of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Ambassador Bill Burns. Good evening, everyone. I am very pleased and honored to welcome Vice President Biden back to Carnegie. But I must admit this moment is bittersweet. We're at the end of an extraordinary chapter of an extraordinary life, of an extraordinary American. In his farewell address last night, President Obama said that selecting Joe Biden as his running mate was the first decision he made as a presidential nominee. And he said it was the best. President Obama's wisdom was our good fortune as a country. I've learned a great deal from the Vice President over the course of my many years as an American diplomat. I've been deeply touched personally by his thoughtfulness and encouragement. And like so many other Americans, I've been inspired by his unfailing belief in our country's promise and potential, his fierce determination to deliver on that promise, and his willingness to speak truth to power and advocate for what is right, especially when it's hard or inconvenient. That is especially true when it comes to foreign policy and his contributions over many decades to American leadership. Indeed, he's been on the front lines of one critical issue after another, from the Balkans, Iraq, and Afghanistan, to strengthening our alliances, to building new partnerships for the coming century, Asia, our own hemisphere, and beyond. No issue better exemplifies the Vice President's remarkable leadership, courage, experience, and vision than the topic that brings us together here today, nuclear security. The Vice President contributed to all the major nuclear policy initiatives over the past four decades, from formulating arms control agreements at the height of the Cold War, to managing nuclear arsenals in its aftermath, and tackling the new threat of nuclear terrorism. The Vice President has truly been indispensable to the success of the administration's four nuclear security summits, the passage of the New START Treaty with Russia, and the nuclear agreement with Iran. The hard truth is that no issue is more critical for the future of international peace and security than the global nuclear order. For many decades, Carnegie's nuclear policy program has worked to highlight the fragility of that order and offer new practical ideas to strengthen it. And I hope you'll all join us in March for Carnegie's biannual nuclear policy conference. Ladies and gentlemen, I said at the outset that we're marking the end of an extraordinary chapter in an extraordinary life. I also know that there are many more extraordinary chapters to come for the Vice President, rich in their benefits for American society and for a role in the world. So please join me in welcoming the Vice President of the United States, Joe Biden. Thank you very much. Thank you. I'm a late Joe Biden, and I apologize. It's an honor to be here with back at Carnegie, but with so many people who have not only a view, but depth of knowledge and an expertise in the subject that is not spoken of nearly as often as it should be, or debated as thoroughly as it should be. And I'm happy to have the opportunity to speak with you all. You know, I know it's Ambassador Burns, but I kind of think of him as Secretary Burns. I know Ambassador's a hired type, but I think of him as Secretary Burns. And I know, by the way, he would have been the next Secretary of State, by the way. That's just what I know. And so that's one of the great losses that are occurring in this election. Forget the President, the Vice President. It's been an honor to work with you, Bill.  One, you know that you're dealing with a man of enormous, enormous integrity. You will never, ever, ever, ever have to wonder whether he inadvertently or inadvertently did anything or in any way compromise or diminish your efforts in trying to work for peace and security for the United States. The second thing about Bill is that he is a really, really effective diplomat because although he is strong and fervent in his views, he has a way of dealing with friends and folks alike that put them at ease and generate trust. They know whatever he says he means and they know whatever he says he speaks for the administration that he's with at the time. And lastly, he has a prodigious amount of knowledge about the vast array of foreign policy issues. So Bill, I've enjoyed traveling around the world. I've enjoyed working with you and I've learned a lot from you and I do not plan on, don't think you're getting rid of me. I continue to need your help. And everyone here at the Carnegie Mellon International Peace, thank you for your continued unrelenting commitment to peace, to peace. You know, in the summer of 1969, in the mid to deep freeze of the Cold War, I was a 35-year-old kid, 36-year-old kid and I walked into the Kremlin, into the mayor's office. Actually, I walked into our minister's office first and sat down across the table with seven members of the National Security of the National Security establishment of Russia.  And I remember sitting across the table with him and I had five United States senators with me because we were there to discuss the strategic arm control agreement, then known as SALT II. And to gauge whether or not the Soviets were likely to abide by the modifications and the codicils that the United States Senate had voted defining some of the elements of the agreement themselves. You know, you can amend a treaty, but you can seek understandings of what individual sentences are phrased in the meeting. And it was a very close call as to whether or not we were gonna get the votes to pass the SALT II treaty. Frank Church asked me whether I'd lead the delegation since I was such an old timer and then they're six years with a lot of the newer members of the United States Senate who were in the process of making up their mind. And across the table from me sat Kosigin. He grizzled Soviet Premier, a veteran of World War II and a very hard line guy. And there was no love between us. There was no love between our countries at the time and we didn't trust one another. I remember how we started off the conversation to make sure to put me in my place. He said, you're a very young man and I was chairing the delegation. You're a very young man, Senator. He said, when I was your age, I was coordinating the Siege of Leningrad.  Let's get this straight. And then he went on to say, and I mean it sincerely, notwithstanding the fact that neither of our nations wanted to be responsible for unleashing nuclear apocalypse, Kosigin did most of the talking that day. And one of the first things he said to me and my colleagues was he said, let's agree at the outset, Mr. Senator, that you are the only nation in the history of mankind that has ever used a nuclear weapon, not once but twice. I'm not second guessing your judgment to do that, but you use them. So you have to understand why we think, we the Soviets think, that you might use them again. This is not about trust. Oh, I came out of that meeting with the assurances we went to, we saw it for the reason we went. We got the assurances. They would accept the, not amendments, but the understandings we brought forward. And I came away with a lesson that has served me relatively well throughout my entire career. And that is the assumption that good intentions rarely exists in international diplomacy, or the assumption that they do exist is an exception. Motion is that the Soviets wanted to do with us not because they trusted us, but because they didn't trust us at all. It's precisely because we didn't trust our adversaries. We didn't trust the Russians. That's the reason we have treaties. And I remember these endless debates with Jesse Helms and the Foreign Relations Committee. Don't make treaties with your friends as necessary. Make treaties with those who you have stark disagreements. Constrain human capacity for destruction. Treaties are indispensable to the security of the United States of America. Arms controls an integral to our national defense and when it comes to nuclear weapons to our self-preservation. Almost from almost the moment we unlocked the destruction hidden in the worlds hidden within the atom, we recognized the equally powerful imperative that preserving the doomsday clock, preventing the doomsday clock from striking midnight was an overarching responsibility of humankind. Already in 1953, President Eisenhower, a man synonymous with the American military strategy, warned that our security could never be achieved through a nuclear arms race without end. He said, quote, let no one think that the expenditure of vast sums of weapons and systems defense can guarantee absolute safety for the cities and the citizens of any nation. The awful arithmetic of the atomic bomb does not permit any such easy solution. Even against the most powerful defense and the aggressor and possession of an effective minimum number of atomic bombs for a surprise attack could cause hideous damage. And quote, in a world possessed with nuclear technology, an effective minimum number of bombs is pretty small. Even one, I remember I was saying to Dr. Carl, now security advisor, I'm obviously over 40. But in my day in undergraduate school, in graduate school, phrase was there was a bumper sticker. One nuclear weapon can ruin your day. One can cause hideous damage. With that knowledge over the course of decades, we negotiated agreements to reduce and control the world's supply of nuclear weapons. Despite what some extreme voices have argued at the time, the arms control agreements we hammered out with the Soviets were not concessions to an enemy, were signs of weakness in the United States. They were a carefully constructed barrier between the American people and total annihilation. You know, it was how we managed that dangerous rival. That dangerous rival. I was telling Bill, I was putting on the Foreign Relations Committee as a very young man, early 30s, 31 years old. And if you wanted to have anything to do and be engaged at all in the conduct of foreign policy, there was only one arena you had to learn. You had to understand strategic doctrine. There was really nothing much else on the table. And so we spent a lot of time trying to keep things things from spiraling out of control to prevent thermonuclear war. Republicans and Democratic presidents alike have understood nothing is more fundamental to our security. And for more than four decades, I've been deeply involved with the ins and outs of our strategic agreements. As I said, I was a forceful advocate for start or some result too in the 70s. And the limits it sought to impose upon the growth of the Soviet Union's nuclear capacity. In the 80s, I fought against President Reagan's efforts to weaken the ABM treaty, which threatened the very cornerstone of the arms control between the United States and the Soviet Union. But I fought equally hard for his treaty on intermediate-range nuclear forces, the first treaty to eliminate a whole class of nuclear arms. I fought hard to see that it succeeded. I traveled at the time across Europe meeting with Helmut Kohl, Francois Mitterrand, Margaret Thatcher, Soviet leaders like Gromyko to bolster support for the treaty. And after the collapse of the Soviet Union, I called for the global elimination of nuclear weapons, tactical nuclear weapons, position that President George H. W. Bush also worked toward. And I made sure that the START agreement included appropriate measures to monitor nuclear stockpiles in the former Supreme. Today, the risk of a massive nuclear exchange between Russia and the United States and the terminologic of mutual assured destruction is far less than it was when I arrived in the Senate in the early 70s. Yet nuclear weapons and the proliferation of the deadly knowledge to more nations and the possibility of terrorists obtaining nuclear materials remain among our most pressing security challenges as I speak to you. Even one nuclear bomb, as they say, can still cause hideous damage. And that's why, from the moment the President I took office eight years ago, reducing the threat of nuclear attack has been the chief national security priority of this administration. In Prague in 2009, in his very first foreign policy speech, President Obama passionately argued that the only way the world would be completely safe from nuclear weapons is to pursue a world without nuclear weapons. For the past eight years, that's the vision we have relentlessly pursued. Thanks to American leadership and the international community is newly focused on preventing nuclear terrorism. We know the terrorists have both the capacity and the goal of transforming nuclear materials into weapons to so have it. We're all just radiological bombs. We can do an awful lot of damage. Render place is uninhabitable for a long time. We know that no nation acting alone can defeat this threat. That's why in 2010, President Obama gathered leaders from around the globe for the first ever nuclear security summit here in Washington. To create concrete multilateral strategies to lock down those nuclear materials and prevent nuclear smuggling. Since then, the world has met more than three times in Seoul, at the Hague, and last year in DC to continue to build on that progress. Our efforts have reduced the supply of nuclear weapons, nuclear weapon usable material around the world. And we've not only stepped up physical protection facilities when nuclear materials are stored, we have greatly improved the ability to detect and seize unregulated nuclear and radiological materials being smuggled in secret. Acting together with international partners, we strengthen the global nuclear security architecture that monitors and enforces nuclear norms, ratifying and bringing in the force important international treaties to secure nuclear materials to prevent them from falling into the hands of terrorists. Providing, providing better funding resources for international atomic energy agents and expanding the proliferation security initiative. These steps have bolstered international norms and institutions around protecting nuclear materials. And with the creation of the Nuclear Security Contact Group, the world can continue to build on this momentum to deliver progress for many more years to come. But it's going to take many more years to come. Great years the United States has led in strengthening the non-proliferation regime, including the non-proliferation treaty. That basic agreement that countries with nuclear weapons will pursue good faith negotiations on this armament. Countries without nuclear weapons will seek to gain, will not seek to gain them. And countries, countries, all countries can access and benefit peaceful nuclear energy. To build a global consensus that nuclear arms must be, nuclear norms must be upheld, international commitments must be honored. And those that violate those standards must be held and called into account. That's why the United States made an international priority to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons. Decades of animosity and chest beating, not cut off Iran's burgeoning nuclear approach. We did. We're international economic pressure combined with hard-nosed diplomacy. The Soviet Union during the Civil War, excuse me, in Cold War, we negotiated with Iran precisely the same way we did with them because we do not and did not trust them. Not because there's any trust. That's why we sought an internationally verifiable agreement to constrain their nuclear activities. One that cut off every single path that could lead to a nuclear weapon, the one that instituted the most rigorous inspection regime in history to ensure that they hold up their end of the bargain. If full implementation continues, the deal will prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons, remove the threat of Iran using nuclear weapons against us or our allies, and we will have accomplished this without initiating another devastating war in the Middle East. When we came to office, Iran was inching closer to a nuclear weapon capacity. North Korea already crossed that threshold. And as North Korea and the ballistic missile capacity continue to expand in North Korea, it poses a growing threat to international security and our own national defense. That's why we've been so vigilant in keeping international and international community united to raise the cost on North Korea for its flagrant violations of nuclear norms. Just last year, a response to a legal nuclear test by North Korea and the United Nations Security Council, including China and Russia, unanimously adopted two resolutions imposing the most far-reaching and comprehensive sanctions on North Korea today. We need to ensure that these sanctions aren't forced by all. To ensure that North Korea understands and will continue to impose costs for their legal behavior. We know these sanctions in and of itself did not stop North Korea. As of the reign of the bowl of sanctions, it's not to punish people of North Korea but to induce their leadership to negotiate an earnest. North Korea's growing capacity is one of the most significant challenges the next administration will face. I would argue maybe the most significant challenge. There are no simple solutions, but any viable path forward must include standing with our Asian allies to send a clear message upon them and point to the capital of North Korea. Attempts at coercion or intimidation will fail. You should know that. Security and international respect cannot be attained through illegal weapons. You should know that. As long as that is a choice, North Korean leaders continue to make their country remain economically isolated and in an international variety. We have to continue working closely though with our international community, particularly China. Commence North Korea to reverse course. That in and of itself will be worth a seminar on that subject alone. As we've worked to stem the spread of nuclear weapons, we've also advanced the second half of our non-fulfillation work. That every nation can use peaceful nuclear technology for energy, for medical advances, for research to better human condition. Again, this understanding dates back to President Eisenhower who said, it is not enough to take this weapon out of the hands of the soldiers. We must put it into the hands of those who will know how to strip its military casing and adapt it to the arts of peace. We've invested significant time and energy in buttressing the international framework for civil nuclear cooperation. We've taken practical steps, like supporting the IAE's low-enriched uranium bank, setting up our own American fuel bank so that states are insured reliable access to nuclear energy without setting up fuel cycle capabilities in their own countries. 10 years ago, as chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, I issued in our civil nuclear cooperation agreement with India through the United States Senate agreement that will allow US nuclear reactors to provide enough electrical power for Delhi and Mumbai through peak usages in the hottest summer days. And parenthetically, keep India from moving in that direction, able to supply themselves. Over the past eight years, our administration pursued and brought in the force new peaceful nuclear cooperation agreements with Russia, China, Republican Korea, Vietnam, and others. In total, the United States now has 22 such agreements with 47 partners resulting in the production of more than 1.5 million gigawatts hours of safe, clean nuclear power worldwide in the year 2015. Enough to power 150 million homes for an entire year. Of course, no discussion of nuclear weapons can ignore the fact the United States possesses one of the two largest arsenals of nuclear weapons in the world. Nuclear deterrent has been the bedrock of our national defense since World War II. And so long as other countries possess nuclear weapons that can be used against us, we too must maintain safe, secure, and effective nuclear arsenals that deter attacks against ourselves and our allies. That's why, early in this administration, we increased funding to maintain our arsenal and modernize our nuclear infrastructure so that our arsenal remains safe and reliable even with fewer weapons and without testing. The investment was not only consistent with our non-proliferation goals, it was essential to maintain our non-proliferation goals. Guaranteeing the capacity of our stockpile allow us to continue to pursue nuclear reductions without any compromise of our security. As part of President Obama's change to reduce reliance on launch under attack procedures in US planning, the Department of Defense has adjusted our planning and processes to give the president more flexibility in deciding how to respond to a range of nuclear scenarios. In our 2010 nuclear posture review, we made a commitment to create the conditions by which the sole purpose of nuclear weapons would be to deter others from launching the nuclear attack. Accordingly, over the course of our administration, we have steadily reduced the primacy of nuclear weapons and the primacy of nuclear weapons that have held since our post-World War II timing while improving our ability to deter and defeat our adversaries and reassure our allies without reliance on nuclear weapons. Given our non-nuclear capacities and the nature of today's threats, it's hard to envision a plausible scenario in which the first use of nuclear weapons by the United States would be necessary or would make sense in the view of the president and me. President Obama and I are confident we can deter and defend ourselves and our allies against non-nuclear threats through other means. Next administration will put forward its own policies. Seven years after the nuclear posture review, the president and I strongly believe we have made enough progress that deterring and if necessary, retaliating against the nuclear attack should be the sole purpose of U.S. nuclear arsenal. If you want a world without nuclear weapons, the United States must take the initiative to lead the world there. Moreover, as President Obama pointedly highlighted during his visit just last month to Hiroshima, as the only nation to have used nuclear weapons, we bear a great moral responsibility to lead this change in the world. That's why we negotiated with Russia the most ambitious arms control reduction treaty in two decades, a new start. I fought hard for this treaty as I have for every substance of arms control agreement since the 70s because it makes America safer. Again, it's not about trust or goodwill. It's about strategic stability and greater transparency between the world's two great nuclear powers. Fact that has become more critical as our relationship with Russia has grown increasingly more strained than the last 70 years. New start enshrines rigorous verification and monitoring mechanisms for nuclear reductions. And next year, when the central limits of the treaty come into effect, the strategic nuclear arsenals of our two countries will be at their lowest level in six decades. That's a major step forward in my opinion. But I can vest it's not as much progress as our administration had hoped we would have made by this point. The past three years, Russia has refused to negotiate additional reductions of deployed and non-deployed arsenals. But American leadership in this issue need not wait for Russia. Since 2009, the United States has dismantled 2,226 nuclear warheads. And I'm proud to share some additional news in here. After determining that we can safely reduce our nuclear stockpiles even further, over the past year, President Obama set aside almost 500 warfares for a dismantlement on top of those previously scheduled for retirement last year. That puts our active nuclear stockpile of 4,018 warheads in service in approximately 2,800 in line to be destroyed. And we recommend to the next administration conduct a comprehensive nuclear posture review to determine whether additional reductions we'll be able to. As I've long said, the United States is the strongest when we lead not only by the example of our power, but by the power of our example. Our efforts have not only reduced the threat of nuclear weapons that pose the future generation, they positioned our successors to continue making progress toward the day when we can finally and forever rid our world of this scourge. But I'm not here to only laud our successes. We didn't accomplish all that we'd hoped to. We lobbied hard for the U.S. to ratify the comprehensive nuclear, the comprehensive test pantry. The United States has not conducted a nuclear test for more than two decades. The directors of our nuclear laboratories tell us, we know more about our arsenal today and its reliability through stockpile stewardship than we did when testing was commonplace. Ratifying the treaty would be an incredible boon to strengthening the existing global norm against nuclear testing. It were blocked at every turn in the United States Senate. I did not always support the decisions made by President Reagan or either of the President's Bush to remind 36 years as U.S. Senate. Repeatedly helped improve and pass anti-arms control measures pursued by Republican presidents, though, for the same reason. Nuclear security is too important, too important to be a party policy for our nation and for the world. Although we no longer live with a daily dread of nuclear confrontation, the dangers we face today require a bipartisan spirit. The challenges looming on the horizon are gonna require leadership not only from the next president and vice president, but from the Congress as well. While the vast majority of the international community understands that the world is more dangerous when more nations and people wield nuclear weapons, there are still those who seek to grow their arsenals and develop new types of nuclear weapons. Not just North Korea, but Russia, Pakistan, others have made counterproductive moves that only increase the risk of nuclear weapons could be used in a regional conflict in Europe, South Asia, or East Asia. So working with Congress, the next administration will have to navigate these dangers and I hope continue leading the global consensus to reduce the role of nuclear weapons. Particularly, they'll have to determine how best to improve strategic stability with Russia, which has eroded over the past few years. While we have shifted our security doctrine away from our nuclear arsenal, they have moved to rely more heavily on theirs. Some of that has to do with Russia's concerns about our technological advances, our superior conventional capacity, and the capacity of the United States military. But it's a shift in strategy that increases the nuclear danger for the world. Furthermore, Russia is currently in violation of the Intermediate Range Nuclear Force Treaty, which has been in effect for almost 30 years. They have thus far refused to engage constructing with the United States and returning to compliance or to broach discussions about strategic stability in future arms reductions. As the next administration navigates these difficult security talks, they'll have to make decisions for American security that recognize budgetary constraints and require trade-offs. If future budgets reverse the choices we've made and pour additional money in the nuclear build-up, it harkens back to the Cold War. It will do nothing to increase the day-to-day security of the United States for our allies. And it will mean we will have forever be in a position where we have fewer resources to devote to the areas that are indispensable for 21st-century security needs of the United States, like cybersecurity, space, the health and modernization of our conventional forces. It risks placing the theoretical power of a weapon we hope to guide never to use again above the tools the military uses each and every day. It risks increasing the chances of nuclear conflict through miscalculation and destroying the confidence-building measures and security agreements that have protected American people for the past four decades. And it risks, this I think is an important point, it risks degrading our moral leadership, diminishing our standing with our allies and compromising our capacity to achieve any of our other goals in the international community. I know that as we move forward in this debate, there'll be voices of counsel and nuclear arms race in the name of realism. I know because I've heard that argument from the time I entered the United States Senate in 1972. Their arguments make even less sense today in my opinion. In a world where the most challenging nuclear threat comes not from foreign governments and advanced technologies, but from terrorists with crude Cold War relics in the suitcase, heading for any major city inside a cargo container pulling the port of New York or San Francisco. That first speech in Prague eight years ago, President Obama distilled the essence of the problem when he said, and I quote, "'Some argue the spread of these weapons "'can not be stopped, can not be checked. "'There were a destined to live in a world "'where more nations and more people "'possess the ultimate tools of destruction.'" We're not gonna say such fatalism is a deadly adversary, or if we believe the spread of nuclear weapons is inevitable, then in some way we are admitting to ourselves that the use of nuclear weapons is inevitable. Over the past eight years, we've sought to defeat fatalism. We have rejected inevitabilities. As a nation, I believe we must keep pursuing peace and security for a world without nuclear weapons because that is the only surety we have against the nightmare scenario becoming a reality. This was a problem created by human ingenuity. It can only be solved with human ingenuity and the belief in our better angels. Our capacity for destruction must always be balanced by the weight of our shared responsibility. That's a belief I've held for more than 40 years, one that I've fought to make real time and time again in my career, one that I've been honored to keep advancing through the American people alongside President Obama in the past eight years. I think that effort has to continue. God continue to bless the United States of America and make God protect our troops. Thank you for your patience.


Welcome to our interview show in which we interview LGBTQ guests who are important contributors to our community. We want to acknowledge that all things LGBTQ is produced at Orca Media in Montpelier, Vermont, which is unceded Indigenous land. Enjoy the show. Hi. Welcome to All Things LGBTQ. We're talking today to Diana Whitney, poet and editor of You Know You Don't Have to Be Everything. It's a cast of 68 poems and is extraordinary. Diana lives in Brattle, Laura, Vermont. She's from South Williamstown, Massachusetts. Author of Workman Publishing. Poet, editor, essay and queer mom of two. Yoga Instruction Instructor. Former poetry columnist at the San Francisco Chronicle. He studied English language at the University of Oxford and studied English and creative writing at Dartmouth College. Quite a resume. So tell us a little bit about this, your upcoming book. Is it already out on the shelves now and ready to be ordered? Yeah. Thank you so much, Linda. I'm so happy to be here. And it's perfect timing. It is out. The official pub date is March 30th. But bookstores here in Vermont already have it. And it's been really exciting to, you know, see some photos of friends holding it up. And yeah, I always recommend to readers if they're going to get the book to go support their local indie bookstore. And you have a lot of Vermont poets in here as well. Yeah. There's a handful of us. I, some well-known names that people will know, Bianca Stone, Alison Prine, and a wonderful younger poet, Rage Hezekiah, who I believe works at the Bennington Writing Seminars. And so when they, what brought you to wanting to do this project particularly? I mean, I think it's a wonderful idea. And so how did you get here? Yeah.  So it's an inclusive poetry anthology for teen girls. Or really, you know, any young person or of any age in that process of becoming, which I think we all are, you know, in discovery mode. But I really wanted to reach out to that, that group, I guess for me, being a teen girl was, you know, it's a really challenging time. And I, you know, starting from about 13, I really struggled with my mental health, with depression, with self-loathing and body image and self-harming.  So that transition, you know, what I wanted to do was to create, to collect the voices I wish I'd heard as a teen girl. And, you know, also growing up in the 80s, because I'm a, I'm a Gen Xer, it was a really hard time to be LGBTQ. I was, you know, in the closet till I was 20. I'm bisexual. And, you know, my first relationship, and I talk about this in the, you know, a little bit and an introduction to the book, was when I was 13 with my best friend, but it was a secret and there was a lot of shame. And eventually my parents found out and forbade me to see her. And so that, you know, carrying that secret, that heavy secret throughout my whole high school years, like it was, couldn't even really admit it to myself. And I think it, that's a heavy burden. And part of what I wanted to do, bringing this book into the world was to collect the voices of queer poets who were writing openly about queer love, about their identity, about self-love and self-acceptance. And, you know, really thinking kind of imagining my younger self encountering these poems and what that might have been like to hear those voices.  And I will say, I'm also, I'm the mom of two teenage daughters. They're 13 and 15. So, you know, I'm watching them live through, you know, not the same struggles, of course, but, you know, some similar struggles in some ways that I went through, definitely in terms of mental health.  I mean, it's really, it's a health crisis beyond the COVID crisis. And we've struggled in our household with some of those really scary times.  I've been working on it for over two years. But my hope is that poetry can bring us out of our isolation, that reading the poems. I mean, really, I wanted young readers to feel like they're not alone, that not every poem in this book of 68 poems is going to speak to every reader, but there may be a few that really, you know, that voice of truth telling, you know, that, you know, poetry is often cut right to an emotional truth, whether it's because the language is compressed and kind of intensified or through the use of image and different craft tools. And I have to say, I love all forms of writing and I'm a huge novel reader. That's like my favorite, you know, pleasure reading. But there is something about a poem when it speaks to you. So what I hope is that someone, you know, here's I'm going to hold up a book because I'm so happy to hold it in my hand that, you know, someone may look through and find something that brings them out of that sense of isolation and loneliness. In the book, it's it's actually also it's illustrated, which I, you know, I don't know how much readers can can see on Zoom. But, you know, for example, they're these just beautiful illustrations. There's three different illustrators from diverse backgrounds. And that was really that was important to me as a white woman being the editor of this anthology, that if it was going to be, was going to have an intersectional feminist mission, which is what I wanted. And the poets in the book, they're about half Black, Indigenous people of color, and actually about one third LGBTQ voices, which I realized that wasn't even like I didn't go in with any like quotas, but I just kept choosing the poems I loved.  And it's not even that the content of the poems was expressively queer.  She writes about nature. I anthologize her poem, Wild Geese. You know, you don't know that that her identity is at the forefront, but it was central to who she was. So I mind, you know, my hope is that when someone would look through this, both the poems, but also the illustrations would speak to them. Here's another, and the book is, it's arranged by emotion. There's eight chapters, according to emotion.  But it actually became a really useful organizing principle, especially because they focused on, you know, some taboo emotions. It starts with seeking and then loneliness, which is really defining part of growing up. And it can be at least, and it certainly has been a defining part of the past year for, for many of us, and especially for teenagers. And then attitude, and I'll hold up this picture, it's one of my favorites. Nice. Isn't that great? It's just like, here she is, hands on the hips. And, and then rage. And that is, you know, I felt like that a lot when I was a teen.  I have a temper in my kids do, too. But I think girls, especially, you know, we're, we're not given permission to express our anger. And so to have these, there's some angry poems that are powerful, and that are, you know, using that emotion as like a catalyst for, for creativity, for expression, for, for release. And then there's shame, which for me, what like I said, was a, you know, pretty central part of being in high school, certainly, and trying to have a certain, you know, exterior surface. I was a straight A student, and I was kind of boy crazy on the outside. But there are all these different aspects of me, including this, you know, my, my closeted full spectrum of my sexuality, which, you know, I was 20 when I came out at Dartmouth, and that was a really liberating, amazing time. But that was the 90s, you know, I'll say the 80s was a really, kind of a toxic period. There weren't real role models in my small town, not in Williamstown, Massachusetts for LGBTQ people who were out and living, you know, visibly full lives, no teachers in my high school, you know, no one in my high school. Yeah, well, it was a, it was sort of an exhilarating and difficult period, the 80s. Because, you know, people were sort of moving towards, and of course it was AIDS too, early 80s. So that added a whole nother stigma to. Absolutely. I think that was connected to, certainly in the small town, there was like real powerful activism happening in the gay community around AIDS activism and ACT UP, and all of that was happening, I think, often more in the cities, and I think that paved the way for what happened in the 90s, which was, I did then have the, and I saw this happen, like on my college campus, there was like a real blossoming of, we didn't use the word queer then, it was like, you know, LGBT, LGBT Alliance or whatever, but I think all of those activists, you know, in the, you know, the tragedy out of the tragedy of AIDS in the 80s, and you correct me if I'm getting the history wrong, but I feel like there was some paving the way for then what happened, like socially for young people, that there was just more space for, for us to be, us to be open and out and proud, starting in the early 90s. And then I kind of felt like the, like some of the, you know, music of the time became more, I don't know. I mean, I always wax nostalgic about the music I listened to, like that time period. I have two sons and they're Gen X. Yeah.  I mean, for me, though, for me, it was the indigo girls. Yeah, yeah. Oh, like, and, and like, were they out? Maybe not at first, but like, yeah, then they were, you know, and in it was like, oh my God, my, I, who do I love more? You know, Emily, or at least Amy, and I went to see them. I went to see them live at least, at least three times. I went to this amazing concert in Berkeley the summer of 1994, I lived in Berkeley. And I'd cut my hair short.  And, and so especially because I'm kind of a fem, you know, I didn't know when use that word then. But it was like, Oh, I need to do these external, these external markers to prove myself in some way. So, you know, I had this short haircut. I pierced my nose. I got a necklace, which was a double woman's sign. And then I spent this summer in Berkeley, because I just wanted to meet women and date women and didn't really work out like that. But I got to see the indigo girls. And it's a Greek theater in Berkeley. And it was outdoors in the sunlight in the eucalyptus grove. And like, everyone was just taking off their shirts. They were just there, like in their bras. And like, when I think back to like the the nineties and that blossoming, like, that's what I think about. Yeah. And I saw the ones in New Orleans at Jazz Fest, they were fabulous. And I think, you know, there was a whole generation of people, you know, in the sixties and fifties.  So would you like to read us before we leave? I'd love to.  And, you know, maybe maybe I'll read this poem by Joy Layden. I don't know if you know her. Yeah. I actually just read, I read with her last night. And her poem is called Survival Guide. And that title alone, you know, Survival Guide, like, that's what you need. That's what I needed when I was like 13, 14, 15. It's like, you know, how do I do this? How do I get through?  So this poem, I'll read this poem, Survival Guide, which just really spoke to me. Both me is who I am now as a, you know, middle-aged mom and then also thinking about the girl that I was. Survival Guide by Joy Layden. No matter how old you are, it helps to be young when you're coming to life, to be unfinished, a mysterious statement, a journey from star to star. So break out a box of Crayolas and draw your family looking uncomfortably away from the you you've exchanged for the mannequin they named. You should help clean up, but you're so busy being afraid to love or not. You're missing the fun of clothing yourself in the embarrassment of life. Frost your lids with midnight. Lid your heart with frost. Rub them all over. The hormones that regulate the production of love from karmic garbage dumps. Turn yourself into the real you. You can only discover by being other. Voila, you're free. Learn to love the awkward silence you are going to be. I think that is a wonderful way to end this. Thank you so much, Diana. I hope we'll see you on tour shortly when this is somewhat over. Yeah, I'm actually reading at Palm City in Montpelier at the end of April with Allison Prine and Bianca Stone. Nice. So for people who want to hear some more poems from the book, we'll be sharing those. That's great. And well, do you think they're going to let people in at that point? It's online. It's a virtual reading, but that's what we do now. And you know.  Now you said it's accessible to more people too. Absolutely. You can record it. You can play it. You can, you know, it can have a life of its own outside of just the community that you're in. So in some ways that's really, I think, valuable.  I love it. And you're right.   You can be in your pajamas on your couch with your, your dog. And you can, you can watch poetry. So it's really, it is, there, there has been a kind of a silver lining to the way that we can interact in these online spaces with more people. Yeah. And have accessibility to people that if you don't live in New York or, you know, play or San Francisco that you can have access to that you might know of before. So I think in some ways I think that is maybe a good thing that's changed in the culture. Yeah. Yeah. So April 30th, we're reading Friday, April 30th. It's the last event of Palm City and it's online. And, and I'm sure if any of your audience wants to find out, they can go to the Palm City website, which is, you know, it's through the Kellogg Hubbard Library in Montpelier. And they do such a wonderful job every year. And if you give me a heads up just before the reading, I will advertise it on the show. That would be great. Yeah. And let's see. Okay. So thanks again, Diana. I appreciate it. And I hope we get to meet in person one day. I hope so too, Linda. Thank you so much for having me. Thank you. All right. Bye. Some early spring weather. And Vermont is looking at easing up some of the COVID restrictions. Linda and I thought that perhaps y'all might be ready to book that retreat. So we found the ideal place for you. And we want to introduce you to Willie and Greg, who are the endkeepers at Moose Meadow Lodge on Crossed Hill in Waterbury. Welcome. Hi. Thank you. Hi, guys. Hi. So I want to thank you. You know, how is it going with COVID? And how are you preparing people for their stay at your wonderful lodge? Well, you know, actually, we were open last summer and fall. And back then, we didn't know as much about COVID as we do now. So we have a lot of practice in cleaning and sanitizing. I spent a lot of time with laundry. And of course, everyone has to mask. And we've been able to spread everybody out for breakfast. So we'll continue to do that once the season starts back up. Now, since November, we've been pretty much closed, except for the holiday. But because of all of the restrictions and the numbers going up, but now that the governor is easing up on those restrictions, especially after July 4th, we'll be ready, more than ready to take action. So and, you know, everybody is eager to travel, as Keith mentioned.   Now, you you've promised us that during this interview, you're actually going to take us inside and show us around moose metal lodge. So people have a real sense of, oh, this is where I want to go. But you have four guest rooms plus the treehouse. And at the end of this interview, we're going to show your brief YouTube on the treehouse. But before moose metal lodge, you both had lives. So could you tell us a little bit about your life prior to moose metal? Linda would really like to know how the two of you met. I'd like to know why made you decide to open a B&B and how will we grace to entice you to come to Vermont? So that's a very interesting question. How we met actually relates to why we have this bed and breakfast. Greg and I met in a log home bed and breakfast, a gay owned log home bed and breakfast in the mountains of West Virginia called the the lodge. The guest house. The guest house. The guest house at Lost River in West Virginia. I had actually rented out the whole place. But two weeks before we were supposed to go, my friends and I, my friends started calling me and cancelling. And so I called the odor, I said, Bob, I'm sorry, I only need two rooms. He says, don't worry, I'll sell the other rooms. And while I was mad at my friends for cancelling out on me, it gave Greg the opportunity to rent one of the other rooms. And how many years ago was that? That was 29 years ago. Wow. Congratulations. So we met at this bed and breakfast in the hills of West Virginia. We found out we both lived and worked in the Washington DC area. I was with IBM at the time and Willie was with a couple of different associations that he worked. And every weekend after that weekend at the bed and breakfast, we would just do stuff together.  But we just traveled. We just did things together. And every time we travel, we would stay at a bed and breakfast. And we thought after a while, we'd be sitting at a bed and breakfast in the morning and we'd think, you know, we could do this. And as we continued to date, we thought, you know, in the future, you know, sometime when we get close to retirement, it wouldn't be kind of fun to have our own bed and breakfast. You know, something to do if, you know, if we're still together. But we dated for four years before we moved in together. Six months after we moved in, I got transferred to Vermont with IBM. That's what brought us to Vermont. So it was supposed to be a three-year project. It lasted six years. During that time, well, when I got transferred up here, I went to Willie. I said, Willie, you know, I'm going to be leaving Washington, DC, moving to Vermont. Why don't you move with me? Because we talked about having a bed and breakfast. Maybe this is the time, not when we get close to retirement. Maybe when we're young, this is the time to do a bed and breakfast. So Willie agreed. He moved to Vermont with me, with the plans of buying property to do exactly what we're doing right now. So this was a private home, private property, when we first bought it. But we bought it with the plans of doing what we're doing. After six years at IBM, I'd been with IBM for 22 years, but after that project ended, this was up and running. And we were, I didn't want to leave Vermont. And so left IBM to focus on the bed and breakfast. Wow. I haven't regretted one bit of it, right? No, no. As a matter of fact, we were so happy with what we found. Because first of all, I wanted something within 30 minutes of my office when we moved here. But I wanted something in the hills, something with views, something close to water. And this was the first property that we saw. But we continued to look for three more months before we came back and put an offer on this property. It had a lot of work. And that's the reason it had so much work that needed to be done. So that's how we managed to continue. That's how we met. I guess I'm shaking. That's how we met. That's what brought us to Vermont. And we're just as happy today as the day we bought the place. Okay, but you have not just settled in, as I am told, one of the in keepers of the year here in Vermont. But you've also reached out to the community around you. And you both have high levels of involvement in community activity.  Willie, you played the violin with LFO players, chamber players, which you are one of the founders, and the Vermont Philharmonic. Can you share with us your experience reaching out to and how the greater Duxbury Waterbury community accepted you? Yeah, that's a really good question. Coming from a city like Washington, D.C. and moving up to a rural state like Vermont, you have ideas of what it might be like when you move there. But I was blown away by at least in our community, the openness and welcoming attitude that the community members had around here. Our first community involvement was to volunteer at the Waterbury Public Library. And I tell you, it was the best way to get all the gossip and meet all the neighbors and fit right in. And then I started playing with the Vermont Philharmonic and the Montpelier Chamber Orchestra. I play violin.  They are looking for ability in your instrument. And people just embraced me and wanted to get more involved with music. And then years later, I founded the LFO Chamber Players, which is a professional orchestra that performs here in Vermont. On my business side, I was president of the Waterbury Tourism Council. I'm appointed by the governor on the Vermont Travel and Recreation Council. And I'm also now on the board of the Vermont Chamber of Commerce. So I'm heavily involved to represent not just the people of color, but also the LGBTQ community in these venues that we aren't normally in. I think it's important for us to have a voice. Some people have loud voices and try to influence society and changes from a more vocal perspective. I work more from the inside, so to speak, and get more involved with those people who aren't in the establishment or people who are in power, so to speak, so that they can hear another voice. So to answer the question about how moving to Vermont it's been like it's been the best decision we ever made. And Greg, what's it like being an elected official for the town of Duxbury? Because you were also in the Cemetery Commission, I understand. And Justice of the Peace is usually one of those municipal roles that go to the people who have been there long term, the people who are really established. Right, right. Well, I, yes, I was a Cemetery Commissioner for 12 years and then turned it over to, there were three of us on the commission, and then after 12 years we turned it over to three other commissioners. So I'm not on that anymore, but we did a lot of wonderful work here in Duxbury. We put together the rules, regulations, policies, and procedures for our cemeteries, but a lot of work was done there. But becoming a Justice of the Peace, that was back in, well, 2000, when Civil Union was first went into law here in Vermont. And when Vermont was the only state that had Civil Union, couples were coming to Vermont to have a legal recognition of their life together with whoever they were with. So they would book here at the Moose Middle Lodge, and then we were running around looking for a Justice of the Peace to officiate the weddings. And that's where we met you, Keith, because you came over a number of times in officiated weddings. And then we thought, well, Keith is not only fantastic, but wouldn't it be great if we could have a package that includes my services if I ran for the position and got elected? Maybe we could have a package that includes my services, and that'll free Keith up for other things that he's involved with. But anyway, so 2001 I ran for the position, got elected, and every two years I get reelected. Now, Keith, I mentioned before we started recording that you were very, very instrumental and very helpful, bringing me on board, watching you as an efficient, getting information from you, getting just the right words from you, just was such a springboard to help me to go on to where I'm at today. It's actually become a second career. I just counted yesterday, and this is March, April, and I have 44 weddings just for this year on my books. That number is low. That number is low. I've already officiated six since January. I've got quite a few already into next year. So I'll be doing between 50 and 60 weddings this year because it's only March. But that's what I'm saying. It's become a second career, and I travel all throughout Vermont to officiate weddings. I'll get a phone call from an in or resort to bed and breakfast, and once they have seen me come and represent them and officiate, they will ask, can we put you on our preferred vendor list? So now I'm getting a lot of referrals from other locations. Most of my weddings are not here at the Moose Metalage anymore. They're throughout Vermont, all the way from JP down to Bennington. And it's the fun part of being a justice. So Keith, if you recall, you did a wedding here that was covered by the New York Times. I think in 2001, like 20 years ago, which is hard to believe, Greg had just become Justice of the Peace, but he went away for a furniture building class in Maine, I believe, that week. And so you filled in, and then you got in New York Times, and he was so jealous. Keith would heal. Never forget that. It was your picture in the New York Times. Okay, but he went away to Maine to learn how to make furniture. And I understand that there's a fair number of his projects that now populate the lodge. Yes. Yeah, there's tables and chairs and benches, because I have, since my wedding ceremonies have increased, my woodworking has decreased, because I don't have the time now to walk out here and cut what I need to make furniture, because I'm always working on another ceremony with another couple interviewing. I had an interview or FaceTime today, one yesterday and one day before, so in the last three days I've talked with three couples, and I'm constantly doing that. So furniture making has kind of taken a backseat. Being conscious of our time, I want you to take us inside and show us loose metal lodge. Sure, I will hold the camera, and Greg will give you a tour. You're holding the camera because he kept shaking it. Could you tell? I didn't realize I was, I was just nervous. All right, here we go. So now I wonder, first of all, do you want to check out the view? Gorgeous. Sun is shining. Welcome to the Moose Metal Lodge.  There we go. So when you walk in, you're going to notice throughout the house there's a variety of trophy animals, and I do a little hunting, I do a little fishing. So some of the trophy animals are ones that I caught. I do my own butchering. We eat everything I take, and nothing will go to waste. I have everything preserved, and so now guests can come and enjoy, like over here. This guy I got in the woods a few years ago. Guests will be able to come in and see up close what some of these wonderful trophies look like. So this is the piano room. Let's walk over here because what I want to show you, a dear friend of ours made us a replica of our treehouse, and as a thank you, they came over to see the place. We gave them a little tour, and a couple weeks later they called and they said, hey, we have something for you, and we thought they're going to give us some flowers or something if we're thanking us, and they walked in with this, and it is a centerpiece. I can't wait to actually show you the real treehouse, but this is very, very close to what it is. And if you follow me over here, we have our lobby shop, really caused me the vice president of the lobby shop. I got promoted this year. And maple syrup from our trees, our neighbor taps about 600 of our maple trees. Oh, and Willie is just starting his new business, will flowers. There we go. What this is, this is the most sought after pancake mix worldwide of all the guests that come here, because it is made, what it's made from, sweet rice flour, gluten free, but we have more guests asking for this than anything else that he makes. So we know that's going into production. If you follow us over here, a lot of the materials came off our property. This boulder came out of our woods, and stone cover carved us a sink. Hot water comes out of 200 degrees, cold water, easy access. So if you see a rock, a stone, a tree came off our property. This is, I don't think you've seen the kitchen key. You did see it after it was renovated. Okay. So I'm just going to let Willie pan the kitchen area. This is, now I tell the guests, we give the guests a tour when they come in, of course, and we let them know they're welcome to use the refrigerator. We have plenty of refrigerator space for the guests, but this is very important right here. I tell every guest, I just want you to know why this is so important. This is where your Ben and Jerry's ice cream goes. I never guarantee it'll be there in the morning, but that's where they can store it. We're going to bring you over here into the great room and some trophies. Now, not all trophies are ones that I've taken. There are some belong to friends of ours. Some I purchased, so it's kind of a combination of different trophies, North American animals. So I'll really just walk in and maybe do a pan. Okay. And we've got a couple rooms we can show you. The first is the Creole room.  C-R-E-E-L. Oh, we must be muted. I don't know. Isn't it a Southern expression for like a bayou or a creek? No, no. It's not a spice. It's not a seasoning. It's, what were you going to say, Linda? I was going to say, I was going to say that's Creole. Yeah, that's Creole. This is C-R-E-E-L. This is a Creole. So it's what you carry fish in when you're out fishing. So this whole room has a fishing theme and I collect Creoles of all vintages and sizes and designs. This particular, all the rooms have private baths. This particular bath is a piece of art. The entire room is hand painted with by a local artist of all my fishing gear. And this room also has a two-person steam room, big enough for two people to shower and turn the steam on and that room fills up with a, the steam room fills up with 110 degrees of steam. If you follow me this way, this is, go ahead. I just want to say my father who was from Newfoundland and was a fisherman will be very, very mad that I did not know that. I was going to say we're, we're just about totally out of time. Okay, okay. So, so, okay, then tell me. Well, what I'm, what I'm going to say is thank you so much. We're going to need to come back and what's going to be coming immediately after this and, and it's why we're ending a little sooner is so that we can show the video of the tree house. Oh, yes. Absolutely. So, so, but one last thing, every summer prior to COVID, Loose Metal Lodge had sponsored a picnic and concert with the Vermont Steel Harmonic. Might we see that coming back this year? Yes, the plan is to have it, I think it's August 8th, the second Sunday of August, three o'clock picnic, four o'clock concert and it's our annual Pops concert. It's, it's going to be wonderful. It will, I'll be crying because we haven't performed it over a year. We missed you. And we want a front row seat. Got it. All right, with that, thank you. And thank you guys. It's been a pleasure. Bye. Very welcome. Thank you. We'll see you in two weeks.


In this video, we're going to look at a balanced 3-wire circuit. Now, what a 3-wire circuit allows us to do is it allows us to have two different voltages available to us off of one service. Sound familiar? That's how your house runs. You have 120 volts, which basically takes care of your lights and your plugs and your TV and all the fun stuff, and then you have your 240-volt load, which is basically all your heating loads and other things as well. But in a typical house, it's your heating, so you've got your baseboard heaters, you've got your dryer, you've got your range, your oven. So those would be covered under the 240-volt. Now what we'll do here is just to get the points across, I'm going to assign some values to these batteries, and then I'm going to assign some values to these resistors here, and we're going to have a little chat about how this 3-wire circuit works. So let's just pick a nice and easy one. Let's go with 120 volts. So let me just change my pen color here to a nice red, and let's say that that's a 120-volt battery there, and that's a 120-volt battery there. Now I'm using batteries in this instance, but it could be very well AC, and in your house it honestly will be AC, but we'll just go with that for now. And then let's pick some resistive values for the resistors. So I've got, let's go with 10 ohms here, 20 ohms on this one. Let's say 30 ohms for the 240-volt load. I've got 10 ohms on this resistor and 20 ohms on this resistor, which basically balances my load. Now in a 3-wire circuit, like I mentioned, I have two different voltages available. So if I follow through here, starting with my negative, I'm going along the negative line, and I come up through 300 ohms and I go back to my positive, I end up with 240 volts at my 30 ohm resistor. Now what's going to happen on these other loads, these little loads here, the 10 ohms and the 20 ohms, is basically my current's coming through here, and while I have access to this neutral, I don't really need it. Because what's happening here is if I've got two equal loads in series with each other, well, remembering what we learned from Kirchhoff's law is that the voltage is going to split evenly across it. So from this point to this point, yeah, I do have 240, but because this is a balanced load, this is only going to see 120 volts and this is only going to see 120 volts. So this neutral, not required at this instance. Same thing over here, this is 20 ohms, this is 20 ohms. These are both in series with each other. So what's going to end up happening is, again, 240 from there to there, but split in half because these are in series with each other, 120, 120. So what's going to happen to the current along this neutral? Let's find out. Now, let me just change my pen color to a nice blue and I'm going to say, okay, using Kirchhoff's law, I know that if I go 120 volts divided by 10 ohms, I'm going to get 12 amps, 120 volts divided by 20 ohms, I'm going to get 6 amps. So let's write that in there. This is going to be 12 amps and this is going to be 6 amps. Down here, it's the same values, 12 amps and 6 amps and then over here, and this is where sometimes I see some students forgetting things, is that from this point to this point, you only have this one resistor across 240 volts. So we're going to go 240 divided by 30 and we're going to end up with 8 amps. So let's just write that in there with a nice blue. Alright, so we have all our currents figured out. Now what we need to do is figure out what our line currents are going to be, line 1 and down here, line 2. And the way we can do that is looking at these nodes and talking about Kirchhoff's current law, we've talked before about how whatever the current entering the node is, it has to be the current exiting the node. So if we look at this, now we see that current is heading this way. I've got 8 amps flowing here. Let's just use this as an example. 8 amps flowing here to this node. It picks up 6 amps here, so I end up with 14 amps and then it picks up another 12 amps here and I end up with 26 amps. So let's get that written in there, 26 amps. Then let's take a look down at the bottom here. Same idea, as current is coming along here, we have some value of current coming from there and it's dropping off 12, it's dropping off 6 and it's dropping off 8. Coincidentally, that works out to be exactly the same thing, 26 amps. So I have 26 amps on line 1, 26 amps on line 2. Now what that means for our neutral is because they're completely balanced, there is no need for any neutral current to be flowing here. Because what's happening here is if we look along here, this 12 amps gets to this node, it doesn't have to pick up or drop off any current because it ends up being the same here. So 12 amps still maintains 12 amps and goes across here. Same thing here with 6 amps. Comes up to the node, it doesn't have to pick up or drop off any current. So it just stays happy being 6 amps. So you have zero current flowing in the neutral, zero amps. That's kind of a dream when we're trying to get our loads all figured out for our residences or commercial or any industrial drive. You try to balance your loads so that you have a minimal amount of current flowing on the neutral. Because the neutral's job, it provides a reference point and a safety point for the ground. But it is also there to carry the unbalanced current. Now in this video, we focus strictly on a balanced circuit. So that's going to be zero amps flowing through here. But in other videos, we'll talk about an unbalanced current where if these values, these 10 ohms and 20 ohms and 10 ohms and 20 ohms are all different, let's say it's like 10, 5, 35, 15, that's going to throw things all out of whack. And so that changes things. But right now, for as far as we're concerned in this video, everything's balanced, everybody's happy and the neutral has nothing traveling on it.


I hope you enjoyed the little musical break we gave you. Oh my gosh, thank you for staying with us. And if you've just joined, good morning. How are you? It's a little bit cold, but we're determined to have a good time because you are watching the hardest breakfast show around. I don't know what to do with it. That's why I try to find Facebook at Y254Channel on Twitter. Hashtag is Y in the morning. Only thing blue about this day is my sketch. Are we together? Yeah, let us give a very warm welcome to our first guest with a very, very interesting topic. It's OK. I was not born knowing things also. So, good morning again. Hi. Hi. Good morning. Good morning. How are you? I'm good. Would you like to tell our audience who you are? My name is Dr. Lydia Tambo. I'm a medical doctor, public health specialist, infectious disease, and I'm a women's rights enthusiast. Oh, wow. And you're glowing. Thank you, thank you. Congratulations first. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Thank you. And it's not her first, she looked like a first time mom. I don't know, you look so young and good looking and I cannot imagine I've heard more than one of these, but it's OK. Welcome to the show. Thank you very much. As you have been welcomed by our members behind the scenes, at least they've prepared us for something that we can discuss, because he might be making fun, but there are people who actually legit don't know. I've heard people who claim that you have intercourse with children, like babies, and if you had HIV, you're suddenly cured. That's amazing. And people that had believed, yo, hello, it's not true. Don't do it, OK? It's not true. So maybe we're going to break some of the myths that come around cervical cancer and HPV. But maybe tell us what the difference is. What's cervical cancer? What's HPV? So we'll start by saying that there is a virus called human papilloma virus. Categorically, they are divided into two. There is the one that is not dangerous, and then there is the dangerous one. So there are different subtypes, up to 40 subtypes. But the ones that we really fear are subtypes 16 and 18. And those ones are the ones that lead to cervical cancer. The rest lead to skin warts, genital warts, which can be managed and treated and controlled. That sounds very uncomfortable. Yes, they can be uncomfortable if not managed. OK. So it sounds malignant and benign. Yes, so there's benign. There's a benign aspect to it and a malignant aspect to it. So let's talk about the scary ones. 16 and 18, what does that even mean? So HPV is considered to be a sexually transmitted condition. So you have sex, and your partner exposes you to the virus. If you get the subtypes 16 and 18, then it comes and causes now the malignant changes in you. As we said, it is sexually transmitted.  There's oral sex. Therefore, you can get oral cancer.   For men who have sex, which is the majority of the population, it means you can get penile sex. And for the women, yes. Or you can get penile cancer.  So the whole spectrum, all the organs down there can get cancer. So it's a risky game. So it's a risky game. OK. I don't know if you're a buyer, but we must educate each other. OK? I don't know if you're a buyer or not. Please go ahead, OK? It's fun. You think it's exciting. And yes, it's pleasurable. Sitakata. But you know, the lyrics of the songs that are trending right now are anything to go by. That means the population is getting sexually active at a very young age. Actually, in Kenya, we have a sexual debut of around 12 to 15. Yes. So it's a break, right? Yes. And it's a grown-up. Yes. So by the age of 15, about 10% of our girls are pregnant and ready to be mothers. That's so devastating. Yeah. But OK, does the cervical cancer or HPV, do they vary? Is it a possibility that someone younger would get it at a higher risk of getting it than someone else who's a bit older? Let's just say, by the time you're exposed, do you can get it? Exposure? Again, depending on your immunity and various factors. But once you're exposed, you can get it. It's not impossible to get it. And the more times you're exposed, the more times you get it. For example, if you have your sexual debut at 12 years, it's unlikely that you may have that same boyfriend by age 20. But someone else who has sexual debut at 27, you probably have two or three partners, or one or two. However, if you started at 12, you may have more partners. So the more the exposure, the more the likelihood of contracting it. So that's why we say, because Kenya has a sexual debut of what? 12 to 15 years, get the vaccine early. How early is early? Essentially, 9 to 12 years. And what does the cost look like? Is it expensive? How many shots? Yes, the variation, there's 12,000, there's 3,000. But you get, so let's discuss the risk factors, then we'll come down to. So if you have sex early, it means you'll have more partners. If you have many partners, it means you'll have more exposure. Let's expound there first. That means, if you have a boyfriend, then you have your actual boyfriend, who may sponsor. Why? Run shot, choker. And you're just keeping it there, rotating, rotating, rotating. And out of those four people, of those four partners, also have their own partners. So already, it's a sub-partnerable game. Yes, so that increases your exposure. Yes, so early sexual debut, having many partners, your immune status, all those things contribute to getting exposed and getting the infection. So we propose that the best way to manage such a condition is weight, abstinence. OK, but use condom. OK, like that. Have less partners. But if you've been exposed, then you have, for example, the skin condition, this medication that can be given to you to control that. If you have now, we say, vaccinated, so that you don't get the cervical cancer, go for screening, get your pap smears done. You know, yeah, so that's what we advocate for. OK, but I want to imagine, because we are targeting the youth. Yeah, we are targeting the youth. There's an age bracket of which, let's say, does not have their own financial manpower. And they're dependent on someone. What happens if the people they're depending on cannot really, it's either a kule or a vaccine. There are programs that are promoting and supporting the youth to get the vaccine. I like that. What programs are those? Well, we can leave the contact later, but there are programs that are supporting. So that they can reach out, because it's important.  I don't know if you're saying, yes, you only live once, but it's a little scary. What do these skin conditions look like? Well, the skin conditions can start as small, minute lesions. However, depending on your immune status and how long you have them for and how you manage them, they can actually become big and become, you know, like cauliflower. They look big and quite. Once you see one, you'll never forget it, actually. I'm having goosebumps just thinking about it. So it's just... And it's spread by contact. Yeah? Yes. So for people who like, for example, chewing their nails, it can be a source. And you get into contact with someone who has the skin lesions. It can come in. For people who have sex, of course, the condom will protect against the cervical cancer, but it won't protect against the skin, yeah. So you can get lesions. Yes. OK. All right. And you said something about maybe lesions in the genital area. So if someone is maybe an endocrine, what are these, what's going on? Yeah, it's good to have them checked. There are medications that can be used to control that and manage that. What's the case scenario we surgically excise them? That sounds so painful. Yes. OK. So according to statistics, out of every 100,000 women, there are 33 suffering from cervical cancer. What does that mean for Ken? In Kenya, that means that we have a population of women, ex, and out of those women, statistically now, as we speak, breast cancer is top of the list. So we have a lot of women suffering from breast cancer. And cervical cancer is the second most common cancer. So for breast cancer, it's usually genetic. Your mother has it, therefore, you have it. And there are few other factors that can cause you to get breast cancer. But for cervical cancer, there is a cause and effect. And there is a vaccine that has been known to be protective and is successfully so. So what you are saying is, if we empower our women and empower our youth, and even tell our boys that join the bandwagon, come, let's learn about cervical cancer, let's get vaccinated, let's do our ABCs, abstinence, be faithful, use a condom, have less partners, stay in school and learn. You don't have to get into relationships very early. If we do all those things, then we will be able to contain the spread of the HPV virus. So what you are saying is cervical cancer is killing many women. However, with information and knowledge, perhaps we can change the narrative. Do men get vaccinated too? Men should get vaccinated too. Hello. Isi Ugonjawa-Stana, please. And how does this affect men? Because I think that when you go to school, you have to go to school. That's the only time maybe they'll feel that they really need to do something about something. Yeah, as we said, it is sexually spread. So they can get penile cancer. Yeah. Please get vaccinated. Please get vaccinated. It's very serious. It's not just a female thing. See, it's not a period stuff at the early. Even when you're affected, all right? Please get vaccinated. All right, so you were telling me something about the cost. I don't know what the cost is. Cost, there are two types of vaccines. There's Gardasil and then there's Savarex. So Gardasil has two variations. There's one that has, that covers two. And then there's the other variant that covers almost nine subtypes. So it covers the 16 and 18, which we really want to target. And then a few more of the skin ones. So of course, the one that has more will cost more. Then there's Savarex, which targets the 16 and the 18. So if you want broader protection, then you get the Gardasil that has more. However, as we said, there are more subtypes. There are many subtypes. And depending on your immunity, you can get this one and your body can be able to fight it off, depending on your immunity. Yeah, so what we do is try to protect you from the most dangerous ones. Yeah. You've mentioned immunity a lot. What would be factors that affect someone's immunity? Someone's immunity can be affected by your age.  If you're diabetic, if you have a kidney problem, if you have HIV and AIDS, if you're malnourished, if you have cancer, if you're on chemotherapy, all those things affect your immune status and compromise your immune status so that your immune status is not able to fight and protect your body the way it should. I did not imagine AIDS was one of the biggest news to me. Does the vaccine have side effects by any chance? Yes, the vaccine has side effects, but just minus side effects. It's an injection. So you get swelling at the area, pain, redness. You can get a fever, but nothing dramatic. Vitos in Asia? Vitos in Asia. The process of getting a vaccine is really tedious and long and protracted and expensive. And there are very many mechanisms that are in place to ensure that the vaccine is safe. And even when you get the vaccine and you probably get a side effect, like fever, we have mechanisms in place that report that and document that with a view of managing the side effects. So it's the same way. If you have a headache, you use panadol. And you trust that panadol will work for you. Yes, so we health workers try to ensure that actually what we're giving you is safe. It may have minus side effects because if you compare cancer and fever and headache and redness. Yeah, it's okay. I'd rather have the redness fever. Yeah. Okay, maybe let's go to the common misconceptions that perhaps cervical cancer is for rich people. Cervical cancer is not for rich people. Cervical cancer is for everybody. Yeah, if you get a partner and unfortunately the partner has been exposed, you can get it. I can get it. Yes. Anyone can get it. We will not mention names or point any fingers. I won't point fingers. Yes, but at this is a... You are more prone to getting cervical cancer if you're not sexually active. So the more times you have sex, the more it's kind of suffocating. Yeah, I don't know what... It's okay, but it's a school of thought. And if he's thinking like that, then there must be someone out there who's actually in that belief. No, no, no. Cervical cancer, the best way to protect yourself is to try and minimize exposure as much as possible. Yeah, so start having sex later rather than earlier. If you're going to have sex, then try and stick to one partner. If you're gonna stick to one partner, use a condom or be faithful. So things like that. So minimize your risk and exposure. So what are we telling the 15-year-olds, by the guys who are going back to school? What are we telling them who are going back to school? What is that kind of advice? Is it abstain? Okay, fine, now that you've already decided having sex, okay, now what? So we are saying be smart. It's not only cervical cancer that is out there. There is HIV. And HIV, one exposure can make you have the virus and get the disease. But under the impression that nowadays, that ladies are not even afraid of HIV. They're more afraid of getting pregnant out of wedlock than anything else. Yeah, because pregnancy shows. Every day of sex. And HIV, you can sort of live with it for a while. But HIV has a condition, HIV and AIDS. Again, if you don't take care of yourself and eat well and stay healthy and stay positive, it can affect your health, your nutrition. It affects your family because then they have to start taking care of you. It's an expensive process. You have to get medication. So you have to be ready to pay the price.   Okay, so let's say I want to give an example of someone who already has the cancer, cervical cancer, or penile cancer or all these things. Is there like a cure? Or it's just chemo and all that and just hope for the best? So what we advocate for is once you're sexually active, please go for your pap smears. Once a year, cervical cancer can be treated and or managed, especially in the early stages. It can be treated and managed and successfully so. However, we hardly go for a pap smears, which means then that we hardly catch it early. So by the time we are getting patients coming in and the cancer has spread, then managing it is harder and more expensive and more emotionally draining. And so we say, go for your pap smears. If you haven't started having sex, don't. Like wait a bit longer. If you are having sex, get your vaccine. Yeah, so that's what we're saying. Screen, screen for it. If you're already having sex or you are married or you have been, I mean, if you've started life for the rest of us who are older. But then there is a caveat there that states that we want to vaccinate our younger population. However, if you're 27, 27 year olds have started life. Probably have one or two babies, you know? So for the younger ones, we'll vaccinate them two times. For the older ones, if you come and you're 27 and around there, we'll vaccinate you three times. Yeah, so there's still an opportunity for vaccination up to around 27, 30. Beyond that, get your pap smears and let's monitor and see if you've been exposed and we manage it early because early management means success in terms of treatment and outcomes. I like the way you're so composed and positive about this. In case you missed the side effects of the vaccine, it's redness, fever, or a little bit of swelling in the said area. But it goes away. So redness, fever, swelling, cervical cancer. We'll talk about it later. Cyndio, WhiteFive on Facebook at WhiteFive on Twitter. Hashtag is white in the morning. How would you like to maybe in a nutshell, if they missed the entire interview and this is the point that they're catching it, what would you like them to take home? I would like you to take home that cervical cancer is killing people, reality, fact.  And cervical cancer is caused by a virus called human papilloma virus. Human papilloma virus is sexually transmitted. So once it's sexually transmitted, the man can get effects from having the infection and the woman can get effects from having the infection.   However, if you engage in oral sex, you can also get oral cancer due to the HPV infection. But what we are also saying is that the ABCs that we know from HIV are also applicable in the management of HPV. You know, abstain for as long as you can, be faithful to your partner, use a condom when you need to. If you are young and you have been exposed, then there's still room for vaccination up to the age of 27. If you haven't been exposed, please get vaccinated, both boys and girls. And ultimately, we say for the older population, please get your pap smears, at least once a year, so that we can monitor you, because when we catch it early, we are able to manage it and the outcomes are better. Have you ever had a patient with cervical cancer? Yes, I have. What was the reaction like when you told them, oh my gosh, I could have fixed this, or oh my gosh, I never knew it existed. What was the reaction? Actually, the financial muscles makes a huge difference, because the first patient, I saw had cervical cancer that I interacted with on a personal level, was at a public facility, and they couldn't afford all those tests you were sending them for. And unfortunately, we don't take our NHIF cards that can support us during these hard times. So of course, the outcome was not as we would have wanted it to be, and they came late. So there was really not much we could do in terms of management and outcomes. However, in the private sector, patients who have good insurance cover and medical cover, I mean, we see good outcomes when they come early. However, again, when they come late, then the outcomes may not be as good as we want them to be. So what we are saying is, get your Pap smears. Pap smears are very common when you get in the check.  Early is key. Pap smear is not a surgical procedure. It's not. Yeah, so they just go in there and use a brush and just, you know how you brush your teeth, and they just, so they can just take a swipe. So they take a swipe and then they go examine the cells and then they are able to tell how that area is doing. Because if there is a change in the cells, then we are able to tell, is this malignant? Is it benign? And then we can manage it very quickly. So it's not a surgical procedure. Please go and get your Pap smears. It's not painful. In fact, most women describe it as uncomfortable. It's just cold. It's cold and uncomfortable. But it's not painful. Please get your Pap smear. You heard the doctor, okay? Please get yourself checked, get the Pap smear. And for guys who don't necessarily do the Pap smear thing, how do they get checked? Pap smear currently is the gold standard. Even for guys? For men. Yeah, for men, well, we can also do a bit of swabbing here and there to check. No prostate invasion. We had a conversation once and they just wanted to die. They would rather just even.  Well, prostate check, there's of course the manual check that we do, but there are also different parameters that we can check from the blood. We can do. Buonasphäre. Yeah, the ideological tests for that, yeah. So it's not as bad as, yeah. As it used to be. As you think. You don't have to bend over anymore. You can just get your blood checked and things are fine. The basic point is, please do get checked. Okay. Let us live long. Let us live wonderful and fruitful lives. Nakoko, gamia, sex.  But you heard, if you get exposed, you know what to do. Big boy, big girl things require you to be ready for big boy, big girl consequences. So get yourself checked. Try to be faithful. Use a condom as, please use a condom. Like kunazines ko fri itam, so. All right, I think someone had a question somewhere. But because of time, we're just gonna have to call it a wrap. How can we find you outside of here? Well, I practice at Matahospital. Yes, that's where I can be found. Do you have like a, do you have a Facebook page? Yes, I have a Facebook page. Please tell us your handle. Lydia Mwanza, yeah. So we can just slide in and maybe ask. Please slide in and ask your questions. Yes, whatever. That's wonderful. Whatever, whatever need you have, we can see who to you refer you to, yeah. Oh, I like that. Guys, do you know how much consultation is in her? She's just agreed you can go to her Facebook page.  One more time, the handle. Lydia Mwanza. All right, thank you so much, Dr. Lydia. Thank you very much for having me. Yeah, so do you. All the best, make choices that you'll be proud of in the next few years. I want to imagine that even I, at some point in my life, I didn't really think of the future. Like, I want to drive you on a home on Zasai. I never sat down and thought maybe Val would want this in the future, maybe she'd want a family and maybe it would be like two young women, which is a game safe. Yeah, but you guys, just do like you and be safe. Be safe. At Y-5 on Facebook, at Y-2-5 on Twitter. Hashtag is Y in the money. Stand by for K-Alex with youth and politics.


Good afternoon. I feel a little bit like I'm on a ski jump, probably the largest room I've played. So in any event, I can't believe that all of you are here for governance. I'm sorry, but it's just not that interesting. I think the last time I gave this talk, yeah, we got one rapid fan. Great. The last time I gave this talk, I think I had about 20 people and they were just waiting for the next speaker, but I will do my best to entertain you. So I'm Marty Delberg. I am the Senior Coordinator for Learning Management Systems, and I have the best job at NC State University because I have a position where I have the ability to influence the direction of the technology that we take, help facilitate learning, and I have no direct reports. So I work with a variety of different groups within Delta, and I'll kind of explain what Delta is, and I work with a variety of different people at kind of a peer-to-peer level. We have a fairly, you know, while we do have a hierarchy, we really kind of jump those bounds and work well with each other to collaborate and make things happen. And I work with a green bunch of people, aside from the folks that are up front here that are planning on heckling me, but you know, we'll do what we can with that. So anyway, Delta is distance education, which is one part of what we do, and then learning technology applications. So we are a separate group from the IT group at the university, and our responsibility is to manage those learning technologies. So we deliver things, we have a portal, sorry, is there a question? We have something called Wolfware, which is kind of our portal, or the system or point of entry, and within Wolfware we have a bunch of technologies, most notably Moodle and Blackboard Collaborate and MediaSite for lecture capture. So we do a variety of different things there, but all of those technologies are kind of wrapped up and handled in our office. The benefit of that is that we get to deal with technology as our primary or most important focus. So rather than having five or six different competing things, like student information systems, like payroll, accounts payable or receivable, email, and all of these things, you know, authentication, all of these things go wrong on a regular basis and data centers and all that stuff, rather than being pushed and pulled by that and having to compete with that for budget money, we're in a separate group inside the provost's office where our primary focus can be on education and making things, making it possible for faculty to do wonderful things. So I think that pretty much covers all of that. So let's talk about a little bit about what governance is.  It's not, I mean, you know, people get the idea that, and somebody asked a great question at one of our last sessions, you know, if you set up this governance structure, what do you do with it?  And the answer is the governance is there to guide from a strategic point of view. They are there to make recommendations about the strategy, the direction that you're going to take, the philosophy or approach that you're going to use to manage these tools of this technology. They are not there to oversee and manage your day-to-day operations. We reserve that Delta handles the implementation. We look to our governance to make recommendations, and I use the word recommendation about strategy. Now, all of that is a recommendation to the vice provost, but since it's his checkbook, he gets to hang on to it, and he does not have to follow the recommendations of this governance committee. So we've had one or two cases where our, you know, learning management system steering committee has suggested that we do something that was a little counter to what, you know, was actually going to work, and so we got a veto from the provost for those things. That's happened twice in about eight years. For the most part, it's simply a rubber stamp when we go ahead and do. There's usually good decisions that are made. So we try very hard to make it inclusive and collaborative, and for the most part, we are successful. It is difficult sometimes to find representation at all levels. How many of you folks are faculty? Do you have two or three hours a month to donate to something like this, and you do as well? Well, so it seems like in NC State, we have 2,000 faculty members, and we struggle to get three or four. So whether it's a visibility issue that we're not able to get the word out enough, you know, I've asked people at Faculty Senate, for example, for recommendations, and one or two people will be eager and will say yes, I want to join, I want to be on the committee, and then somewhere about two or three meetings later, they stop coming because they have other, you know, other constraints upon their time. So it can be a little bit difficult to get that kind of collaboration and buy-in with our most important constituency, which is the faculty. We're kind of geared towards making sure that they have what they need, figuring that if they can do what they need to do, the students' needs will get taken care of, they'll get to learn. So that's kind of how we approach it. So why is governance important? Okay? Not Delta, but, you know, a hypothetical organization has in the past had the reputation for making decisions in the blind. And by the way, these slides are available online in the course, so you can go get them afterwards and have a couple links at the end. But some hypothetical organizations had a reputation in the past for knowing what's best for people, okay? And for simply providing solutions in a vacuum and rolling them out. I am sure that you have all seen this at your institutions. That that's happens from time to time. And that's one of the things that when we formed this governance, we were trying to combat. We did not want to have that reputation for being a holier than now, or we know better than you what you need to do to do your job. So it was very important for us to kind of get that out there to be as transparent as we possibly could, make sure that we're meeting the needs of our constituency, and try to pull as many people in and get them to buy into that process. If they're not, if they don't feel that we're doing well, sooner or later, we will not exist any longer. I mean, that's just the fact of life in an organization. You know, somebody else will come along, they'll start doing their own things in different departments. And then our need, you know, our ability to provide technology across campus will get challenged and will be more and more difficult to happen. We try to adhere to kind of a basic principle of transparency over all else, and that can sometimes be very, very painful, because frequently there's dirty laundry or there's disagreement or there's, you know, things that people are asking for. And we have to say no and make that, you know, open to the whole world. But we really strive very hard to be transparent so that people can see what's going on, they can understand what decisions we're making and why, and can get involved and can weigh in on that. And so I'll talk a little bit about how we do that, and then I have some links for you. You can see some more of what we're doing. We want to have, you know, a heterogeneous viewpoint. We would like to be able to include or to understand all of the different things that are going on. So, you know, I'm really smart and I know better than everyone else what we need and what should happen, but every once in a while somebody comes up and explains to me the little things in life like, you know, vet school is a medical school and they have different needs, they have a different time frame, foreign language needs, voice recorders. I mean, I started teaching in the day when I taught, you listened, and that's how it worked. I would bring in a big pile of handouts into the classroom. And clearly things have changed a lot since then. And even from having this job, I have learned a lot. Okay. I've become, you know, I don't teach anymore, but I became a better teacher and a better understanding of what's involved and how learning works. So it's been a great thing for me. But with that said, you know, there are a lot of different, you know, universities, huge. We have 35,000 FTEs or something like that and a couple of thousand teachers. And, you know, there are a lot of different little nooks and crannies of things that people need special things. Like foreign language, for example, really needed poodle. I think that was talked about earlier today, voice recorder. And it was really helpful for them. And if their voice isn't heard, then it's very easy for that to get drowned out. And we create a good system for NC State and they're out of luck. So we really need to get that kind of input. Okay. It's also important that you get people who don't like what you're doing. And that's that could be really painful.