Live from San Francisco, it's theCUBE, covering Spark Summit 2017, brought to you by Databricks. Welcome back, we're here at theCUBE at Spark Summit 2017. I'm David Goad, here with George Gilbert, George. Good to be here. Thanks for hanging out with us. Well, here's the other man of the hour here, and we just talked with Ali, the CEO at Databricks, and now we have the chief architect and co-founder at Databricks, Reynolds Shin. Reynolds, how are you? George, good, how are you doing? Awesome, are you enjoying yourself here at the show? Absolutely. It's fantastic, it's a lot of just Summit, it's a lot of interesting things, a lot of interesting people with who I meet. Well, I know you're a really humble guy, but I had to ask Ali, what should I ask Reynolds when he get up here? Well, Reynolds is one of the biggest contributors to Spark, and you've been with this for a long time, right? Yes, yeah, being contributing to Spark for about five or six years, and I guess that's probably the most number of commitments to the project, and lately we're working with other people to help design the roadmap for both Spark and Databricks one time. Well, let's get started talking about some of the new developments that you want. Maybe our audience at theCUBE hasn't heard here in the keynote this morning. Sure. What are some of the most exciting new developments? So, I think in general, if Rook has Spark, there are three directions I would say we're doubling down. One, the first direction is the deep learning, like deep learning is extremely hot, and it's very capable, but as we alluded to earlier in a blog post, I think deep learning has reached sort of a MapReduce point in which it shows tremendous potential, but the tools are very difficult to use, and we're hoping to sort of democratize deep learning and do Spark, what Spark did to big data to deep learning with this new library called Deep Learning Pipelines. So what it does integrates deep learning, different deep learning libraries directly in Spark and can actually expose models in SQL, so even the business analysts are capable of leveraging that. So that's one area, deep learning. The second area is streaming. Streamings, again, I think there's a lot of us, customers have aspirations to actually shorten the latency and increase the throughput in streaming. So we just actually measure the structure of streaming effort is going to be generally available, and last month alone on Databricks platform, I think our customers processed three trillion records last month out using structured streaming, and we also have a new effort to actually push down the latency all the way down to a similar second range so we can really do blazing fast, blazingly fast streaming analytics. And last but not least is the SQL data warehousing area. Data warehousing, I think it's a very mature area from sort of outside of big data point of view, but from a big data one, it's still pretty new and there's a lot of, I would say, use cases that's popping up there and spark with the pushes like the CBO and also in particular in the Databricks runtime with DBIO we're actually substantially improving the performance and the capabilities of data warehousing features. We're going to dig into some of those that technology's here to second with George, but have you heard anything here so far from anyone that's changed your mind maybe about what to focus on next? So one thing I've heard from a few customers is actually visibility and debuggability of the big data jobs. So many of them are fairly technical engineers, some of them are less sophisticated engineers and they've written jobs and sometimes the job runs slow and so the performance engineer in me would think so how do I make the job run fast? The different way to actually solve that problem is how can we expose the right information so the customer can actually understand and figure it out themselves. This is why my job is slow and this is how I can tweak it to make it faster and kind of rather than giving people the fish you actually give them the tools to fish. Just going to call that bugability. Yeah, debuggability. Debuggability. And visibility. All right, awesome, and George? So let's go back and unpack some of those kind of juicy areas that you identified. On deep learning, you were able to distribute, if I understand things right, the predictions. You could put models out on a cluster but the really hard part, the compute intensive stuff was training across a cluster. And so like deep learning 4j and I think Intel's big DL, they were written for Spark to do that but with all the excitement over some of the new frameworks are they now at the point where they're as good citizens on Spark as they are on their native environments? Yeah, so this is a very interesting question. Obviously a lot about the frameworks becoming more and more popular such as TensorFlow, MXNet, Tiano, Keras and all of this. What the deep learning pipeline library does is actually exposes all this deep learning single node deep learning tools that's highly optimized for say even GPUs or CPUs to be available as an estimator or like a module in a pipeline of the machine learning pipeline library in Spark. So now users can actually leverage Spark's capability to for example do hyperparameter tuning. So when you're building a machine learning model it's fairly rare that you just run something once and you're good with it. Usually you have to fiddle with a lot of the parameters. For example, you might run over 100 experiments to actually figure out what is the best model I can get. This is where actually Spark really shines when you combine Spark with some deep learning library be it big DL, be it MXNet, be it TensorFlow, you could be using Spark to distribute that training and then do cross validation on it so you can actually find the best model very quickly and Spark takes care of all the job scheduling all the fault tolerance properties and how do you read data in from the different data sources. And without my dropping too much in the weeds there was a version of that where Spark wouldn't take care of all the communications. It would like maybe distribute the models and then like do some of the averaging of what was done out on the cluster but are you saying that all that now can be managed by Spark? So Spark, in that library, Spark will be able to actually take care of picking the best model out of it and there are different ways you can assign how do you define the best. The best could be some average of some different models. The best could be just pick one out of this. The best could be maybe there's a tree of models that you can classify. And that's a hyperparameter configuration choice? That is, so that is actually building functionality in Spark's machine learning pipeline. And now what we're doing is now you can actually plug all those deep learning libraries directly into that as part of the pipeline to be used. So another, maybe just to add, another really cool functionality of the deep learning pipeline, transfer learning. So as you said, deep learning takes up very long times, very computational demanding and it takes a lot of resources, expertise to train. But with transfer learning, what we allow the customers to do is they could take an existing deep learning model as well trained in a different domain and then we re-train it on a very small amount of data very quickly and you can adapt it to a different domain. That's how sort of the demo on the James Bond car. So there's a generic image classifier but we train it on probably just a few thousand images and now we can actually detect whether a car is James Bond's car or not. Oh and the implications there are huge which is you don't have to have huge training data sets for modifying a similar model of a similar situation. I want to, in the time we have, there's always been this debate about whether Spark should manage state, whether it's database, key value store. Tell us how the thinking about that has evolved and then how the integration interfaces for achieving that have evolved. Yeah, so one of the, I would say, the advantage of Spark is it works with, it's unbiased and work with variety of store systems be it Cassandra, be it HBase, be it HDFS, be it S3. It's, there is a, I would say, metadata management functionality in Spark which is the catalog of tables that customers can define but the actual storage sits somewhere else and I don't think that will change in the near future because we do see that the storage systems have matured significantly in the past few years and I just wrote out to you a blog post on last week about the advantage of S3 over HDFS for example. The storage price is being driven down by almost a factor of 10X when you go to the cloud and I just don't think it makes sense at this point to actually be building storage systems for analytics. That said, I think there's a lot of, building on top of existing storage system there's actually a lot of opportunities for optimization on how you can leverage the specific properties of underlying storage system to get to maximum performance. For example, how do you do intelligent caching? How do you start thinking about building indexes actually against the data that's stored for scan workloads? With tungsten, so where you have, you take advantage of the latest hardware and where we get more memory intensive systems and now that the catalyst optimizer has a cost-based optimizer or will be and large memory, can you change how you go about knowing what data you're managing in the underlying system and therefore achieve a tremendous acceleration and performance? So this is actually one area we invested in sort of in the DBIO module as part of Databricks Runtime and what DBIO does, a lot of this are still in progress but for example, we're adding some formal indexing capabilities to actually the system so we can quickly skip and prune out all the irrelevant data when the user's doing simple point lookups or if the user's doing a scan heavy workload with some predicates. That actually has to do with how we think about the underlying data structure. The storage system is still the same storage system like S3, but we're adding actually indexing functionality is on top of it, that's part of the idea. And so what would be the application profiles? Is it just for the analytic queries or can you do the point lookups and updates in that sort of scenario too? Yeah, so it's interesting you're talking about updates. Updates is another thing that we've gotten a lot of future requests on. We're actively thinking about how we would support update workload. Now that said, I just want to emphasize, for both use cases of doing point lookups and updates, we're still talking about in the context of analytic environment. So we'll be talking about for example, maybe bulk updates or low throughput updates rather than doing transactional updates in which every time you swipe a credit card some record gets updated. That's probably more belongs on the transactional databases like Oracle or like MySQL. What about when you think about people who are going to run, they started out with Spark on prem. They realized they're going to put much more of their resources in the cloud, but with IOT, industrial IOT type applications, they're going to have Spark maybe in a gateway server on the edge. What do you think that configuration looks like? Really interesting. So it's kind of two questions maybe. The first is the hybrid on prem cloud solution. So again, one of the nice advantage of Spark is the couple of storage and compute. So when you want to move, for example, workloads from on prem to the cloud, the one you care the most about is probably actually the data, because the compute, it doesn't really matter that much where you run it, but data is the one that's hard to move. We do have customers as leveraging the data bricks in the cloud, but actually reading data directly from on prem and reliance of the caching solution we have, they minimize the data transfer over time, and this is kind of one route, I would say it's pretty popular. Another one is like, with Amazon, you could literally give them, this is snowball functionality, you give them hard drive through trucks, the trucks will ship your data directly, put it in S3. With IOT, a common pattern we see is a lot of the edge devices would be actually pushing the data directly into some sort of the firehose like Kinesis or Kafka or I'm sure Google and Microsoft both have their own variants of that. And then you would spark to directly subscribe to those topics and process them in real time with structure streaming. And so would spark be down, let's say at the site level, if not on the device itself? So most, it's an interesting thought and maybe one thing which should actually consider more in the future is how do we do push spark to the edges? Right now it's more of a centralized model in which the devices push data into spark, which is centralized somewhere. I've seen, for example, one, I think I don't remember exactly use case, but it has to do with some scientific experiment in the North Pole. And of course there you can, you don't have a great uplink of all the data connecting transferring back to some say national lab. And rather they would do a spark processing there and then ship the aggregated result back. This is another one, but it's less common. All right, well just one minute now before the break, so I'm going to give you a chance to address the spark community. What's the next big technical challenge you hope people will work on for the benefit of everybody? I think in general, spark came along with two focuses. One is performance, the other one is use of use. And I still think big data tools are too difficult to use, keep running tools even harder. The bar, the barrier to entry is very high for all of those tools. I would say we might have already addressed performance to a degree that I think is actually pretty usable. The systems are fast enough. Now we should work on actually making just things even easier to use. And it's what also we focus a lot on at Databricks here. Democratizing access, right? Absolutely. All right, well, Rhett, I wish we could talk to you all day. It's just great when we are out of time now. I want to appreciate you coming by the cube and sharing your insights and good luck with the rest of the show. Thank you very much. Appreciate it. Thank you all for watching here. We're at the cube at Spark Summit 2017. Stay tuned. Lots of other great guests coming up today. We'll see you in a few minutes.


Let's go back and look at your role as Managing Director. In your opinion, what's the best way to motivate your team? I have dealt with many teams in the past where you can let it depend on who that person is. So some people are very driven by reward and that can be a tap on the shoulder, it can be an appraisal that says you've done a good job, we've made a difference and for others it's pure monetary. So it's about having the right paycheck, having the right annual increase in your salary. And generally, even though in Denmark we do focus a lot on how we have a nice time here and we leave at four o'clock and forget about bonuses, it's not really part of it. Money does rock this world, money does matter.


Hi, I'm Case van Dock with TomTom and this is the Service Design Show. I'm Mark van Tijn and in this special episode of the Service Design Show we're going to give you a taste of what to expect at the upcoming Service Design Conference that is taking place in Amsterdam on October 27th and 28th of 2016. My guess in this episode is Case van Dock. Case is the head of design at TomTom but he's also a little bit of a development nerd. Let's jump right in and ask Case to give us a preview of his upcoming talk. Welcome to the show, Case. Hi Mark, how are you doing? Great, it's nice to have you on the show and my very first question to you is let's jump right in and can you give us a 30 second pitch of your upcoming talk for our conference? Okay, so the theme for my talk will be about designing hardware products. Hardware products in today's kind of mobile centric digital reality. I'm not really sure about the title of the talk yet but it will be something along the lines of maybe software is not so simple but hardware is really, really hard. Or in other words I want to talk about how difficult it is to create meaningful but differentiating hardware consumer electronics that work well with people's digital connected lives. And I'm going to talk about how a strong customer focus rather than a technology focus helps us as TomTom being successful in that space. So of course services are strongly tied to digital and software and your talk will focus more on hardware, on the hardware aspect. Exactly because most service design and service services are usually mobile apps, web, backend system and the interaction between them. And obviously many hardware products have become or have been sent into oblivion because of the rise of the smartphone and the mobile phone. But for us as a consumer electronics product company it's actually essential to find opportunities to work within that ecosystem and to find hardware products, tools for people that actually extend your lives, take away or take out hurdles and obstacles and provide kind of meaning additional value to that dominantly digital ecosystem. And I can imagine that this is a super relevant topic as the interfaces to hardware are changing so much these days. You take the Amazon ECO for instance and all these kind of things that designing into intuitive hardware becomes really interesting. Absolutely, absolutely. And it's at the same time it's very difficult as well. So on the one hand indeed like upcoming interfaces like voice recognition, speed support, augmented reality, virtual reality pose a whole new kind of world and ecosystems where designers are only kind of scratching the surface of at the moment of what those interfaces could mean and how you could really leverage them to create meaningful customer and customer experiences. But in our daily reality we're not there yet. Really we kind of look at products like wearables, outdoor consumer electronics that also fit that same purpose still to improve upon what's out there to make products that have less hurdles and less obstacles to use than some of the products that we find around us and learning where those opportunities for improvements are is essential for our kind of business. Because as you know, consumer electronics is like swimming with the sharks. It's a highly competitive space. There are many competitors out there. It's a fast pace environment where you have to really be agile and be on your toes in order to survive. And that can only happen by really, really understanding the customer very well, understanding what their needs are, where they find issues and problems with existing products and how you can improve upon that. So I can relate strongly to this topic and I'm really curious what will people learn and know after seeing your presentation? Well, I hope what they take away is that design thinking and relentless if not obsessive customer focus is quite essential for staying alive in the aggressive competitive space of consumer electronics. That's for one. But also that making better tools for people is often a matter of simply removing friction and hurdles from today's solutions. It's not always that you have to think very revolutionary. Most improved products really come from what it already says, improvement. In addition, I hope that people take away that design led product envisioning and visioning and concept creation is a very important factor in aligning the various disciplines at larger companies like ours.  And in order to make sure that people are aligned and work towards a common goal, design has a very important role to play there because before any product is being realized or before any product is understood by the organization, we can bring it to life. And we can inform other parts of the organization of what a potential product experience could become. And I think that is a very, very powerful angle that designers have that is not always broadly understood. A million questions that pop to my mind about this team, but I'll wait for your talk. That's good. And my last point actually is also that there's hope and there's opportunity for device makers in Europe. And I think for the Europeans that attend the conference, that's quite a positive and upbeat message. Consumer Electronics is not only a play for the Asian and the US part of the world. We have a fighting chance as European and we got the creativity and know how to claim our space. Is that also your motivation for addressing this team? Bringing hope? It's wonderful. But I think my main motivation is that I think that hardware opportunities are underestimated. Like I think many brands that are active in the app, web, back-end space kind of underestimate the power of a physical component to your product and your brand experiences. When you can include a tangible aspect to your customer experiences that you can feel, that you can smell, that you can hold, that makes a significant potential difference in long-term customer loyalty. Right. But I guess software, like you said in the early beginning, is easier in hardware, is hard. But maybe that's changing with the whole IoT stuff coming up. Absolutely. Yeah. I think technologies like 3D printing, electronics platforms like the core, the socks of devices becoming much more ubiquitous. The rise of cheap hardware platforms that can be easily embedded in a range of products absolutely has lowered the threshold to make stuff and to make stuff. And design should be challenged to do that, to use those abilities. Absolutely. And I think it's a bit of a lost craft that part of our design industry and as I said, like tinkering with hardware and creating a tangible aspect of your products is an important message. So I'm sure you will give us a lot of insights, but I'm also sure you have some big questions around this topic too. What are the questions that keep you awake? One deep question maybe. Yeah. It's basically what we talked about briefly before. I'm very curious to see how customers' experiences are going to evolve in a world where voice and speech and augmented reality become the new in and output. So basically where screened services are disappearing and where interaction is getting much closer, if not part of your body. And I think we're only starting to scratch the surface of how to properly design for such a new world. And I hope this event will help me learn a bit better from other people's experience there. Cool. Kay's final question. The conference is coming up. What are you looking forward to the most? I'm mostly looking forward to external views. If you work in a company like Tonton and any larger company for that matter, you always tend to get a bit myopic and inward focused. You run the risk of not being outside enough and not seeing enough of external developments. We try a lot by staying engaged with the startup community and obviously having our research standards in user research, in technology research, in marketing research. But having worked also in design consultancy, there is such great value in working with different company cultures and getting the view of people from those other cultures. And I think that is the primary benefit of any network event and that's what I'm especially looking forward for here. So I'd encourage people to grab you by the coat. I'm not sure if that's an English saying, but start a talk with Kay's that there would be a message. Everyone understands what you mean with that. So Kay's, that was all we have time for actually. Thanks. I'm looking forward to your talk and see you at the conference. Kay, thanks Mark. Thanks for having me and all the best in the final preparation. If you enjoyed this talk and like to see more interviews with service design pioneers, be sure to subscribe to the channel and check out some of the past episodes. If you want to learn more about the conference, check out www.service-design-conference.com. Thanks for watching and see you in the next episode.


involvement, obviously, he's five daughters and they're all playing Gillick. They're all brilliant players, just like themselves. So they're all involved in Dunlop, up through county side to that. So just caught up with him and we shot the breeze out in the smoking area. And there's not many sports whereby you can be standing in the stalls or standing in the crowd one year. And then a few years later, shoulder to shoulder with your sporting hero. It's an amazing stuff. So that interview with Tony Ball, reflection on the men's and women's championship games from the weekend. So that's Barry Meaghan, Maureen O'Donnell and Tony Boyle. It's all live just after the 7 p.m. news this evening on Highland Radio. Go ahead, Brent. Yeah, and miners, just going to have to mention the miners, of course. You're four masters, right? Yeah. Well, no, need bridge, sorry. That's actually kind of... OK, I wasn't sure, exactly. We've never had this conversation. I've never had this conversation. Are you starting something? Because I will go. Well, anyway, four masters are flying around their heads. And again, they're in the final, them at Boncranah. Four masters being good at work at Boncranah, being said, you know, and in the division two, men, if I had to call on any of Patrick Moff. So, listen, great things happen. Good to see Boncranah as well. There, you know, second-biggest guy. Second-biggest town in Dutty Gall. We want to see them always progressing, of course. So good to see their miners doing well again. Four masters after fall, and maybe off the top tier senior, certainly building a load of great young fucklers again in another minor final for them coming up. Fantastic stuff, Brennan. Listen, thanks so very much. Looking forward to have a lovely day. And Brennan will be with you live after the 7 p.m. news tonight. You can listen to the DL Debate in association with Sarah's Kitchen at Sister Sarah's letter, Kenny. And that's if you want to listen to it live. It is going to be available shortly after broadcast as a podcast for you to listen when you're out in your room or whatever it might be. Hi, Greg, could you please play a request for Gemma Wiley, who has said yes to the dress from her mom and Auntie Amanda. Woop, woop, they say. Ah, I know Gemma. I thought she said yes to the dress a long time ago. I don't know what that means. What does that mean, yes to the dress? Anyway, congratulations. Hi there, Greg. My daughter and two of her friends went along to the Mount Errigal on Saturday night to see the tumbling paddies. Enjoyed the night, but were charged 22.50 for three Coke soft drinks. Seems a bit extortionate, but did anyone else at the concert feel it was too expensive? 22.50 for three Coke soft drinks. Does that make them over seven Euro each? No mixer in there at all? I don't know, we'll check into that. Good morning, Greg. I think Patrick Kield, he was just okay as a host, apart from when he tried to sound like Gay Burn, which was as gringy as trying to make a joke to get the big elephant out of your TV screens. It's time the late, late was axed. There's nothing like what it was. Let Patrick stay as host, but change the name of the show and wipe out a show that doesn't work anymore. Okay, so I think the first show. Lot of nerves. I think they really need, I think actually I guessed at least one of the guests that was going to be on the show, the public no longer want to hear RT employees being interviewed. Okay, we have two smaller country here. There's five or six million people on the island of Ireland and we've heard most of the stories before. As I say, why not cover social issues, cultural issues, get a debate going? I think, or maybe people feel that that's being done now by prime time and late debate or whatever shows else shows might be on. I don't know because I don't watch RT, but I did watch on Friday night. So I don't know, it just can't, it's not going to last beyond this season doing what they did on Friday. Patrick, I thought did really well. Lot of nerves, lot of pride. I love the Gay Burn reference to be honest with you and I'm in a bit of a cynical old git, but he is going to struggle if they just wheel out the same guests and other podcasts next week, some other Instagram lotty rhymes. Do you know what I mean? They're going to have to come up with, they're going to have to come up with something else unless they just say that this is a platform for us to promote other RT shows. If they say that, that's fine. It'll die or succeed on that. Could you get some of the politicians to come on and explain when can we get approval from Donegal County Council on our create kind of applications? I'm not sure, not familiar with that. I'll check it in. If the cycle lanes were built to the same standard as the roads, then cyclists would use them as they are full of road debris with ramps on every junction when the cyclist has to yield to every adjoining minor road. But then again, too, would you want to share them with people walking, running, pushing buggies? That's also a problem that comes up. People say, well, I'm doing 40 kilometers per hour down mountain top or in the four lanes, 40 kilometers per hour. I don't want to clean someone out of it on the cycle lane. I just think you'll see scooters on them and people out for a casual cycle. Those cycle lanes are not going to be used routinely by semi-pro, not semi-pro. You know what I'm about dressed up like they're doing the Tour de France. The new lanes going into Lettucequenny are way too narrow. There was no need for the cycle lane to be that wide. Not much space between a van and a lorry or a bus, but whoever designed that needs to go back and have a good look at it. I think they're narrowed on purpose. We have seen that with other road developments. I think it's actually to slow traffic down. I don't think it's a, it's not a lack of space. It's to slow traffic down, I believe. Now, someone who's involved in roads engineering, I'm sure will advise me one way or other, but they did the same at Capri and Balabafé and other road developments. People go, oh, it's too wide. You can barely pass. It's by design. It's so that you slow down and keep other road users safe. I'm not saying that's the right thing to do. I'm just saying, as far as I understand, that is why it is done like that. The county's number one talk show, The Nine Till Noon Show on Highland Radio. The Nine Till Noon Show with Letterkenny Credit Union. Simplify your debts with a debt consolidation loan from Letterkenny Credit Union. Call us on<PHONE_NUMBER> or apply online via our app or in office today. Enhance your skills with SIFTECH's part-funded training programs. 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Expressway, bringing you the time, Matt. The time now is 11.20 and our next guest is in studio, and it's Caroline O'Hara, who's one of the founders of Destined, which is designed to empower people with learning disabilities and promote social inclusion. Good morning to you. Thank you so much for calling up. Good morning, Greg. How are you? It's great to have you with us. OK, now we are speaking ahead of a conference that's taking place in Clody, which we'll talk about and on. But talk to me a little bit more about Destined. What is the work behind the title? Well, we set up Destined 22-odd years ago, and basically it was for people, really, that had left maybe school and were sitting at home doing nothing. People with learning disabilities, people maybe just with maybe mental health issues or people with autism. And when we set it up, we were really looking at how we could help empower them and give them opportunities to maybe have a more fulfilled life. Because there probably wasn't an obvious pathway between school leaving and then entering the world. And then entering the workforce or any organisation for that matter. There was like a buffer zone there almost. Yeah. Many of our members would have maybe attended either special schools or gone to secondary schools. Maybe didn't have any qualifications when they left school. And really going into even, now there would have been, the North Best College in Derry would have had a course that they could have taken people into. But a lot of the people that were coming to us were people with maybe autism and learning disabilities that couldn't cope with very large spaces and very large numbers. And they just needed maybe more individualised programs and activities as well. So we started off very small. As I say, this is our 22nd year. We have another centre that's 12 years old now that we opened in Feene, which is in County Derry. Because we were very aware of the experiences of people that were living in isolated world communities as well. Our youngest members now are coming in really shortly after birth. Maybe if it's children's diagnosis of cerebral palsy or maybe Down syndrome, something that could be seen. And our oldest members are in their early 80s. Do you think that we need to be doing more to address some of these issues through education or with the people at that period of time? I mean, rather than have this sort of a cliff edge that Destin is in there and people like you were there to support, but could we not be doing more through that process to help in that regard? Interestingly say that, Greg. I am a parent of a young woman. And I say young woman, she's 42, who has learned disability and who has autism and has cerebral palsy as well. And basically whenever she was younger, I realized the services weren't there. And I actually went back and trained as a teacher. And I started working in special schools and developed provision for autism in the special school that I was teaching in Derry. And then after a number of years, the inspector approached my principal to ask, would I maybe look at developing services for mainstream schools because there was nothing in mainstream school to that state either. And basically, about 25 years ago, I set up the autism service for Derry, Taron and Fermanagh, which was part of the Western Education Library Board. So what you were doing was being recognized to the point where they said, we need to see if we can employ this elsewhere. Yes. Basically, a lot of people were coming, looking at the model I developed. But I think because I probably, I was going to say, was straddling, sort of, riding two horses almost, that because I was a parent and a carer and also because I was an educationalist, I could see where a lot of the gaps were. And basically, as I say, we were looking at other difficulties that were right there as well. But specifically, through working with autism, but say my daughter also learned disabilities and physical disabilities. So we were aware even of all the issues and problems that families are meeting all the time. We talk about learned disability and autism as being lifelong conditions. And basically, I suppose, we talk about it from, say, birth to death, starting off even, now I've listened to your programme, I think it was last week when they were talking about the services in North Donegal. And I was thinking, nothing really has changed. And this is where we're at at times that parents of younger children now that are maybe going through assessment, that are going through diagnosis, that maybe have autism or learned disabilities basically are still knocking on doors.  Leonard, probably. Yeah. And when Leonard was talking, he was talking about the fact that, you know, parents are maybe all knocking on doors as individuals and they're being appeased or they're being sort of sidestepped on things to work with them. And he says it needs to be maybe more concerted approach. So when our daughter left a special school and we realised there was nothing really that could have been done for her that was sort of set up and established, we then said, right, we need to look at something. But my husband and I both have skill sets that were able to do things. So I was still working, but say we set up destined and we said, rather than just help her, we should be helping other people out there as well. So that was why it was set up. And now when we opened the doors, there were people that were coming that had actually were 10 years older than her that had been to a special school that remembered her as a little girl. And they were saying, oh, I remember you from school bus and things. Now, we've a very wide range of abilities and disabilities within destined as well. It just sounds to me like something that requires, you know, so much work and so many skill sets because people are different and it has to adapt and be able to sort of, you know, accommodate everybody. So when you talk about from a very young age, so how if someone comes to you at five or something like that, so how does destined work with them through their schooling and, you know, pass that and into to working life, for an example, like how, what kind of involvement might you have? I suppose it's going to taste interesting because again, I've retired. I retired as a teacher five years ago and came in then full time to help out with destined and basically I suppose a five year old, we're looking at maybe just first of all where the family lives. Yeah. A lot of the children that are first identified coming to us are attending special schools. So we have developed links to the special schools. Our area covers Limavadi up as far as Strabane and into Derry. And again, just through, let's say, my experience of being involved with all the schools, primary, post primary, nursery special, people know they can lift the phone and contact us. And maybe then, you know, we'd say, maybe we need to sort of meet with families or families would like to get in touch. And we explore really what each family's journey is and what their journey is for their child to see how we can help them. We have an after schools program, which is based in Cloddy, which is where the conference is going to be, this conference anyway. And then we do programs with the schools. So, for example, we talk about inclusion. And it's not just about people with learning disabilities and autism being brought out and being involved with society. It's actually about it's a two-way process about people in society coming in and being involved with desk and two and things. So, for example, just after COVID, the railway museum in Derry. And I'm training up our tour guides to be, or some of our members to be tour guides. So, we were looking at developing an interpreter center and looking at exhibitions. So, we involved the primary and the secondary and special schools. And we had workshops and the kids came in and the students came in and got involved with it. And basically, we look at the whole social aspect of things. Some of our members, for example, we have a football team. So, again, if you're a younger child that may be interested in football, we have a Derry City supporters club. Not Van Harps, unfortunately. But we're based in Derry. I used to say where it might go. You know what I mean? It's only because we're based in Derry. But we also do drama. We do music. We actually, for our members now, that are looking to be more independent. We look at life skills. We look at sport, as I say. One of our members is Black Belt now in Chudeau and has actually become a referee in Chudeau. So, you know, there's... So, I'd imagine, Destin, it must be really useful for families that it's an understanding that gets it, a voice that can signpost or can offer certain services that are available because loneliness is something that you hear an awful lot of people. Also, too, just in terms of the different groups that work in this area, do you think, either just within Derry or on a cross-border basis, there's enough coordination between the various groups that are doing fantastic work in different areas, but potentially under the same sort of... under the same roof that maybe a little bit more coordination or whatever might be helpful, and if so, how? Yeah, well, I suppose that's one of the aims of this conference. For example, we work very closely with Bluestack, who's based down in Goldtown, and other groups within, say, Derry and County Derry, but at the same time, we want to look at maybe developing through a partnership approach, having a cohesive strategy and from it then, and that's the support, not just the person with the autism around disability, but their families as well, because it has to be sort of a wraparound approach to it, and then from that, and from the conference then, we want to maybe identify then, you have a roadmap that we can identify the resources that are necessary and then look at even future planning. So it's not just about now, for example, they're building... The two special schools in Derry were amalgamated about six or seven years ago, and both schools, one of them definitely wasn't fit for purpose, so they're building a new school, and we've just heard unofficially that there's going to be a problem because it isn't big enough to take all the students that are at the school. So future planning has to come into it, and again, even sort of looking at lobbying and things and getting the groups together. So that's kind of what we want everybody to come, and I mean, everybody's welcome. Of course, and what we need though is we need the powers that be, the well-resourced powers that be, be it the NHS or the HSC or whatever, to catch up with works the likes Destin's do and the ICA's do and that the Blue Stack Foundation are doing, as you mentioned. All of these organisations that are working so hard to plug gaps really that shouldn't actually be there, the state should be providing an awful lot of this, but we have a tendency to just throw money at things. You know, we don't want that. We need people to understand the problems in terms of, you know, supports for children, speech and language and all that kind of stuff. We need, we've kind of over the course of the last three weeks been discussing this, Caroline, we've kind of pretty much figured out what the problem is, if you know what I mean. Now, what we need is the people that make these decisions to recognise that the parents know best and to sort of start addressing it and that can supplement and complement and be referred from the kind of works Destin do and the other groups that we're talking of. Well, we would work very closely with the statutory services that is and we would work again with... Are they responsive? This is in Northern Ireland, are they responsive? To a certain degree, but again, I'm going to say their hands are tied because now this is what I discovered. I worked in the statutory sector and now I've moved into the voluntary sector and I just know that through the statutory sector, you know, your hands are tied a lot of the time and you have to pass requests up the line and things and it has to be discussed and the processes and everything else. And again, we don't have a government in the North at the moment. So it doesn't really matter whose door we're knocking on at the moment. We've got recession, we've got inflation, we've got all kinds of problems out there but we don't even have a door to knock on to look for money or whatever. But we're saying to people, let's get together, let's identify what the issues are and then look at how we work together. Now, we're very lucky in Derry that it's quite, it's like letter candy, really, it's quite small and everybody knows Derry or knows each other and we can lift the phone and talk to other groups as well. But I think sitting down together within a room and looking at partnership working and then seeing how we can lobby together to make things improve. A voice that can't be ignored. So this all kind of brings us right back to the conference and so talk to us about the conference while it's about who's invited, when and where. Right, the conference is in the Diamond Centre in Cloddy and it's on Wednesday morning, it's starting at 10 o'clock and it's in the mornings just until 12 but we're going to have invited speakers, we have people with learning disability speaking, we have people with autism speaking, we have family members speaking, we have, we're doing presentations from professionals as well that will look at, I'm going to say, the services that are there already so we can identify them maybe where the gaps are and then we're going to have an invited speaker who's going to talk about the benefits of partnership working and her experiences of that and how that brings people for a cohesive lobbying campaign then to work together. And I say everybody's very welcome, we've invited students at schools and colleges maybe that are doing health and social care, we would have student placements coming in from McGee that maybe are doing nursing or OT and things and again they're coming in and they're familiar with our members and things so really what we're saying is it's an open door, we'd be very welcome to see anybody and I suppose we're lucky in a way that we've got good relationships with Darius at the Interband District Council who provide the funding for it and I suppose another thing I want to do is do a quick shout out if you don't mind as well, Greg we actually, as they have the museum and we have a culture night and Friday night and it's open to the public from seven to nine and there's no admission charges and again I say some of our tour guides are members of Destin for Learned Disabilities and we love to see people along at it as well. Okay and in terms of the conference I think through the course of this conversation people will know whether it's for them or not because they'll say right well that's the area I'm in or that's the area I have an interest in. Okay continued success with Destin and success with the conference which is on 10 a.m. Wednesday in the Diamond Centre, Claudie. Thanks very much Caroline. I really appreciate it okay that's Caroline O'Hara one of the founders of Destin. Please or transaction charges Letter Kenny Credit Union 9102127 GiveBlood.ie know we can count on you our community of blood donors to be there for others in their hour of need. Blood donors from Letter Kenny and Bunbeg should attend the clinic in the Radisson Blue Hotel in Letter Kenny from Monday 18th to Thursday 21st of September. Making an appointment is recommended. Regular donors can now visit our website or call 1-800-731-137 to book a time. New donors are vital. 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If you're not tired enough to sleep well then you can sleep better and sleep well. E-T-B is a great place. This is the song from the lyrics of the song Real Tess Nahirn and his Intentus Europa. new organ in all her kind to all of you. Oh, I'm enough. I sure wish us long time. All right. Thanks for your comments as they're coming in this morning. I will get to them before 12 or as many of them as I can. Thanks very much. Keep them coming. 08 6 to 25,000 or call us an 07 491 25,000. Okay, right. Pretty much effectively, we are going to see a new political party. And it is going to be the 100% redress party. And it's public relations officer is PR O is Ali Farron. Ali, thank you so much for your time today. Really do appreciate it. Yeah, how are you? I'm good. So where are you now in terms of having this officially recognised as a party on a national scale? We are probably 15 days or 16 days away from getting their over stump. The register of political parties have basically said that they intend to accept our application pending a 21 day review in case some of the other political parties would like to knock us off the perch before we even get started. But overall, we've complied with all the regulations that they need. And we're, you know, we'll be good to go. Yeah, indeed. And it's unlikely any parties might do that because there's no advantage to them in doing so. So once that's done, and let's presume that it will be done. Just the work start then, in terms of, you know, recruiting people to run for elections, obviously, a party requires a team that will never seek public office that have to work beside behind the scenes. Or is that work tentatively already been underway, Ali? So there's a lot done. But quote another political party a lot more to do. You know, so we have a lot of the paperwork typed on. And when we get approval now, we will be setting up the bank account. You need money to run an election. So we'll be setting up the bank account. And then we'll be looking for members membership people to come on board. Then we'll be looking to set up small commons for want of a better word and different electoral areas. So a lot more to do, Greg, definitely. But look, we've over the first hurdle. This, this is not this is a marathon. So there's good. There's gonna be a lot of hurdles we're going to jump through. And our priority is getting a party formed, and then get our candidates in the race, get them talked out ready for the race. Is this the 100% redress party has been labelled as a single issue party? Is that the case? We don't think so. Of course, it's going to have a massive emphasis on the redress of the houses, the defective country blocks. But there's like, you don't need to be a genius and done it all right down the West Coast to see that there's lots of things that needs to be redressed in different areas. And depending on the first elections, we will be doing will be county council elections. So, you know, there's no point in having a massive memorandum or a bit of policy on the health and education because they're not relative to county council elections. And again, we are from grassroots, like we're new, but it'll be a medium of minds. There'll be a pile of people in rooms that will want different things. And we will be fighting on all fronts when possible. But the main aim of our, like we've, there's been that many, there's three or four parties been around for since the start of this state. They haven't delivered for Donegal or they haven't delivered for defective concrete blocks. So that's the reason why we're putting this party in place. I mean, they might argue that, look, this is a this is a national scheme that councillors have attended numerous meetings on defective concrete. You've got many friends within the council that raise it at every given opportunity.  You know, what what change at council level can 100% redress party electees make? Right, well, the first and foremost, there's, there's nobody in the council at the moment, why do they say they are doing their job for us? The defective concrete block homeowner, business owner, farmer does not have anybody that they can say 100% is speaking for them. And at the moment, we don't have a mandate to be at that table to, you know, and while we know the scheme that was delivered by the government to the council to deliver is not up, not fit for purpose at the moment, if we can get a mandate from the people, the, you know, the powers would be in Dublin then has to take us more seriously because we have a mandate like we are, we will be a democratic party. It's a democratic country. And it's only right that they accept unrespectful democratic candidates have you have some councillors in your own area. I want to say that I mean, generally, in a show that are, you know, very active and have been very supportive of the campaign, you can't rule out displacing them. Are they collateral damage? If that happens, Soviet? Well, you know, everybody who goes to the polling booth has a choice to make. And they can decide that then people work, you know, all right, some of them are high profile. But, you know, a fine example was a few weeks ago or months ago, they were asked to go to represent all the politicians were asked to go to Dublin to represent us. You probably remember how many didn't go, you know, so this is, this is a, this is a, you know, this is a disaster waiting to happen in the amount of houses that's in this area and all over Donegal that probably won't be fixed in my lifetime at this stage. No, people see no, you know, people do not see an end to this handling. And I think there's a really strong point here. And I'll have to, in future conversations, choose my words more carefully, because, you know, I have to interview you guys, and I have to interview you, but there's a voice out there that's not heard as much, perhaps it should be of people. And a lot of them, and I'm not sure if the majority that have no hope at all that they don't believe they can't. Well, an example, if I had a house and who's to say am I not? And I had to get 40,000 euro together. And some people haven't to get much more than that together to access this scheme. I don't know how I would do that.  And also to as you get older, would I really I'm still paying the mortgage, but you know, you'd be looking at paying something into well into your 70s and 80s. A lot of people don't want to do that. And I'm not sure if they're not the majority. I think I'm not sure if they I think they might actually be the majority of people affected by this crisis, not to mention those that are in public social housing who see no hope at all at all. I think that is the majority of people out there that they still feel completely helpless even with this scheme in place. Well, one thing we will soon find out at the next county council election, we will be rolling councillors exactly to support people or to make make a better case for people like me and other people who are, you know, you're right. There's a lot of people here who don't see the end of the tunnel.  There's there's while there is help, it's very little. Like we have two facilitators in the whole of Donnie Gull for thousands of people for thousands of homes. We have elderly who can't see an end to it. You know, there's there's so much wrong. And some of the politicians that we have at the moment are nearly saying, well, we've done it. We've got a deal that, you know, like it's this is the second one and it's still not right. So, you know, and if they are collateral damage for us, come the next election, well. Now, I mean, the it's one thing promising something. It's another thing delivering, you know, we have she and Fane saying they will just make this 100 percent redress that there is just no doubt about that. It will be funded. It will be budgeted. They'll deliver justice to the people affected by this. They'll go after the banks. They'll go after the insurance companies. It'll all be done as soon as they are in power and they may well be in power. I take it then that there might be a little bit of cynicism or skepticism, Ali, amongst those affected by this that a she and Fane led government will deliver his promise and that you will actually still need people elected to fight this campaign, even if that were the government in place. Yeah, I think so. I think we still need representation. Like we've had all promises before and fair enough, Jim Faines hasn't been tested yet, but our party, if we get an election, get elected and get a mandate, we will promise one thing we will promise. We will promise to try. And sometimes I think some of our politicians are not even trying, you know, we will put people in place, hopefully, that will be shrewd enough that can, you know, talk and, you know, do it in a way that we need help and we need it now. And, you know, we can't leave it for another four or five years in the hope that if Jim Faines gets in, that they will deliver. We, like at the start, at the same time, we have no mandate to go knocking on a door and up a dialer and say, you know, so our hope is that we get a mandate from the people of Dutty Gall and right down the West Coast should we get candidates in that area and that we can open doors and help, you know, keep this topic on the, like there's so much that needs to be done in this country, but, and maybe if some of the bigger, this new Jim Faines gets on in the next election, their priority, while they say it is, maybe it won't be in Dutty Gall. So, like it might be safer to have, you know, a card in your back pocket that you can fall out and say, well, you know. It's going to make the cancel election debates in a few months, very, very interesting. There's just no doubt about that. I'm looking forward to that already. It's a very serious matter, but of course it's just going to make those debates that will be hosting here in Highland really interesting, I think. Do you anticipate any defections? Do you anticipate any defections in any shown to the 100% redress party? Not looking for any names or anything, but if any fear has been put out, any white smoke, do you expect, I'm not, I don't say you're open to it or we'll see or whatever, but do you expect any defections? At the moment, I don't know. You know, people are probably politicians, you know, they're a closed shop, they don't like the new kids on the block. They just, they don't, you know, they go to kind of say, I will, I think they're going to have to see that the public want change, they want a voice for, you know, defective concrete block owners. And some of them might decide, but some of them might be a fit for us either, you know, they might be what we want. We're a new party, we might want to be new faces, we might want to be new and fresh thinking that we're not going to come down the line that, you know, Dublin or somebody else can say, no, you have to keep quiet this week.  So I think we will be looking for fresh faces, young faces. We would love a few women to come on board because the strength of the women that have been involved with the redress or the defective concrete block campaign has been phenomenal. And we will be looking for new or nearly new, how's that faces going forward? I think you've rude yourself out already anyway with the young one, come here. I have a face for radio, not for posters. Listen, come here, thanks so much for that, Ali. I look forward to teasing that a bit more with you. So approval has been given, it's just paperwork now at this stage. And do you, once that paperwork lands on the door, do you have any bombshell announcements? In other words, what we can confirm this person is going to be a candidate? It's still the same question, Greg, no matter what way you ask it. We do not have candidates yet. That's it. We will be getting our membership up and it will be our membership who will be voting on who our next candidate or our candidate. Ali, thanks for your time.  If your listeners could check it out, give us a like because it's through social media that we will be driving our election campaign. We will try and give Highland Radio a few pounds, but overall we'll be doing it mainly through social media. Just give us interviews, you don't have to worry about the money. Thanks very much indeed. Take care of yourself. Ali Farron, 100% redress party. I'm sure there'll be some sort of an online package going into the elections, but as I say, we like to tease out on this programme and on the newsroom, tease out the issues by way of interviews as well. Is this just another left-wing anti-everything party? I don't really know what that is. I'm not sure if it's left or right-wing or how you might describe it. It's a party they say is designed to try and get 100% redress. 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Have you ever lost sleep wondering, could I be getting a better deal in my mortgage? Well, not anymore. Psst. Hey, hey. With the CCPC Mortgage Money Tool, you can instantly compare mortgages for free and sleep better knowing you're getting the best rate. But I was sleeping. Shhh, now. Just visit ccpc.ie forward slash mortgages. Yeah, I know. From the Competition and Consumer Protection Commission. Enter the Virgin Media Playhouse and unleash our best offers. It's time to play with our 100-euro gift voucher to spend your way when you choose full-fiber, 500-meg broadband for just 39-euro-month for 12 months and no activation fee. So switch today at virginmedia.ie. Virgin Media, it's playtime. TSNC's applies to virginmedia.ie subject to location and availability. New customers only 12-month contracts, 500-meg broadband, 70-euro thereafter, end of October 11th, 2023. Caller says, Greg, what a wonderful woman, Nula Morris, congrats on the book that comes in from Mary. Greg, I discovered I was pre-diabetic and could cut out all sugars and have lost £8 in four weeks. Well done to you. I'm not looking forward to Christmas. I'm going to struggle not to have my quality street. Give it a go. I don't actually need to lose weight. I need to...  A quick suggestion for Greg. What about an operation transformation section for the Ninety-Noon show, healthy eating exercise, even an evening walk? Well, you know what? If people are interested in that, get in touch with me, 08-6-60-25,000. We'll not be weighing anyone because I'd be dead against that. But certainly we can reflect on something. If anyone out there wants to get involved with it, I'm always open to suggestions. That's what drives this show, of course. Right, OK. Thank you very much to Caroline Orr, who researched and produced the show, and Nev Shields working flat out, too, behind the scenes. We appreciate their efforts. We appreciate you listening. We're back with you tomorrow morning at...


The Cavalcade of America, sponsored by the DuPont Company, makes us a better thing for better living through chemistry. Starring Susan Douglas in a true story, I speak for democracy. A bitter cold afternoon in 1944. A farmhouse near Fort Vermilion, a fur trading post in the northern wilds of Alberta, Canada, close to the border of the Northwest Territory. Six carbon, seven nitrogen, eight oxygen, nine chlorine. Oh dear, seven sodium. What is that you study here, Slauka? A new language? No, mama. Chemical elements. The correspondent school says I have to memorize them. That is good, Slauka. Your papa and I, we did not learn things like that in old country before we came to Canada. And what we did learn we like to forget. Papa, it's not enough. I want to learn more. It's so hard to memorize things like chemical elements with no way to apply them. Yes, right. Papa, ever since they closed the school here, for two years she's working like this. My heart goes out of her so hard, she studies. She will go to a real school then. I see to it. We come here from the Ukraine so our children can have better than us. We have savings, she goes. But where? She could not go down to Edmonton and live by herself. Oh no, that is true. Wait, Petro, why we don't think of it before? Your brother, Georgie, in Delaware, at United States, there must be fine schools there. Sure, sure he would take her in. Oh, Petro, she could come back. He'd steal the children, maybe even start the school again here. No, Mama, it would be too expensive. Oh, what good is our savings if we keep for ourselves? Good. I write to Gowardy and tell him our Slauqa must learn the United States. Mama and Papa, I am riding this on the airplane and we'll mail it to you when we reach New York. There was the boat to the town of Peace River.  And then the motor bus to Edmonton that bumped and bumped over the hot dusty road. And then, oh then, this airplane. You will wonder, Mama and Papa, if I am frightened. I don't think I am. So there below me, just the way I had read it would look, the United States. And all the things I'd read about. Niagara Falls and Ritz-Banweaker, Valley Falls, Bunker Hill. And now, as I write to you, we are circling the island of Manhattan and we're going to land any minute now. Well, this is it, Slauqa Times Square. What do you think? Oh dear, it all looks so peaceful from the airplane, Uncle Georgie. Great, Slauqa, no more Georgie. Even the United States, I am pure. What about just plane auntie? Fine, fine with me. And we'll have to do something about your name too. Yar, Slauqa. In English, that would mean glory to God in the highest. So in the United States, you will be Gloria. Gloria. Oh, I like that, Gloria, Julia. Good, good. Well, what would you like best now that you're in the big city of New York, huh? Would it be too expensive if I had an ice-cream soda?  What flavor you like? I don't know. I've never had one before. You haven't? Well, I'll tell you, you can't go wrong with chocolate. That is unless you'd rather have strawberry or vanilla or pineapple. Oh, dear. I'd better let you too. All right, all right. Come on. We get it in the restaurant at the Pennsylvania station. Then we take the train to your new home in Wilmington, Delaware. Come on, come on. We don't have much time. She's crazy.  Everybody here is in a hurry. It's a funny country. You have to get used to it. It's just that I expected people who have such great responsibilities as Americans have would be very serious and dignified. I felt that too when I first came over. The things they have here to make life so easy and comfortable, I thought to myself they were like the top soil. They could wash away any time and leave nothing. Yes. Yes, that's it. But then I lived here a while, Gloria, and I found out down underneath its good, rich earth, strength that nothing can wash away, that's important to people like us. You'll find it for yourself someday. What do you do, sir? Oh, how do you do? They said I could find the principal of Wilmington High School here. I wish to register for your full term. Oh, I see. Well, I'm Mr. Full Mother Principal. Why haven't you been in before this to register school about time? I just arrived here from our best at Canada. I'm staying with my uncle George. My name is Gloria Chomiak. Well, Gloria, welcome to Wilmington. Please sit down. Thank you. Well then, tell me all about yourself. Well, Mr. Full Mother, I think I ought to tell you. I have been to school only two years. I beg your pardon. But I had two more years studied with the Royal Canadian Correspondent School. Oh, and you wish to enter high school? I've tried my best to learn, sir. I've read and read. I know your president, George Washington, John Adams. Yes, yes, that's fine, Gloria, but... We have a ruling, you see, in order to enter high school. Well, you must understand. You might hold the other students back if you wanted to. I would not. I wouldn't say a word in class. I would just listen. I want to listen to hear and learn all I can. I wouldn't waste a minute. How could I? Your country has given me this chance to come here and I want to repay it by hard work and study with all my heart. Yes, I see, but that isn't my point, Gloria. We want you to say a word in class to feel part of our student life. Yes, I understand. Well, I thank you very much, sir. You've been so kind to explain things to me. I... I'd better be going now. What are you going to do? I don't know. You see, my parents sent me all the way here so I could learn. And then I want to go back home and teach the other children, because there isn't any school at all up there now. I never thought you might not let me in. How old are you, Gloria? Fifteen. You see, Gloria, we have rules in our school system that are made for excellent reasons. Oh, yes, sir. It's all right. Well, of course, there's the old maxim that it's the exception that proves the rule. I don't understand. Well, here. I'm going to see that you get your chance, young lady. Oh. Here you are. Here's a form. Oh, thank you. You just find your name right there. That's it. My name, Gloria Chomiak, is 16. Residents, I'll get... No. Residents, Delaware, United States of America. Now we continue our DuPont play. I speak for democracy, starring Susan Douglas as Gloria Chomiak, who in a new home in Wilmington, Delaware, is writing a letter to her parents in the far north country of Canada. Dearest mama and papa, today was the first day of the new term at Wilmington High School. I thought it was going to be quite simple that I would go there and register and start my classes. Oh, pardon me. Could you please tell me where the library is? Why not?  That's the door. Oh, it's rather confusing sometimes finding one's way. You're new here, aren't you? Yes, I am. Where did you come from? Up north, Canada. Oh. I suppose my not knowing my way around seems pretty strange to you. I don't mind if you laugh. Was I laughing? No. But I'm foreign and I'm a little mixed up. Oh, look, practically everybody's mixed up first day of school. What's your name? Gloria. Oh, gee, that's nice. Mine's just plain old women. Say, everybody goes to the cafeteria for lunch. Do you want to meet me there? Oh, no, I couldn't. I brought my lunch from home. Well, eat it in the cafeteria then. Oh, come on. Make it about 12, huh? And afterwards I'll show you where things are around school and you can meet some of the kids. It's awfully kind of you. Oh, thanks. Well, be safe, Gloria. That's right, we, Beast and Papa, I hope you'll understand why I haven't written very often lately. There is so much to study and the most wonderful thing has happened. The editor of the school paper invited me to be a cobb reporter. And last week after school, Miss Wright, the director of dramatics, came in while I was working on the paper. What's Gloria? What are you doing here on a Friday afternoon? I'm working, Miss Wright. Somebody has to, as the reporters say, put the paper to bed. I see. It seems to me you're always that somebody. Oh, no, honestly, it's my turn, that's all. And besides, remember when our class tour, the news journal, I met a real newspaper reporter and her name is Miss Power and she's helping me to learn how real reporters write their stories. Oh, Gloria, I'm worried about you. You're trying to do too much. Take on too many activities. Library squad, debating clubs, school paper, with just a limit, dear. I'm strong. We're a good, strong family. We know how to work all of us. That's obvious, but... Oh, Miss Wright, my father and mother knew there was much for me to learn, but I don't think even they realize how much. There's something new every day. I'm happy, there are words to remember. I want to take back with me all I can absorb. Oh, Miss Wright, this is my chance. I don't want to waste a single second of it. Oh, I understand. I can go on with things like the paper. You have to stop. Nobody wants to stop you, Gloria. As a matter of fact, I don't think anyone could. But still me a favor, will you? Of course. Get out to a party now and then.  Well, I mean it. The class party is tomorrow night. I want to see you there or else.  You look cute as a button. Yeah, why didn't somebody tell me? We need to fix my hair a new way.  Hey, Winnie, did you hear about the content? What content? Miss Wright just told me about it and I figured you and Gloria might be interested. I think it's something to do with writing a script for the radio. And I hear the prize is a scholarship to college. College? Oh, Winnie, let's find out. Okay. Come on. Miss Wright. Hi, Miss Wright. Well, hello there. That's a good thing you made it, Gloria. You scared me into coming, Miss Wright. I'm having a lovely time. Well, you look lovely, too. You're not kidding. Miss Wright, we wanted to ask you about the content. Oh, yes. Well, I just heard about it myself. Goldman Walts and Harvey Smith over at WDEL told me about it. It's a radio contest. The National Association of Broadcasters, the Radio Television Manufacturers Association, and the Junior Chamber of Commerce are sponsoring it. Would any of you like to enter? It's for high school students all over the country. Well, what do you have to go? Oh, just quiet a little talk on this subject. I speak for democracy. The winners will read their scripts over the radio. Jeepers, I wouldn't have a chance. What about you, Gloria? You're going to try it, aren't you? I don't know. Oh, don't be timid about it. We're not supposed to be elaborate. No oration or anything like that. But the title, Miss Wright. Well? I speak for democracy. I haven't the right to speak for it. I wouldn't be eligible. Oh, that's nonsense. I'm afraid it isn't. It would be presumptuous of me even to enter. Oh, now come, dear. Think it over carefully. And remember, the prize is a scholarship to the college of your choice. Yes, Miss Wright. I know. And so, dear Papa and Mama, you can imagine how I lay awake last night dreaming and wishing I could take part in that contest. Then this afternoon, as I was going across Rodney Square to the library... Well, Gloria, hello there. Hello, Miss Power. It's nice to see you again. Where are you going? Want to help me cover a story? Oh, that's very kind of you. And I'd love to. I was on my way to the library. Oh, looking up something for the school papers, huh? No. I was thinking about a contest. I just want to write down how I feel about it, that's all. Contest? Oh, wait a minute. The voice of democracy contest. Yes, you see... Gloria, you ought to enter that contest. I was even going to suggest it to you if you hadn't heard about it. Oh, but you don't understand, Miss Power. There is so much I want to say. And yet, how can I, a foreigner, be the one to speak for democracy? Look here. You see that building over there, across the square? The federal building. Yes. What goes on there? That's where the courts are. Where everyone can get justice. Everybody knows that. And the city hall. What's that for? Oh, that's where the city government meets. Okay. Now, what about the public library over there? That's for knowledge. Isn't it there for everyone? That's right. But Miss Power, I don't understand. Now, that statue over there. The man on horseback? Cesar Rodney? What about Cesar Rodney? I'm a little rusty on that story. Oh, well, I read about it in history class. Cesar Rodney was in Dover, but he found out that the resolution for independence might not be unanimous unless he got there to vote for Delaware. So he wrote 80 miles through modern lightning and thunder and reached Philadelphia just in time to cast the deciding vote. Good. Now, Gloria, you know, all the things we've been talking about. These burles and squares, the institutions they represent, probably wouldn't be here if men like Cesar Rodney had just sat back and let someone else do the talking. I never thought of it that way. Your voice is every bit as important today as his was, Gloria. Yes, I see. What you mean is that every voice that speaks out for democracy is important. Isn't it? That's the ticket. Okay, Miss Power, I'll enter that contest with Mama and Papa. I don't know how to tell you. It is also unbelievable, but that day in the square decided me. I entered the contest. When I wrote the script, it was what I wanted to say, but I knew how many others would be doing the same. High school students from all over this country. How could I stay a dream that later there would be an assembly at school, and Mr. Fuller would say... We have just received word of the winners in the Voice of Democracy contest. They are Anne Pinckney, Trinidad, Colorado, Richard Chapman, Brookings, South Dakota, Robert Shanks, Lebanon, Indiana, and it gives me the greatest pleasure to announce that one of the winners is right here in our own Wilmington High School. Gloria Chomiak. Thank you, Kitty Washington. I went to Congress. The members of the Supreme Court all stood in line and bowed to me. And I met the President of the United States. And then we went to Wilmington, from the town where the first Patriots of this country met to plan this nation. We gave our broadcast from the House of Burgesses where Patrick Henry cried out, Give me liberty or give me death. I was standing there right beside General George C. Marshall as he talked to the audience over the radio. Friends, today we have gathered here in this historic shrine to honor four young high school students who, like Patrick Henry, have spoken out for liberty. They have spoken in their own way in a radio contest on the subject I speak for democracy. But I am convinced that the words these boys and girls have written are more to them than a mere competition for a prize. They are the voice of democracy. Representing these four students is a young lady just 17 years old who I am proud to introduce. Her name is Ms. Gloria Chomiak from the Wilmington High School of Wilmington, Delaware. Ladies and gentlemen, this is Susan Douglas of myself. We have a surprise for you at this point in our cavalcade play. I don't think I could begin to leave Gloria's winning speech as well as she did that day. And so that you may hear Gloria reading a part of it as she did on that occasion in the House of Burgesses. Well, here she is, not the actress, but the real Gloria Chomiak. I speak for democracy because the generations back, my ancestors could not. Because if I do not speak of it, if many more do not speak of it, there may come a time when we too will no longer have the right to do so. For today, neither at any other time, governing powers are fitted one against another. It seems a crisis has diminished and must be broken. We who believe in democracy cannot trust our living it alone. We must stand up and speak and be heard in its cause. And what is this saying called democracy? It is a thought discovered in ancient Greece. I feel the Slavic spirit dreams of too much and faithful with his life. An ideal started in its practice by a model parliament of England and bitterly struggled for in Larry's fron. It found a home in the new world when honest communists learned to demand a role by their own choice. It has grown from a privilege of the few to a right of the common, risen from a persecuted idea to a mighty ideal of helping safety by millions. It is a government that has been developing for hundreds of years and shall develop for hundreds more. It has developed into a system whose imperfections can be remedy and whose virtues are God's given right. I think he spoke a truth about democracy when he said that it can make each man his own oppressor. Yet I believe that greater men have said truer things about democracy that the people's government cannot and shall not perish from the earth.