My name is Lewis Porter. I'm a Calis resident and glad to be here moderating one of these, one of the debate today. I appreciate all of you coming out. It's funny, 10 years in state government and 10 years as a reporter. And I've never done one of these, so bear with me. I'm looking forward to it and I hope you are as well. I'm going to hand out a couple of pads here in case people want to suggest questions from the audience. And please ask or give us questions that can be answered by both candidates, if you would. And I'll ask some of those questions from the audience as well as some from the list that I have prepared here. We're going to give both of our two candidates here five minutes each to introduce themselves, explain a little bit about why they're running, tell their backgrounds. And then we'll go to questions, as I say, from a mix from the audience, questions and from a list that I have ahead of me. And the goal, of course, of one of these is to distinguish between two people who are coming forward to volunteer to represent the community and Montpelier. And so please bear in mind that there are folks who are looking to serve you and looking to serve their community. And that we can have differences of opinions without having differences of divide the community. So I appreciate all of you coming here. Bram Tobin has served as a Plainfield Select Board member and road commissioner, Plainfield representative for the Central Vermont Regional Planning Commission, on the board of Central Vermont Television Public Access, and has been on the Plainfield Planning Commission and the Hazardous Mitigation Committee. Bram, thanks for being here today. And Mark Mahaley, Calis Select Board Vice Chair, Chair of the East Calis Community Trust, working on rehabilitation of the East Calis Store, former dean of the Vermont Law School, is also working with the town and a committee of the Curtiss Pond Association to renovate Curtiss Pond Dam and keep the pond. So thanks for being here. Both are running in the primary for stake rep in our district. And I will now give Mark five minutes to introduce himself and explain why he's running. And then we'll do the same for Bram. Mark. Welcome, everybody. And thanks, Lewis and Bram. Thank you for sharing the table with me. And I'm going to use some of my precious time just to note that two candidates from our Senate, Jared DuVall, is here and Andy Perchlich is here. Jared actually lives as a foreigner, but he's going to be our senator, maybe. Jared. OK, so thanks for coming. I am Mark Mahaley, and I live in East Calis with my wife, Chris. Chris is right here. And Chris is a writer of children's books. We have three children grown and a growing number of grandchildren, the latest of whom I think she will emerge in November. 20 years ago, Chris and I decided to move to Vermont. And we came and visited. In fact, actually, the very first place we stayed was the home of two people who happened to be here in the audience, opened their home to us. And we spent the night in Calis, in East Calis. And lay in bed that night and just said, this is it. This is where we want to be. And it materialized. And we love this place. We love this landscape, which is totally unique. And we love the people. We feel incredibly fortunate to be here. In the last years, since I retired from Vermont law, I've become more and more involved in the local community. As Lewis said, I've been elected twice to the select board, but I really had a really educational, for me, a real education and an interesting time working on reopening the Calis store, renovating it. It's such a great group of local people that formed this nonprofit. But working, we raised something like $300,000 or $400,000 locally. But then we've raised over $2 million in state and federal funds. And that was really interesting to me. And the same, I think, is going to happen with the Curtis Pond. There's this wonderful effort by local people. And it's really going to, I think, leverage federal and state funding. And it got me thinking about the possibilities of what happens when you have real kind of generative action at the local level, then turn into this leverage at the state level and the federal level as well. You can really make great things happen. And that's, frankly, what got me thinking about running for this seat. Now, I've spent the last weeks knocking on doors, talking to residents. And I can tell you, we all know the problems we face, but it's one thing to know them. It's another thing to hear them directly from voters. And housing, for example, is just getting out of reach for most people. And I think a lot of it is because of immigration. I talked to a young couple and asked them. They told me they'd moved here from California recently. I asked why. And the husband and wife both said at the same time the same words, the fires. And I just think we're going to see more and more of that. More demand for housing, and that's going to increase the price. And oil, need I say, oil is a terrible problem.  And then she did cry, as she told me. I don't think I can heat my house this winter. So it's just becoming more and more difficult to live here. Well, these are problems. These big problems are problems that we at the local level cannot solve alone. We can generate pressure, but we need to work with the state and with the federal government, our federal government. And that's why we need effective representation in Montpelier that is precisely why we need it. It isn't a local versus state thing. It's that the local pressure has to be successful in creating results in Montpelier that benefit us and our programs. And I'd like to bring my experience with the legislative process and my lifelong work, Building Coalitions, because that's how you'd get things done in Montpelier, Building Coalitions to provide Calis, Plainfield, and Marshfield strong, consistent, thoughtful, and informed vote in Montpelier. Thanks. Graham. Thanks for the 30 seconds. You didn't give me credit for introducing our. I had another 10 seconds. I'm Bram Tobin. I live in Plainfield. And my wife and I have a flower farm. We moved up here from New York City many years ago. I'm very bad, 15, 20 years ago. So now you'll notice in the back of us there's some beautiful peony, which are Vermont grown on our farm. And after the debate, please take some of them home, if you'd like. Why am I running? To me, the key to Vermont is the small towns, the small towns like Calis, Marshfield, and Plainfield. And what's sometimes lost in the shuffle is that Montpelier wants to do good things. But when they pass laws, the local interest is ignored. Here's an example. Act 46. Oh boy, I know. This is a way of, if you read the legislation, the idea was that we want to make a more efficient way of taxing schools and so forth. And it talks about a national study that showed that a school of a certain size, and I can't remember the exact number, is the ideal school size. And we should try to shape our funding and everything to approach that goal. Then comes, don't worry, we're not interested in getting rid of small schools, which I mean, I think, let's be honest, I think the idea is consolidation to get rid of small schools. But forgetting that issue, forgetting the logistics of Act 46, here's something that I think everybody in this room should know. If you live in Calis, you pay a higher property tax rate than non-residents. Now, to me, that is an abomination. If you live in a town and you dedicate your life to a town, you need to pay the lower rate. Now, just forgetting, I think we could argue about Act 46 all night long. And there are some very good things. I think, for example, if you look at the ratio of administrators to students at U32, it's halved since Act 46 went through. So in that respect, maybe there are some good things about Act 46. But what I want to draw your attention to is the fact that a non-resident paying a lower rate than a resident is not something anybody on the local level would have ever thought is a good idea. And the strangest thing is if you look at the taxation part of that bill, it goes on for page after page after page after page. And what I see as a local representative, I see this again and again and again. Let's take, for example, Act 64. The state wants to clean up Lake Champlain. Well, who doesn't want to do that? I mean, that's a great idea. But if you look closely at the way that language in the bill reads, smaller towns like Calis, Plainfield and Marshfield, have to do more remediation than the guys who were right next to the lake. And I don't need to be a scientist to know what's going on there. Obviously, they had better representation in Chittenden County on that particular issue. Even more egregious, in my view, is the state in this Act 64 thing. In order to clean up Lake Champlain, they mandated a general road permit for the town. So basically, what you had is Montpelier oversees and tells you which parts of the road you have to fix, and there's a timetable on this and that. And I complained bitterly about this. I said, guys, what is this about? Suddenly, we have to take care of class four roads. Suddenly, we have to do this. Oh, no, no, no, Brandt, don't worry about it. This is another thing. 30 seconds, Brandt. 30 seconds. Okay, I said, what about, who's going to pay for all this? And they said, don't worry, there's funding available. I said, you don't know what a small town office is like. Because if you need to get the funding, you have to, that means what, I have to spend four more hours a week writing grant proposals and not getting them. I'm probably over time, am I? Not yet. Oh, no, okay, five seconds. Five seconds. When we have a goal, let's keep the local interest in mind. And they said five minutes was going to be too long. I knew you guys could do it. So, shoot. We're just going to have a series of questions now. To each, for both candidates to answer, I'm going to give each candidate two minutes to answer. And the candidate who goes first has the opportunity for a 30 second response after the second answer if they choose. But if you choose not, that's fine also. I'll start with some, I'll start with some easier ones. And by the way, these are excellent questions from the audience. So this is really going to be fun. If you were elected to the house, what would your top three priorities be? And Mark, do you want to start us? If they always want numbers, my top three, my top one. Actually, it's easy. Rural economic revitalization, rural economic revitalization, rural economic revitalization. That's, I mean, it's all about money. It's just getting too expensive, too difficult to live here in a lot of ways. And I think the way we have to approach that is one, because we have to find ways to deal with the housing problem. So we have to make it easier to build housing, but we want the housing focused in the village centers. We don't want to grow subdivisions on our farmland. And that's, I've watched that happen. It can happen. We don't want to do that. So we have to find ways to concentrate housing in our village centers. And to get young people into them. The legislature approved about $4 million to help first time homebuyers, and I just think that's a drop in the bucket. So we have to address the housing. The other is we have to, we have this special landscape, which is totally unique. It doesn't look like this anywhere else. And it's wonderful. I know from talking to people how much they love it. And that is farms. So we have to get young people on farms. And I know we can do that because I was chair of the Vermont Land Trust. And we did it. We can do it. We can get young people onto farms. So, and then we have to revitalize our village, which is of course why we're all, a whole bunch of us are working on the store. Is cause, you know, there has to be a there there in the village. Graham, same question. Well, I am completely in agreement regarding the housing issue. And I want to direct everybody's attention to an article that was published this week in Business Insider. And it profiles a nice Connecticut couple who have an Airbnb empire and they gross $100,000 a month. Not to begrudge them. But here's the thing. My spouse works in social services and people are not aware of how bad it is.   The motel system presently is completely booked up. And starting July 1st, new rules will apply and a lot of those people will be evicted. So I, you know, my opponent is completely correct. Housing is number one. I think my emphasis would also be to make sure the local voice is heard. Because over and over again, I mean, I could sit here all night long and talk about things that I would like to change. Am I doing okay? I'll give you a 30 second warning right now. Okay. What I would focus on, and which is why I would be interested in government operations, is to make sure that when large scale things are passed that the town clerk gives feedback, that the local residents give feedback. It's critical. You cannot have this job and not know what the local people, how it really impacts them. So I have a question for the audience and for the candidates. Should we switch to one minute answers? Or stay at two? Switch to one? Two is good? Okay. Two is good. Okay. We have a lot of good questions. I wanna make sure we get somebody. Do I get a rebuttal? Yeah. Really a rebuttal. Okay, I'll be quick. I agree completely. Social services need more money in the state. It's just tragic. And a real good example is childcare is weird. Parents are paying too much. Childcare providers don't earn enough. No one in their right mind would go into the field. It needs the application of a lot of money and the estimates right now are like $300 million. We can't just raise the tax rates. We gotta figure out where that comes from. That's gonna be difficult. And that's your 30 seconds. Thank you. Can I speak to that issue? Or should we move on? But let's move on because we actually have a question from the audience on that topic. And I think it's a good one. So let's go there next. The question is, Bram, for you to start, the question is, I know I have it here. What steps would you take to ensure improved childcare? Okay, once again, it goes back to my central theme, which is people not listening. There is a woman who had a childcare service in our community, 30 years. People were dying to get their kids in that program. And guess what? She doesn't do it anymore. And part of the reasons she doesn't do it anymore is the state decided that she needed to be certified in a special way. And she had to take courses from the college-educated people with all this knowledge about how to treat kids, which she had to pay for. Now, I'm all for accreditation and certification. But when you scorn people who have a track record, it doesn't work. And you could improve childcare immediately if you had respect for the people who've been doing it. And now we have this childcare crisis. Now, I applaud Let's Grow Kids in terms of raising a standard. I think that that's a wonderful idea. But when you raise the standard to a point where you disenfranchise seasoned people who have a track record, I think it's deplorable. So the first thing I would do is have a real conversation about opening it up to people with the track records and bringing them in to help the situation. Mark, concrete steps on to improving childcare. Yeah, it's not like a broken record. It has to do with money. I think right now the state pays about a quarter of the bill for childcare. And that's just not gonna work. The problem is childcare is worse in some ways than medicine because we all know there's a lot of problems with medicine and its delivery, but there's a lot of money floating around in the system. With childcare, there just isn't enough money. It's, the parents are paying too much, much greater percentage of their income than they should be. It's like marginal, whether you go to work or not. That's bad for our economy. And on the other hand, the childcare providers can't earn a living. Particularly, I agree with Graham, there will be a difference between us somewhere. I, you need premium economy when you fly and I don't. That's the reason. But I think that it's really, it's problem that we've gotta find a way to funnel more money into the system so that childcare providers can earn a good living. We'd have to make sure that childcare providers that are larger pay people, a good amount. And that's key. So I think that it's real. This is the problem the legislature is gonna face this year.  We are going to have to figure out how to finance this. Everybody knows the system is broken. 30 second warning. I'm done. Good, okay. Graham, any response or good on that question? No, I think that there certainly is the money issue and we definitely need to pay people a livable wage to do this incredibly difficult work that is not really acknowledged. Oh yeah, absolutely. What's the, this is Mark to start. What's the right balance between local and state authority? And are we out of balance here in this district and in this state one direction or the other? I think that everything starts with local. It has to start with local. We know what our problems are. No one knows what our problems are like we do. And frankly, I have to say, I think on some level no one cares about our problems like we do unless they're general problems. So what, when a group like you guys elect people like us to represent you, our job is to apply those local needs in a way that generates results for us that work. And when we fail, you get situations like Graham was talking about. You get over bureaucratization and stuff like that. That can be addressed. It can be addressed by legislators, but it takes work. So for me, the key is that the representative on the local level works on the state level to get results for the locals. Now, it also takes someone who knows, I think to be a legislator, you gotta listen. That's probably the most important thing you gotta do. You can't pontificate to people who are also elected and they don't have to listen to you. You have to build coalitions and you have to figure out ways to put together something that really works. At the same time, how long have I got? 30 seconds, right? At perfect. At the same time, you have to be independent of party when you're in the legislature. I mean, I'm a Democrat, that's fine, but I don't agree with everything that Democrats will always ask for. And if I feel like, and I'm in the legislature, if I feel like the Democratic party is saying X and I believe my constituents need Y, I have to be able to say no. Bram, balance between local and state authority and are we out of balance? We're completely out of balance. The state authority has taken Dylan's rule, which is this legal concept of the state knows all and can destroy the town if it chooses to, to the nth degree as far as I'm concerned. Let me give you an example. The organization that's supposed to help and support town affairs is the League of Cities and Towns. They're very nice people and they've done some good things, but in terms of advocating for the town, it's been a disaster. I'll give you an example. As road foreman, I was called by the League of Cities and Towns and they said, you have to go to a training because you supervise people who, you know, drive the trucks and this and that. So I go with, sorry, I was road commissioner. I went with my road foreman. We drove two hours or whatever, someplace to the northeast kingdom where a person from the Vermont League of Cities and Towns, we met with all the other road foremen and the course was one hour of how to tell if somebody's drunk and one hour to see how, if somebody's on something other than alcohol. I'm not making this up. This is a group of middle-aged men and we're sitting there having a discussion about how do you tell if someone's drunk? Well, I guess if they're sleeping in the corner of the garage you can, you know, I mean, the whole thing sticks. So at the end of this, I got my Vermont League of Cities and Town reasonable suspicion trading test certificate. I'm an expert. Mark's completely drunk. No. I wish. This to me, the League needs to be helpful to the town and not put us all through this. And I understand this is in a modern world, you know, we all have to go through this kabuki dance of nonsense. But I mean, do we have to make a show of it? Mark, are you responsible at all? I think that if I were in the legislature I'd join the rural caucus, which I think is a place where we can address some of these issues. I don't wanna sound like a Pollyanna. I agree that there's just a lot of ways we can improve it, but a good example where things work is broadband. I mean, this came up from us. We created CV Fiber. You know, we did all of this and look what happened. We just got $31 million. We couldn't have done it ourselves, but we started it. I'll ask a couple now that I think are pretty easy, yes and no questions, but good ones. And I think we probably won't need the full two minutes all time just in case, but starting with you, Bram, have you read the town plans for each of the towns in the district? I have not read Calis. I actually helped write the town plan for Plainfield. And I remember when I was doing that, I went through the Marshfield one. But, sorry, should you want me to stand on that? No, that's great. Great, yeah. Same, I've read the Calis plan. I've used the Calis plan because we had to use it to get money. And no, I haven't yet read the other two towns plans. And if elected, not only would I learn the plans, but I'd meet with there with the select boards. You gotta remember, this is, it's funny, we're so small, but it's three towns. It's like they're foreign countries. And that's silly. And as a legislator, we've gotta really get to know. We really have to get to know each other. And I would look forward to being educated. I don't know. There's lots I don't know. Another quick one, starting with Mark. And, Bram, you probably don't need a rejoinder on the town plan question, I would expect, but you're welcome to do it if you'd like. Actually, just one second. For all those who don't know about the town plan, it's very, very, very important because if you want legal standing to protest something, it has to be in the town plan. So I encourage you, not only to read it, but next time they're writing it, have something to say, because if you have a complaint about some issue, that's the document that is the legal standard of the direction of the town's going. I think Bram started that question. So Mark, do you support ranked choice voting for Vermont? And why or why not? Yes. Why? I think it's more accurate. I think it produces better results. I just think it's better. Yeah, it's a little complicated, but I think it's a good idea. I think it's better. I definitely support it. Great. How about that? You've got more time. That is perfect. Thank you. Bram? Yeah, I would agree with Mark that I think that, I think that the idea behind ranked choice voting is that if a majority of the people agree on one of the pool of candidates, that candidate should win rather than the person. And I think that that's a fine concept. I think we need a little bit of education because I think I had an argument with somebody about this who thought that I was upending democracy and all this. And I said, well, I mean, I think we have to kind of go through the steps, you know? So yeah, I support it. No rejoining. Great. Mark, starting with you. Ultimately, the state budget is a single most consequential piece of policy enacted by the legislature. What's the single area which is underfunded in recent approved budgets and how would you pay for additional funding for it through specific taxes or cuts elsewhere? Well, there isn't a single area. There's massive areas. And I could talk about them, but you know, I've been talking about them.  I think we're a pretty high tax state. I don't, I think we have to live within our means. I mean, does this make me a fiscal conservative? You know, I don't know. There's all these labels that are really silly. I just think we have to live within our means. I don't, we're a pretty high tax state. There are other states that are higher, but they're bigger generally. And I don't think we can just like raise taxes. That said, I think there are some things we could do. We could tax, for example, I think we could say capital gains are tax like income. But there are areas where I wouldn't tax. I don't think we ought to tax military pensions, for example. Maybe we shouldn't tax pensions. But I don't, I have to confess that that's as far as I wanna go because that's as far as I know at this point. But I'd like to be educated. Bram, same question. Places in the state budget that are underfunded and how would you increase their funding? Well, I think my answer might surprise and that I think that housing is underfunded but let me just step back. And I think this is, when you talk about the state budget and when you talk about spending money in a lot of ways, I think it's important to have more nuance. Here's an example. Governor Scott got a lot of headlines and rightly so for this $40 million project, housing project in Randolph, which is absolutely wonderful and I'm very supportive of it. But at the same time, the state has spent, in excess of I think $100 million, temporarily housing people in motels. This is insane. And you wanna talk about money out the window and guess what? Starting July 1st, that's all gonna change and in fact a lot of the social service agencies have notified the police because they're nervous about this sort of unrest. So if there's an area that we need to spend more but spend it wisely, it would be housing. And we're gonna get a lot more influx of people coming here. I mean, there was a PBS show where they asked everybody, what is the county in the United States? What is the single most county that would be the most resilient to climate change? It turned out to be LaMoyle County, weirdly enough. 30 seconds. So what I'd say is that we have to, when looking at the budget, we have to really think carefully about how the money is spent with the notion that a lot of what makes callus callus, Marshfield, Marshfield and Plainfield, Plainfield, is under threat in a sense because of a broad Chitenden County approach to solving problems. I do have a rejoinder there. I guess this is a point of difference. I think the temporary motel thing was great. And I think it was a stay up and it was a move in the right direction. I can't comment on whether it's gonna end or not and how it's gonna end because I just don't know but those people who would be people on the streets, I think it was an interim situation and we did a great thing. So I'm an incrementalist. I think you take things one step at a time and I think that that was a good thing. Could I respond to that? Not by the rules, but you'll have a chance at the end. You know, if he's gonna respond then I'm gonna ask Gus Selig to respond to it. Exactly, I don't want to change the rules if you're... Is it okay or not? No.  Just ask another question, I'll work with you. You can work it in. You can work it in or you can work it in at the end. Yes. Starting, who started that one? I guess Mark, you started that one. So, Bram, for you first, what will you do to help implement Vermont's Climate Action Plan and help achieve the goals of Vermont's Global Worming Solutions Act? So for all those who are not familiar, the idea is to switch away from fossil fuels and I think it's 90 by 2050. Then in other words, by the year 2050, we should have 90% renewables, as I think that the sort of shorthand gist of the law. I think that the main challenge, if you look at greenhouse gas emissions is in transportation. So, in order to address this, I think we have to focus building around transportation corridors. And I think that that opens up a very big discussion between the state and the towns in terms of how to manage that solution. So I think that that would be a critical, if we could get people to use commute less. The other key thing is that I think that possibly the government should get involved with whether or not you commute at all. So, it'd be interesting to know if telecommuting became something of, oh, I don't know, if there was some way of evaluating whether or not, because a lot of times I see a lot of people who could easily work from home, but their boss is like, you gotta make that commute here. Well, possibly that could be an issue to discuss. 30 seconds, man. So, in other words, if you have a business, maybe the more people who telecommute, you get some sort of benefit or something like that. So, but I think the focus is on transportation and of course heating is another issue. Mark? Again, I think this is something that's gonna take some really serious negotiation in the legislature. It's not like we don't know what to do. We know what to do. It's just the governor vetoes it when we try it. And so we're gonna have to override the veto we almost did with the clean heat standard, but whatever we do and however it emerges, we're gonna have to at least next year overcome a veto, I think. So, we have to reduce dependence on oil. You know that we export a billion dollars a year to, you know, for that we pay for oil that leaves the state. It goes to Saudi Arabia and Texas. It's not generating jobs here. It isn't doing any good for us here. So we have to get off of oil and that means weatherization, heat pumps, clean heat, et cetera. It's not like people don't wanna do that. They do, but they don't have the money to do it. So we need programs that have the state and federal money to do all that in a way that's reliable over time because we're not gonna get the workforce to weatherize because we have a lot of money one year from the feds and then the next year it all dries up. It's not gonna work. So we have to find ways to do that. On transportation, although I agree that corridors are nice in an urban area, I think we're all doomed to drive for a long time here. 30 seconds. And so I'm afraid the solution is electrification of our fleet. And again, right now electric cars and I own one, they're too expensive. They're not available, but they will come down. And I think they will sell themselves and I think that will help. So that's, I think that we know what to do, we've known what to do for years. We just haven't been able to do it. And it's in the legislature. We can do it. Great, thanks. Bram, a response? Well, yeah, I mean, I think, I agree. I think that one of the important aspects of climate policy in general is to really be sensitive to people who cannot afford things. And you pointed this out very clearly that obviously we know what to do. That's 30 seconds. Oh my gosh. Goes my past, right? Just gonna play. That's amazing. Thanks. I think this one's for Mark first. You're both running as Democrats. Why run as a Democrat? I'm sorry, I just have no place in my existence for the modern American Republican Party. You know, my grandfather was a Republican and he'd roll over in his grave at what we're seeing. Now, you know, there's a lot of moderate Democrats. I used to represent in my environmental law practice.  But, and I know we have good moderate Democrats and I guess, and Republicans, and I guess in some ways, I'm a, am I a fiscal conservative? I guess in some ways I am. But when I look at the governor, for example, I think the governor, there's a lot of, there's some good things he's done. You know, COVID, he listened to science. I mean, okay. He did a good job. He did, took a stand on guns. That was good. But otherwise, it's the status quo. All the problems we're talking about, they're not gonna change. You don't change anything if you just say, oh my God, we can't raise taxes and I have no other ideas. And I think that's where the Republican Party is right now. So no, I would not feel comfortable as a Republican. Yeah, I think I feel that the Democratic Party is more in line with the things that I believe in. And I think I agree with what Mark said earlier that not everything that the Democratic Party does would I immediately jump on board about. So yeah, I think I don't see, I think Vermont has a Republican Party that certainly doesn't represent what's going on nationally, which is positive. But I just feel more comfortable running as a Democrat. Graham, for you to start, what qualities make a good legislator? Well, I have a little newspaper article here. A guy, and I'm probably gonna mispronounce his last name, Ted Reel. Does anybody know what that is? Ted Reel? Maybe I'm not. Really? Okay, see, I wasn't born in Vermont, but people who've been here a long time know that. But history does not remember, you know, Ted Reel. Let me tell you two things. Ted Reel is responsible for banning billboards and Greenup Day. Pretty good, huh? So that to me is a legislator. Somebody whose legacy is not in his name is in the work that's done. Okay, so the legislature is 150 people who are equal. And I think that the most important thing that a legislator needs to do is to have a reputation there as someone people can talk to. Someone who will really listen to them, not just sort of listen to them, but actually listen and figure out what it is they really think. And if they are people who don't see the world the way you do, which there are plenty of people like that in the legislature, I'm sure that you're patient with them. So listening plus patience. The third quality is then the ability to process it all and come up with a coalition. Is there a place where we overlap enough that we can actually advance our goals? And the phrase I hear most use which resonates me is the enemy of the good is the perfect. You never get all you want, but you try to keep moving in advance part of what you want. So a good legislature knows how to do that. And I've talked about independence. You have to be able to tell a party no.  Well, they don't care. So. Bram, any response or are you good? Oh, no, okay. Um, because you brought up leadership, whichever of you wins, presuming you win the general, we'll go into a legislature with a historically high turnover, particularly among chairs. How will you deal with the relative newness of so many of the legislators? And would you anticipate being in it, pursuing either a chair or a leadership position of some kind to mark my, I think it's your turn to start. Yeah, it's going to be chaotic. It really is. Normally what happens is you have to, they ask you, well, what committees do you want to be on? And you rank your committees. And what you do is you go around asking, well, who's the chair and are they any good? You know, and that, but what is the chair? You don't know who the chair is. It's going to be very chaotic. I will not seek a leadership position in my first year of my first term. I, you know, I've never been a legislator. It's a new thing. I've done a lot of new things in my life. Try being a dean for the first time. Oh my God. Anyway, when you do that, you don't know anything. And you just have to spend a lot of time learning and listening. So I think I'd be, I think I'd be a little reluctant to seek, certainly seek a leadership position in my first year of the first term. And we're going to just have to learn from the people who've been there. There are people, I've talked to, three or four legislators. There's people there who have been there and we can talk to them. Oh yeah, I think my strategy would, I'm in agreement with Mark on this. I don't think, I don't feel comfortable that I'd want to step in and try to be a chair or anything like that. I think I have certainly a number of committees that I'd love to serve on. I think my, the decision about what to go to would really actually be more about the people on the committee than the issue. So like, you know, would the current ranking member or would the, if the chair is talking to things, is he somebody who I think I could, you know, get along with, get things done? That would be the deciding factor rather than specifically the committee's actions. But I wouldn't, I would mark on not wanting to try to do the leadership position. Wave. So I have a question, I guess for the audience. We've got a couple of other good questions from the audience and I want to give the candidates a chance to ask each other questions. Would you like to take a break and come back? Would you like to keep going and try to wrap up in about an hour or so? Okay, I mean an hour total, not an hour more. All right, great. Mark, you started that last question, correct? Yeah. Great. Another audience question here. In a time of national disunity, what can you do to help Vermont maintain a sense of unity as our representative? And Brandon, that would be for you first. Well, I think it's very important to communicate with everyone in the community. Now, I have a track record in Plainfield. You know, the anarchists who lived up at the top of Spruce, know me. They didn't like it when I wanted to have the police do speed stuff and all that. They were very much against that, but we had a dialogue. People who are on the other side of the political spectrum had a lot of problems with me, weirdly enough, it was a traffic issue. I wanted to put in some speed bumps, but that didn't go over well. But you really have to be in dialogue with very different people. And I think actually a prerequisite for getting into politics would be being a road commissioner.  And it doesn't matter if it's somebody who doesn't have a lot of money or has a lot of big fancy, this is an issue.  I mean, Erika can attest to some of the voice messages that have come across the machine sometimes. It's a tough gig, so. Mark, same question to you. I agree that the local level is a great school for teaching you how to deal with everybody.  At the legislature, I'm gonna take your question as at the legislature. Well, first of all, again, I hate political labels, but I guess I'll put it as a personality. My approach is I'm a moderate. It's not political. I'm a moderate in that I've just been through too many fights, too many battles to think there's just one side to anything. There's always two, three, four, five sides to every issue.  Truly believed that they were going to put it over on you. People believe in themselves. They care about their positions. And so I think in the legislature, despite what I said about the National Republican Party, I wanna be a person that Republicans know, eat with, talk to, socialize with, can talk freely about what they care about and listen to what I care about. Any response? No response, okay. Great. Mark, what's the most important single thing you're doing to get to know the people in the district who are not in your own town? Well, I haven't done that much yet. I've been kind of busy. It's funny how running for office takes up your time. But I'm gonna talk to a lot of voters in Plainfield and Marshfield. And that really helps. I find that when I go to voters' houses, sometimes people just say, thanks, take the brochure, I'm cooking, goodbye. But a lot of times, they really appreciate that someone's talking to them and they tell you what they think. And a lot of what I've heard, I didn't know. Or I knew, but I knew in theory, but hearing it from people face to face is not the same as knowing it in theory. I think if I'm elected, first of all, the session Tuesday through Friday, I think on Mondays I'm gonna be here in the district having coffee with people, with our elected officials. I think I'd like to spend some time in meetings, in select board meetings. I'd like to go to the select board. If I were to win, I'd talk to him. He's been all over in his community. I mean, he's well known, he knows the issues there. And that would, that would be a major effort on my part. I'd have to, you have to be taught. Same question, most important thing you're doing to get to know those and not in your town. Well, I have, I know people, because Marshfield and Plainfield share a front porch forum post and because of the school being joined, I do know people in Marshfield as well as Plainfield. I don't know as many people in Calis, and I've reached out to a number of people and I've had some fun encounters and I have, I've really grown to appreciate Calis. Do you know that Calis has its own road standard? Do you know that? All this beautiful, once again, getting back to what I was talking about. This is really, to me, what it's about. The reason why Calis kind of looks as nice as it does is suddenly they didn't adopt a road standard where they had to mow down every tree and make sure that every road is three-rod. So I think it's a wonderful community and I'm just, I don't know, I'm calling up people on this and that and just trying to touch base with everybody. I do have a, you know, I think a really good example of a really great legislator. Anybody know Jane Kitchell here?  I would like to be, I would like to be anywhere near as good as Jane Kitchell because she listens, she's calm, she's quiet, and usually she ends up being right. And I just wanted to say that. I think I really admire her as an example of a great legislator. Great, we haven't gotten all the way through all the questions, certainly not on my list, but not even all of those for the audience, but I think I'd like to switch to having the candidates ask each other questions for a little while if that's all right. And so I guess starting with you, asking the question, Mark, since you answered the last question, just ask you to ask for him a question and then I'll give him two minutes to respond to it and the candidates won't answer their own questions, only the ones posed by the other candidates. So when you're ready, Mark, thanks. I have to admit, I hadn't thought about this. We have something in common. I think we have a lot in common actually. Okay, so what I'm seeing is a difference between us is I'm more kind of, I'm more optimistic about the locals. I think I'm a little more positive about the local state relationship than you. So I guess my question is, am I right? You've listened to me and if you really feel so negative about it, do you want to be in the legislator? Well, here's the thing. I think that there are a lot of wonderful people in the legislature, including the people who are here in this room tonight. So my negativity springs from a feeling of being disenfranchised and also not having people's needs met when they should. So I, my upsetness and so forth really speaks to policy, not to people. I think I can get along with people and get things done. I think it's that people don't realize what the policy brings. So it's not that I don't want to go in there as a bomb thrower and destroy everything or anything. The bottom line is that when you have a policy, like here's an example, once again, a million examples, but as a select board member, you know this, every select board meeting or not every quarter, whatever it is, we go through and we okay something called fleet permits. Now, what is that? Fleet permit is that the trucks that use the town roads, if they're a fleet, they pay $10 a year. And if they're an individual truck, they pay $5 a year and we go through this rigmarole where we okay the fleet permits. And what's that about? Well, I looked up the law and the law says, well, it's about giving money to help the wear and tear on highways. Well, that's absurd, $10, what are you talking about? Well, what it's really about is it gets the towns to certify the insurance status of the trucks because that's what you need when you present the town clerk. That's an example of, to me, we either get real money to fix the roads or we stop the sort of thing of okaying other people's thing, I mean, this is sort of what I'm getting at. So I think that can be effective. Mark, question for Brown? I just did. You just did. Oh, sorry. He's got an event. So I actually, Mark has a very distinguished career in as a lawyer and head of a law school. And what I was interested in is one of the things that seems to be on the national stage is rule of law. That suddenly laws and the Supreme Court and institutions that we're used to are losing ground. And as someone who has dedicated a large part of their life to law stuff, I was wondering if you fear any of that in Vermont or if you could sort of give your perspective if you were in the legislature and what that means to you. Yeah, I have a lot of fear, not so much for Vermont, but I'm afraid. I think when you talk to law students, 20-somethings, that's holds, they come there 22 years old and you talk to them about rule of law. Before Trump, it was like Snoozeville. I wanna do environmental law. I wanna do racial, social justice. I wanna do whatever. Rule of law because they'd never lived in an era which told them what life might be like without it. And then after Trump, people were crying at the school, people were incredibly upset. All of a sudden, everybody's interested in the rule of law. I guess my feeling is we need to teach civics. There's just been a loss. We need to teach civics in the school. Chris's books, she's written on the Supreme Court, she's written on freedom of speech, she's written on freedom of the press for kids, picture books. We need to start there. So it's just something we've lost and I think we've really gotta push it. It's just not sexy. Yeah, it might be so. Until you lose. Exactly, then it's scary. Shall we do one more round of those? Mark, Karen, one more. I don't have enough. You're out. This is it's closing. Yeah, I think people have endured us for as much as they should. So let's have each candidate, starting with Bram, give a 90 second close and we'll call it an evening. Great, I just wanted to get back to the motel question. I'm not throwing people in the street and my criticism of the motel program is not that it's not needed. It's certainly needed. And I wouldn't mind a motel program that had an ending or a starting. It's just that when the state is embracing such difficult and trying questions, the cruelty and cavalierness of what is going on is mind boggling. I mean, we live in a country and I think people in this room would be absolutely shocked by what goes on. And I think it's Dickinsonian or whatever. It's something out of another era.  This is an elderly man. And he, Erica offered him a tent and he couldn't use it. He couldn't physically put up the tent. I got, you know, Erica was crafty and figured out a way to get that guy housed. But my God, what kind of country do we live in? What, where are we? And I think in terms of the tax questions and the spending, we have to basically shape policy. Sorry.  Go ahead, I'm sorry. Thank you. Mark? This is the end. Okay, so I've really learned a lot of doing this and I thank, I just feel privileged and wonderful that to have been talking to people, teaching and I just want to thank everybody for, I'm thrilled that this many of you came out. I mean, hey, you know, you could be at home having dinner and having a drink, a glass of wine or whatever and I or soda water, whatever, and you're doing this. And I'm just really grateful. I'm grateful for the intelligent questions. I've spent my life as a negotiator and as a collaborator and a builder of coalitions and if I'm in the legislature, I'll just keep doing it and listening to you and enjoying it. So thank you. So we're done. Thank you. Yeah, thank you. And thanks all of you.


Hi everyone, this is Jason here from Nathaniel. In this lesson, I'm going to teach you how you can make a very, very unique chord progression using nothing but the circle of fifths, a chapter which I'm sure you'll find all over the place. You know that circle, right? C, G, D, A, E, B, F sharp, D flat, A flat, E flat, B flat, F and C. You have to write it that way, then you have to also remember it that way, then you can get a lot of these charts and stick it in your house. I'm sure some of you even have it, right? Now we are going to actually take that, use it and make some serious music out of it which is going to be very, very unique and very, very interesting. So let's get started right away. The first thing I want you to do is just draw the circle, right? So the circle of fifths will have basically fifths. So you have C, G, D, A, E, B, F sharp. If you look at it as a clock and then you do, you continue D flat, A flat, E flat, B flat, F, C. And while you write it, you can write it clockwise, it's also nice to even remember it counterclockwise. So maybe one practice you could do will be this way, the other could be that way. So that's C, F, B flat, E flat, A flat, D flat, G flat at the six o'clock mark clockwise and then you do B, E, A, D, G, C. You go like that. So it may even help if you want, you could pause the video, doesn't matter. You can always restart and write it down. It's very, very important to write the circle and stick till the end of the lesson because we are going to move step by step until you really get stuff going on, on whichever instrument you may be playing, be it the piano or the guitar or whatever. So if I'm in the key of C, we are basically going to drift away from this center away from this tonal center C by staring at the circle and seeing how do we get back to C. You know, how far can I go and how can I come back? Well, the circle of fifths has that property. So if you go clockwise from anywhere back to your tonal center, in this case C, it's going to just work. It's going to sound really good. So for example, if I just do F going to C, F, C, works really well as a chord progression. It's actually what we call as a cadence, the plagal cadence. I could even do B flat, F, C, that's like a very Beatles with a little help from my friends or a Mixolydian chord progression as we call it, B flat, F, C. But now the journey could be beyond that. You know, you could take, let's say A flat, which is away from C a lot, right? You do A flat, E flat, B flat, F and C, all major chords. So how is this working? This is an entire circle of fifths journey, a clockwise journey, where I am identifying or respecting the fact that C is my tonal center, but I am approaching C via A flat. So A flat, E flat works, B flat, F, C, so they all kind of link and connect with each other, right? That's the beauty or the power of this plagal cadence, 4 going to 1 as we say. So we've not really heard this chord progression in a lot of pop songs, right? Because pop songs these days, at least, work very diatonically. What that means is people will have a major scale with 7 notes, then you have 3 major, 3 minor and 1 diminished, you don't think out of that, right? So with this progression, you don't care about the scale chords as such, you just care about the tonal center, in this case C, or you want it to somehow come to C major. So if you play this chord progression, you can actually develop these small melodic phrases. For example, so I did that on the plagal journey from A flat to E flat. And now if I follow that pattern up, and now do B flat going to F, right? I'm just composing a melody on those chords, really, and then end on C major, which is pretty much the full stop of your song or the end of the phrase. So you can do that, okay, B, E flat now, B flat, F, C. And what's important to note when the melody is being constructed, I'm pretty much thinking chord tones, but with a little bit of color, so I can add that B flat, which is what we call as a passing or a connecting note, to come back to a chord note, which in this case is A flat, so A flat, E flat major, I'm choosing to only play chord tones. E flat, B flat is adding that C there for flavor, A, F major, slide to F and end on C. So I have a nice phrase, I think, you know, CSUS maybe, it depends where you want to use it for your song, maybe the bridge, maybe the chorus, I guess if you see fit, it also depends on your vision for this, right. So you could use this for some reason with the diatonic world, you know, if you maybe have one chord progression, which is very normal like C, A minor, F, G, C, you've heard this before maybe. You come back to the tonic, so it's a great way to kind of leave the normal diatonic world, which is the major scale, come out of it, come back into it or just stay out of it, maybe you don't want to do a diatonic chord progression at all, right. So another way to use this movement is to keep the root note in the left hand consistent, you can just keep C constant and we call this an ostinato pattern, that means a pattern with a consistent base, okay. So now look at all the chords with respect to the C, that's A flat over C, E flat over C, B flat over C, F over C and back to C. So the only chord which kind of sounds stable is the chord which has its name in the bottom, right, A flat over C, E flat over C, B flat, F, C and as you go away from the tonal center C, you start getting that chaos going on, it doesn't sound wrong, it just sounds interesting, right. So maybe you don't want to drift more than four o'clock away from C, you know, one o'clock, F, two o'clock, B flat, three o'clock, E flat, four o'clock, A flat and then five o'clock, I like it, six o'clock, F sharp, a bit dicey, right, but it depends, you can go as you go away from the tonal center, so that's also what the circle of fifths teaches you as you go away from the tonic or the tonal center C to F sharp is the most adventurous of the lot or the most chaotic if you will of the lot. So this is how I propose this circle of fifths journey or clockwise journey if you will, you build chord progressions essentially by imagining the root or the tonal center in this case C and then go all the way maybe up to four o'clock from C in the circle of fifths and then journey back clockwise back to the root and you got yourself, I hope, a very very interesting chord progression which you can use for a song or to maybe spice up a song, maybe you could use this at the bridge section if you will of a piece of music. So again, this is Jason here from Nathaniel, I hope you found the lesson useful, if you have, please like, share, comment on the video, request us for something more which you'd like to learn, don't forget to subscribe and hit that bell without fail, cheers.


The Labour Party Lagos State Chapter has declared that it is committed to justice, fairness and will organize credible primary elections in order to produce a candidate capable of winning the forthcoming Suriliri federal constituency won by elections later for August 19th. The Labour Party Lagos State Chairperson Pastor Dayo Ekung, who stated this while addressing newsmen in Lagos, cautioned aspirants against the patronized and illegal factions of the party for parties of expression of interest and nomination forms. She also disclosed that the Labour Party Working Committee will soon unveil the party's expression of interest and nomination forms for interesting aspirants. You saw the iNEC timetable flying around about bi-election and in Lagos states we're going to have bi-election, the one that is certain that we are well if are correct in Suriliri. So there's going to be primaries. We're going to choose the person to represent us for the House of Representatives in Suriliri and therefore we're going to come out with the forms for interested candidates. Our members, whether at the State House of Assembly or House of Representatives or even the Senate, they are people who came out to fight for the interests of the people. They won the elections, the elections based on the support, based on the people understanding that these are men that are going to represent them. So they will not get into the House and be carried away, leered away by inducement of any sort to work for another party. They may be there in few numbers, but by the end of the tribunals, by the time the cases at the tribunals are decided, definitely we will have more people, you know, more elected members on the platform of Labour Party. People saw what Labour represents and continue to represent and they willingly bought into it. Yes, the intimidation, the harassment is there, but it is not deterring anybody because every member of Labour Party knows that the cause we are fighting for is the cause that concerns everybody in Nigeria. So in spite of all those challenges, majority of Nigerians know that the fight, the tumble, is for the emancipation of Nigeria and Nigerians and their fully committed. The National Chairman of Labour Party, as are today, tomorrow, is nobody but Barista Julius Aboule. And the Lego States, the Chairman of Labour Party Lego States. And my escort is no other person, but my own self, Pastor Dayo. I want to say this, any other faction is counter-meeting. They are not the leger body and they can never be the leger body. So please resist them and do not join them. Hello, hope you enjoyed the news. Please do subscribe to our YouTube channel and don't forget to hit the notification button so you get notified about fresh news updates.


Everybody mad here for late in sports car drip in 2022 bowman draft baseball super jumbo. This is one box for Scott. You luck Scott Yes, we do ship international Shipping is responsible for your customers fees holiday here. There's a holiday But what I said was a big holiday. There's another holiday. I keep saying it maybe helps keep up. No, excuse my heart trade lips come All right See a big holiday here. I pulled three holiday one of ones Pull the black shimmer auto out of this Pull pretty no super fracture sample this Pull the super out of omens bass non-auto called Phillips Kunya Miller and refractor out of to 499 Steven so back And then Out of I was that way like before I went out in 2021 with the medical stuff. I pulled uh, I mean there was just like draft picks the whole three Lamella one chase my droth purple paper to 250 like prism draft contenders draft those types Nice that's a green refractor to 99 drew Gilbert solid card for you Scott And Ryan Ritter First bowman auto Yeah, my favorite was in the late 80s early 90s. There's Elijah When there was an Andy Allinson and an Alan Anderson jace Saddam raffaella victor ryanakunya so contra Mason Barnett It's all a nice color. I can see who it was though Hopefully it's in the auto spot woman Diaz sky blue paper Tamar there's tamar refractor pirata jerky Simon one and Landon Sims first bowman gold refractor auto to 50 All right, come on Scott. Let's do better in this house Brandon Barrera Baker young Andrew Pentar first bowman purple refractor Jacob Melton Austin Hendrick and Sonny Di Chiara That is Sparkle to 71 sparkle auto I really want to pull a son of Di Chiara orange refractor Sonny the orange one Sonny D So I just start picking up oddball stuff like that. Nobody else Realized it with that, you know Or in Sonny D And then I would end up broke because I would find out nobody else is as nerdy as I think it comes to Things like that Michael Noor Jared McKenzie. All right, come on. Let's finish strong Christian Hernandez aqua paper to 199 Sal Stewart aqua lava to 199 Furman mayo and Sean McLean first bowman auto All right, that'll do it for your box. Appreciate it Scott. We'll get these right out to you


What's going on y'all Kristen joshes case breaks calm doing our second and last R&B for this PYT National Treasures football mix number nine from the Jets Dolphins Eagles Giants Panthers Lions Colts and Seahawks usually would give away the two free spots, but since Joshua bought all the four spots outright. I'm just gonna do it for practice just because yeah God knows I need it We're good for the practice and as we do our numbers here our dice than our numbers, of course All redundant cards go to spot zero even if it's a one-on-one Live one-on-ones will go to spot number one So I'll grab these names again even though even I'll just grab all four of Joshua's names Even though when people that got spots outright are eligible. We're just doing this for practice. Yes You bought them all so we'll just do it just because I need the practice so thanks y'all for the patience appreciate it Here's a one and six is seven so Joshua. Good luck. One two three four five six and our last one seven Joshua and Joshua nice last one mojo.  So we now we grab all of our names Let's put a little rooftops next to those names so Josh can separate those from his Full spots in case he wants to play that game It's fun like hey my winning spot got this but my full spot So we'll grab in all of our names Joshua Joshua Terry Joshua Joshua all the way down our two dice list We'll start off here. So one dice roll for both lists three and a four is seven seven times. Good luck one two three four five Six and seven last one seven here There we go Terry down to Joshua and then for our numbers one down to zero one two three four five Six and our last one seven Go seven times so seven down to one three and four is seven So we'll grab our spots and throw them right here. All right Put these in a box make them a little bit bigger so we can see What 18 you can clear out that other list too All right, there we go. So Terry was seven Joshua with nine at three zero four five eight two six and one So there we go. That was R&B for our second sets for the once again. It's for the Jets dolphins Eagles Giants Panthers Lions Colts and Seahawks. We will be right back with the actual case break itself Thank you very much. Bye


This is the second time now in three years that this embassy has been attacked. Last time, it was attacked by a drive-by shooter with an AK-47, and you can still see the bullet holes in the building and on the statue. This time, it's Molotov cocktails. In the past, there have been offices blown up, but even today, people lose their jobs. People lose their places where they're living. When we go to the caravans in Miami, you never know when you go back to your car if they're going to be slashed tires. The last time I was there, three of my tires were slashed. These are violent people. These are people who we have to call out as being haters. These are people who are anti-democratic. This is reflective of the right-wing, hating Cuban-American community that doesn't represent the majority of Cuban-Americans in this country. Because whether or not they like the Cuban government, they cannot be supportive of this kind of violence. They cannot be supportive of this kind of hatred. Let Cuba live, let Cuba live, let Cuba live.


had a high school teacher. He taught social studies. I had him I think in my eleventh grade year and there's something he said that I never forgot. He would always say to us that in matters of politics and religion people speak with a degree of certainty inversely proportional to how much they know. And I think maybe one of the reasons that this stuck with me and I really don't remember anything else I learned in his class. I mean I probably it's in my memory drive hard drive back there somewhere but this is the only thing I can quote verbatim and I think maybe the reason is that over the years I've seen how accurate this observation is. It's quite stunning actually. In the mid-1990s here in Toronto I was coordinating Jewish educational programming on the university campuses here in Toronto. And one day in the beginning of the fall semester a student came to meet with me that was extremely distraught. Very upset. The student was majoring in environmental studies at York University and told me that the professor in the class remarked that the Hebrew Bible was responsible for the degradation of the Earth's environment. Now this student had virtually no Jewish educational background grew up with virtually no Jewish background but this is a student that identified as being a Jew and felt that the professor was maligning her faith her religion and she felt attacked personally as a Jew. So I asked what was it that the professor said? What exactly did the professor say? Even though I already knew I was pretty sure I knew what the answer was going to be. And the culprit was a verse in the beginning of Genesis in the beginning of the very first book of the Bible in the first chapter verse 28 and God blessed them that's Adam and Eve and God said to them be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and conquer it or subdue it. The Hebrew Vechiv Shuhah can be rendered in a number of different ways sometimes conquer it sometimes do it and have dominion over the fish of the seas and the birds of the heavens and over all the animals that roam the earth. And on the basis of this verse in Genesis the professor accused the Hebrew Bible Jewish scriptures of being responsible for the devastation of our planet. Now the truth is that this is not something that began in the 1990s. Lynn White who was an American professor of history writing in the 1960s specifically implicated this verse in Genesis as responsible for the environmental crisis and if we think that they had an environmental crisis in the 60s look at what's happened since then. So already back in the 60s people were concerned and Professor White blamed the crisis on the Hebrew scripture specifically this verse in the beginning of Genesis. The British historian Arnold Toynbee said pretty much the same writing in the 1960s he maintained that it was this passage in Genesis that permitted and directed mankind to exploit the earth's natural resources. The modern ecological movement emerged in those heady days of the 1960s and one of the most important works back then was Rachel Carson's The Silent Spring where she decried the harmful effects of pesticide use on the environment. So I asked this student that came to me that was so upset if it made any sense to make an assessment of the entire Jewish Bible and really an accusation against the entire Jewish Bible based upon citing a solitary verse one single verse without taking into consideration all of the other relevant material that appears in the Bible. That's a really a rhetorical question sort of a no-brainer and so I suggested that we study we do a project where we study together all the relevant material in the Hebrew scriptures and in the rabbinic writings that appear on this topic and the student was very enthusiastic. We began our study again at the beginning of the school year and after a number of months we were about to conclude our studies. We had met each week many weeks and as we were nearing the end of our studies I invited this student to a to be Schwat Seder. Now to be Schwat is the 15th day in the Hebrew month of Schwat and it is known as the New Year for Trees the Rosh Hashanah L'Ilanot. This holiday usually falls out around February and it's when the earliest blooming trees in Israel emerge from the cold winter and begin their growth and this day is considered the New Year for Trees for the purpose of calculating the various tithes which were basically biblical taxes that were taken to support the Levites the priests and the poor. There is an ancient practice going back hundreds of years to have a special meal on to be Schwat that is called a Seder just like we have a Seder on Passover the word Seder means order there's a particular order for the things we do during the evening so there's an ancient practice to have a to be Schwat Seder to have a special meal and during this evening the custom is to have various fruits that are featured that are grown in the land of Israel fruits and nuts and different colored wines white wine red wine mixing the wines or grape juice now this originally began as a cabalistic practice it's a deeply mystical program and today many people focus the discussion not so much on the cabalistic mystical significance of to be Schwat but they focus the discussion of the Seder on the themes of our relationship to nature our relationship to trees and lessons that we can derive from the different produce of the earth and the beauty of the world it basically in modern times has become more or less an ecological feast for many students experiencing to be Schwat for the first time it's a tremendous eye opener tremendous eye opener virtually none of the students that I met on campus when I was the rabbi here in Toronto for about five years on campus almost no one ever heard of such a thing as a to be Schwat Seder and the students that came to these saders learned that thousands of years think about this thousands of years before ecology became a popular cause Judaism had broad concerns and sensitive teachings about how we're to interact with the world around us imagine discovering like the student who came to me that your tradition your people had incredibly advanced teachings going back not hundreds of years thousands of years about concerns that the world only latched on to maybe in the 1960s the students that came to these to be Schwat Seder's learn about the numerous Jewish environmental groups today that are actively seeking to educate about these teachings advocate for these teachings and implement these ancient teachings the student who came to see me developed an incredibly intense pride in belonging to a people bearing these teachings and the student went on to become a committed Jew and a devoted Jewish environmental activist now what I'd like to do is return to that controversial passage in the beginning of Brachy Genesis chapter 1 verse 28 so God tells Adam and Eve in this passage that to fill the earth and conquer it develop it work with it that to harness the natural resources of the planet that's basically what they're told they're told they have a right to harness to work with develop the natural resources of the planet now is this a license to exploit and plunder which is basically the accusation of the environmental activists that I quoted earlier tonight is the Bible's mandate for us to develop and work with to harness the earth's resources is it license to exploit and plunder that's the question we want to ask in the very next verse you don't need to go too far in Genesis chapter 1 verse 29 the very next verse Adam and Eve are told that they do not have carte blanche to consume whatever food they desire they can't just eat or take whatever they want in the Garden of Eden their diets would be restricted to fruits and vegetables and grains the diet originally intended for human beings was a vegan diet this only changed about 10 generations later when Noah and his family emerged from the Ark after the flood and they were now for the first time since the creation of the world given permission to consume meat but there was still restrictions placed upon their consumption and hundreds of years later the dietary laws that were given to the Jewish people to Israel severely restricted the species that we could consume and preserve the seed of the original Edenic diet preserve the value the hope the promise that really our diet should be a vegan diet now it's impossible to understand I would put forward to you impossible to understand how the critics of our Bible could miss this critical passage found just one verse later after the passage that they seek to impune how serious are they about understanding what the Bible actually teaches the foundation of their polemic rests almost exclusively on that one verse in the first chapter of Genesis verse 28 and they miss the implications of the next verse verse 29 another important verse it's overlooked again just overlooked by those seeking to attack the Bible appears in the very next chapter of Genesis chapter 2 they don't have to become Bible scholars and master the whole Bible you find it pretty quickly if they just read on a page or so in chapter 2 of Genesis verse 15 we're told that God put Adam and Eve into the garden of Eden love the who was Shamra love the to work it who was Shamra and to guard it to watch over it to work it and to guard it so we're told that the world we live in needs to be cultivated and developed I would say that's the exact same thing that they were told in chapter 1 fill the world the chief shuha conquer it meaning master it master it develop it and that's what they're told in chapter 2 they're put in the garden of the to work the garden to develop it to cultivate it bread and medicines don't grow on trees we have to explore the world develop the world and extract from the world the necessities of life you know it's significant that the Torah as well the Torah that we have is not a finished product her that we have from God the Torah that sits in that arc behind me it's not a finished product God gave us a role to play in understanding the Torah in interpreting the Torah in exploring the Torah and in making rulings using the guidelines of the Torah God did not have to give us a role to play in the unfolding of the Torah God didn't have to do that everything could have been written in a massively huge book instead of having a book with you know you can held in one hand could have been a book that took up two or three libraries now have everything we would ever need to know God didn't do that not only could God have given us a huge book but any question that would arise could have been answered with further revelation God could have told us look if you get stuck you don't understand something just pray to me and I'll give you the answer I'll come down once again on the top of the mountain and I'll reveal what you should do I'll tell you what you should do but that's not the way the Torah is given to us God says to us you figure it out God says I've given you the raw ingredients I've given you the basic information you need in the Torah and work with it develop it study it learn it figure it out and that's the mandate that God gives us for his Torah for the spiritual revelation that he gave us because I'm not giving you a finished product I'm giving you the basics now work with it figure it out and the same thing happens with the physical world that God gives us it's not a finished product we don't walk up and find bread on trees medicine on trees we've got to work with the world that God gave us and develop the world and make advances and discover things and invent things that's why the Torah says we were put here love to work the world to develop it to cultivate it nature is breathtakingly beautiful but not only is nature beautiful so are the incredible discoveries and advances made by science and scientists over the years it is absolutely incredible when you think about what scientists have discovered and developed over the centuries separating of conjoint twins think about that with that been possible even 50 years ago and it's tremendous beauty to what scientists human beings have developed and discovered however there's supposed to be a balance there has to be a balance and we're told not only to work the earth and develop the earth and cultivate the world we're directed to guard it and protect it and the word used for guarding the world Lishamra is significant that word is significant because the Bible speaks about people that are shown rim they are people who are stewards over the property of others this is found in the 22nd chapter of Schmo the 22nd chapter of Exodus the laws of the trustees the watchers people that are watching that are responsible for the property of others and they are to return this property in a condition no worse than they receive the property when you are guarding and watching someone's property you're responsible for it and that's what God says to us we're in the Garden of Eden you're here to work the world but to guard it to protect it to watch over it we're responsible for it so Genesis chapter 2 verse 15 describes our relationship to the world as showm rim we are watchers we are stewards we are trustees and we're responsible to take care of that which was placed into our hands how can any reasonable person assert that the Bible gives us license to rape the environment how can any serious scholar say that the Bible gives us the license to destroy and ravage the environment there's a beautiful rabbinic teaching in the Midrash to Kohela's Ecclesiastes it says when God created Adam he led him around the Garden of Eden and said to Adam behold my works he said case you didn't notice Adam look at this world I put you in behold my works see how beautiful they are how excellent is all that I have created for your sake that I created God says see to it that you do not spoil or destroy my world for if you do there'll be no one to repair it after you again this is not some modern rabbinic sermon that was given 30 years ago this is a Midrashic teaching that goes back thousands of years this is a sensitivity of our sages that comes straight from the Bible now the preceding passages make it clear that mankind's place in the world is responsibility not license that is our place in the world we're given permission to develop but not to ruin to use but to preserve now from the assignment of our role and the fact that we were given the role as showman as trustees we can see that the conceptual reason the conceptual reason for the need to protect and preserve the world stems from the reality that it does not absolutely belong to us this is something that we have a very difficult time coming to grips with because we think that we're the boss we think that we're the owners and the truth is and this is the major message of the Bible you do not own the world you are stewards of the world you're given permission to use the world you do not absolutely own it one of the central institutions of the Bible that concretize this idea is the Sabbath the six work days were assigned to us to carry out our role to develop and creatively harness the world's resources that's what we're told six days you shall work but the seventh day is a sap so those six days were as a time specifically designated for us to carry out that assignment God put us here again love the to work the world to develop the world to harness the world's resources but the seventh day is one when we are commanded to cease our creative interference with the natural order that's what the Sabbath is the Sabbath is a day where we're told you are to stop your interference with the creative with your creative interference of the natural order and by this by this ceasing and stopping we express our recognition that what that the world is not ours but it belongs to its maker that's one of the major messages of the Sabbath to realize we're not the masters and the owners of the world the same concept by the way is expressed in the institution of the sabbatical year the shmita every seven years in the land of Israel the owners of the land are not to work it or harvest it but to let it lay fallow let the land rest it doesn't belong to them to keep on harvesting it and harvesting and harvesting it the person who feels they really own it would say why can't I take the fruit and the produce of the seventh year it's mine I'll do whatever I want know the Bible says it's not yours and you're commanded not to harvest not to work the land in the seventh year the same is true of the Yovill the Jubilee year every 50 years land that was sold people sometimes have to sell their land it reverts to the original owners during the 50th year it doesn't belong to you ultimately it's a God tells us that this in the Jubilee year the land returns to its original owners these institutions among others by the way the Sabbath every seven days a sabbatical year every seven years the Jubilee every 50 years teach us that we have no absolute ownership over the world it's interesting by the way that in biblical Hebrew there's not even a word for absolute ownership in biblical Hebrew all we have is a word that implies and denotes possession that we possess certain things we're holding on to certain things but there's no word in biblical Hebrew expressing the idea of absolute ownership the Talmud expresses this in many places just one example in tractate brachotes 35 B the Talmud has two verses from the book of Psalms that the Talmud says they contradict each other seemingly they contradict one verse in the book of psalms says God belongs the world and everything in it that's what the book of psalms says to God belongs everything in the world the world and everything in it belongs to God but the Talmud says but wait a second there's another verse in the book of psalms which says ha shamaim shamaim la donoi the heavens belong to God the hearts not only when they are dumb but the earth he gave to mankind so the Talmud says which is it one verse says that the earth belongs to God the other verse says the earth belongs to mankind it was given to us so the Talmud resolves this seeming contradiction by saying one verse is speaking before you say a blessing and the other verse is speaking about after you make a blessing meaning that when we want to eat food the purpose of saying a blessing is basically asking permission it's saying please we don't own the fruit we don't own it we have to ask permission so before we say a blessing to God belongs the earth and everything in it once we say a blessing we say please God then gives it to us here you welcome the institution of saying blessings for food is another teaching in Judaism that helps us understand that we don't own the world we need to ask permission and then be nice and say thank you now there's a there's a biblical Geneva convention for the environment the Bible has its Geneva convention for our relationship to the environment and it's found in the book of Dvarim in Deuteronomy chapter 20 verses 19 to 20 and in these two verses which describe a wartime situation describes what's going on during a war the Torah says that soldiers are prohibited from chopping down fruit trees to use the wood of those trees to lay siege to an enemy city you may want to use the woods for a battering ram maybe you want to build a catapult whatever you want to do you cannot chop down fruit trees while waging war against an enemy instead of needlessly destroying a tree that produces fruit you can use a tree that doesn't produce fruit or a fruit tree that's dead but if a tree is producing fruit and it has that value you cannot chop it down even in a war we're talking about a time of life and death we're talking about a time of great need this is not just vacation time this is a time normally where people are working at high gear and the Torah says even at that time when you're fighting for your life you cannot chop down a fruit tree now if this kind of restriction is placed upon soldiers during war which is clearly a situation of great need we can see how seriously the Torah takes ecological concerns the Talmud and rabbinic codes like Maimonides extend this prohibition beyond cutting down fruit trees during a time of war to the wanton destruction or wasting of anything of value at all and at any time so lest you think that the only thing prohibited is chopping down fruit trees the Talmud and our codes insist that we're prohibited that this prohibition called Baltaschit don't destroy is an absolute prohibition against wasting or destroying anything of value at any time and any place it's a very wide-ranging prohibition and I believe and others teach that this prohibition of Baltaschit has practical applications in Jewish law today to wasting things such as food fuel paper electricity water things that we often use very casually the Torah seems to say that's prohibited if you don't need to run the water in your house turn off the sink you don't need to keep the lights on maybe don't keep them on there are thousands of examples no one's going to be perfect but if we're sensitive to the mandate of the Torah Baltaschit don't waste doesn't take a rocket scientist to look around the world today and see how much is being wasted how much food is thrown out unnecessarily there have been a teaching in the Midrash to the book of Exodus that teaches that when God had the Israelites build a portable sanctuary the Mishkan in the desert after the Exodus from Egypt he specifically charged them to use acacia wood I'd say sheet him in the construction of the tabernacle and the Midrash explains why that would specifically so the Midrash says because the acacia tree does not produce fruit and so the Midrash says that if God did not allow us to use fruit bearing trees for the making of the tabernacle in the desert we should similarly be careful when building our homes that we live in and not to use fruit producing trees for the wood and to be careful about the environmental impact of what we do the Talmud lists by the way a number of people who will never see blessing from the activities their activities during their lifetimes and one of those people who will never see blessing from their activity during their lifetime are those who destroy good trees it's not something which is just whatever what's the big deal the Torah says it is a big deal now there's another way in which the Torah teaches us about the importance of maintaining the integrity of the natural order many commentaries to the Torah say that this concern for the integrity of the natural order is the motivation for biblical prohibitions against mixing different seeds in the field interbreeding different species or wearing garments of wool and linen the Torah says that you cannot wear a garment that has wool and linen mixed together so when you buy a suit for example my suit was inspected is a place here in Toronto that inspects your clothing and it looks where they normally would be let's say in the collar they would stuff the collar line the collar and it's often a mixture of wool and linen they make sure it doesn't have it in your clothing and the Bible prohibits that why why not mix wool and linen so some commentaries point out it's just teaching us this idea that we're not to alter the world and play God the Torah speaks about something called Sidrae Bureishi the order of creation and unless you have to don't mess around with the order of creation is a fascinating story in the Talmud tractate Shabbat 53 B they tell about a man who had a wife that died and left him with an infant child a nursing baby and he was too poor to afford to hire a wet nurse so the Talmud says that an incredible thing happened the man grew two breasts and he nursed his baby so one opinion in the Talmud says wow what a great person he must have been that this miracle happened for him but then the Talmud concludes by saying no he must have been a very low person that for his sake the order of creation was altered it didn't have to be altered if he was on a higher spiritual level he could have won the lottery he could have found some money and he would have realized this wasn't an accident it wasn't an accident I found the money it was provided by God so I can hire a nurse to the nurse my baby but this person was so spiritually dense that they would have said oh how lucky I am I found some money they would not have attributed this to God so a person that's as thick as this he would not understand that God was providing for him unless something incredibly odd took place and the Talmud says that is an indication of his thickness and his lowliness that God had to alter the natural order for him the Torah dates back 3,300 years think about this 3,300 years and it had what is probably the oldest legislation in the history of the world about city planning we have people today that that's what they major in a university majoring in in city planning probably back in 1940 they didn't even have such a major and 3,300 years ago the Torah had legislation about city planning the Torah required that the 48th Levitical cities there were special cities where the Levites lived and there were 48 such cities the Torah required that these cities had a green belt of 1000 cubits that surrounded them all around as a migrash as an open space as well as 2000 cubits beyond this open space for agricultural use Rashi explains that the purpose of this migrash the purpose of this open space was an amenity for the beautification of the city and the pleasure of the inhabitants you can't just have building and building and building and building and building to no end we see that here in Toronto anytime you find an inch of space a building goes up on it we're choking here the Torah says 3,300 years ago you can't do that you have to have a city that's planned with an open area a green belt around it and in that open area that migrash you can't have any building you can't have any agricultural use it's just there for beauty for recreation and for the pleasure of the inhabitants now my monody says that by extension and by analogy this teaching does not only apply to the 48 Levitical cities he teaches it applies to every city is supposed to build itself like that now most of what I've shared with you tonight seems like a no-brainer this is not seem to me terribly unusual don't waste don't pollute it's not rocket science the big question is what doctors refer to as compliance anyone as a doctor here knows that you can have great medicine for a patient if they don't take it as goonish health and as we say in dish it's not going to help and many people are either not motivated or not disciplined or whatever problem they have they don't take their meds so doctors are concerned with something called compliance how do you get people to do what they're supposed to do and that's the big question here with the Torah's teachings about Baltaschka not wasting not destroying not spoiling the world how do we get ourselves how do we get ourselves and the world to implement these reasonable teachings of the Torah you know the mistake of Greek philosophy in Greek philosophy they had what is referred to as the theory of knowledge Greek ethics was based upon the theory of knowledge the Greeks believe the early Greeks believed that the problem with ethics is that people don't know that which is right and they believe that all you need to do to produce ethical moral people that live properly is teach them that which is good if people know the good they'll do the good that was what the Greeks believed it's hard to believe that the Greeks who were so smart that they actually believed this they actually believed that people are like computers and you put input in output out and they're going to do exactly what they're programmed to do we know how false that is because we know that people are not just brains we're not computers we're not so logical where if we know that which is right we're automatically going to do it because the human being is not just a brain we have a will we have a heart we have desires and the big problem we face is that when there's a battle between our head and our heart we know who's going to win the Torah says that the heart is very very powerful in the book of Deuteronomy chapter 4 the Torah says that our task in life is to connect our head to a heart or actually to connect our heart to our head the Torah says you have to know you have to know but then you have to take knowledge in your head and bring it to your heart you have to begin to actually to feel those things that you know to feel those things you know every person on the planet believe me knows thou shalt not steal you're not going to find a person on planet earth who's going to say to you you're not supposed to seal I never knew that why don't you come up with that one every human being on the planet knows thou shalt not steal how many people on the planet steal it's incredible how much stealing goes on of course we rationalize it we come up with ways of justifying it it's only a little bit everyone does it they assume I'm going to take the towel from the hotel whatever I mean everyone has ways of rationalizing inappropriate behavior and so the Torah says it's not enough to know things you've got to feel it so the idea of taking something doesn't belong to you has to make you sick to your stomach and until you reach the level where you feel what you know what you know is useless the brain is such an impotent part of who we are and that's what the Greeks believe for some reason just teach people the right the good and they'll be good so the real problem today is not so much ignorance people know they shouldn't destroy the environment the real problem today is selfishness laziness greediness an individual walking down the street eating a candy bar doesn't feel like holding on to the wrapper until they get to a garbage pail for it right on the street I was once driving in New York never forget this and someone threw half a watermelon out of their car onto the West Side Highway but look at I mean Toronto used to be famous as a clean city I've been here 25 years I've seen changes it's not as clean as it used to be why what happened did little pieces of candy wrapper become so heavy people couldn't hold on to it so there's an ethic there is a sensitivity there's a moral sensitivity to wanting to have a clean city and to realizing it's simply wrong it's disgusting to throw your garbage on the floor that's the problem it's not ignorance it's laziness it's selfishness it's greed corporations that are more concerned with the bottom line and with paying off their investors rather than what's going to be in the environment in 25 or 50 years they're so incredibly short-sighted it's simply a matter of greed why spoil the profit margin by making our companies more ecologically responsible it's just not profitable so we have today a moral problem not an intellectual problem we have a spiritual problem not a lack of knowledge what the Torah is concerned with primarily is teaching us how to be responsible how to be sensitive human beings how to be people with the ability to exercise self-control how do you teach people to have self-control it's not so easy you know Dennis Prager once said that it's not a bad thing for a little kid to learn and they can't eat every candy in the store he used to say the first English words he learned how to read was pure vegetable shortening only right he grew up in a home where he was taught to keep kosher he wanted to have a candy bar he would look at the ingredients but you're teaching this to kids that are four five six seven eight years old it's becoming part of their guts it's because it's becoming part of who they are you can't sprinkle a little bit of knowledge on an adult after a lifetime of not having any exercise over themselves any working at self-control the Torah is to a great extent a handbook a guidebook to learn self-control self-discipline and to teach us values the values that we need to use those skills of self-control and self-discipline for the Torah spends a lot of time teaching us about how to get along with our friends and neighbors tremendous teachings in the Torah for example not speaking Lashon Hara not gossiping not speaking about other people this is rampant you want to do an amazing exercise monitor your conversations over the next week listen to what people talk about at work and listen to how many of our conversations are about other people about my neighbor about my spouse about my boss about my employee the Torah has a tremendous amount of teaching about how we're to get along with other people because unless we can get along with other people which is a daily activity almost every minute of the day we're not going to be the kind of people who can control ourselves when it comes to how we care for the environment if we can't take care of the bottom line when it comes to being responsible and disciplined and our interactions with other human beings it's going to be almost impossible for us to be the kind of high moral people that are going to be disciplined when it comes to taking care of the environment so the Torah's major concern is to teach people how to perfect their character traits and become more complete more whole people I want to conclude by sharing with you an amazing passage from the book of Yicheskel in the prophet Ezekiel in the 47th chapter the 47th chapter of Yicheskel the prophet was shown a vision of a polluted ocean a polluted ocean with fish and other marine life that are dying everything's dying and then we're told that a small trickle of water emerged from underneath the holy temple this is what he sees in his vision an entirely polluted ocean everything is dropping dead because it's such foul water the actual the word the word that's used in the prophet here is the word for polluted water the kind of pollution you see in an open sewer that's the word that the Torah uses in the vision that's what he's seeing that's how disgusting this water is and he sees a little trickle of water that's coming from underneath the threshold of the temple we know that water symbolizes Torah throughout our rabbinic writings water is symbolic of Torah and the temple the holy temple that is the sanctuary that's the place of the Torah and what happens in this vision this little trickle of waters little stream of water grows to become a great stream it increases in intensity and size and what happens is as it's growing the shoreline of this great emerging water you see or he sees in the vision all kinds of beautiful fruit trees growing previously there was a polluted ocean where everything was dying and as the water pours into this he sees in the vision beautiful fruit trees and the leaves do not wither and the fruits never stop growing and when these waters finally reach the ocean the polluted ocean waters the prophet is told are healed that's the word that's used the waters are healed they were diseased and now this water that trickles in and comes in heals the waters and all of the fish that were dying in the waters they return to health they restore to health what do we see here we see a vision that one day the paradise that we once had in the Garden of Eden which was an ecological paradise will be restored and how will that happen through the teachings of the Torah