lot of different things are actually there are a lot of different dynamics actually happening in other words it serves more than one purpose the scene this can be very thrilling you don't want to tip it over into so many things that are happening in one scene that you can barely keep track or something like that but do you agree with this? totally so we wound up deciding that we had to cut this funeral scene there were two little events that happened in it that were easily put into other places and our director was violently opposed to cutting this scene and so was our producer it was one of our biggest disagreements huge huge fight about it and finally after weeks of fighting about this and are saying why do you care so much about this scene? Joe Montello revealed to us that he had this whole plan about Elphaba's costume and when she would wear black that he had worked out with Susan Hilferty and that she the reason she wore black was she showed up at the funeral in her black dress and she had not worn black before that and that's why in the end he really really wanted that scene and Winnie and I just said to him I'm sorry you cannot have a ten page scene no ten minute scene to get the leading character into a black costume no one cares no one is ever going to wonder why she's wearing black put her in black this scene before the scene after but you can't have it and so we finally but boy that was a struggle it's a version of a first draft I mean it's a version of this first draft I think we'll take some questions there's a microphone in the center aisle if you line up right in front of the microphone it's right behind you right in the center aisle and let's I guess make them as brief as possible yeah I got when did you write a parody in which was that like right early there was always a scene from the first of the girls becoming the incident where where Glinda starts to feel that she's wronged Elphaba and they become friends and the whole thing with the dance and giving Elphaba the hat of this original outline and and so I think in discussions with Mark Platt Winnie had the idea or Mark had the idea that there should be this sequence that's we called it the Emma sequence after the Jane Austen book where the popular girl makes over the the unpopular girl and so and that seemed like a really funny idea so pretty early on I would say like about the sixth or seventh song that I wrote was popular and it really never changed a lot of songs get rewritten or whatever but that really never got rewritten and I remember that I was so happy about the song that I did something that I almost never do which is I sent the lyrics to Mark Platt before when I was going to get to together with him next and play it for him and he read the lyrics and called me and had lots and lots of issues and questions I don't know about this and I said Mark you have to trust me on this this one's going to work what did happen to the song was that when talking about Kristen when they staged it she basically invented a lot of this middle section about teaching Elphaba how to flip her hair and everything there was a little teeny bit of training that we had written into the song and then it got expanded into this huge, hilarious sequence that Kristen more or less invented Hi quick question when you shut down after San Francisco for the three months for the rewrites and people were on retainer did that mean you were able to use them at all could you workshop for yourself with actors it was just back to the computer it never really occurred to us they all went on vacation we just worked now that you mentioned it that probably would have been a good idea so you kind of retained them just to retain them there were certain equity and other things where you had to so essentially though from the San Francisco stage draft to the Broadway stage draft was all on paper until you got it up for rehearsal and then when we got into rehearsal for Broadway I was certainly changing things every day but we weren't doing what he was terming the big structural rethinking at that point those had been done in the intro this is where it was such a great plan honestly things were calmer when it was just the two of us working in his studio you need a bit of as you all know you need a bit of calm and you're also not being told why technically you this is why you can't change things out of town because you come up with an idea and they're like she can't make the costume change they can't change the set there are all these reasons that you're stuck with this production that's now screwing up your play so once you shut the production down then you do these things and then they rethink the production so that was the advantage of being able to do it on paper and how long was the rehearsal period for each of those productions do you remember? I think it was the New York one again five weeks I think it was three it was five weeks the first time and then Endless Tech and then I think when we went back after the time off it was another three weeks in the rehearsal room yes that sounds right next you talked a little bit about this but I was wondering how because most musicals are when you have the two and it's not just the one character that you're following through most musicals are boy girl centric can you talk a little bit about both of the leads be female well that was yes an interesting thing about this is six years after the show opened or something this terrific woman named Stacy Wolf wrote a thing for her college a treatise about Wicked saying that it was a queer version of Rodgers and Hammerstein which had never occurred to us and then we just loved this because it was true it was very insightful we basically did a Rodgers and Hammerstein relationship like King and I with a French and in the way that the King and I relationship is basically sexless in that it's a love story but it's not a romantic love story that's what this was but we were that's what we were doing while we were doing it it's more like it just happened and then as it was happening there were other like we were describing we were seeing the feedback that the two women on stage that was the heart of the musical that was the beating heart of the musical we were seeing that it's not like I sat down conceptually going I will write a musical with the women leaves that's my goal in life I'm not saying that's a bad goal but that wasn't how it happened it occurred organically seeing what we were seeing and going look at them together it's like it's so fun or it's so touching or whatever it was did you ever think that maybe Glinda was there a moment maybe where like oh maybe we should follow Glinda did that ever happen because he told that didn't happen for a while but did you ever consider like maybe we're doing this because it's right and what was but you know that's not a bad question because you can be writing something and suddenly say oh I was doing this show but actually that one's more interesting but the the thing that excited me about this show and excited I think Winnie also from the get go was the brilliant genius idea that Gregory had that he was going to take this quintessential villain someone who doesn't even have a name in the original is referred to only by the attribute that she is wicked and make her the center the protagonist of this piece that was a stroke of genius so that was always going to remain in the center we have time for two more questions something that's been coming up a bit this weekend and something that I've begun to experience myself as an emerging writer is very often as writers how in some ways how little control we have over our show how the show's developed that we're always at the mercy of can we get the rights and how long do we have to wait and how long will the lawyers negotiator what director can we get and I guess any thoughts on maintaining calm amidst what I'll just term for better word the fog of war the fog and the confusion all the different things I would challenge your assertion about how little control we have over our show I thought you were actually referring to something else which is that the show reveals itself to us sometimes the show controls us which is sort of what Winnie is talking about but we as writers it's our show and it's we like to we'll take collaboration ideas and input and help from anywhere we can get it but in the end it's our show and so I think you have that's what you have to maintain in the fog of war if you're having a fight about the scene that the authors have decided the scene has to go that scene went in the end we said we're the authors and that scene is out of the show the end and that was a huge fight but that's what happened and we were right because we knew we were right that's the point we knew we were right but also I just want to say quickly that you know just you mentioned getting rights as one of your little nightmares and you know sometimes it's best to just if you're having a night time you know to stick to things where you don't have to get rights you know I would encourage that you just happen to mention it so I'm sure but I would say that I you know you don't want to when you are starting out at any age you don't want to have to worry about something like that that's very daunting you know and I'm not look if it's your heart's passion and you must do it then of course you're gonna do it you're gonna follow that you know you want to be go easy on that kind of thing because the truth is you want to be like self-generating you know I think and that will maybe give you more power yeah we make the last two very brief we have to vacate this room when you were fighting for the rights of the show what argument did you make that this book needed to be on the stage instead of the screen I said a few things Mark I said first of all that we all know what Oz looks like and if it doesn't look like Oz in the movie the audience is not going to go for it and you can but on the stage it can be much more stylized secondly I said you've got a leading character with a lot of stuff going on underneath there's a lot of subtext there's a lot that she's not saying what how are you gonna do that in a movie even with a close up she's gonna have a big prosthetic nose she's gonna be green how are you going to do that what you need her to do is be able to soliloquize and you can't really do that except with kind of really bad voice over so you need her to sing to give voice to these things going on inside her and that's weird in a movie so it needs to start on stage and ultimately he bought those arguments did Gregory Maguire have any involvement past giving his blessing and how did he respond to the eventual production he'd be happy he was wonderful about it I remember the first time he saw the show which was one of the it was like our fifth reading and we'd been at it for a long time I was so nervous about Gregory coming and the elevator on the way up to the rehearsal room where we were doing the reading I was like it was a lot but what he said what he said was I took the Wizard of Oz and I did with it what I wanted and I feel like now you're taking what I did and you're doing with it what you wanted he had some suggestions and some thoughts a couple of which were very helpful to us and we assimilated but he never said you need to do my book in this way well here's to the second decade of working let me actually let me I just want to finish a comment because I think it's really it's really appropriate because it has to do with adaptation I propose that I think it's very important if you're adapting somebody else's work that you have the right to do what you feel and in fact if the person says you can adapt my novel but I have to approve your first draft or your this or that do not do it turn it down it's not a good idea ok now you can thank us


What's going on everyone Sam here with late in sports cards, and I'm ripping five 2022 panini national silver packs for Brian s so good luck Brian See what we got in here. Got Kenny picket rookie Steelers Nice one there, and then we got an orange Malik Willis behind that to 199 Titans That is 23 out of 199. You look pretty good in the preseason God Damien Lillard and green CD lamb to five Nice one there Brian two out of five on the CD heck, yeah Cedarian very nice pole right there Got Lionel Messi and orange rated rookie Evan Mobley Cabs that is 108 out of 199 got Mike trout base and Red Garrett Wilson Jets rookie to 99 That is 74 out of 99 Nice Garrett Wilson. Oh for sure. Absolutely. I completely agree with you on that one John We've got Tyree kill as a dolphin this card still so sick and red Yanis to 99 That is 50 out of 99 That'll do it for your packs there Brian congrats on all the hits. We'll get them right out to you appreciate it buddy


It's going to be in the fall. What's that? We're getting away for a little bit. What do you feel when you're working? That sounds like it. Oh, you're not, no problem. Oh, okay. Where have you been there? Oh, yeah. The seaside. Wow, welcome morning everybody. Good morning. The ambition to actually, you know, break a form and be prompting on time today. But as usual, circumstances intervened.  It was a tough, tough morning. But this is so great to sit here with all of you. One more, one more time. We, you know, I figure we never actually, unlike President Karapal, actually went back through and got a precise count on her number of city council meetings. We haven't quite done that with bagels, but I believe this is well over 500 that we've been doing. And looking around the room, if you add up the number of times you all have been here, there may be many thousands given the regulars we have here. You know, I'm not quite sure the best way for us to do it this morning.  Jordan, my chief of staff for those of you, many of you have met her here over the years. Jordan, one of the reasons we stay committed to doing this all this time, sometimes Jordan would actually get me on a bike to come out here, especially once we got the bike lanes bell. Yeah, great. I guess before we go around, I know not everyone will be able to stay, so let me just kick things off with a couple remarks. I will, a lot of you I think know that we started doing these Wednesday morning events back before I was mayor, right when I announced my candidacy to be the Democratic nominee for the position.  To win this contested caucus against, turned out to be three other much more experienced qualified candidates. And to win a caucus, we had to get hundreds of people to come to Memorial Auditorium on a Sunday afternoon in November. And, you know, I started out with some supporters, but had to find a lot of others quickly. And one of the strategies that we settled on was to have these coffee conversations. And we actually did them every morning of the week for about two months leading up to that caucus. So we had wanted every part of the city. And it was just barely successful enough. For those of you who don't know the story, we survived a tie vote, 540 to 540 at one point. So I definitely credit these coffee conversations with making everything that followed possible. Then, when as a candidate and then as a new mayor, I knew it was important that you have a connection with this part of the city. And it always seemed to me in my kind of observations of city government that this part of the city was often polarized and sort of alienated by what was happening down at City Hall. And I thought there might be a way by having a physical presence out here on a regular basis that we could break some of that down. And, you know, I wouldn't say it was entirely successful. I certainly pissed a bunch of people off in this part of the city with those bike lanes and some of the other decisions. But I do think it mattered to be out here every week. It kept me aware of what was happening out here. It allowed me to make sure, you know, there is something about the mayor's office, especially with the way I tried to do it, maybe, where it got easy to sort of... There was a trap of being in the office too much and being too focused on the details of trying to keep things running day-to-day. Having a commitment to be out here every week made sure... was pushed against that. Made sure I stayed connected with what people were thinking. And so we kept doing it. And I'm so grateful to Peter for allowing us to... Cafe owners wouldn't have been so happy about the shopping and taking over like this. I mean, this is a large crowd today, but we had a lot of days that were approached this. And I know there were times where... There were a few times where things got a little uncivil and that concerned you, Peter, and you took actions to make sure that didn't continue. But other... they were rare. You've been an incredible host. Thank you for making this possible. And then just a couple of last thoughts. Another reason that I kept doing it is... You know, part of it was... It was the regulars who showed up all the time, helped me navigate all the challenges of this job. You know, the fact that so many of you continued to show up during the pandemic when we did this for months online was part of my personally being able to kind of get through the isolation and the challenges of the pandemic. But another thing that made it me think that this was... You know, if it had just been the regulars showing up, I might have questioned whether this made sense, right? If it was just 10 or 12 or 25 you, is this where I should be spending, you know, a couple hours of mayoral time every week? It might have been a question. But I knew that even for people who weren't showing up, there was value in this. I always had this sense that people liked that we were doing this. And one of the... Even if they couldn't make it there regularly. And one of the reasons I believe that is literally almost every week for 12 years, somebody new came to offer a new perspective to get a question, asked, answered to make sure I was aware of something. It so many times, you know, Emma and Jordan and other people worked in the mayor's office over the years, and we would go back to City Hall with a to-do list of things to follow up on that we wouldn't have gotten any other way. And it just, you know, it just was clear to me this is something I wanted to keep doing. So thank you all for being here and being part of this for so long and for being here this morning. It's quite touching to see so many here today. Thank you. I want to thank you. I want to thank you for the pods on Amman Avenue, because it really does help. It made a difference. Well, David, you showing up every week for the last couple of years to make sure not only I heard that, but that so many of your neighbors heard that and kind of put out a different narrative about that than some people were telling. You know, a lot of people, you know, there were issues that came as a result of us doing that and there were challenges with it. So those challenges were inflated and exaggerated and you made sure that we didn't overreact to them. So thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. Jim. We had our temperatures back. Well, I'm here to thank you for your effort to get us here. And I have here my last electric bill, which was 13 cents, because we got solar array and heat pump, and we filled up, by October, $600 in credit for the electric which is just the last of it, our last bill, and I've signed my bill. Now, Jim, remind me, we had issues with your roof, right? Like, we had to... And we had to make, you know, we had to get rid of this crazy, deep three feet of space around every edge of the... Several departments there was disconnect between, actually there was no connection between the inspection folks, the fire folks, and the solar pump. Yeah. And with one call, or, you know, Mike Cano, I count a lot to make that happen, and the solar people said to me, oh, we've never talked to people about how we have built the inspection. And anyway... Is that right? Wow. We got down to this, about a solar year ago, the head of the solar array actually was the head of the heat pump, so anyway... So did you see the report we put out last week that showed that you are part of a very important transformation of what homes... how homes are built, how they're powered there's now 2,300 heat pumps have been installed. The solar... We've gone from having almost no solar installations in the city to being for years, you know, multi-years running now, the most per capita solar installations of any city, east of the city. And it's actually making a difference since we're clear now with our missions. Our missions are down 18% since 2018.  Will you provide a rebate for the... during the three minutes of what we have started? You won't be able to do anything. Sorry, you'll have to... you'll have to talk to Eve about that. She is in charge of the eclipse. Last speech and I particularly is touching that you're coming and say that because we... I remember that we disagreed on some things and you were passionate and we were able to continue to communicate, stay... share a sense of where the community needs to go in some ways through that. It's... I really appreciate it. I think we're following the light now. Yes. Years ago? Well, I've always remember James, Mary Jane, that you played a role in these conversations to make sure, you know, we was not clear what the policy should be. Should we plow it? Should we leave it? Should we leave it with snow on it so that people could cross-catch a ski? And I... as I remember it, I think your input in conversations play in a role in us coming up with the policy of kind of compromising half of it, half of it plowed, half of it left for snow, and we did that as each section of the bike path got rebuilt, we would implement that policy now. You can do the whole eight miles. Someone plowed the bridge to this. Great. And the tennis course. And I thank you. That's great. Thank you. I wasn't going to say thank you when you announced, but now it's time that I can say thank you for all you've done. You've had a lot of challenging issues. Man, I can't imagine being in your position the last four years, especially. So now I will say thank you for all you've done for us. But I think the city's got issues, but it's in the right direction. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for joining us so many times at the table. Ed. Yeah, Mero, I just wanted to say something. That I came to Burlington after a 30-year career in addiction health in LaMoyle County in 2015. And somebody directed me to you to say, pay attention to Mero. And this was 2015. I began coming to your meetings and I watched you hit what I would call a vertical learning curve straight up when it came to people with addiction. And I can just say from a professional point of view that you mastered it incredibly quickly. And I just want to share with you something from, this is your draft for guiding the city of Burlington in response to the opioid crisis. Now, folks, this is from a long time ago. This is from 2015. And this shows how progressive the mayor was thinking. I'll just read a few of the principles. Opioid addiction is a public health crisis with a law enforcement component. City government plays a unique and vital role in addressing the opioid challenge. People struggling with opioid addiction need access to treatment without delay. Police should give amnesty to users seeking help for their addictions and send them to treatment. The pharmaceutical company, the pharmaceutical industry has a role in resolving the crisis it helped create. Treatment for opioid addiction should not end upon arrest. Naloxone must be available to people of using opioids or using opioids, their friends and family, and their emergency service providers. That's not all of them, but there's been incredible progress made in this city and it is directly a result of your leadership from the bottom of my heart and as like a representative kind of of parents who have lost children and the profession, I want to thank you. I want to thank you for everything you've done. You've been a courageous mayor. You know, again, I am proud of the work we've done there. It's hard to feel like we've made sufficient progress when more people are dying than ever before. It's been the most heartbreaking part of the last 12 years that despite what we have tried to do, this problem just continues to grow and grow. It was a little bit hopeful to be able to send out the report a couple of weeks ago that for six months now we've seen a reduction in the police and fire responses to overdoses. I think there's from state as well that there maybe has been, maybe we've turned a corner again at long last after four years of setbacks since the pandemic. And your commitment to action and progress here has been an inspiration to me. You have always shown up and really dedicated your life to saving lives and turning this around. And it's that kind of commitment that has kept me going and continuing to work on this. And yeah, thank you for being here again. As you have so many times in the past. Thank you for continuing. I won't be on the open settlement advisory committee anymore after Monday. So keep up showing up at those meetings and making sure the public forum is well, you know, it's an important part of those meetings. I see officer Corey Offent has joined us as he had many times in the past for state this, Corey. But I know you came to a lot of these bagel meetings at a time when you were kind of taking a pause from your service at the police department. I think trying to figure out what made sense to you in your future. And I don't know, we really never talked exactly about it. So, you know, put you on the spot with television cameras. But I always felt like these conversations played a role and you decided that you you were still committed to this community and wanted to come back to the police department and continue to serve in that challenging role. So, police officer, we've spent a few words. Thank you for your continued service. I want to thank you for completely rebuilding the bison path and making it a up-to-date resource for anyone to enjoy. And I also want to thank you for persistently pursuing certain issues. And I think you've got to change the entire city because I went through those meetings down in the south end where nobody wanted housing. Everybody wanted housing. Couldn't have that. I thought they were going to bring you out of the meeting. And now... I'm at a town, there was that. You're at a... You're at the... You remember the year at the hard hop where we had paper mache effigies and a row of milk. But you stuck with it through all that. And now the entire cities come around and unanimous vote on the rezoning which is building more housing in film development which is something you've been pursuing right from the start.  In fact, that isn't the reason. You understand that if you don't build more housing the res are going to go through the roof. And I'm really glad to see the city has turned that border. So your persistence in all of those issues I think has paid off and will pay off in the state for a long time. Thank you very much. Thank you, Rick. It's your participation. Rick is one of the regulars going back, I think, to the campaign days. You came to some of them, right? And it was, you know, for anyone who doesn't know Rick's history here in the city. He was one of the first the first bike path champions actually building it. You know, it was one thing I am proud of what we did rebuilding it. It was the biggest parks project in the history of the city. And it took a lot of work over years to get done and we made it we made it better and we built it to last and it was it's definitely one of the things I'm proudest of in the last 11 years. But building it the first time was all another kettle of fish and it wouldn't have happened without your leadership and your advocacy taking on some, you know pushing back against all sorts of all sorts of resistance to that early on sometimes from surprising places. So it's been a lot, Rick, that you've come here and even though we too have had disagreements on a few things I haven't been able to build the bike share system that you think is right exactly. But it's meant a lot to me that you've come and given your put over the years. Thank you. Oh. Yeah. Yesterday I saw a brick bike. I saw one too. We were done with that. You don't need to answer but it's been believable I saw that. Yeah. I don't know what that means actually. Yeah. I thought I I don't know. Amber we might need to follow up on that one. I'm surprised to hear about that one. Yeah. It's great to see so many city councilors here. As usual City Council President Karen Paul always already noted. We have Mark Barlow the North North District City Councilor who is here. So many times Sarah Carpenter who is here weekend week out and I think it's that's another reason why it felt like it was worth doing this to be out that that you guys came and saw this as a valuable forum for conversation out here in the New North End was a big part of it. I had Turner and Peter on the corner to see New North End residents Mayor Peter Claes join us as well. I wanted to come and see the Stacey's left but Moreau's getting a lot of thanks but let's thank Stacey and Moreau's two daughters for 12 years of their life. It's not always easy being a family member of a mayor. So let's give Stacey and the girls a round of applause. Thank you, Peter. There definitely are some sacrifices of the family's big sacrifice the family's made. Both my daughters and Stacey love this event though and they often they came many times over the years. Ada wanted to be here this morning and she didn't come down with the fever last night she would have been here but thank you for noting that. That's the public school system. I really appreciate it. I see speaking of the neighborhood code passing the other day I see several several members of Vermonters from people oriented places to start here people that came out calling them talking about you I just wanted to know that you, Ryan, Colin, Todd your advocacy for many months leading up to the vote on Monday was critical to that passing and that you came here and part of the conversations as people had questions about that was it's great to see you back here thank you for being here again. It's pretty tiring. I'm not used to this you know local colleges. I think we got time. I know it's here for the very first morning with Morro I just saw Jessica come in. Oh my gosh. I didn't know if I tried for response. And many more after. So this is Jessica Nordhaus who is one of oldest friends I have in town. We met in college in another lifetime and Jessica ran my first campaign for mayor back in 2011 was the architect we were talking about the caucus a few minutes ago. We would not have won that without your efforts and Jessica's gone on to have many great roles in this community led that changed the story initiative for a long time and is now playing a key leadership role in Becca Baylitz congressional office and I'm so touched you're here Jessica thank you for being here. I want to call out Sam Morbel who I am not sure I don't know how many of these you made it to Sam is this your first not enough this is my first this is your first but you played a big big role in my surviving the pandemic as well Sam Sam ran the owned and ran the CrossFit gym down the south end of town now has a new CrossFit gym at the base of main street we're building a new road down to you there Sam thank you for being here today it's touching the you're here delight to be here and a particular thing during the pandemic as a small business owner the amount of like the amount of support that you gave the amount of time you spent listening to me as a small business owner you personally spent listening to me helping personally connect me to resources so we could keep air clean etc I love shooting the ventilator in the gym there it's big and it's ugly but it works and it kept us open so thank you again for that thank you Sam alright we don't need to belabor this I mean how do people want what do you want to do this always happened we got coffee and bagels around the corner here and you know there's not much more I can do with your input from here maybe we should maybe we should just make it a party from here it's going to be a challenge maybe maybe someone should stand here take the photo this is something that really evolved organically over the course of being in this role I started my first challenge as a candidate for office was to win the Democratic Caucus which ended up being this kind of epic political event in November I think it was November 12th 2011 who were your opponents in that call? there were three other candidates ultimately and each of them had been city counselors or state senators state reps Jason Lorber Tim Ash and Bram Kranichfeld Bram just we have seen the news just a few days ago he's just the governor just appointed to be a state's attorney and so I had never run for any office before so I had strong social network but I knew I needed to meet hundreds of new people to have a chance to win that caucus and one of the strategies that we pursued was to come to these coffee shops around the city and just talk to whoever show up answer questions talk to people we put up little signs initially so people knew who I was and and would just stop in spontaneously and we did that for weeks I think like two months leading up to the caucus vote and we had a coffee in each different part of town we had this one here always on Wednesdays we had an old north end coffee we had a south end coffee there was a fourth somewhere too I think and that ended up being an extraordinarily close election where it went through three rounds of voting after the third round of voting it was just me and one other candidate left Tim Ash and after the votes were counted I had 540 votes and Tim had exactly 540 votes so it was a dead tie and we had to keep campaigning for another month before we had the fourth ballot so we kept going to the coffee shops we ended up winning that decisively in that fourth ballot and then then faced an opponent in the general election who was from this part of town and we knew we knew there were probably this was Kurt Wright he had been a state rep and city counselor from out here we knew it was probably not going to be possible to win the new north end but I knew I had to keep it close to have a chance at winning and continuing to come here having physical presence here was an important part of that general election campaign which did go our way and and then we realized I should keep doing it once I was in office because it was and we didn't we didn't keep all of them we had occasional coffees in other other parts of the city but we kept doing this new north end coffee every Wednesday for 12 for 12 years because I really was a goal of mine to break down the sort of physical isolation of the new north end which had translated some into kind of political isolation and sort of a sense of polarization and alienation out here and I thought I could do something about that by being here and listening to people talking to people regularly and I think that you know there's definitely times where this part of the city was unhappy with me as you could say that about every part of the city for one reason or another but I do think having that sticking to that coming here I mean literally we had this event except for Thanksgiving week we would have an event out here once a month or so I would send a department head to fill in for me because I had some kind of conflict but but we've kept it going for 12 years I'm proud of it it was it was an important part of how I was able to lead the city for 12 years and you name you mentioned a few before but like an example that comes to mind of how these meetings actually change your administration and impact the city yeah so I mean there there are so many examples because and there are varied and there many of them are very granular like I said before one of the remarkable things about this event is there's sort of a group of regulars who came more or less every week and that group would shift over time but then without exaggeration and beside even here today every every week for the 12 years someone new would come for the first time and they would bring a new issue or question that they wanted addressed you know the examples range from people coming to tell me there was a pothole on their street that that needed to be addressed or you know a problem with their sidewalk you know I remember elderly folks coming saying you know you got to do something about this my wife is in a wheelchair now we need the sidewalk addressed we had sometimes people who were hoping to make an investment in the city thinking about maybe trying to build something new in Burlington they would come and show up here and just have a chance to meet the mayor and get some feedback on what they were thinking about I remember the folks who are now building the hotels at city place I met them first out here we a lot of people especially this time the bike path is a beloved part of life out here in the new north end people would come in and say you got to put a speed limit up on the bike path because of all these electric bicycles that are on there and we've done that we've established a policy around that we have this as you may have heard before this policy of plowing half the bike path and leaving half of it open for runners and walkers but leaving the snow there for cross country skiers that's something that kind of evolved in part out of conversations here we this new this neighborhood code that just passed on Monday we did a lot out here the planning director came in would have coffee joined me for the coffees and actually had coffees of their own here in other parts of the city as a way of getting public input and then this grassroots organization for monitors for people already in places that is this kind of youth movement in the city they frequently came and pushed me to get as much in this reform as possible and engage their neighbors here so those are a few examples to jump to mind but there are literally hundreds of others thank you and one more quick thing so Tommy and TV kind of putting on the media hat here there's clearly some around narratives how we talk to each other how do we communicate about the work that's happening at city hall what role do you what do you see as like the media needs of the community and what do you like what role needs to be filled when it comes to making our like dialogue or discourse a little bit healthier and what role does town meeting TV as well as seven days digger other you know what what can be done to make our media environment to help you well I've said it many times I hope you and all your colleagues know how much I value what town TV does I think we're so fortunate to have this community resource for many reasons I think the the way in which you open up and the coverage that you provide to the city council meetings and so many other events is remarkable the fact that people can participate in and also access archives is extremely valuable I've been you know I believe in my 12 years your world has changed some some of the the way in which the role that cable and cable funding played has changed there was a need for more kind of municipal support and I've been proud to work with you and find a way to expand this space you know what more could town meeting TV do you know is a a great question I think you guys have been very nimble and adaptive to the increasing role that social media plays making sure you are trying to reach Berlin Tonians through Facebook and Twitter having such an active YouTube channel in these quickly evolving technological times you guys have been keeping up with it and it's a great thing and I think you make you know it's Burlington remains fortunate that we have not seen the devastation of the traditional media that many smaller cities communities have we certainly have seen change the Burlington Free Press is a shadow of the what it was when I came into office I mean when I was during those that caucus campaign during those first years it was it was a traditional broadsheet with many veteran reporters and we do miss that you know BT Digger has stepped into the breach some seven days has expanded their coverage and we're fortunate to continue to have you know traditional television local news is still quite strong here so but I think we haven't figured out what the future of media I mean I think media will always be evolving and always be changing but I think we're in a particularly uncertain time about how we you know continue to in a in a society that's that's becoming kind of atomized and people are getting into their own echo chambers how we make sure facts are getting out there how we make sure you know it's a great test it's a real test of our democracy that a strong town-meaning television is an insurance policy that that's going to that kind of culture is going to continue here in Burlington so you can just share some reflections on this event and so you know how long have you been coming to these and what's your experience been I'm David Call I live in Burlington right across from the Almond Avenue shelter and I've been coming here to support the unhoused I've been trying to find a balance in our city to be a community activist after my retirement so I've been really impressed by the mayor and all the things that we've been trying to do for the unhoused especially for the staff of the Almond Avenue shelter they're extraordinary great people any more questions I also live on Almond we're neighbors that's right David nice to meet you can you think of any memories of conversations that have happened here that stick out in your memory the Moran plant and then there's the bike path the tents on the battery park then there's the zoning thing that gets brought up a lot and how sometimes the state and the city don't work well together at all and COVID-19 was really hard on everybody so that's been talked about a lot how long have you lived in Burlington? all my life I've lived in Almond Avenue for 14 years you live across from the pods? well thank you for talking with us David thank you so much can you talk a little bit about what your current has meant to the shop and your experience sure you know as Moran said over 12 years ago when he was running he said if I get elected I'll continue this every Wednesday hold a meeting out here and he's held to it it's pretty impressive I think it's been great good for North End good for our shop obviously and I think good for Moran yeah and how long has this shop been around? well it's been around for about 20 years I've had it for about 15 anything else any other reflections about the Mayor's Administration or I mean I would say it's been a successful 12 years I think he's been good for the city yeah hope it continues I'm Dave Hardnett and I served on the Burlington City Council for 8 years 6 of them under Moro Administration and then after Moro was elected before Moro was elected I was on the other team working working hard for Kurt Wright at the time as he was running for Mayor and Moro was successful and Moro won and he became Mayor and we developed a working relationship at first but then quickly turned into a friendship and it's just really from there has taken on his life of its own right yes the bagel on Wednesday mornings have been a big thing for 12 years I've been a big part of it it's been great to be a part of it I've always felt though that these Wednesday mornings were more for the every person day voting that every person you know couldn't be involved in city politics right they didn't have time to go to the meetings they didn't have time to run for city council it was their opportunity to come here and meet the mayor and kind of you know listen to what was going on in the city and then also for the mayor to listen to some of their concerns and so I thought Wednesday morning was less about politics as far as the politicians right we always had our time with the mayor Monday nights all the meetings this was more about community and having people come here and reaching out and I think it really I hope Emma will continue doing it I think she will you know so it's just been a great tradition it's a great turn out here this morning it's hard to believe it's been 12 years and a big thank you to Peter Barenburg right how many people open up their business like this right to the community every Wednesday for an hour and sometimes you know we might have 10 or 12 people but sometimes there might be 25 to 30 people and you know it's nice of Peter to do that right and it's all about to me it's all it tells you all you want to know about the new north end right it's the best place to live and we've enjoyed every minute of it and look forward to Emma's administration and hopefully if not once a week maybe Emma will do it once a month but we look forward for Emma to come out as well so you just share a little bit about this event your experience with it and your reflections on the bagel breakfast sure Sarah Carpenter ward 4 city council and I come here every week because this is in fact my ward and these are my neighbors and I'm really grateful that the mayor has taken the time to spend time with our neighbors and listen to what we have to say I think that's a special part of Burlington city government we try to hear what each of us have to say we often and not often but sometimes don't agree and this is I think a really good relaxed forum to air some disagreements and share news and just an important part of keeping us all engaged


Welcome folks, we have the Dow Industries trading up $119, ASIC up $54, S&Ps up $25, Gold contract down $12.30, trading at $19.93 an ounce, we have Silver up $0.43, $22.96 an ounce, late sweet crude up a Dow in $112, $81.19 a barrel, notes and bonds, 10-year note, down two ticks, $106.04, $30.00 up $3.00 at $109.13 and $Kingdoll, $Kingdoll has caught a bid here, now let's get really interesting so you get divergence here, $Kingdoll is up $547.00, $106.66, Euro is at $105.00, Yens at $151.00, British Pounds at $121.00 to $1.00 U.S. Dollar. We can over and take a look at the, market wants higher price, we're in window dressing, you had the, you know, come off the lows yesterday, that being said, but this volume is anemic so, you know, we'll see whether this thing gets straightened out tomorrow because you get the Fed meeting tomorrow, it's only a one day meeting, they're going to come out with the two o'clock in the afternoon, come out with the statement, $2.30, come out with the news conference, but you can see, you know, the contraction is pretty dramatic, right now the spy is up $274.00 and you can see we, you know, when we made that bottom, we made the bottom with 107 million shares yesterday, you did $85.00 and we're only at $48.00 so that means we're only doing maybe $68.00 today and the Q's, same type of set up inside the Q's, you know, actually no and the Q's, the Q's could get volume out here today, what we did with the Q's, yesterday we had, yeah, yesterday we had $55 million, we could do $55 million out here today, we're at $37.00 right now, notes and bonds, we go take a look at the note and bond market, this still continues to go sideways, there's no sellers down at these levels though, that's the bottom line and more than likely, this is also waiting for the Fed tomorrow, so you can see that you're down one tick, you're only down 1.6 million contracts inside the 10, you know, that's just the sideways move, we've been going sideways now since we hit that bottom for basically nine trading days, we go into the gold market, we take a look at gold, that's the dollar one, a little bit higher today, you had gold pullback but gold's in its range, it's only 1.198,000 contracts, hasn't even got to the low that was established two days ago, so that's still saying that wants higher price, then we go into the dollar, so the dollar is hanging tough up at these levels man, you know, the bottom line is that you gave it up on price yesterday, you come right back today, you know, and, you know, so we'll see where this baby shakes out, you know, we're making solid up at these levels now for about three weeks, so right there folks, come right back sharpening your skill