Good evening. Thank you so much for coming. I'm Dan Groberg. I'm the Executive Director of the Kellogg-Hubert Library. I'm so excited to see so many people here supporting the library. I'm really grateful to have all of you here. Thank you so much. And I'm so excited for this special event with Ros Gay. I want to thank the Savoy for hosting us this evening, and to Ross for generously donating his time, and to Bearpond Books for collaborating with us on this event. And I want to invite Shane Knight from Bearpond to say a few words. Oh, y'all, butter and paper is an occupational hazard. Hi. It is a delight, too. Yes, absolutely. I want to thank Ross Gay for jumping in to help out our little town.  Bearpond is so happy to be slinging Ross's books again, and we are more than happy to pay this opportunity forward to our beloved second home, the Kellogg-Hubert, a place where all are affirmed, welcomed, and safe. And I know I'm speaking to the choir here, but I implore you to continue to support one of the last bastions of publicly supported community spaces, our libraries. We all know that book bans, the hijacking of public boards by fascists, and the willingness of elected officials to defund these publicly held goods, are tearing down our nice things across the country. So please continue to show up, get dirty, ask questions, run for things, and find out what awesome organizations such as For the People are doing, which helps train and empower citizens to protect and defend our beloved public spaces. We actually can have nice things, and we do when we work together. So thank you for showing up, and enjoy. Thank you again to Bearpond Books. As Jane said, at a time where libraries around the country are under attack, this community has always been here for the Kellogg-Hubert. With your support, we're proud to be a bastion of free thought, free expression, and lifelong learning. When the library flooded in July, we immediately jumped to work to say, how can we serve our community? But even more remarkably, you immediately jumped to work to say, how can we serve our library? 160 volunteers showed up with 24 hours notice on a hot human day to carry heavy, wet oil, sod, and books. I know a lot of you are in the audience, and I'm so grateful to all of you. More than 600 people have donated since the flood to support our recovery efforts, and we were able to start curbside services just a week after the flood because of you. We were able to reopen the building to the public just a few weeks ago, thanks to you, and we'll rebuild a better, more resilient library thanks to you. The road ahead is long and expensive, and we don't expect to have our building fully restored until at least the spring, but with your help, we look forward to continuing to serve as a third place in our community, as a safe and welcoming place where all are welcome. So thank you so much. Tonight, I'm so excited to welcome National Book Award finalists and New York Times bestselling author, Ross Gay. Ross is the author of four books of poetry against which bringing the shovel down, beholding, and catalog of unabashed gratitude, which was the winner of the 2015 National Book Critics Circle Award and the 2016 Kingsley Tough Poetry Award. And in addition to his poetry, Ross has released three collections of essays. The Book of Delights was released in 2019 and was a New York Times bestseller. Insighting Joy was released in 2022, and his newest collection, The Book of Mordelights, was just released in September of this year. Ross studies joy. And with all the darkness in the world right now and all the challenges facing Montpelier and Central Vermont after the flooding, joy is something we could all use right now.  We just have to be willing to look for it. Without further ado, please join me in welcoming Ross Gay. Good to see you. Thank you so much. And thank you for having me here. I was saying to Jane, who said, oh, this is your first time to Montpelier, the bookstore.  And the library, God damn, it's beautiful in there. Yeah, the Calder prints upstairs. Jesus. If you haven't seen it, there are like four, five or six of these Alexander Calder prints that are just gorgeous. God damn. And also the seats. I don't know if people do this, but the seats that have the, you know, the windows that have the things that are big enough that you can kind of take a nap in them, if you wanted to. Anyway, yeah, I'm glad to be here. I'm really, really glad. And it's amazing to hear about all the, you know, when we take care of each other. It's really beautiful. Let me read this first essay that is, it's actually about, it's about a bookstore in Philadelphia that I adore, but I feel like it's for both the bookstore and the library. I'm going to read it. And it has this long title. It's called, also what a cool theater. God, yeah. We were talking back there about this place and man, it is awesome. This is called friends. Let us do our best not to leave this life having not loved what we love enough. I learned today from Dave that Joseph Fox bookshop has gone out of business.  I just looked it up. It was. Anyway, there is a cliche circulating these days like genital warts meant to suggest something was jarred. It's a weird way to introduce myself to you. We're all adults meant to suggest something was jarring or upsetting or super heart stirring or something. I assure you someone is saying it at this very moment.  When Dave said it, I actually put my hand on my tummy and said ug and no and why to which Dave shrugged and made a sad and sympathetic face. He loved the store too. Joseph Fox was a beautifully curated bookstore for my tastes, which needn't be yours. Lots of essays and nonfiction, lots of poems and novels and nearly whole runs of certain presses stuff.  They had a gardening section where I once got a seed saving book and an art section where I got a book of Annie Albers' work. It was small. The back room was very close to the front room and the hallway between them was often packed, encouraging lots of excuse me's and after use and such, which are themselves among the products, the gifts of the small bookstore. We put those after use and such those let me grab it for you and such in the satchels of our hearts. Though it was a little place, a packed little place, I meandered, I got lost, I got found, I got lost again. I guarantee you there were nooks I had not yet discovered. No to Bene, a good bookstore is also a nook store, a store of nooks inside of which await what you cannot begin to know.   The last time I was in there, I was looking for W. E. B. Du Bois' Black Reconstruction, a book I wish I had read when it was assigned to me in college. Lots of those books. No regrets, no regrets. When I asked the 20-something woman working behind the counter hopped off her stool and walked directly to the floor to ceiling shelf across the way and pulled the Du Bois from the shelf, placing the tome, and it's not too much to say, my life in my hands, again and again they do. These booksellers, these librarians, these guides, these friends, smiling. Here it is. This is, you know, this book, it was written between August 1st of 2021 and August 1st of 2022. And I think that's right. And so the first four or five we were actually in Vermont, where we like to come for my birthday sometimes, and other times. This is called My Birthday Again. Well, here we are again, this time my 47th birthday. This year we decided to enjoy a week away up in a little rented cabin in Vermont, which has a bounty of delights. The first of which is that apple trees grow everywhere here. Yards, roadside tickets, parking lots, and this year they are loaded.  It makes me want to come back with a pickup truck to snag a few years worth of applesauce. As we were driving around admiring all the apple trees, I was also admiring that very Vermont-y and Catholic sounding roadside feature called the pullout. Also called pull-offs, they are common here as air, room enough for a few cars to pull over and look down at the beautiful river roiling through the boulders below, or overlook the valley with the first embers of fall in the leaves. Shortly after we pulled out of a pull-off, we pulled into yet another of the delights of Vermont, a roadside farm stand. This one peopled by people, though sometimes they're peopled solely by a box in which to slide your money. A trust box, I've never heard it called, though we should. As we were getting some blueberries and raspberries, we overheard some Vermont's who were happily whooped from somebody in a past earlier today. They described it while picking out their fruit. Beautiful this and beautiful that, challenging but fun. So we got directions from them and after we settled up, we headed over there. The trail started right at the edge of the parking lot, which was more like a pull-off. And we entered what was immediately a lush and magical forest, birches with their bark curling like pages of old books, ferns luminous from the light dappling through the canopy, plush carpets of moss, nearly fluorescent mushrooms. It was rugged-ish, lots of scrambling up slick slabs of, I think, granite. We were both sweating pretty good within the first half hour or so, and Stephanie stashed her sweatshirt behind a fallen tree. We passed through what felt like several ecosystems and when, about two hours later, we finally approached a sign that we knew in our heart of hearts was going to tell us a hundred feet, maybe fifty, to the summit. It said one mile to go. We'd only eaten a couple handfuls of berries. I'd only brought a not-all-the-way full court glass jar of water for both of us. And then, that's like someone said, ooh, you're not from here. And as we were contemplating reaching the top, a couple hikers approached the same sign we were looking at. They both had on big packs. One looked to be about mid-60s, the other late 20s or early 30s. We learned they worked together and were practicing for a longer trip on the Appalachian Trail, with which this trail intersected. The older of the two was the boss. She had hiking poles, and the younger looked a little bit coerced. The boss asked us which way we were going, and we told her that we were deciding whether or not to go the final mile, pointing in the direction of the summit. Upon which she looked us up and down, noting, I guess, our attire, t-shirt and shorts, and she asked us, or maybe actually she was telling us, you know cotton's a killer, right? Which we didn't know. Then pointing to our feet, unsupportive sneakers, she made an, are you kidding me, face and shook her head, no.  I was already backing away, trying to sneak down the trail, for who wants to get chewed out on their birthday? When Stephanie for some reason blabbed about, yeah, I am a little hungry too, and yeah, I have a little bit of a headache too, and yeah, my knees kind of bothering me too, blab, blab, blab. At which I recoiled and ducked my head like, why would you tell her that? Like she's going to yell at me, which in a Vermont way she did.  She asked, I mean, she actually asked, what's wrong with you? After we told her everything is wrong with this, you're right. Thank you very much. And no more glass on the trail. Sorry about that, ma'am. She said, sort of chipper again. Okay, take care now. Enjoy Vermont.  She was hungry. He had a glass jar. They were wearing cotton, trotting down and joined myself, trying to not smoke Stephanie and her hurting knee and head. I found myself whistling and feeling the soft earth receiving my inadequate footwear and the glowing ferns dragging their feathery fronds along my suicidal cotton shorts. And I noted how pleased I was delighted even as I tend often to be at having not reached the summit to have gotten close but no cigar and interesting quality I was turning over in my head on my glad descent. Maybe I'm afraid of failure. Maybe I'm afraid of the ends of things. Maybe it's a rejection of the conquering spirit of some of my forefathers. Maybe it's a distant cousin to the way I for some reason always leave out a tiny bit of a few ingredients when I'm cooking. Maybe it's a small and weird gesture of hope leaving something in the tank for tomorrow, which implies there will be a tomorrow. Maybe not finishing as a prayer for the tomorrow. An interesting prayer to make on the first day of a year long project. Though it was a dueling prayer I made when Stephanie brought home four very delicious birthday tacos for me, which along with the chips and guac and the kimchi and the roasted sweet potatoes and the kombucha, I did in fact summit. That was mad taco that we were eating. Yeah. So good. Yeah. This is called the wide berth. Today as I walked on a narrow shouldered road, very distracted by the abundance of forageable food, more rogue apples, raspberries, choked cherries, a whole eight foot wall of thimbleberries. It's like Willy Wonka's out here. Leeds from Montes driving in their Subaru's or pickups. I got to just tell you a thing about this book. So, you know, like if you're, I think probably any writer, but a writer like me, you really depend on a type, what is it called an editor, a type editor? What's it called? A copy editor.  But periodically, they miss something that's so obvious. Like, I'd spelled the word Bramanta, V-E-R-M-O-N-T-A-H.   It's a joke. Anyway, so there's all these things when I see in this book, I'm like, oh, that was a good one. These for Montes driving in their Subaru's or pickups almost to a one gave me a wide berth veering a good eight or so feet away from me. Sometimes they crossed all the way across the double lane into the other lane into the double line into the other lane. And most often while birthing me widely, they waved. Though this is not the first birth of note of delight for today is my beloved friend Walt's 50th birthday. No doubt some extra confetti for this party because Walt was supposed to be a goner from leukemia over a decade ago. Not to mention that like me, he's had an intermittently troubled mind. He's had a mind itself intermittently difficult to survive. And yet here he is. Here we are still together on this side, our friendship nearly 40 years old, which some days makes me look at it like it's my child.  How'd that happen? Our 40 year old child, which we have watched grow up, which we have grown up together is one of the great comforts of my life. All that becoming, all that floundering, all that stumbling, all that wonder. Walt's the one helped me with my slap shot. Walt's the one taught me how to cook eggs.  Walt's the one picked me up when I needed a ride, gave me money when I needed it, shared his sorbet, his gummy bears, his cheese steak and pizza, his extra hockey stick, his car. Walt's the one who said when I was not quite sure how to extract myself from a relationship that was making me sad. Dude, what are you doing?  Walt's the one who makes me think of Donnie Hathaway's song. He ain't heavy. He's my brother. Walt's the one who never fled from my need, flailing and sloppy and shitty and even cruel sometimes though it might be, which maybe explains why I will never put his phone number in my phone. I keep it by heart. Oh, one last thing, sort of a first thing truth be told, for my 17th birthday when I still mainly only read the sports page of the Bucks County Courier Times, dude gave me Kant's critique of pure reason and Nietzsche's Beyond Good and Evil, which you might call, in addition to throwing your money down the drain, setting a ridiculously high bar or you might call it belief, which though I never would have said this out loud, I've actually needed people to have in me. I have needed to be, we need to be believed in, which in a certain kind of way is like being birthed. And just like his gummy bears and hockey sticks, I guess I'm taking Walt's birthday because when Walt was born, so too was I. This is called the lady in the tree. I just put my laundry, I just put in my laundry at the laundromat. And as I was sitting on the curb in the sun, looking across the parking lot, I heard but did not see a woman yell, a girl, right? And a brown dude walking beneath the voice and pushing a baby stroller, turned the chariot to the woman who was, now I could tell, obscured by a tree. And so her voice, a white Hoosier voice with a touch of the East, a little pinch of Jersey or Philly back there, which gotta say, smooths out my hackles some, seemed to be coming from the tree. This brown dude, who pretty sure was not a black dude, which I think I gathered, stay with me, from his footwear, a certain kind of sandal, very thin, possibly leather, with a loop over the toe, was darker skinned than me, although I am in common parlance in many parts of this country anyway, though the world and overall an entirely different story, a black dude, races like God, it'll do whatever you need it to do.  And she said, something, something beautiful, something, something precious. And he seemed not to be saying anything, though I could see him looking up into the tree, nodding, a somewhat reticent or guarded smile. And I heard from the tree something like hair ties. And then the brown dude nodded, his baby girl still tilted on her rear wheels. And then it was quiet for a second. And the brown dude rested the carriage back down on all fours before taking a few steps to his right, where he bent over to pick up whatever the woman threw down from the tree. I'm guessing some hair ties for his beautiful, precious baby girl. After he grabbed the hair ties, he waved to the tree with the same hand that was holding the gift. And the woman in the tree said something like, okay, baby, as the man turned his carriage and baby girl to carry on their way. Immediately after which she hollered at this big burly white dude in a camo hat leaning against the phone pole across the street. You okay? Which he didn't quite look. But he smiled too. I could see it beneath his camo cap. And he nodded and gave the tree a thumbs up. And this is called the lady on the porch. This is one of those days the book isn't big enough because in the intervening 45 minutes, the white voice lady in the tree has spoken to literally every single person who has gone by every single one, which is up to about 13 if I was counting right.   Nana also liked to sit on the porch. She said probably because her last name was porch from her third husband, who my mother reports wasn't great. Though I never met him. I knew her first husband, my father's father, who I called Papa. And her second husband, I met once at their son's funeral. Keith died of a heart attack at 35. When I was having some heart stuff and they did a family history, I was like, nope, nope. And then I called my brother to double check and we remembered, oh yeah, Uncle Keith. And when I said, you know, I had an uncle. Should I put that down? They said, yeah, you probably should. Nana's second husband, Mr. Turner, like Keith was dark. It was tall, dark brown, very handsome with pretty hands. But about Nana's third husband, porch, the one I never met. My mom's beef, like my Nana's incidentally, was that he was always playing golf instead of working. I have no beef with not working, though I do have beef with golf. It sounds like Nana is maybe at last truly on her way. She's 96 and all three of her siblings, aged 90, 90, 90 are alive. In a nursing home in Youngstown, no longer able to get out of bed. Very tired. You can let go, Nana. Spent a long time. About a decade ago, when I was visiting her in her high rise old folks home across from a Cleveland clinic, in addition to flirting hard with some man in the elevator, you got a car? Because I don't mess with no man without a car. And boasting about how a couple nights prior she had been at a geriatric dance off and was by far the best one down there. She bragged me up and down the hallways telling the other old folks, this is my baby. And he's a writer and telling everyone she made me greens without the ham hot because he doesn't eat meat and still they're good. We went to Corky and Lenny's out on Chagrin Boulevard just past Shaker Heights where Nana got a pastrami and I got a veggie burger, which they for some reason kindly made a double. And she told me the waitress was flirting with me. She dipped her french fry into the ketchup and pointed it at my double, then giggled the wispy way she did. She's trying to get with you Rossi. Takes one to no one, I guess. We came back to sit on her sixth floor porch overlooking the parking lot where she was growing peppers and tomatoes and greens and pots. She was telling me about her mama's garden. Just like I am incapable of calling my father's mother anything but Nana, my Nana was incapable it seemed of calling her mother anything but mama. Before she excused herself for a second and came back with a bag of goodies from what she called I'm pretty sure the Hunger Center. Inside was a cheap electric toothbrush she grabbed two, some store brand toothpaste she grabbed two, some beans and some spaghetti. Baby could you use this? She asked and though I didn't really need it I said yes please and thank you. Oh but I also wanted to mention that after listening to the lady in the tree for a while I went back in to change my laundry and noticed the third of my three machines was empty. I figured the attendant maybe moved my clothes somewhere but when I asked she told me she didn't know and then went into detective mode. She eventually figured opening a washer a few doors down and seeing some granny panties in there. Aha that lady must have taken your clothes.  I'm still six foot four and my clothes on that lady will be very big. My clothes will make that granny a baby. Lord I believe in almost nothing anymore except these fleeting sweetnesses, these dime a dozen precious sweetnesses, these sweetnesses that seem to me the organizing fact of our lives or maybe more accurately the reasons to stay alive. These people in trees and on porches and in laundromats taking my phone number for when my clothes came back and while I was giving her my number a woman in a tank top and jeans standing guard next to her washer good idea reading her phone who I'd noticed glancing up periodically at our conversation called out looking down so at her phone but smiling that's life in the laundromat. How are you doing? You're doing all right? Okay okay this is called Daisy Returns. The cat the cat we cohabitate with common parlance our cat though it's obvious enough that we belong to her is sitting atop my legs which are beneath a handmade old-time equipped liver spotted with coffee stains as bedclothes in my proximity always are and probably always will be. You are who you are I once told my friend Sebastian when he got eggs on his shirt again. Daisy takes off on the regular because there have been dogs and another cat who intermittently visit or live here. One of those dogs a recent addition to the family is batshit as we say and to any little creature squirrel, bunny, puppy, cat she lunges and screams I mean she screams like she's being scalded or having her skin peeled off from her or something and though it seems to me the scream is murderous I guess it's possible it is a scream of curiosity and collegiality. Either way Daisy's not hanging around to find out. Daisy's foundational inquiry her primary and abiding question is whether or not the coast is clear which because we live in a neighborhood of cats it's often not Zeke and Zora brother and sister are the neighbor cats Zora talks like a rusty swing set and a lot Zeke had been for a few years until Gizmo's arrival the sole baddest dude on this block Zeke walks slow and luxuriously almost princely they both kick Daisy's ass Turmeric is a recent addition to Zeke and Zora's house whose human mother claimed her from a junk yard in Indianapolis hoping against hope that she was ginger the former badass matriarch of the neighborhood who one day disappeared she's not not even close toothless now because of some kind of mouth disease and it seems to me with a bum leg or two she also kicks Daisy's ass Gizmo is the deaf side means cat who moved across the street a couple years back who's a little bit like Omar from the wire the streets mostly clear when he pokes his head from his cat door and by the time he's tried it down the steps it's a ghost town except one time Zeke stayed put thickening up his coat and getting low looking just past Gizmo and Gizmo slightly smaller than Zeke but wiry saunter directly to Zeke getting lower with each step and looking also just past him and when they got within spitting distance they started howling at which point on my porch I put my book all the way down on my lap for I knew it was soon to be on I guess I could have broken it up but I'm sorry to tell you I like to watch mixed martial arts I was curious when they commenced to brawling it was straight out of Tom and Jerry in the first round they whirled about four feet into the air clutching each other in a kind of corkscrew motion after a 15 second intermission they jumped back on each other and this time it was somersaults a few feet into the air after which Zeke back pedaled very slowly probably saying stuff like you're lucky I didn't sleep good last night and you're lucky I had a sore paw etc before scampering away needless to say Gizmo sometimes kicks Daisy's ass there's that chubby homebody cat whose name I don't know across the street beneath the pear tree who never leaves her yard but would surely kick Daisy's ass then there's baby Jake like Paris from the Iliad gorgeous regal always in the cut seems mostly to be in seductive repose and who when he moves he flounces if it doesn't interfere with his preening he kicks Daisy's ass and finally there's crazy Jake baby Jake's dad sometimes we'll see them catching up in the alley a true wildcat with matted fur who crawls almost like a snake and sleeps under our garage in a dugout with a woodchuck crazy Jake you don't believe me crazy Jake I'm pretty sure is Daisy's friend her counselor her her confidant her Yoda a few times I've seen them lying on the same wall no hackles working things through all to say Daisy's often on edge though I've not had my ass beat like she has daily I have for other reasons at times in my life been all brainstem all anxiety all darting eyes and every sound coming for your throat and so how lucky it feels to have her snuggle down relaxed safe on my lap purring so loud and so hard I can feel it into my chest and when I take a sip of coffee or turn the page of my book and so stop petting her for a second she puts her hand on my wrist and looks into my eyes as though to say please don't stop a plea I feel so lucky to heed this is called being read to in what would prove to be a somewhat lazy day a day we would neither seize nor attack nor crush nor murder nor decapitate nor defenest straight but simply live langurously and loungely Stephanie drinking her tea me my coffee in bed and PJ's past noon and in no big hurry to fix that which makes the Puritans in us whirl in their graves hastening happily their conversion into soil and worm shit and flowers from our sloth Stephanie started reading Eduardo Galliano's book soccer in sun and shadow which is one of my favorite books and I think now hers it's a kind of history of soccer football told in short essays essay it's from galliano's perspective not only as a pretty hardcore fan but also is one of our most important and searing writers on colonialism and empire also there are drawings this is the second or third time we've read galliano's book having come to it first stumbling around the public library browsing is the word wandering wondering for some guidance on a book of epistolary basketball essays I'm working on with a friend I'd read and taught some of galliano's memory of fire trilogy and his book of fables the book of embraces but I still need to or should read his open veins of Latin America which I understand is one of the most important books I'll ever read per that last sentence that should how lucky even if it sometimes prick you with shame should is one of the cudgels of shame especially should have even if it has compelled you to pretend to the contrary not yet to have read even near everything by your favorite authors thanks to your having been a shabby and half-ass student there are so many books to look forward to I was reclined with my coffee on my chest as Stephanie flipped back and forth through the book reading essays which though galliano's book moves chronologically it invites it might be the brevity of the essays or that they mostly stand alone or just that reading a book not front to back can be a delight I recently realized reading the poet cd writes book cooling time an american poetry vigil that I really love to read books maybe especially a book of poems or poem adjacent stuff back to front vignettes of favorite favorite players stories of miraculous games how brazil became brazil when they finally started playing their black players among whom was pele and slightly longer riffs on the world cups which galliano being galliano historicizes makes events in and of and with the world never missing a chance to describe often with comedic flourish the plow powers that be teasing for instance that castro's revolution is any day this starts in 1962 to be overthrown there is also a slight nostalgia nostalgic bent to soccer and sun and shadow a longing for the good old days of the game footnote no to bene although sometimes the good old days is code for when women and black people couldn't really vote etc sometimes it's really not sometimes it means when I like the soccer or the pizza or the buildings or the unions or the price of college or the roe v wade more a nostalgic bent to it which seems to me to include a more flamboyant and dancerly manner of play a game in which form or style was as important as function or winning a game free of things like owners and corporate sponsorships and everyone and everything branded like cattle i.e. the general bleak consumptive way of sport which emerges hard to remember sometimes from play the vast wonderful collaborative unknown which is pretty sure antithetical to capital and which galliano a romantic with a fierce memory dreams of dreams he likewise gave to me as I drifted into sleep to his words from stephanie's mouth floating like a ball punted by the goalie back into play helmets free today after shooting some hoops with jared up in eastern then spinning around the neighborhood looking for old buildings we might convert into dreamy basketball courts we got a couple smoothies at the public market and past us wishes a parade of kids doing wheelies on north hampton street swerving sometimes between cars to keep the wheelies going wheelie gangs jared called them pointing and smiling before asking if we have those in bloomington which we do not at least not in my neighborhood which seems to have few children and where there are children if they are out of your sight and not at a lesson or practice or some kind of improvement session they wear two or three helmets and probably elbow pads to boot the children in my neighborhood so many of the children these days seem to wear wrist guards and tracking devices to and take a water bottle and their cell phones to get the mail my god it filled me up this parade of helmetless children veering their precious little lawless brains through traffic on one wheel with nary apparent to be seen now that gave me hope this called i'd prefer not to i was walking into town today and i ran into a lovely guy i used to see all the time in the afghan joint acupuncture joint walking the streets etc though it's been a while you know how it is he was walking his charmingly aloof dog a petite squirt who is sniffing around in one of the prettiest gardens in town while inside the house about 10 feet away were a couple dogs crashing against the windows and walls to get out here so they could murder this little aloof fella who happened to be peeing on their peonies when i asked how it's been going implying how it's been going these past couple years the shit show he shrugged and he smiled sort of puzzledly because his business which is called pr did not take a hit like many other businesses did in fact in the midst of the crisis it kind of took off he said in that sort of i'm happy but i know i shouldn't be way that is so common these days he explained to me that pr is no longer only for humans but also for a bunch of acronyms i did not understand though i knew enough to know to get nervous knowing the acronyms exist the one i remembered was nft which when he said it i interrupted him to ask what's that stand for non fungible token he told me whatever that is it evidently needs a pr campaign then we got around to megan the stallion who if i understood it right and it's very likely i didn't because i was nervous panicking a little though trying to keep up is doing a tour where i think the audience i suspect this means thousands and thousands of people i'm guessing megan the stallion isn't playing small venues these days will all put on virtual reality i'm sorry i mean vr helmets i guess together i guess that's what some people these days are calling together apart together together apart you know however they say it anyway they're doing pr for that vr show too which i think meant maybe this was the flicker in his eyes the gleam that pr no longer needs there to be a there there at which point you can start printing your own mula i know nothing about the financial system but i have seen the big short about six times and i'm pretty sure the great innovation in there maybe it was derivatives maybe it was bundled mortgages maybe it was cdo's maybe i better go watch the big short a seventh time was inventing out of thin air a mechanism a great golden way to make a small handful of people rich side note but no biggie also making many large many many handfuls of people homeless for or by what we might in another frame of mind call a conspiracy theory i.e. i know they're there anyway i was trying to be a sport and track what was being said to me despite feeling like the great whirling ravenous void from evil dead two was opening up in my chest and sucking me and everything i could perceive or imagine into it and i heroically managed to cling to the true living world in part by noticing the espalier apple tree against the picket fence just behind this very sweet pr man and that what had been just a few days prior the still tightly wrapped buds kissed with pink i pass this tree daily we're now open as his lips continued moving i watched just behind him little pollinators swirling around and into the new blooms i nodded and smiled and until he said well i better get back to work take care now waving sweetly over his shoulder as he and his dog trotted away you do the same i said moving to the tree which now seemed almost to be opening its arms to me i put my face to a few of the flowers and inhaled and i brushed my lips against them while doing so a honey bee was scooting through the neighbor bloom i took one more deep breath and headed up the street and there goes a magnolia tree and there goes the cardinal and there goes that woman with the bad limp and the big smile and there goes that sweet to coma with the long bed good for hauling and there goes Jim who just retired from the community radio station looking at its garden smiling and there goes the lilac and there goes the bunny and there goes the brick walkway and the breeze and the bird shit splatting from the mulberry tree and there goes that hiccup in my heart and there goes my favorite alley and there goes the rust in my knee and there goes that pink dogwood tree and there goes the sound of two people fighting behind me oh wait they're laughing they're laughing and touching each other arm in arm they are i see now it's glee okay one regular length one and one very short one is that okay okay okay if you tell me to stop i'll just stop that would be so rude though um this is called sunflower in the mortar in an almost uncanny feat of symmetry another affirmation of the palindromic world the world circling around to catch itself the world a flummoxment of beauty bells ringing in your every periphery step in and i noticed walking in bloomington down belton way almost directly across from the butterfly bush that emits the world's most wig flippinist smell outside our friend don's old house and that has been the past couple weeks flipping my wig a sunflower growing out of a crack in the mortar between two huge limestone blocks of the wall a wpa project the plaque says around rosehill cemetery how reasonable if you're going to have a thing called a country not a given to have a thing also called a wpa or any number of other things aside from a military that pay people decently and make things work better a trillion dollars yearly into the war industry where a trillion dollars into jobs planting trees and replacing the lead pipes and re-rivitating the bridges and putting in the high-speed trains already and beautifying the schools and the libraries and paying the teachers well and building limestone walls around the cemeteries seems a no-brainer to me but i'm just a poet i'm a flower guy despite which we almost walk right by this one which was still i'd say in early adolescence before the first flowers were beginning to form i can't remember who but one of us noticed stopped and grabbed the other's arm like is that we both laughed and shook our heads no meaning yes meaning impossible but indeed how often perhaps most often delight is shown to you by someone tugging your arm how often perhaps most often delight makes you want to tug someone's arm we inspected the tiny buds at the top the reddish furry stem the tiny crack it grew from in the mortar in the wall that was at the very most i mean the complete total fulsome absolute very much most about the size of a sunflower seed maybe a little smaller it was a kind of crack that if you were a lay person inspecting the mortar maybe even not a lay person you think almost nothing of it and certainly wouldn't think it needed pointing so how did it get there we wondered and surmised that among the possibilities the most likely was that a sparrow or finch stashed it there or squirreled it away maybe more apt finched it away even more and came back some weeks later for a snack to find now a flower or a flower soon to be and incidentally in a few more weeks a much bigger snack or who knows maybe the bird thought a sunflower would look nice right here can't hurt to try this is not unthinkable to me given as the the goldfinches planted all the sunflowers in our yard with what i would call superb design sensibility so good pedestrians often come through our alley to admire their work attributing it to us but it also has to be noted remembered that this was not a garden no soil or wood chips or compost or goat poo not even a little sludge or leaf litter or gravel this was a sunflower growing out of a crack in a rock a smidge of rain and light if you're thinking it's a little bit of a cliche all the obvious and potent meaning survival despite the harshness resilience making a way out of no way the fugitive seed finding a patch of survivable earth yeah yeah i guess so but more i'm thinking the unlikely collaborations by which we come to pass at all any of us the trillions and trillions the literal trillions and trillions to the bottom of which we will never lord let us get i'm gonna stop there thank you thank you so sometimes we do q and a is it these things do you want to do that we can for a little bit we don't have to so i'm gonna brag hi my family was one of the first ones to walk in when they reopened and we shared like before we went in we shared donuts with the librarians outside like immediately they were like we got these new books that you're gonna you guys should come check out and then i saw it inside enjoy and i got that and it was like it was like i'm tearing up now thinking about it we come every week and i yeah i love it it's magic thank you for that yeah yeah the staff the community i went to the library today to pick up a book on hold they didn't ask my name they know they know yeah the people they know the books that go there and what you read yeah wonderful yeah yeah when you are when talking about the like the function that a live public library in blooming in our public library is so important it's just like yeah it's a place to gather it's a place to do stuff it's a place to rest to place to all these things you know so crucial these public spaces someone's hand was up i was going to say that um the library in limited reminds me of a library here i first love the library oh yeah and from there i love the library yeah i see the library in st jones barry no really what's it like what's it like describe what's it like and her chance what's it like it's all hand carved little steps going up woodwork spiral stairs there's an art anthony in the back oh man it's pretty amazing with a huge burn spot at the back really okay yeah thank you yeah actually he went to the club right here as a kid oh really it still supports it strong oh see it's beautiful yeah yeah so i i just want to comment about what i've experienced listening to you i have not read you before um i can't think of a better time to have heard you and i think the joy and i'm going to ask you there do you what kind of generational scratches do you get because it's almost like that word or maybe it does exist it's just not being experienced especially today the word joy yeah and uh so thank you for that i feel like i feel first time i'm also you couldn't write what you were writing if you had an iphone if you were constantly looking at screens you're like a plant you're like a cube for example nobody has iphone they're all they look you straight in the eye and they remember what the hell you said and they actually respond and they're alive and awake and open in the present moment so i just think that you that you're showing us that what it requires to be a poet first of all to have this ability to observe and to be true to observe that it doesn't exist in many places in here so first of all i just want to thank you and then ask you what kind of generational response do you get because i think the word joy yeah totally totally yeah i think that's a great observation i think there's something like it's vital it's really vital about even in that last essay where the sort of part of the experience of witnessing this having this experience of delight was one was being together it was social and it was being alert to someone else someone else be like yo look at this and that feels to me like very much like you know here's something i learned i was in a conversation with someone recently and someone said like i was talking about the light feels like sort of occasional like something prompts it you know you have a have a sweet interaction or you know like a bird flies right next to your lands on you something and um you feel suddenly connected joy i think of is like the fact of connection it's always there but you have to sort of practice whatever you call it entering it or submitting to it or you know um whatever the word is i'm not sure what the word is you have to practice being in you have to practice our entanglement because there's a lot of mythology i think a lot of very powerful mythology suggesting that we're not entangled or suggesting that we could be otherwise you know bootstraps is a version of that etc etc right so anyway but someone gave this beautiful metaphor and the metaphor was like oh yeah joy is like the mycelium and delight is like the mushrooms i thought that was pretty good it's not mine i think his name is michael or something um but when you think of it like that joy not is something that you get because you bought something joy not something that you could buy actually you know it's not like you can't like get a book and get joyful it's actually like something about connection and it's not just connection it's about you know to be connected to be truly connected means also to be sort of willing or participant or um capable or desiring to enter the sorrow of each other that seems to me that like our capacity to um carry each other's sorrow is absolutely crucial to joy it's not joy actually to me which is why to me you have joy as much at funerals as you do at births and weddings so so part of the cynicism which is sort of reasonable because you can you can imagine like if there's a commercial it's like get your joy and you're fucking heartbroken you're like a fuck you and you're fucking joy but if you're it's a funny thing to say but you know i would say it but if you're like oh this is actually the practice of acknowledging my own and uh each other's sorrow are changing our transformation our heartbreak then it's like not it's not like um light work you know it's not like kids play it's not it's the opposite of what might make one cynical it's deadly serious because it actually because it's about death and dying you know so that's the one thing that i think and i think i i have heard people you know i've heard older people i mean in the beginning of this book i have a little story about knowing the beginning of the inciting joy book a woman who seemed to probably be in her 70s and and she was responding to the book catalog of unabashed gratitude it was a book of poems and she was like i didn't know you could write about joy you know just about to cry saying saying that to me and then i thought of course young people who say their teachers have said things like joy is not a serious subject to write about or think about yeah it's heartbreaking it's awful um so anyway i think it's across the generations i don't know um um i'll just say that and what was the second part of your question oh yeah the technology yeah yeah in earth okay thank you yeah beautiful yeah i mean yeah i mean it feels absolutely crucial again um given all of these sort of um the admonitions to do the opposite in fact to be afraid of one another that we have to like really practice being with each other like i know my classes are going well when i walk into them because you know this again any of your teachers are like hanging around with like whatever you going on the fucking subway or whatever it doesn't matter and you walk into a place and most everyone is on the phone you can walk into a classroom it's like everyone's on their phone you know you know class is going good you're doing something right in your semester when people aren't looking at their phones or if they are it's like they're playing music and they're like playing around with each other you know um but where they're actually interested in being with each other and i think that is i think the desire and the capacity to be with each other is actually something that we have to practice you know i think we have to practice that and cultivate that and honor and celebrate it you know like this like this this is so beautiful the fact that we're actually all together in this nice space you know that's a big deal you know thank you yeah yeah that's a great question i think it is a little bit like you know so i'm writing a book um don't hold your breath um but i'm writing a book called book tour and um because i'm on a book tour and um um and you know so i was sitting in the library and i was observing the things that i was talking about i was observing this sort of like the those beautiful like what do they call them like the relief things around the freezes in a library it's beautiful you know or like again the windows like i love i love those windows how beautiful they are and also like another thing i was sort of thinking about a public library that is like actually a kind of a real kind of public space a communal space you can hear inside of it but also outside of it kids yelling it's a good sign you know and i was just sort of talking about that so the answer to your question is basically i'm just noting stuff i'm just noting stuff sort of regularly that's kind of my my process if i was driving i might pull over i might just note it down you know i used to drive a stick shift and that would be a little bit more hairy but um but yeah i just sort of practice as part of my writing practice now especially now because i've started writing these delights books and other things that feel like so much about a kind of daily noticing practice to inform what i'm what i'm trying to work through um yeah i think it's i think it's like that yeah is that help at all is that useful yeah thank you for your question yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah totally totally that was i have an essay here i sort of talk about this but the the experience or the learning how to make my writing experience um really about play like i'm just getting around i'm getting there to mess around and i'm gonna observe it and i'm gonna do my best not to like evaluate it very quickly i'm just gonna try to watch what happens and participate and uh and recently actually in the last six weeks i realized something that feels important i don't quite know how to kind of articulate the importance or why but i know it is i realized at some point that when i write something that's the first time i read it like it comes out of my pen i'm like whoa okay neat like i'm the first reader um but it's not because it's not coming out of my head it's more coming out of my body or coming through my body in some kind of way and then you get to watch look at it and be like okay i couldn't have done that i couldn't have imposed that kind of follow it or something so you can tell i'm not quite sure how to talk about it but it feels like an important it's an important fact of my part of my process actually that i i'm learning about so we do one more i think there's one more yeah two more two more i'm 49 i probably started when i was like 20 yeah i think in my 20s i was losing my fucking shit i was losing my mind and i was cracking up and i was exposed many things many things many things you know what i was reading what i was doing but i was exposed to like you know writers and teachers like pamcha drone actually you know like i remember that someone gave me the book the wisdom of no escape when i was having a very hard time and um and then from her up to chogum trunk for Rinpoche i say that right um and then i was just rereading that the tic not han book being peace and i was just sort of thinking oh right there's so many things here that i read in my 20s that deeply informed kind of perspective and and you know like you know i think trunk for Rinpoche says something like when you're part of the practice or something i can't you know but part of the practice is to smile with tears in your eyes i've read that in my 20s and i kind of forgot that i'd read it but i feel like it's absolutely um a thing but i think the the most important thing i think about this is that i get two things one is that my my interest in this you know there's a variety of queries this sort of joy delight etc is in part because like i said i'm i'm curious about um connection and connection is devastating too you know so to study these things to be deeply enmeshed or practicing or trying to figure out these things about joy about connection means also to be um aware of and wondering about disconnection so it feels like um um you know the the joy guy feels to me like someone who's deep in the deep study of sorrow you know practicing trying to um also as i say that also as someone who has spent a lot of time being like terrified of sorrow you know um so there's that i would say i would say that and i would say that um the arrival to this kind of what is it how do we live holding this sort of full breadth of our lives not being like a child and wanting to be happy but also not not also sometimes not being like a child and wanting only to witness what is terrible you know though sometimes we can't help that because sometimes it's only terrible and we need each other to be able to sort of witness something else so there's something about there's there's something about this sort of um i mean i do i think of like all kinds of utilities but i think of like a kind of political utility to this you know that part of the thing is that part of the practice is to witness each other's heartbreak and in the practice of witnessing each other's heartbreak whether or not you say it i have a firm belief i could be wrong like one out of a million times but i have the firm belief that you are heartbroken and you can assume that i'm heartbroken because i am what does it mean if we try to sort of walk around like that you know that's kind of what i'm what i'm after so that's what that joy practice is but like i was saying at first it comes out of trouble you know i think it comes out of trouble you know yeah thank you um you can totally ask i was i mean and i can and i'll say like basically i'll say this without getting deep into it i'll say this i'll say that i think it could be many things you know many things but i think one of the things was that i was terrified of how connected in fact i was i think i was terrified of the fact of the of entanglement i think there's a way that i was terrified of the fact of entanglement i'll just leap to this other thing which is like how sorrow has been terrifying to me you know i write about this so it's not like sorrow has been terrifying to me in part because i think to be sorrowful means to be connected it's the evidence of connection you know and i feel like i've spent a good bit of my life for whatever various reasons some of them i think about like sort of masculinity training sometimes of like not wanting to be moved and not wanting to be movable um but i'll leave it at that yeah thank you here's one and then and then one more yeah yes i'm so shy about advice but since it's to myself i would um i don't know you know i do feel like um a question that feels like a really important question is something like what do you love i think i might just be asking myself that question every day you know what do you love oh and then no actually i'd ask another question too and what's loving you you know yeah because when you start to be like oh right the trees are actually loving me that breeze was loving me that light through that beautiful window and the library was loving me that's some way yeah thanks for that question was there one more or okay hey oh god so the poet jerald stern poet and essayist jerald stern he's um he's uh he died about a year ago maybe exactly i think yeah author of many books he was um one of my main teachers and a mentor there's so many things and i think about actually i'm glad you said that because i wanted to mention him too because he's someone who in his writing he's just he's always talking about the sorrow and the delight like they're always they're often hand in hand i mean he so many of his most beautiful poems they're they're in one direction and they get yanked into they're in the in they're in the delight or something they get yanked in the sorrow they're in the sorrow and they get yanked into the delight i feel like he's an absolute um guide in that way i also he's someone who throughout my life i'd start to write something or start to write you know like i was writing these delights in 2016 the first time and i remember sharing them with him when he was living in an insistent living place up in new york and he was so generous and lovely and listening to them and then it was like i don't know a couple months later i was like oh right jerry wrote these daily essays short essays that he wrote every day they were kind of occasional about like little things in his life diaristic almost five years earlier seven years earlier whatever and i it didn't even occur to me that i would the way that i came to this writing thing was probably through jerry's essays you know so again and again i would have that experience of being like oh yeah i would never have written this without jerald stern i wouldn't have thought it without jerald stern so that's that's a little bit what i would say but like you know probably of the writers in my life jerry's probably the one who is the most kind of threaded through stuff yeah hey it was so good to be with you all and thank you


If you put your phone down for a second. Channing the ball. So put your hands together. Now when you're opening up, just imagine there's like a ball. Like a balloon. Now put it together close. You can feel that heat, right? On your palms. Imagine you like have the spaghetti in between your fingertips. The key is to keep the center relaxed. Because if you tense up the center, it's actually going to make the blood move away. Some people feel it's cool. Some people feel numb, tingling, electric. If you have pain anywhere in your body, put it on there. So let's say you have neck pain, you can put it on there. Imagine it's breathing in through the back of your hand. It's coming from the sky, going into the back of your hand, going to the place where you have pain, into your spine, down to your gut. Do the same thing. You're going to be imagining that white and gold energy coming from the sky.  And then coming down through the middle of your body. So if you close your eyes, it might help with visualizations. Ideally, you want to breathe very slowly. Just really gentle breaths is ideal. And then gentle breath out.


Mr. Speaker, I beg to move the following motion standing in my name, whereas on the section 10918 of the value added tax, cap 15.4 to the Act, it is provided that the Minister of Finance may by all the published in the gazette amend the schedules to the Act and whereas it is further provided around the section 1092 of the Act that an order made pursuant to section 1091 of the Act is subject to an affirmative resolution of parliament except where the amendment is to the customs tariff headings only and whereas the Minister of Finance seeks approval of the draft value added tax amendment of schedule one and three order to amend schedule one and schedule three of the Act by an affirmative resolution of parliament to include in the case of schedule one as zero rated goods for period of two years commencing from the second day of August 2023 and ending on the first day of August 2025 a supply of goods under the following customs tariff headings a 44.07 to 44.12 Lumber all articles inclusive and the related subheadings b 25.23 cement specified articles and related subheadings c 72.00 to 72.09 galvanize 73.00 to 73.08 galvanize another type of galvanize 73.12 to 73.18 semi 6.00 to 76.10 semi 6.16 and related subheadings 73.06 to 73.14 steel of all articles 72.14 and related subheadings and 72.08 and related subheadings e 44.11 to 44.18 plywood all articles 44.20 to 44.21 f 96.19 sanitary nap sanitary towers pads and tampons napkins napkins and similar articles of any materials 42.00 for period of two years commencing from second day of August 2023 and ending on first day of August 2025 a supply of components of 40 vaulted systems intended solely for harnessing solar power under the following customs tariff a 85.02.39 complete system b 85.41.40 solar panels c 85.04.40 charge controllers and inverters d 85.36 to .70 mc for connectors e 76.10 to 90 90 solar panel months 85.36.50 cables insular switches 85.37.10 combiner boxes 85.44.6010 direct current dc alternative current ac cables 85.07.80 85.07.60 deep cycle batteries j 85.36.90 battery clamps k 9032.8900 control devices other dc ac components 85.37.100 combiner m 85.36.900 junction boxes 9 85.36.500 insulators o 85.36.300 protective devices combination devices 85.07.900 data cloggers 9032.8900 control components 85.17.6900 communication cabling ethernet switches 85.37.30 for a period of two years commencing from the second day of August 2023 and ending on the fourth day of August 2025 a supply of the insulation service for 40 vaulted systems 85.37.30 for a period of two years commencing from the second day of August 2023 and ending on the first day of August 2025 the purchase or lease of an aircraft for local original travel 85.37.30 for a period of two years commencing from the third day of August 2023 the purchase or lease of an aircraft for local original travel 85.14.35,iya equipments and supplies. Be it resolved that the parliament by affirmative resolution approves the draft value added tax amendment of schedules one and three order which amend schedule one and schedule three of the act to include in the case of schedule one as zero rated goods for a period of two years commences from the second day of August twenty twenty three and in the first of August twenty twenty five a supply of goods under the following custom tariff headings four four oh seven to four four one two lumber all articles inclusive and the related subheadings be twenty five point two three cement specified articles and related see seven two zero zero seven two zero nine galvanize seven three zero zero two seven three zero eight seven three one two two seven three point one eight seven six point zero zero two seven six point one not seven six point one six and related subheadings the seventy three point zero six the seventy three point one four still all articles seven two one four and real subheadings and seven two point zero eight and real subheadings e forty four point one one two forty four point one eight plywood all articles forty four point two not two forty four point two one nine six ninety six point one nine scientific towers napkins and tampons napkins and similar articles of any materials two for a period of two years commencing from the second day of August twenty three and then in the first of August twenty twenty five a supply of components for for the vaulting systems intended solely for harnessing solar power under the following custom tariff eighty five point zero two point three nine complete system eighty five point four one point four not solar panels eighty five point zero four point four not charge controllers and inverted and voters eighty five three six point seven not mc for connectors seven six one not point nine zero solar panel months eight five three six point five zero cable insulator switches eight five three seven point one not combine the boxes eight five four four point six zero one not direct cable dc alternate current ac cables eight five point eight not eight five eight five not seven point eight not eight five not seven point six not deep cycle batteries eight five three six point nine not battery clamps nine oh three two point eight nine zero zero control devices other dc and ac components eight five three seven point one zero zero combiners eight five three six point nine zero zero junction boxes eight five three six point five zero zero insulators eight five three six point three zero zero zero protected devices communication devices eight four seven one nine zero zero zero the detailed logos nine oh three two point eight nine zero zero control components eight five one seven point six nine zero zero communicating f and s switches for a period of two years commencing from the second day of august twenty three and the first day of august twenty five a supply of the installation service of 40 voltaic systems in the case of schedule three as an exempt import for a period of two years commencing from the second day of august twenty three and in the first day of august twenty five the purchase or lease of an aircraft for local and regional travel two the import of vehicles buildings and construction materials machinery plant and equipment by approved contractors subcontractors and consultants for the Caribbean regional air transport connectivity project and free vehicles building and construction materials machinery plant and equipment by approved contractors subcontractors and consultants for the St. Jude hospital reconstruction project including medical equipment and supplies Mr. Speaker this is another of the promises that we made to the public of St. Lucia in my budget of the twenty four of April Mr. Speaker where we promised Mr. Speaker that we would incentivize the construction industry in St. Lucia we promised the public of St. Lucia that we would give the young people will give the people who have been longing to build the houses or will give people who have been longing to make improvements in the house Mr. Speaker we will give them a break Mr. Speaker what this resolution means Mr. Speaker is from the second of august that of twelve and a half percent will not be payable on building materials like like lumber all types of lumber Mr. Speaker steel all types of steel galvanized and cement Mr. Speaker and Mr. Speaker if you know a little about construction you would know Mr. Speaker that the bulk of course in the beginning in construction is on steel cement and lumber Mr. Speaker plus the fact that the cost of blocks of concrete blocks should decrease because cement that's the major component of concrete blocks the price of cement will be decreased Mr. Speaker Mr. Speaker what this means is that the fact and I think I brought Mr. Speaker invoice somewhere for you to see Mr. Speaker that if the cost of materials that you build that you buy to build your house cement lumber steel and plywood Mr. Speaker if the total comes to two thousand dollars Mr. Speaker the total before second of august you will have to pay an addition twelve and a half percent on the two thousand dollars on the total price of the books you have to pay an additional twelve and a half percent Mr. Speaker but with the removal of that when you get your invoice that twelve and a half percent will not be there and you will not be required to pay that twelve and a half percent Mr. Speaker this means that even if even if the cost of these imported goods increase in the final analysis you ought to pay twelve and a half percent less than you would have paid previously before we remove the vat on these items Mr. Speaker Mr. Speaker that is a very significant point to make and that is a point I want the public of solution to understand because the prophets of doom and gloom and lies and untruths Mr. Speaker will try to peddle it differently and make the point again even if the cost of these goods increase even if they increase at the end of the day before august the second you had to pay twelve and a half percent more with the removal of that with the zero written in that you have to pay twelve and you will not have to pay twelve and a half percent so you will make a savings of twelve and a half percent even if the price increases so Mr. Speaker I hope I really really hope Mr. Speaker that businesses work with us Mr. Speaker we have shown good will we are going to increase the tax on amnesty we are going to increase the time period for the tax amnesty we have reduced interest on vat Mr. Speaker we have said to you if you lost tax we will waive all the interest on the penalties for the tax that you lost Mr. Speaker we have shown Mr. Speaker I can say we don't fear of favor that this government of solution party has been the best government for business so all the talk all the talk here about this government is a government that taxis we Mr. Speaker we understand the private sector we give the most generous incentives the private sector we pass the tourism incentives act that give generous concessions the private sector and I have been told by the minister that we are going to we are going to look into a mega business act to further incentivize Mr. Speaker businesses in St. Lucia that make a large investment today you heard the minister for commerce told you tell about the medium and small micro and small business grants of ten million dollars first time in his shop St. Lucia Mr. Speaker you heard about the youth economy and the Caribbean development bank has just given us the go ahead they are going to be investing by means of loans six million dollars in the youth economy Mr. Speaker and colleagues from all over the region are coming to look at what we are doing in the youth economy Mr. Speaker this government has worked in the private sector and this government I can say we don't fear of favor we never ask any businessman what's in it for me on the retriever in our discussions with investors Mr. Speaker they tell the stories but you know Mr. Speaker time will tell time will tell because right now Mr. Speaker we think they think they have a new lease of life so they are talking social media talking political meeting this and that demonstration come to the how can I not speak about time will tell and Mr. Speaker I have warned them and they do it again all the time they underestimate the capacity of the solution Labour Party they underestimate our resolve Mr. Speaker and Mr. Speaker I will tell you the story about the cabinet yesterday Mr. Speaker Mr. Speaker yesterday I felt proud to be a member of the solution Labour Party Mr. Speaker very proud you know why Mr. Speaker I saw the men and women in the cabinet spend more than two hours discussing an incentive for small contractors Mr. Speaker people that would have been normally disregarded people that would be called you remember the statement Mr. Speaker what's the track record who is she remember the statement who is she it's a track record what has she done she is a non entity remember the statement Mr. Speaker but we we spent hours discussing how we can help non entities and that is the philosophical difference between the solution Labour Party and the other party and we are proud of that philosophical difference we are very proud of it although some people who want to know better or to have that same philosophical underpinning that would guide the direction in life Mr. Speaker but because they suffer from so much self-hate because they suffer from so much self-hate because they suffer from the fact that people like them are now the makers and movers in the political life Mr. Speaker they prefer to spit out all kinds of anger and all kinds of hatred Mr. Speaker because they refuse to accept they refuse to accept Mr. Speaker to give people like them time and means to run this country Mr. Speaker but Mr. Speaker we are not going to be we are not going to be deterred Mr. Speaker I will not be deterred you know I will not be deterred Mr. Speaker because I have a vision for St. Lucia where every man and woman particularly those who are most vulnerable have an equal opportunity to achieve in this country Mr. Speaker and that is why Mr. Speaker and that is why that is why they will not understand why this government is removing that on a simple item you will hear the naysayers and the prophets of doom and the the balance of misinformation you will hear them make a joke if it Mr. Speaker but it's a simple and a significant step on the 96.19 Mr. Speaker sanitary towels and napkins and similar articles of any materials Mr. Speaker and Mr. Speaker those who do not know it will not feel it because they don't care they don't care because they have never felt it but go to parts of my constituency go to parts of Kashmir south or Kashmir north or even a certain country Mr. Speaker go to these parts and you hear about something called period poverty and Mr. Speaker you know these are the things that are significant Mr. Speaker these are the things Mr. Speaker so what we are doing Mr. Speaker there are many single mothers not single mothers who will be castigated not single mothers who will be single mothers who are castigated who are castigated by the leadership of the opposition who will call all kinds of neighbors to the single Mr. Speaker single mothers who want to bring up the children in a respectable way Mr. Speaker and they have to make a choice Mr. Speaker a choice at certain times of the month of whether they must buy food for the children or they must buy sanitary napkins that is the reality of life for many people in this country but you know what Mr. Speaker because of selfishness because of the sense of entitlement because of the feeling that it must be them or nobody else because they believe that God given the right to run this country they will lie and they will try to confuse the people of the generation with Mr. Speaker so Mr. Speaker this resolution will in a realistic fashion help people to look for the shelter Mr. Speaker and there is a thing in sociology called the hierarchy of once Mr. Speaker or needs the hierarchy of needs Mr. Speaker for Maslow Maslow hierarchy of needs Mr. Speaker and there he spoke about the need for food shelter and clothing Mr. Speaker and in once once right we try to deal with all of them Mr. Speaker once right so Mr. Speaker this removal of that on bill of materials it's not because we want people to eat plywood you know because of that and these are the kind of things that people promote on the radio eat plywood you know what Mr. Speaker it will help a single mother who wants to stop the godly on a house it will help her to pay twelve and a half percent less for two sheets of galvanized that's what it will do it will help the teacher and the policeman who want to put an extension on their own because their family is growing it will help them to buy their cement cheaper it will help them to buy their steel cheaper Mr. Speaker it will help them to buy their plywood cheaper it will help them to buy their galvanized cheaper that's what it does Mr. Speaker that's what it does what it does Mr. Speaker is it says to the man and woman in this country that the government is assisting you the government is assisting you to be a man and to be a woman Mr. Speaker to have a share to have a stake in your own destiny Mr. Speaker that's what this simple resolution is saying Mr. Speaker that's what it's saying and it also is saying that if you want to build a hotel or you want to build a factory where should you wait for the other incentives Mr. Speaker you can begin because you have to pay twelve and a half percent less on the construction materials needed to start up that business Mr. Speaker so Mr. Speaker this is significant it's a major step in the economic and social evolution of this country major major step Mr. Speaker and Mr. Speaker why are we doing that we are also seeing about the infrastructure we are also seeing about Mr. Speaker because we are saying that there is a project for the re-surfacing re-surfacing a world bank project for the re-surfacing of the UNR airports and Mr. Speaker will come to the parliament very shortly with a full disclosure on the UNR airport but there is a project for the re-surfacing of the UNR airport a world bank project so we are giving them we are removing fat on the imports Mr. Speaker but more importantly and Mr. Speaker why would somebody deliberately spread that work on St. Jude has stopped why why would somebody in that good sense Mr. Speaker because you have lost an election but they have already lost they have already lost they have already lost why why would somebody spread misinformation that work on St. Jude has stopped and a contractor whom they have vilified now they support them because they say they take his gift and he goes a contractor they have vilified and that is a sad thing with the opposition one day they are on this corner next day on the other corner one day somebody good and the person turns bad once a person speaks the truth the person turns bad so Mr. Speaker I want to assure the public I want to assure the public that I feel better now about St. Jude than I ever felt before I feel better now about St. Jude than I ever felt before you know why Mr. Speaker because I see the end in the horizon I see the day I see the day I see the day Mr. Speaker when we will say to the patients and the staff of St. Jude we apologise for what you went through from since 2011 and we usher you into pride new premises so you can continue to the people of St. Jude and that is going to be a wonderful day Mr. Speaker so regardless of what they tried Mr. Speaker you want to believe that this opposition is trying to push a contractor to have an injunction to stop work on St. Jude because they say the contractor didn't pay the subcontractor that's what these guys have reached you know Mr. Speaker that's where these guys are and their posture on television and radio pretending like I heard one of them talking about crime and the Minister of Home Affairs and national security should resign Mr. Speaker they are all kinds of crimes that have been committed in this country that go and resolve including kidnapping all kinds of crimes so Mr. Speaker when they want to throw stones tell them those who live in grass houses should never throw stones Mr. Speaker they have taken our silence for weakness they have taken our silence for believing we can roll over and die Mr. Speaker you know why we have not been dealing dealing with that nonsense that goes for a position because we are busy running the country but if they believe that they can continue their falsehoods and the propaganda and we lie down and die Mr. Speaker I tell them they have nothing going because everything they say everything they attack the government for they have done worse and when we begin to debate at the level I will prove to you Mr. Speaker so Mr. Speaker I am very happy with this revolution today Mr. Speaker very happy I feel boy I feel encouraged Mr. Speaker and what is most important Mr. Speaker is the people understand what this government is doing the people understand it so when they try to have demonstrations and they make a lot of false I mean Mr. Speaker you know Mr. Speaker desperation is a real serious thing when you saw from desperation especially when you lose power and you don't want to sit down and regroup and you get desperate you cling on all kinds of things there was a big story Philip J. Pierre attacked elderly people and tell a big big story a big story Mr. Speaker because they say I said something about elderly people all I was saying is that you should not take advantage on elderly people Mr. Speaker by bringing them on the streets when you know very well you bring them for no cause that's all I said and I stand by that that's all I said Mr. Speaker they attacked the attack solution going to referendum but the minister member was not there I applaud him for that he could not put in his good conscience a progressive man like that could not help himself to be a part of people but of course Mr. Speaker he didn't associate himself with colonization had a conscience he did not but then passed for that and Mr. Speaker the demonstration for the CCJ and they planned a big demonstration today for the help and security level a big demonstration Mr. Speaker instead of staying here and defend this cause he run away same thing as usual then next day he will come and go on his favor the program come here sit down and debate the help and security level come and debate it come and debate the fact come and defend come and defend this thing come and defend it Mr. Speaker come and defend the open letter to the prime minister when the debate comes I am going to give that letter line for line and I will tell you the basic student of economics would be ashamed of the right of this letter because the contents of this letter do not stand up do any talents of regular economics or anything it is just a whole lot of envy a whole lot of misinformation a whole lot of refusal to accept that the people of Seleucia have taken a decision and when you say that Mr. Speaker they tell you you are attacking this nobody sees the economy nobody sees that disrespect nobody sees the lies nobody sees the alignment nobody sees what they do to us every day but any time we respond oh it is a lie Mr. Speaker I urge members Mr. Speaker to look at the facts we are we are removing the facts on all the components and the subcontinent Mr. Speaker on the photo voltaic systems which are systems that will cause us to convert solar power into power that will cause us not to have to use electricity or fossil fuels in the same manner as we would without that again revolution is tough Mr. Speaker because something Mr. Speaker I am sure is very close to Mr. education the issue of climate change Mr. Speaker and the issue of how we have to keep the world to the 1.5 degree centigrade Mr. Speaker we have already passed that it has really been said that we will not meet the 1.5% Mr. Speaker and the serious things we have to discuss like climate change in fact like the way rainfall the kinds of weather where there is no there is no sequence in weather there is no dry season or there is no wet season rain falls at some point then there is a drought then in one day the sun is very hot then rain falls in the afternoon the climate change Mr. Speaker the effects of climate change the mitigation adaptation methods we have to take for climate change that is nowhere in the debate that is nowhere in the debate Mr. Speaker but we have to deal with that we have to discuss disaster clauses when we go to negotiate for loans we have to negotiate that Mr. Speaker we have to negotiate these are the issues we have to deal with as a government and issue we have to deal with a country not nonsense these are the issues I want the opposition to come and discuss how do we mitigate and adapt against climate change how do we do that how do we sit and decide that the government must take steps to cause us to take steps that will help make our agriculture sustainable after weather events and you saw what Mr. Speaker a little rain event over 70% of our banana crop got wiped out Mr. Speaker these are the issues not what you are going to discuss and these are the issues that the government on opposition that is serious these are the issues that they discuss and these are the issues that we want to engage them in Mr. Speaker because these are serious issues but instead nothing is said about that nothing Mr. Speaker except the normal cost and misinformation Mr. Speaker people get up in the morning wishing that something will go bad in St. Lucia they get up in the morning and they pray what's going to go bad in St. Lucia how will I attack Philip J. Pierre today how will I attack Eunice Healer today how will I attack Richard Frederick today get up in the morning and they dream for that to happen they actually decide that they sit down and they'll make a lie to create a lie on Philip J. Pierre today just sit down and a friend of mine say construct a lie Mr. Speaker that's what they do except dealing with the important issues Mr. Speaker but we're not going to be moved we're going to stay the cost Mr. Speaker and I ask the members to join me in supporting that resolution I thank you Mr. Speaker


Cirrus membranes are inside the body and their job is really, their function is to reduce friction. So they line cavities and there's actually a list of cavities that they line and they cover organs. One cirrus membrane does both of those things because they're actually double layered membranes.  But the cavities that they are lining and the organs that they are covering, there's actually three of them. And again, the first one we're going to see in the next class period when we do the digestive system. So cirrus membranes line the peritoneal cavity. And do you remember where the peritoneal cavity is? It's inside the abdominal cavity. It's a cavity within the abdominal cavity. And it contains a whole bunch of digestive organs, tubes, which is a little bit awkward. Another cirrus membrane is found lining the two pleural cavities. And so they line the pleural cavity and they cover the organs in the pleural cavity. What are you going to find in the pleural cavities? You're going to find lungs in there. So they line the pleural cavity and they cover the lungs, this two-layered cirrus membrane. The third place we're going to see it is the pericardial cavity. So they line the pericardial cavity in the thoracic cavity within the mediastinum, and they cover the heart. The cavity itself is actually a sort of interesting phenomenon as well.  Before I do that, I feel like, dude, we've got to know what they're doing. The whole purpose of a cirrus membrane, two layers, is to reduce friction. And let's just think for a second. Think about the pericardial cavity. This is where the case is the most convincing, I think. Talk to me about the organ that's in the pericardial cavity or that's surrounded by, I'll show you what it is in a second because it's not actually in the cavity. Just like this, your food isn't actually in your body. We've got all sorts of fun technical details in anatomy. At any rate, the heart is the organ that is somehow associated with the pericardial cavity.  Dude, it's beating. It's beating like mad. And hopefully not beating too crazy right now because hopefully you're feeling all relaxed about anatomy, like anatomy, piece of cake, easy peasy. So you've got a nice slow heart rate going. The act of your heart beating generates friction. And you can imagine that if you didn't reduce that friction, things might get sore. Like if you did this with your hands and rubbed your hands on carpet for like an hour or forever, like eventually you're going to be like, ah, that is not a fun, like that friction can generate painful sensations. You can have friction in your heart that hurts. And breathing, you can have friction between your lungs and the serious membrane where it's not doing its job of producing that fluid. It produces serious fluid that reduces that friction. So I want to show you the structure of this membrane and how it ends up looking like it does. How it ends up with this double membrane. Okay, you ready? We have a layer of epithelial tissue. And the thing starts out as sort of a balloon, like a bubble of epithelial tissue. So, and the epithelial tissue is simple, squamous epithelium every time. So your serious membrane always has a layer of simple squamous epithelium. There's a basement membrane, but I'm not going to confuse the drawing that I'm going to try and do by adding a line of basement membrane in there. The basement membrane connects us to a layer, a very thin layer of connective tissue that surrounds that or is attached to the epithelial tissue. The connective tissue is very thin and it's made of loose, a realer connective tissue. Okay, and it's super thin.  Don't do it. This is a very thin thing associated with an organ. We'll do the heart because they're fun to draw. During development, these organs that are associated with serious membranes actually push into these balloons of serious membrane. So look at what's going to happen here. I'm going to draw my realer connective tissue first. This is like the next step. The heart is actually going to sort of squish in to the balloon. Okay, do you see it? What's happening here? My epithelial tissue lining is still present. Of course it is, right? My heart is pushing into this thing. So it's sort of getting surrounded by it. Do you see what's happening? And then my heart, my heart, my heart ends up completely surrounded by this membrane. I have to be really careful how I draw this because this is what happens here. There we go. I did it. I did it. Do you see how it just pushed its way in? I didn't leave very much space here, but you will be patient with me. It actually is not even really considered an actual space. The cavity, it's considered a potential space. Oh, geez. So I'm just illustrating the potential nature of this space. Remember that I'm drawing a simple squamous epithelium green that is attached to my blue aryler connective tissue by a basement membrane that I'm not drawing in here. What I've drawn is a cirrus membrane. Do you see how it has two layers? Yes, say yes, say yes. Okay, here's my double layered cirrus membrane. That says cirrus membrane in yellow. Oh, dear. And I'm capturing both those layers. Now, of course, those layers have names. And the one, the layer that's closest covering the organ, do you see how this one is closest to actually covering the organ? I'm going to go this direction. This is called the visceral layer. The one that is farthest away from the organ that actually covers or lines the cavity is called the parietal layer. The visceral layer plus the parietal layer make up the actual cirrus membrane. Both layers secrete fluid. I'm drawing fluid in this space. This is cirrus fluid. And the cirrus fluid is what is reducing that friction. How do you feel about that? The nice thing is all three of my cavities that are associated with cirrus membranes, all three of them have visceral layers and parietal layers. We have the visceral peritoneum and the parietal peritoneum. We have the visceral pleura and the parietal pleura. And we have the visceral layer of the cirrus pericardium. How's that for fun? And we have the parietal layer of the cirrus pericardium. So once you can sort of visualize like what this cirrus membrane actually is, you understand all of them. So let's see how my heart got in there. The cirrus fluid is actually in the cavity. So do you see why the heart isn't actually in the cavity? The cavity is sort of surrounding the heart. That works. That's a little technicality. It's easy to visualize a heart in that double-layered balloon sack. It's easy to visualize a lung. It's a good thing you can grab and stick it in that double-layered balloon sack. Dude, try and visualize a tube like your whatever, I don't know how long your digestive tubing is, but it's long. And try to imagine that being shoved into a balloon layer. And what's that like? What? That's what we're doing next. The peritoneum is the most conceptually, like spatially challenging to understand. So we'll talk about that with the digestive system, which is coming up in the next lecture. Okay, so we have our mucous membranes. We have our cirrus membranes. The first organ system we're going to talk about deals with cutaneous membranes. So let's get started on skin.