Eight people were injured in a car ramming and stabbing attack in Tel Aviv on July 4 by an assailant believed to be a Palestinian from the occupied West Bank, Israeli police said, calling the incident terrorism. The suspect was neutralized by a civilian first responder, police said.  Israel has been on alert for Palestinian attacks a day after launching a major military operation in the occupied West Bank city of Jenin. Video circulated online showed a pickup truck that had mounted a pavement near a mall and jutted into a bicycle path. A spokesperson for the Megan David Adam ambulance service said some of those injured had knife wounds. Approximately 1 PM, a terror attack occurred in Tel Aviv, it's a combined terror attack, both of car ramming or hitting pedestrians on the street and then the driver coming out and stabbing innocent civilians. Megan David Adam treated and evacuated eight victims of this terror attack, of whom one in critical condition, two in moderate condition and the rest either with minor injuries or stress, reaction and anxiety.


Hello everyone, my name is Mauna Lokomar, currently in BA's second semester, taking up psychology as my Honest Pepper. Well, I took psychology as my Honest because I'm a very curious person with a lot of questions in life about myself, about humans, just everything. So, psychology was a key or safe solution to all my curiosity and to all my questions. Why would I like to suggest you all to take up psychology as the Honest Pepper is because psychology is a subject which deals with everything. And if you are a curious person like me, wanting to know about oneself, wanting to know about others, wanting to develop your critical thinking skills, become a better communicator, psychology is your best option. Moreover, it complements a lot of studies like math, science, philosophy, education, and so on that every day it will be an interesting day and every day you get a new knowledge. Moreover, psychology, but why that's all. Firstly, the lectures here are excellent that they will mold and shape you in your best form. And then here in that so, there is lab, there is libraries which will help you to become a better person in life. So, to consider taking psychology here in that so and to consider to be a part of our department. Thank you.


I have very exciting news to tell you today. I'm Dr. George Nahas, Chief of Cardiology at Beaumont, Dearborn in Michigan. There is a technological shockwave balloons. It is the same technology as lithotripsy that we use to break stones in the kidneys. Well, now we have it mounted inside a catheter on a balloon catheter that we can insert inside the heart, in the vessels of the heart that have very heavy calcifications, a lot of calcium, where traditional devices cannot open the blockage. So let's say somebody has a blockage, have a lot of calcium in a blockage, which is usually the case now, and we put usual average balloon, the balloon cannot expand it. We have other devices to shave the calcium. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. So now we have one more device that we can go to when everything else fails called the Shockwave IVL. It's a very neat balloon just got approved by FDA. We have it right in our hospital at Beaumont, Dearborn, available to our operators to use to open blockages that are difficult to open otherwise. We have used it in a few patients now with 100% success rate and no complications, and the results are phenomenal where the vessel that we cannot expand, suddenly we apply the wave and it expands. How does it work? Well, it has ultrasound waves that penetrate the calcium and break it like an egg shell. You only have an boiled egg and you knock it and you break the shell into many pieces, stays in place, but broken. That's how it works. And then when it's broken like that, then we can put other balloons and we can expand it and we can put stent and keep it open. That has added a lot to the care of our patients, especially who have difficult lesions to treat as I described. So please keep that in mind and we'll be very happy to see you if you need us to. Thank you. Have a beautiful day.


My fellow Americans, last night when I spoke with you about the fall of Rome, I knew at that moment that troops of the United States and our allies were crossing the channel in another and greater operation. It has come to pass with success thus far. And so in this poignant hour, I ask you to join with me in prayer. Almighty God, our sons, pride of our nation, this day have set upon a mighty endeavor, a struggle to preserve our republic, our religion, and our civilization, and to set free a suffering humanity.


The X-47B recently made history by completing the first ever mid-flight refueling of an unmanned aircraft. This ground-breaking step forward in unmanned aviation is bringing it closer to the capabilities of manned flight. Midair refueling increases the range and flexibility of future unmanned aircraft. The Essex Amphibious Ready Group recently completed a two-week certification exercise that showcased ship-to-shore capabilities. This exercise was a final integrated training event for the Essex Amphibious Ready Group and the 15th Marine Expeditionary Unit. For patients with cancer and certain blood diseases, a bone marrow transplant can be essential to saving their lives. Sailors who are willing to donate can find information about transplants and the CW Bill Young Marrow Donor Registry at the Salute to Life website. For these stories and more, visit Navy.mil.


Thank you for the opportunity to present. Well, orange is not intentional. I didn't know that MPC color was orange, but I thought it was seasonal. So the time is ripe for us to work together, I guess. That's how we can interpret this auspicious sign. So Alex Moseley from Baylor College of Medicine, my group and the Stanford group develop infrastructure for the ClinGen project. And I'll be talking about a core element of that infrastructure, which is a little registry, which helps us integrate information that's important for curating variants for their pathogenicity to inform clinical interpretation of the human genome. Other domains of ClinGen knowledge are validity of genes, which is where COMP more directly contributed in the past. But as we've seen, the trend toward linking sequence level variation is probably to be important going forward. Also, the third domain of ClinGen knowledge is actionability knowledge. So what's the problem we are solving? It looked like none problem initially, but it emerged as actually the core problem. How do we integrate information about a variant if it comes from different corners of the world unless we use the same name? So the name is a necessary condition for that. The problems are actually deeper than that, but let's start with the name. Having to solve this problem, well, isn't genomic reference enough? Well, which reference? Geneticists actually do use transcripts, many of them, half a million available in major sources. And also, the genome is becoming more of a graph and there are multiple versions of it. So reference is not there to solve the problem. But even if we agreed on a reference, we still would have problems with more complex variants than simple SNPs, say indels, which do not have actually unique HGVS expressions to agree on. And literature is full of examples of different variants being described using different HGVS expressions, but corresponding to the same CAD, which is the identifier of the allele register we'll be talking about. So the paper on the allele register actually will appear in 10 days in the special Klingen issue of human mutation. And there'll be a number of ACG talks, including on the allele registry at the ASG. So allele registry is not just about naming. It's actually allowing linking of information about genetic variants. For about 50 years now, the idea of linking information has followed the whole data warehousing model where you put the data together. As part of this warehousing, you actually need to address the identity problem. You know, how do you know that two different parties are talking about the same thing? So this deduplication is actually solved at every warehouse level. We are moving actually to a new world now. As of probably about five years ago, huge trend has started on the web, which is called linked data. So Bernard Sliet, the founder of the web, 10 years ago, defined this new set of technologies called linked data technologies. They have linked it for about five years. But about five years ago, big search engine actually adopted these technologies. And you're starting to see changes, sort of like Google search not just in your links when you do a search, but giving you a info box at the top of all these links, telling you something about the topic you are interested. Well, the way it works is Google now forces websites to provide data using knowledge and data using these linked data technologies. They put the pieces together. And this is a kind of graph. You can imagine every site adding a link in this knowledge graph, and then presenting this knowledge to the end user. So Bernard Sliet started this 10 years ago. He was inventor of the web, right? Because he was not actually happy with the impact of his project, believe it or not. He said, well, this is not exactly what I meant. It meant something bigger. So what is it? Instead of a web of linked links where people can go from one site to another, he envisioned a web of linked data where agents, software can actually on one's behalf go to different sites, put the pieces together, and present something like an info box of Google. But I think we are now in the web of linked data where the web of hyperlinks was actually in early 90s. So I think that during the time of the COMP project, actually, if you're planning 10, 15 years down the road, you'll see a similar revolution in terms of how the data is integrated to the revolution of the web, even though that's hard to imagine, right? But we are working toward this vision. And using these technologies to integrate the knowledge of our genetic variants, which actually is such a challenge that what can't imagine a single database, a single warehouse solving the problem, right? So these technologies come right in time for us. The same way the web came right in time for the genome project, right? One can imagine that the impact of the genome project would be much less without the web emerging at the same time. We see this knowledge of linked data about the genetic variation actually being created at the same time concurrently with these other technological revolutions, which we would like to harness. So in the effort, this effort was a clinging consortium effort and involved a couple of years of actually deciding what a variant is. So believe it or not, design decisions actually are involved in this, not just implementation. So basically, we went with the concept of a canonical allele, which is independent of its definition in the genome or transcript context, and separate concepts of the protein and nucleotide level alleles. So the registry implementation involved actually a lot of engineering to put half a million of different transcripts in memory so that one can quickly resolve the identity based on the sequence level alignment. So the registry contains many transcripts, whole genome assemblies, amino acid sequences that were aligned. And variants from all major sources are registered. If you go to the user interface, actually, which is a minor part of it, the registers meant actually mainly to serve as an infrastructure for other software. But it does have its own user interface where you can put any name of the variant and find its other names and locations and transcripts and such. If you don't know exactly, you found in the literature incomplete description of a variant, say, amino acid change in gene name, which is typical, you can find all the variants, for example, and pick the one that you think was being referenced. This is a kind of big, complete picture of the allele registry's implementation. So one can not only work with individual variants but large amounts of variants, millions in VCF files or AGVS expressions or other identifiers. And a registry provides two services, lookup and registration. So if no one has seen the variant, you'll actually get the identifier of it so that somebody else seeing the same variant will use the same identifier. So this is not a database where to get an identifier, you need to go to a lengthy process. Registry does it at the rate of 100,000 variants per second. So we envision and registering every variant seen in every sequencing project in the world. And even the variants that are artificial from functional assays and also hypothetical variants from computational predictions. So the key is actually the bandwidth. The variant has, as I said, UIs, but it also has APIs, application program interfaces, and follows these link data technologies called JSON, LD, JSON link data, which allows all the knowledge to be represented as a graph, essentially, in so-called RDF format using ontologies and so on. So currently, we provide links to all major resources, but also we support on-demand linking, which means not only you can register your variants, but you can register that you have something to say about it so somebody, a program, can go to your site and get that part of the graph so that somebody can see the big picture of knowledge about the variant. So as I mentioned, bandwidth was the main design goal here, and dbSNP can be registered in 15 minutes. My variant did in about 90 minutes and so on. CleanVar in 40 seconds, only hundreds of thousands of variants, right? Registered being adopted in the sense that major databases, Civic, CleanVar, are adopted identifiers and putting links back to the allele registry to their users. And we now have a number of use cases of linked data. I'll just go through one of them. For example, because we are linking information about amino acid change with nucleotide change, we can ask questions of this integrated data. For example, we can ask how many nucleotide variants in CleanVar cause the same amino acid change and have different pathogenicity assertions. This is a variant, 31 variants of unonsignificance. 31 variants fall into this kind of category. Here's an example of a variant of two nucleotide level variants that have different assertions, but one is the pathogenic. Another variant of unonsignificance, despite the fact that they cause the same amino acid change. So I'll show you a quick example how this linked data can be visualized as a graph using Neo4j, a graph database in a query language. For example, if you look at these conflicting pathogenicity assertions as a graph, you'll see nucleotide variants and amino acid variants. And if you zoom in, you see the relation is contradicts because they have different assertions and they cause the same amino acid change. You can expand the graph and see what's going on. And you'll get information from a little frequency databases, from ClinVar, and so on, all contributing different edges. Now, this is a simple case. Well, one variant has one pathogenicity assertion, the other, but the other was evaluated later. Here is the contradiction. These are the one is this is the contradiction of pathogenicity assertions. And this is difference in the evidence. And because this one has a stronger evidence that was evaluated later, you may try to probably trust this one. You also can see the link toward the amino acid change. They cause the same amino acid change. You can have a link to their allele frequencies. So in the context of all this information, you can actually figure out which one to trust. A more complex case where we have actually three variants that have one pathogenicity assertions and one variant, the other. But while this and that variant have a single piece of evidence supporting evidence, this one has multiple supporting evidence. Moreover, there are three of them, right? So we would probably trust this. But of course, you can examine links to allele frequencies and other supporting information before evaluating this one. So in terms of mouse links to mouse variants, I think the link toward homologous amino acid change in mouse and human, that link needs to be established as well as something equivalent to the mouse database linking nucleotide amino acid variants so that these kinds of types of information can be collated and used for inference. One important bit is, again, adding new layers of data. And we actually kind of ate our own dog food, as the computer engineers say. We try to use our own project to actually test this concept of layering information on top of the existing information using our allelic epigenome project. So this is as part of the data analysis coordination for the epigenome project that started 10 years ago. Just one month ago, actually, we published the final paper where we linked genetic and epigenetic variation by looking at allelic imbalances due to regulatory variation in the human genome. Using information from 13 donors, about 50 whole genome bisulfate sequencing experiments involving 27 tissues, nine cell types. So the key element was really whole genome bisulfate sequencing and looking at allelic imbalances that may be caused by variants in CES. Each methylation of each CPG on every reads was assessed in the context of the specific allele. And special focus was on the reads spanning heterozygous loci, where the heterozygous loci are either markers or actually causative variants, causing the change in methylation in CES. It turned out actually thousands of transcription factor binding loci actually have these kinds of allelic imbalance patterns, and the effects in fact are mediated by transcription factor binding affinities to different alleles. So also we developed a sensitivity map of the genome in terms of a sensitivity of regulatory elements to genetic variation as estimated based on frequencies of these imbalances that heterozygous loci. So the big message is CPG islands, CPG-rich promoters are buffered against change. So allelic imbalances are less likely to occur than the background. Whereas CPG-poor promoters and enhancers particularly are highly sensitive to allelic variation, where allelic imbalances are highly likely to occur. So the most actually unexpected pattern was stochasticity. So what we mean by that is that there's no gradual difference, even though percent methylation is fractional between the two alleles, there's no intermediate level of methylation. It's either on or off. What's different is the fraction of on or off states, which means that the alleles actually modulate the frequency of transcription factor being of the bound state of the transcription factor with some factors preferring methylation, some preferring non-methylation. And actually this is true for a majority of hundreds of transcription factors we looked into. So the message of this allelic epigeno map is that about 5% of the epigenome shows absolute allelic imbalance, which means beta values of at least 30%. These imbalances associated with allelic transcription insist that these are marks of gene regulation. And we have about 200,000 such loci with these allelic imbalances, thousands of them regulatory loci. And each individual actually harbors at least 200 variants that are on purified selection and show these allelic imbalances, which means that these variants do have impact, presumably, on human health. So how did we integrate this? Well, here is how these user-contributed links show up in the allel registry, along with these other links. And if you click on it, you get some machinery that will count in JSON-LD. You probably will not use it. But your programmers will be happy because they can serialize it as a graph. They follow the latest standard of knowledge representation. They can be understood by Google. And they contain information about transcription factor binding, tissue, foraging, donor, and so on. And so how do we then integrate, say, these, how can we maybe make use of mouse in light of this new understanding of the allelic imbalances in human? Well, I think F1 crosses. My dream project would be actually deep whole genome-by-selfie sequencing of F1 crosses because there we can actually create a allelic het loci. And actually, the readout of allelic imbalances is very direct, no need for mouse sequencing because we already know the genomes. And then homology to human will actually allow us to validate the effects of these variants on gene regulation. So in summary, kind of, I have two more slides, we can integrate mouse variation on the regulatory level, mean acid level. And this is, moreover, we can actually be even more looser. For example, we can look at hotspots, orthologous, homologous hotspots of mutations in humans. We can look at functional domains that are homologous in mouse in human. And then transfer this knowledge, links this knowledge to inform interpretation of human genetic creation. We need actually a mouse allel registry for that. And Carl Bolt from Jackson Labs just got an internal pilot project to work with us to actually apply this technology to build a mouse allel registry with a view that this will be a core infrastructure component for integrating mouse data and human data at the sequence level. So in conclusion, Clinton Allel Registry links information about genetic variants using new technologies, looking forward 10 years from now to the web of linked data. It applies these technologies to nucleate a distributed data ecosystem centered on human genetic variants. So it's not a single database, it's just a core element of infrastructure allowing everybody to contribute. And that similar approaches that can be applied to human variation can be applied to mouse and other model organisms so that this ecosystem starts including model organisms. So with this, I'd like to acknowledge members of my lab who have led the allel registry work and also those who've led allelic epigenome mapping as part of the last major paper of the roadmap epigenome project. Also our Clinton collaborators who have defined actually standards that we've implemented for the allel registry. Sharon Plon, who is the PI on the Baylor component of ClinGen with us is a subcontract from Sharon and also Carlos Bustamante, who is the contact PI of the Stanford Baylor Group that's developing ClinGen infrastructure. Thank you.


Great to be here in Park Equitlam, hometown of Terry Fox, who is Canada's greatest hero. This community produced a young man who demonstrated for all of us that you can do anything you set your mind to. If someone can run 143 days, a marathon every day for 143 days on one leg to make a difference, any of us, any of us can find a way to make a huge difference in the world. And that is the message that Terry left us all with. And I truly believe that we are going to find the cure for cancer right here in British Columbia, where we lead the world with the best and the brightest work that is happening out there. And wouldn't Terry be so proud to know that the work that he started ended when we ended cancer here in British Columbia. Thank you. Have a great run.


Welcome to The Metal Voice, another recurring guest. One of the nicest guys in metal. We've had the pleasure of interviewing Hansi on numerous times. And it's great to have you back on The Metal Voice. I'm privileged and pleased to be back. It's always a pleasure to talk to you. All right, The God Machine going to be released September the 2nd. That's the 12th studio album. Wow, what a, what, what, what? 11th, 12th? 12th, is it 12th? Is it 12th? Are we going to rate that? Just nailed it. I'm not sure either. Is it the 11th or is it the 12th? Depending on legacy of the Dark Lands, right? Yes, yes. So we'll say 12th because it sounds a lot more, you know. Yeah. Prestigious. Prestigious, yeah. All right, so considering the time we needed it for all these albums, yeah, 12th is better. I'm going to start off with, right off the bat, the artwork. It sort of moves away from the traditional blind guardian artwork. It's sort of now we're getting into another, I don't even know how to describe what that artwork means. Is there a meaning behind it? Well, the artist Peter Mobacher could probably tell you what the meaning is behind this artwork. We were just simply blown away when we saw the artwork. It's about that. I think it's Gabriel, one of his war-ferrished angels. And he's pretty much into angels. It's very archaic. That's what we felt. And it was very suitable for the music. We needed something connected to mythology, philosophy, religion, and also computer games. And basically, that is all planted into that artwork. He is a genius. And we felt that would be the next step. We didn't feel it was so far away from what we usually do. It's maybe a little more intense. And other than that, we were so convinced that it would fit the purpose that there was no question within the band members. We just went for that one. Yeah, it's beautiful. It really is. Yeah, you're not really sure what it is. You know, it's nothing that's, it's quite interesting at artwork. It makes you look at it and kind of study it. It kind of fits the themes on the album, you know? Yeah, I think so too. I mean, it's an angel on there. And this angel basically is organic, but still it also has an artificial approach. And this is also what we are dealing with in the lyrics. There's a lot of deities moving in. There's a lot of futuristic stuff, like in Architects of Doom where I was hired by that. But I'm going to pause you right there. Is that Battlestar Galactica there? Yeah. Yeah. OK, all right. OK, you're just going to say that.   No worries. I'm just happy if you figured. It's about the cycle of violence, you know? And this is also reflected in this artwork. There's that fragile, still bold angel, you know? And even there, this piece of art fits very well. Are you a fan of Battlestar Galactica? Was it the book or the movies or the TV series? In this case, it was the TV series in the first case and both the old ones and the new ones. I was probably even more relating to the new ones because of the intensity the series had. But then I digged into comics and books as well. That's what Jeremy wanted to bring up. All the themes, all the books you must have read to get the lyrics for this album. Just lucky I sometimes pick the right book in the right moment, it seems. Or I figure something because it pops up because of when I work on the vocal melodies, I have some vocal lines and they guide me into a direction. Sometimes it's the music itself, which just says, well, this is fantasy. This needs to be intense. This can be a little more playful like in Destiny where I relate to Hans Christian Andersen and The Ice Maiden because it's such an obsessive song, such a fragile song, but still threatening somehow. And The Ice Maiden is about obsession. And I wanted to have a sort of love story. I think Hans Christian Andersen maybe is the best storyteller. And I was chasing for that for ages and ages and ages. And finally, when I got the opening pieces of Destiny, I was like, okay, this could be a song for Hans Christian Andersen because he is just so great in inventing stories. And there always is that deeper sense going along with it. And I like that for the story. But it's about the cold obsession of love. And finally, about the results, which are somehow fatal, at least for one part. Just describe to the people who have not heard the first two signals what the rest of the album sounds like musically compared to, let's say, the last few albums by Blind Guardian. It's a natural resource of blind dining qualities, I would say. You will have a better view of the four protagonists in the band. So the intensity is extremely high. It is more on the let your hair down side than on the, I would say, bombastic side, even though there are some bombastic moments. I would say it's a Back to the Roots album because there's a lot of new elements in there. But it has the intensity of what we did in the 90s. So like imaginations from the other side. I would put it in the imaginations from the other side, aggressive, more, you know. Yeah, from, if we speak about aggression, I think it's maybe the most aggressive one. And the only ones which get close to would be imaginations and follow the blind. There's no other album where we really raised speed so much and where we stayed so intense for the whole album. Even the more melodic songs like Secrets of the American Gods or Let It Be No More. They are very intense in terms of, you know, not being wimpy or showing a soft side. That's the word I would use for this album is aggressive and some anger in the lyrics, you know. I had to stop listening to get up, walk away, take a deep breath because I thought myself getting all stressed out listening to it. I mean, is it more of an angrier album because that's the impression I get. And you're right there. I think the two years which lie behind all of us, they had an impact on the album, on the lyrics and the lyrics always relate to the music.  But, you know, we started the production when, you know, the pandemic really started off.  You succeeded. I'm happy to hear. But I have to say with regard to the lyrics, I really was happy at one point and that was somewhere, you know, in February, March last year, I just said it's enough, you know, there need to be at least some positive perspectives. And that's when I started working on Life Beyond the Speaks, which is a sort of big bang theory in a philosophical way. And there are like an sort of alien race, which, you know, is watching the big bang moment and they could interact or interfere and they don't at the very end. So everything can just progress as it is supposed to. But these higher force had seen it gone wrong a couple of times. We go back to Architects of Doom, which plays with the same topic. There's a cycle of violence and there is a cycle of failure, but they just see, well, we give it another try. We just, you know, let things happen no matter what the consequences will be. So that's the positive aspect on the album. That's, you know, how we found or how I found my way back into more positive thinking, but you're right.  The constant optimism that humanity will finally get it right someday is what you're saying. We will not define that someday when that is. But yeah, still is hope. And I mean, there is that idea of, you know, whatever we are doing and whoever is doing what, it is for the good.  You know what? First of all, I wanna compliment you on, you know, like when you put this album on earphones and one thing I love about you and the band is there's so much detail in what you do and there's so much passion and it's just mind blowing like all the detail you put there, the vocal harmonies and the, you know, the changes of the tempo and the aggression to changes of, you know, from slow to fast, it's just, there's so much going on. It's just incredible. And this is sort of my question now. You've kind of moved from a speed metal band to a sort of prod speed metal band to adding more and more orchestra and choirs to the point where you came out with a legacy of the dark lands. Do you think you went too far there? Like, and now because of you, like you're stripping, stripping it all back. Do you think you said, okay, we've reached as far as we're gonna go in orchestration, but now we're just gonna throw away the violins and throw away all the choirs, even though there is a little bit there and we're just going back to what we, you know, back to this aggressive sort of metal band. Is there a question there that I just lose myself? No, no, no, no, no, I'm just, you know, I have to separate the band members because everyone has a slightly different perspective on this. For me, there was a necessity to just let go. I was released after we finished the legacy of the dark lands album and I did not feel the urge to go there back again, exactly after that album. I think it's really time for a new starting point for a new era to say so. And for me, it felt like going home or getting home with, you know, distorted guitars and having a band accompanying me. And I also felt that if there is something bad about legacy of the dark lands or even beyond the mirror, then it's that the protagonist, the band does not shine enough. There's so much going on and there's so much information and this takes away too much attention from the band members. And for me, it was clear from the beginning, I would like to do an album which just features us as a band so much. And when we discussed it over the first month of songwriting, everyone was pretty much on the same side. Even though I believe that Andre, for example, he would love to do another orchestral album directly. For me, that's not what I want to do within the next five years, certainly not. Yeah, yeah, I get it. The other day I went to Aventage. I played all their albums back to back. And right away, I'm like, that's Hansi. You know, I hear one of the songs you did with Toby and I'm like, your voice is so distinctive and you're singing great on this album. I mean, every album you've ever sung is fantastic. How do you keep it up? Like after all these years of your voice is still so strong.  That's one thing. And I like what I'm doing. And basically I do a lot of physical exercises for the voice. And this, in my case, seemed to work. But yeah, it's not carved in stone that this will go on forever. Right now, I just feel quite confident. And I have to say that I learned a lot during the legacy of the Darklands recordings and composing. So that even gave me a little bit of a push. You know, when I first heard the song, and I think a lot of people, it was the American. Secrets of the American God. Secrets of the American God. Wow, what a track. I go, this must be something related to, you know, John and Ice Earth and Demons and Wizards. I mean, that was the first thing that came to my mind. And a lot of people's mind, right? Were you worried that would happen? Like that fans would first perceive that sort of connection or disconnection between you two?  So the one thing has nothing to do with the other. It's related to Neil Gaiman's story, The American Gods. And I was simply so amazed by the story. And because Neil Gaiman creates great images, the atmosphere is amazing. And I build it up on that. And the music I was not so convinced about at the beginning because that was too close to what we did on Beyond the Red Mirror, I first thought, and it was still too complex. So I was not struggling with the song. Therefore, it was so too strong. But my intention, as said, was to get further away from whatever we did in the past few years. And this one is closely related more to Beyond the Red Mirror than any other song on the album. We just approached it differently. There is a lot of orchestration, but different to Beyond the Red Mirror or Legacy of the Darklands, these orchestral parts, they just play. They are efficient when they are supposed to be efficient. When not, they are supporting the band other than in ninth wave or grand parade, for example, where they literally take the lead and the band stands behind. So I make my piece with that one. And I would also say it's maybe the strongest song on the album. But I have to be honest, it's the first one we wrote. It has a long story. I think we started this one even before I worked on the Demon's Wizards album. I believe it was finished, actually, at least in terms of the arrangements long before I started working on Demon's Wizards 3. Which was a great album, too, by the way. I just want to compliment you on that. Yeah, thank you. I also think it's a very good album. I think Secrets of the American Gods is like seven minutes long. It doesn't feel like it. Everything's going on. I would agree with you. It probably is the best track. Not to say that the other tracks are not good. It's just blind guarding it at their best. That's what I think. I'm really happy to hear that. And the ingredients are there. What makes it a bit different, I think, from, let's say, Beyond the Red Mirror, for example, is that the vocals, for example, they're pretty much designed for the lead vocals. So everything else, even though there is that gigantic choir and that hook line, which hopefully people will not get out of their head, the whole thing is more down to earth. No matter how big it is and no matter how effective some of the orchestral hits are, it's pretty much down to earth. And this is what I like on it so much, even though it has all these elements, it's easier to comprehend. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Alan, did you have another track? Yeah, I let it be no more. I thought that was very interesting as well. So let it be no more is interesting. It's also a long process of creating this one. I think that is also something which we worked on in the end of 2018, 2019. So you can see the process of songwriting took a while again, and that was when my mother passed away and that had an impact on the vocals and on the melody lines, especially in the verses. And I made that sort of topic. It's about loss in general and about what a loss means to those who are left behind and those who depart. And that was also related to the TV series, The Leftovers, which gave it an additional depth and a little bit more of this concern, I would call. Yeah, you know what's amazing about you? Like, English is not even your first language and you can capture the essence of a situation. It's just mind blowing. Your English is so good, you can actually write better than most people who actually speak it as a first language, like me. I maybe have the privilege that I can simplify things and still people will appreciate it. But on the other hand, brings some phrases which are sometimes not exactly correctly spoken like in Black Chamber. I sing Black Chamber and there is that line in Pro Jerusalem on a night at the opera where I tend to sing Wilderness instead of Wilderness. That's maybe artistic freedom because I'm a non-native speaker, so I have the privilege of that. So people are probably more patient when it comes to this. But yeah, I pay a lot of attention to the words. And in the past, especially when we started all the stuff, I tried to make things complicated. And over the years, I learned the more precise the words are that I use. The deeper I go with regard to the sense, I believe that's the whole package. We create the music and we have the feeling that no matter how long it takes, it all has to be related. And it should make sense. So when I speak about the fall of the Noldorian race, the music needs to fill this purpose. And basically, we always find a solution somehow. But that also means especially the lyrics are very essential part. And they sometimes take forever. It's not that the words come from sometimes they do not come spontaneously. Sometimes I'm just lucky and I'm really chasing until I feel I find the right words. What is also very important, I believe, since I do the vocal lines, I have decided that the phrases which I created, no matter what I sang when I did the vocal lines, which is sometimes almost nonsense, the later phrase must fit 100% otherwise I don't stop. Yeah, yeah, of course, of course. Deliver Us From Evil, another great book, The Crucible, I'm assuming, right? The Salem Witch Trial, which is a fascination in North America, at least. I don't want to just speak about that, about how they used to. It is fiction, right? But it's based on reality, right? Didn't they just pardon a whole bunch of witches in Scotland last week? They went back and said, we pardon you. You're no longer witches. And we're sorry, we burned you at the stake. What the heck? Did you hear? Nobody read that? Oops. Yeah, it's kind of oops. I haven't heard about that. Yeah, but I mean, Arthur Miller, he pointed it out himself. I mean, there is also that deeper sense about denunciation and how quick a situation can get out of hand. So that also I have to say the song was composed and finally produced in 2020. It is about sitting in the glasshouse and throwing wood stones and then creating a damage and probably not understanding that the revolution always will eat all its children. Well, I mean, it's a forecast. But I mean, the Salem Witch Trial was a case of it's telling of every generation, even the COVID generation, where you're isolating a group of people and you're condemning them. And sometimes it's just not right to most times it's not right to condemn these people. Yeah, right, exactly. Yeah, and there's always a story. There's a narrative which certainly has an origin which sometimes is planted with a needle seat. There is an intention by people. You never understand. But Abigail's intentions were kind of really weird. And how quickly society gets behind condemning that small group of people. That's even the worst part about it. And that throughout history of humanity, you can see that, right? Yeah, I would agree 100%. Especially when it comes to the abuse of religion. People always or many people think religion is a bad thing. It's not religion, which is a bad thing. It's what people sometimes made out of it. They're interpretations, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Well, we'll get it right one day, like you said earlier. That's right, that's right. But it's a great opener for the album. I love that song opening this album. It's a strong, strong opening. You know what I'm saying? We've got it very confidentially. I went through the whole discography just because I always, before interviews like Alan, I just would go through everything, right? This album, it probably is, and I hate to say it, but it's probably one of your best albums because it's so complete in so many ways, you know? It doesn't go overboard in the orchestration. It doesn't go overboard in the choir. It doesn't go overboard on the aggression. There's a little bit of everything there, I don't know. I would agree, it's complete. You just mentioned it. For us, whatever album we're doing, once we're finished, it's the best album. There's no doubt about that. And sometimes we have been proven wrong because the fans did not feel the same way we did about particular albums. They all were doing their job and they certainly have their reasons. And as it is with children, we're still proud about everything, but there are some which do it for everyone and some who just appeal to a certain amount of people and the others do never really get into it. But with this one, I would say it's so complete and it's so defined that I would think that most of the Blind Guardian fans will fall in love with it. And may they call it the very best album or one of the best album, that's up to them and that's maybe just something time will tell, but we feel like this. And I have to say, we had a bunch more of a good amount of songs, which we did not finally put on the album and we did not even work on during the production because we found our way with the songs which are on the album and we never left that path. And this was also very helpful. Wow. I'm thinking about three decades ago when you started out, where do you think you'd be in 2022? I would have thought that we became superstars for earlier, maybe within the first five years of our career and as a 25 year old, I would never have thought about something beyond 35 or 40. So we just went for it, it was fun and that the profession became an obsession and it was the right thing to do for us and would last so long, I would not have thought about it at all. If you told me, I would have said maybe, yeah, no, I don't know, I don't care because the moment was important back then and I remember that we were disappointed with the success of The Talents of Fear, which was minor anyway, but we were disappointed but we were still amazed enough from the business to stay in and we then realized that there would be only the chance of small steps in getting more popular and popular and that helped until now. You know, it's amazing and I will leave with this that the band, you guys kind of sort of building your brand or the band, in the time when metal was just, there was nothing there, right? There was no industry support, you know, the early 90s, right? That's when you're building the band, right? Yeah. So it's just, and I guess now it's gonna come to fruition because you sort of rebuilt it for so long that it took that long to have that bigger success. That's what I'm getting at. So it's the timing, right? It's all timing. It's all about timing. Some have had a better timing in each sense and others, they had a far weaker timing. So for us, it seems to be the perfect timing. But yeah, that is something people sometimes, you know, glorify too much the 80s, especially in the time when we got in, it was not good in business. It was difficult to establish a band in the late 80s. Of course, there were some very established bands, but for young bands, it always had been difficult. And from what I figured over the years, when other bands came after us, it was pretty much the same. The good ones survived and they found their way, whatever the industry had changed, they just adjusted to it. So did we. And this is what is demanded by young bands nowadays. It's a different game, I would say, good in YouTube things or whatever is necessary, social media stuff that certainly demands different skills than back in the days when we started it. But all in all, it's always the same, how to attract people and how to hold them. It's funny how the guys that had massive success and hits don't have the legacy and the careers of those. And I think the metal community really expects legacy bands like Blind Guardian and where you built very slowly, but you're still around and people are like demons and wizards, I mean, they were queuing up eight hours before the show even started. It's amazing, but the metal community is really appreciative, I think, of that type of legacy. Yeah, for sure. But it's because the fan praises honesty, the fan praises quality and music and longevity as well. So if you're on the heart of a metal fan, it's forever.  And it's like, that's when it was all over in the 80s, right? You guys kept going and kept going and kept going and the quality, like you said, spoke at the end of the day. It's the quality that speaks at the end of the day and that's the thing that attracts the fans, right? Even in the hardest metal years, you guys were still cranking about, which is amazing, which is totally amazing. Yeah, I hope that the future looks even more bright. I would not mind at all. Nuclear blast, September 2nd, the God machine, blind guardian, Hansi Kirsch, we're here with us today. Always, always a pleasure, Hansi, to speak to you. You're one of our favorite guests we've ever had on the Metal Voice and thanks again for doing this today. Likewise, I'm happy that we could talk today. Is there a North American tour coming up? No, not right now. We have had a few offers, but at least until the end of the year, we won't play any more shows than the ones which are announced, maybe one or two in Europe. We keep all that for 23. We also have to come back with regard to the album because now we're just teasing somewhere far beyond and this will go on until the end of the year. So God Machine, in terms of live performances will be the main priority for 23. And I would guess that's the time when we come back to North America. Gotcha. All right, I forgot. I should have squeezed that question in before, but I forgot. Okay. Thanks, Hansi. Talk to you soon. You know all the magic souls, you just do it. Absolutely, man. Great talking to you. Thank you. Bye-bye. Thank you.


Thank you very much and thanks to Jason for your presentation just before now. Sarah and I were just saying that a lot of what you were Sharing we saw ourselves in it and I suppose it's timely that we're up here now to tell you our journey of Our recent Moodle upgrade. I'm Rob. I'm a senior learning technologist at Dublin City University And this is Sarah who is a senior software developer from Catalyst IT So what we're going to cover briefly in the next few minutes is just kind of give you a little bit of background to ourselves in DC And Catalyst and our Moodle setup how we approached planning for our upgrade to Moodle 4.1 We'll go into some detail then on the actual nuts and bolts of our testing and the actual technical upgrade And then we'll just share some reflections on why it worked so well at the end So just to give you a little bit of a background I think you know in any project like this obviously the technology is important The tools are important, the documentation is important but at the heart of any kind of a project at the heart of everything really are people And I think a core reason why this project was such a success was because we operated really as one core project team Both from the DCU side and on the Catalyst side. So on the DCU side myself and my good colleague Suzanne We're project managers and our Moodle support team. We're also heavily involved in the preparation for the Moodle upgrade And then on the Catalyst side there were several people involved as well as you can see there We had Sarah obviously as our lead dev, Sam Taylor as our account manager from Catalyst Natasha was the Catalyst project manager, Paul Walker who's a absolute wizard when it comes to anything and everything theme related Steve as well on infrastructure and there's definitely more people from Catalyst involved as well Nowhere near close to Jason's 500 people though in UCL unfortunately But we were a small nimble team working very closely together delivering a successful upgrade Some of you might have be familiar with DC. We've been using Moodle for about 20 years now or so and heavily involved in the Moodle community Our Moodle is very big and very very heavily used. It's absolutely an emission critical system for the university Obviously it supports student teaching, learning and assessment that goes without saying But we also use it extensively for internal staff training. We use it for student elections and referendums And a variety of other reasons as well so because of that upgrading is important But also because it's so heavily used I think planning and finding the best time for an upgrade is always a challenge And another challenge is obviously how customised we have made our Moodle We've got lots of integrations with other systems including Mahara We've got lots and lots of different plugins available so all of that had to be taken into scope as well And importantly my team, the teaching enhancement unit, we are a centre for teaching and learning so we are not tech experts We're not devs by any stretch of the imagination although we do have a very close relationship with our IT department And of course we have a very very strong and fruitful partnership with Catalyst as well Yeah so Catalyst have been developing customising open source in particular e-learning solutions for 25 years And we're a Moodle premium partner I manually counted 82 Catalyst plugins in the official Moodle repository There was no other way of doing it And there's 196 other open source plugins available in GitHub that you can go and have a look at And we are committed to committing to Moodle Core so yeah there's lots of those being made So as we were approaching this project, certainly on the DC side we had lots and lots of questions mulling around in our heads We operate a system of upgrading Moodle every two years to an LTS version So previous to this we were on Moodle 3.9 and obviously we knew that support was coming to an end So it was time to think about upgrading and deciding which specific version of Moodle to upgrade to And lots of questions around how do we do this, this is going to be a big project How do we prepare for it, who do we need to bring together Obviously DC and Catalyst needed to come together very closely to work But also we have a wide variety of internal stakeholders in the university We've got relationships with plugin developers and people who have helped us customise our Moodle So obviously all of those needs to be brought together as well Importantly we are a small team in DCU and with a very wide range of responsibility So a big question was how on earth do we do all of this on top of our day to day work Both our day to day learning technology work and our day to day academic development work What do we do about our other systems, what decisions do we make about Mahara and plugins And what versions to go to and when to scope those and when to plan and schedule those upgrades What resources do we have, what resources do we need And really crucially what do we need ourselves to know about Moodle 4 Obviously some new changes, some new features, UX, UI improvements coming in Moodle 4 It was really important that we ourselves could approach the upgrade with good knowledge of Moodle 4 in our heads So like how you would eat an elephant we just took it one step at a time, one bite at a time We didn't employ an agile methodology as Jason did We kind of approached it in our own systematic way when it came to the upgrade And we kind of divided out the upgrade into sort of six key phases Scoping, exploring, testing and building for the upgrade, deploying it, making configurations And then providing support for our staff and students afterwards So scoping was hugely important obviously We needed to get approval from our Vice President for Academic Affairs to go ahead We did manage luckily to secure some resourcing to hire a graduate intern When we also secured some resources to explore a sandbox of Moodle 4.1 So that the team ourselves could learn and get to know what was out of the box in Moodle 4 Our testing and our upgrading we'll speak about now in a bit more detail But our systematic approach to that I think really contrary to heavily towards the success of the upgrade as a whole And then wrapping around outside of that then after the core upgrade was done We didn't just cap ourselves on the back and walk off into the sunset But over the course of the summer have been busy upgrading our support resources And providing introductory workshops for our staff This is what our timeline looked like so I suppose Really late 22, early 23 is when we started our initial scoping And engaging with our stakeholders getting our approval And having ongoing conversations with catalysts about dates and processes and so on And catalysts did a high level plug-in review for us as well Which is really useful in helping us make some decisions around what plugins to keep What plugins to switch out to remove what versions to upgrade etc Then kind of coming into the springtime we were very busy exploring our sandbox Documenting kind of different changes that were coming in Moodle 4 Planning our communications and then we entered code freeze I think late April or early May And then really in May was our very very busy period there Very intense two week period of UAT Identifying bugs, resolving bugs or Sarah resolving all the bugs I just found problems and said Sarah please help please fix Which she does do because she's amazing Deciding what our priorities were and so on in June Is when we actually had the technical upgrade so the site was down for three days In order to enable that most of our core and third party plugins were all upgraded But several plugins were updated later And then obviously over the summer we've been busy supporting our staff and students You can have a look at the slides later and there's a link there to our systematic test cards that we use And you may find it useful if planning for your own Moodle upgrade The test cards were originally developed by Aurelie and Sam Taylor And we've remixed them heavily at DCU But we use the test cards to test specific roles and test the most common actions And processes on Moodle and that is a really useful way I think for uncovering bugs And sharing that document with Sarah and the catalyst gang Meant that we could kind of operate out of the same space And quickly identify and resolve issues And again that are kind of ongoing checking with the team To make sure testing was going well and was on track was really important And linking back into what we ourselves had learned in our earlier phase Around what was what's a new behavior in Moodle 4.1 versus what is an unexpected behavior Making lots of decisions on the go about what plugins to keep, what plugins to remove What theme issues needed to be resolved etc But really our three big showstoppers that we said we needed to make sure these worked Before we went ahead with the upgrade was making sure our SAML authentication worked Our text matching integration worked and that Paul from Capitalist could fix All of the bugs we uncovered in the theme But Sarah obviously was hugely involved in resolving all of the various different bugs That were uncovered as well Yeah so the decisions that had to be made were really around 4.1 change So talking to Rob and letting him know which plugins have actually been made to work with 4.1 It was just constant decisions so I've done loads of upgrades in the past in previous roles Working on my own so if I wanted to know If I found a piece of information that I was like I'm glad I found that It was so important to pass it on to Rob so that he could make informed decisions Because at the end of all of this we have a go no go meeting So it was all about making sure that stuff that was really important for a go decision was done before that time And then prioritising things to say well okay that's not great But we could actually wait until after upgrade for that plugin to be updated Or maybe we could update it and push the change back upstream And yeah it's kind of a lot of things to try and keep track of and juggle and let you know about So yeah we basically had you know we've got our internal kind of tracking system But it got to the point where it was so on the fly that we had just like a spreadsheet And we were kind of almost having live conversations in the cells as we went along But then on top of that you know we had weekly check-ins so we actually looked at right Where are we in this process? Let's prioritise this stuff If this isn't done it's a no go you know that one can wait till later And at the same time Paul was looking at the theme it's a child theme of boost You know it's very mature now but again the change to 4.1 meant that we had to make some changes to that And Rob was brilliant in kind of finding things that you know kind of were deep down in the depths of the system that needed fixing And obviously those then went out to all our other clients that have the cat awesome theme So huge thanks to Rob for finding those and getting them fixed On the day of the upgrade itself obviously a lot of the work was led on the catalyst side of things But it was important for us in DC to keep our staff and students up to date So you know they had kind of all hands email going out letting them know we had now entered maintenance mode And again when it was lifted we were again having regular check-ins with catalysts And we were on call ready for the maintenance mode to be lifted so that we could go in and do some deployment And that was kind of the 24-7 call I think it was like 11 o'clock or midnight or something When the site was lifted out of hard maintenance so then myself and Suzanne jumped straight in And had to make a few configurations to the site I think there's about 40 different configurations we had to make some theme things Changing the site colours, changing the language string text and media area back to label Which is the term that all our staff and students are familiar with and so on But the catalyst process for upgrading was very smooth as you can see So three days included a full infrastructure uplift Obviously an upgrade wouldn't normally take three days So you know that was kind of backing up and restoring the database into a new environment And really kind of just giving it a complete uplift And I actually wasn't there for the upgrade on this on leave So that kind of goes to show just how great this was It was so well documented which I think is a really good thing If you're doing an upgrade make sure every single step is documented We did dry runs, we'd already done a test on the UAT site We did dry runs so we had all the timings And Rob could know if there was anything that might cause a bit of a problem Because for you guys you've got very strict times If this doesn't happen there's a problem isn't there So we were really aiming for that go rather than a no go which we got And so yeah the 53 steps that we had documented meant I could go on holiday And the upgrade happened without a problem So I suppose just to kind of wrap up now and share with you Our learnings from this approach I think going back to the earlier slide we very much operated as one team And I don't think you can have a smooth or successful upgrade Without taking that kind of an approach Particularly during the UAT phase and the actual technical upgrade As Sarah was saying we were in constant communication Working out of shared documents documenting things Having information flowing back and forth in good time So that decisions could be made and the task could be advanced So it was really important that everyone was invested and committed And giving time to the project both from the catalyst side and the DCU side I think you need to realise that an upgrade such as this Is a distinct project in and of itself but it takes a lot of time And needs to be committed to We had our six phase approach for structuring it And really I think Cathis is our moodle partner But we are partners in very much the very true essence of the word And partnership is a value that both of us hold dearly and live by And I think that is really at the bedrock of why this was a successful upgrade Yes Thank you


Welcome to another show of Celebrate Life. My name is Gary DeCarlis and I'm your host. This happens to be a pioneer show, actually. It's the first live show, and it's also the beginning of our third year. For those of you who have never seen Celebrate Life, the idea behind it is to celebrate the lives of Vermonters and other special people while they're very much alive and in our community. I've read too many obituaries, leaving thinking, gosh, I wish I had met that person when they were alive. Well, this show, you're gonna be able to do that. And I'm of the strong belief that everyone has a story to tell. If you're interested in being a guest on our show, please write me at celebratelife0747 at gmail.com. Or if you have a question for our guest, again, write me at celebratelife0747 at gmail.com. Today, I'm honored to have as our special guest, former mayor, Peter Clavel. Welcome, Peter. Gary, very nice to be with you. Good to have you on the show. Thanks for the opportunity. Thank you, more than welcome. So- It's a be here before you have to read my obituary. That's the idea. So you have a lot to celebrate in your life. You know, I was thinking on my way in, Gary, I've had a very good life. It's been full, it's been interesting. I've had occasional challenges, but hopefully I made a positive impact on the lives of others. And if I died today, I could go out saying, I'm happy, it's been a good life. Good, yeah. We're gonna unpack that life a little bit today. Where did it start, Peter? Started right up here on the hill. 74 years ago, I'm born in the Gosbian hospital, second of five kids of a Winooski family. So yeah. Wow. I haven't wandered too far. I actually have, but- And we're going- But I'm back. Yes, you have it, yes. So what was life like early on? You know, I would say that it wasn't always easy. Mm-hmm. You know, I was growing up in Winooski at a time when the city was suffering economically. Yep. And my father and his brother had a small grocery store. Between them, they had 11 kids. So 15 people. A lot of people that- Trying to be fed off a grocery store, like my dad would say, we eat all the profits. He worked very hard when I was about 10 years old. And the grocery store shut down and he entered another life and ultimately got a job at IBM. But he was a hard-working man. At any one time, he would have as many as four jobs. Wow. Yeah. Wow. And you know, and my mom was mostly stay at home. Five kids kept her quite busy. Yep. Yeah. Was the grocery store like a Kaladnese type of grocery store? Not nearly that big. Uh-huh, yep. It was just a small store located on West Allent Street in Winooski, kind of where the city hall is now in Winooski. Yeah. Yeah. They had a good selection of meats. Largely a meat market, but it also was a place where folks, primarily from the Democratic Party, would gather to tell stories, strategize, drink beer, play cards after closing hours. So you were exposed to politics early on. Yes, yes I was. Yeah. Was your father interested in politics himself? He was interested. His claim to fame in terms of public service was serving as the delinquent tax collector Oh my goodness. for the city of Winooski. It was a job which he held for more than 40 years. Wow. That's a dangerous job. Yeah. His brother Bob served on the city council for some time. So yeah, they were definitely politically engaged. And on my mother's side, yeah, there's also was a trend of political engagement. I remember my grandmother telling me that she was a yellow dog Democrat. I said, what does that mean, mom? She says, I would vote for a yellow dog before I vote for a Republican. I said, really? And then I understood that she had six kids and she was widowed. Her husband died when he was 39 years old. So she raised six kids as a single mom and it wasn't always easy. This was before the day when we had a substantial safety net. And so she really appreciated the programs that were brought forth by FDR and later administrations, but those were important to the survival and the well-being of her family. What was, when you think back to those days as a young kid, what was a typical day after school like for you? You know, we had some woods there, not many woods left in Wunoski, but back then there were a lot of woods and ponds and the go brook and we'd wander around there catching frogs, just walking through the woods. Later I would be interested in hunting and fishing and during the summers we'd spend time at a place that's been in the family for 125 years now in Malletts Bay and big chunks of the summer were spent there. Wow, nice. Did you have any, what I want to be when I grow up, ideas?  Yeah, okay, that makes sense. Did you go to Catholic school? For high school and for college, but not for elementary school, I went to Wunoski public schools. Then as a very young kid, probably 12 years old, I was elected mayor for the day. No kid, is that right? Wow, there you go, huh. But I always had an interest in geography and current events. What were your grammar school years like? Did you, besides being mayor for a day? You know, it was a good life. Of course, back then we all would walk to school and for lunch break, typically, would sometimes go home but often go to one of my grandmothers. They would both live in Wunoski at the time. And after school, you know, I enjoyed sports. I was never very good at it. Probably, I was best at football, but I enjoyed playing baseball, but I was awful and never could really throw the ball. But a lot of stick ball and a lot of time, just riding the bikes through the streets of Wunoski, yeah. And it sounds like with grandparents, uncles, your own family, that's a huge family network. Right, and also, you know, just the neighborhood was very strong, neighbor-directly adjacent to us at 15 kids. Yep, yep. Imagine. 15 kids.  Yes. You know, many of us in Wunoski at the time opted to go to Rice High School. And that was a good experience. I enjoyed my years at Rice, graduate of the class of 1967, and yeah, the good sisters of mercy. There were many late teachers at the time, but the sisters of mercy at the time played a very important role. We always had a tough, but compassionate principle. It was a priest, Spurkey Adams during my day, Father Ross, and yeah. And so that... One of the great traditions at Rice at the time was stunt night, and it continues to this day where each class would, in the fall, would organize a performance. That's right. Was Ron Corey coordinate? Ron Corey was very much the coordinator of the May He Rest In Peace, where he just passed away a couple of weeks ago. I just got a haircut yesterday and I was talking to one of his former colleagues, and we were just telling her about the stunt night days. He would always talk, I used to get my hair cut when I had some of the cut. Now it's mostly polished, but... But he would talk about stunt night as a very special thing for him. He just loved doing that. Yeah, yeah, that's a great memory. Yeah. Oh, that's great. Now, when you went to Rice, you were exposed to a broader section of kids. I mean, from Burlington, from outside of Burlington, did that affect you in any way? I think it affected me because I developed friendships with kids that I might not otherwise have had friendships with. And a number of those friends have passed away. Unfortunately, it's sometimes it's difficult to believe how many of my close high school friends have passed away, but there are many others that I continue to this day to be very, very good friends with. And these are folks from Burlington. So through the high school years, my network of friends grew exponentially. Of course, they would always look at us as the river rats we were called. And I don't know if any of them back then would have believed that this river rat would have crossed the city to become the mayor of the city of Burlington. We'd have often joked about that. Did you get involved in activities in Rice? Things that? You know, when I was at Rice, I was still an altar boy. I participated in CYO for a couple of years. I played football. I was on the hockey team. My wife jokes, Betsy, you were on the hockey team? She said, you can't skate. And she's right. I could not skate. I was on my ankles all the time. You were the goalie? No, but I was kind of the hit man. You know, if there was somebody on the other team that was misbehaving that sent me out to take him out and ended up spending more time in the penalty box than I did on Rice. And then you went to college?  I always liked St. Michael's. For me, it had a sense of comfort and familiarity that I liked, but I didn't wanna go to school in Monoski or Monoski Park. So I decided to apply to a school that was quite similar to St. Michael's in Manchester, New Hampshire, St. Anselm College. Also a Catholic college, but not run by the Edmundites, but by the Benedictines. I also had a cousin who was a Benedictine monk there, so that was a connection. For me, that was a good choice. Yeah, and what did your major in? You know, I went through a couple of majors initially, political science, sociology, but I ended up being an urban studies major, which was a very interesting program. And one of the few colleges at the time that had such a program. And it was kind of a mix of, you know, urban affairs, but there was a track that was focused more on city planning and another one focused on city management. So I had to decide, you know, I really enjoyed the content and the work, but I had to decide, okay, what's for me? Is it city management or city planning? And I decided I liked the city management track, so I applied to graduate school. And this was about the time when many of my friends were getting drafted to go to Vietnam. But fortunately, I was just at the tail end of that process, so I was never drafted. I would have gone if I had been, but I went to grad school, Syracuse University, and received a master's in public administration. And whoever knew that, I'd have the opportunity to use it. My goodness, that's, the progression is beautiful. Well then, to carry the story on, so it was a very intense, Syracuse is a well-known program in public administration, but it was an intense program. You went for a full year, so it was like a 12 month program, but 12 months you're done. Really? So here I am at 23 years old, saying okay, what am I gonna do now? So I started throwing a number of CVs out there. I ended up getting a job in the city of Wunuski at the time it was a model cities program. But simultaneously, I had sent out a few random applications for various jobs, including one for town managers position in Castleton, Vermont. So I went to my surprise, this kid with no experience, 23 years old, I was invited for an interview. I went down there, and before the evening was over, I was offered a job being town manager in Castleton.  It was a great community. I really enjoyed my time there. I did that for four years. Here's this kid, you know, he was running the highway department, raising, collecting taxes and raising them as well.  Wow, no kidding. It was a wonderful experience. Did you, anything special that stands out from those years? You know, I learned very early on. You know, I always wanted everybody to like me. And to love me. But you learn in public services, I'm sure you will attest to it if you do the right thing. Not everybody's gonna love you. So I had to cross that hurdle. It's a good lesson to learn. Understand that, you know, you're not always gonna be loved by everybody. Exactly. I also discovered that in public service, you need to put yourself out there. And that wasn't naturally me. I'm sure some people will find it's hard to believe, but I'm, you know, beneath the facade of a politician, I'm kind of shy and introverted guy, and I need to work at putting myself out there. Putting yourself out there, yeah. Huh, yeah. Great grounds to do it in though. Nice little town in Vermont, wow. And then after doing that for about four years, I was encouraged to apply to be the city manager of Monusky, which I did. Wow. And so 1976, now I went to work for the city of Monusky. And that was a challenging job for me. You know, a local boy going home, and Monusky was in a period of great transition at that time. You know, some of the local leaders were fairly conservative and set in their ways, and Monusky was in a period of great change.  And it was an interesting time. On one hand, we were getting millions of dollars in federal grants per capita of the city was receiving more federal money than originally anybody in the country. But on the other hand, the bread and butter of municipal services, your basic services, they had to be supported by taxes, by property taxes, and some in the community weren't particularly eager to pay their fair share or to increase property taxes. So you had a little, the old school, new school going on, and here you are in the middle. Here I am in the middle. Kind of negotiate both of those.  You know, I was like 27 years old when I started that job. Wow. Did Burlington serve as anything you can learn from? Well, because it was going through changes. Sure, Burlington was going through changes, but we also at the time recognized that there were many issues that would cross the border between Winooski and Burlington and sometimes would find ways to cooperate. I remember a discussion concerning regional dispatching. Other times there was tension, you know, Burlington at one time wanted to dam up the city above Champlain Mill or dam the river above Champlain Mill and you would have had a dry riverbed. We said, no, no, no, that's not a good idea. Right. And we also had great debates concerning the wood chip plant. Our concern was all this truck traffic going through the city. I never realized it'd be on the other side of the river shortly thereafter looking at these problems from a different perspective. Amazing. Yeah. So then at some point you did jump over the river. At some point, there was a point when I resigned as city manager of Winooski. I had a period where, you know, after being city manager in Winooski, I was a bartender in Winooski. Wow. In Canal Street Cafe. And then. Was that a tough time for you, Peter? It was a tough time because also during this time I was going through a divorce. My first marriage was seven years and it was a tough time. Who am I, you know, in personal life, in relationships, it was difficult. And you're a public figure too, so a lot of that's insinuated. Exactly, exactly. Then I had a brief stint in state government and worked a couple years for an engineering firm where my work was focused on municipalities, supporting municipalities, building infrastructure projects. But then, lo and behold, this guy was elected in Burlington, a guy named Bernie Sanders. Sanders, yes. Bernie Sanders. You know, I was not involved in his initial election, but shortly after he was elected, I met him. And he asked if I would help in certain areas because you'll recall at the time he's mayor, but the Lord of Aldermen did not allow him to form an administration. So a lot of the work was being done by various task force and committees. And I became the very radical idea of controlling costs and Bernie Sanders' idea, we need to do a better job of controlling costs. And he created a cost control committee that came up with some radical notions such as putting insurance contracts out to bid. And then also remembering the early years, I was then living on South Woolwich Street with Betsy and we would build the city's budget around our dining room table.  Amazing. It was like a shadow government in the beginning, wasn't it? In the beginning it was. And one of the, not the first, but one of the first opportunities Bernie had to appoint a department head was when the then personnel director resigned. So he didn't have to remove somebody from office but there was a vacancy that he could fill. And he appointed me to fill that position which was interesting. And so I was personnel director and looking at the overall management of government and one thing that became real clear was they had this mayor with this grand vision for the city and all these ideas but no capacity to implement them. Yeah. So one of the propositions that we began to develop early on in my time with Burlington was to create a community and economic development office that would focus on some of the key issues of facing the city. Chacting investment, creating jobs, making certain that downtown was vibrant, dealing with housing with a particular focus on affordable housing, developing the waterfront, involving citizens and decision-making. So all this became part of the mission of CEDO. Right. And lo and behold, after a nationwide search and this was legitimate, I said I'd rather do this than be personnel director. So I applied for the CEDO position. I was appointed and I did that for about seven years. Wow.  Right. I remember one of our big projects back then was a revitalization of North Street. Exactly. Yeah. Right. So, yeah. That's it. So, wow, that's a lot right there. So all those jobs, Castleton, Winooski, helped build that intellectual capital to be able to pull off CEDO. Yeah. I mean, that's fantastic. Bernie was smart to hire you. Yeah. And that was a great job. And... Great staff you had. We had a great staff. We were bringing in a lot of federal money. We operated for many years without any direct taxpayer support. We kind of lived off what we were able to catch. Yeah. Yeah.  Yep. And we made great progress in terms of revitalizing the waterfront, creating the community boat house. Exactly. You know, the bike path, bringing the department store downtown. Right. Dealing with neighborhood issues. Yeah. Creating neighborhood planning assemblies. What stands out in those years in your leadership role for you? What was the most rewarding part of all that those seven years? Yeah. You know, for me, when I look at my time with the city of Burlington, which was a total of 25 years. Right. You know, seven terms, 15 years as mayor and my time in CEDO is a little less than 25 years. But what was... I think of, okay, my major accomplishments, one is place and that's the waterfront, revitalizing the waterfront. And again, this was both in CEDO but it continued as mayor on that path. In terms of policies, I think the work that we did around affordable housing, creating the land trust and developing policies in the city that would protect the most vulnerable and, you know, we used to preserve the stock of affordable housing. We had produced more, protect the vulnerable and ultimately inclusionary zoning and the housing trust fund. And thirdly, we're just a process and of people being engaged in decision making. I've always said that in Burlington, democracy sometimes looks a little messy. It's because it is. And when people are engaged, yeah. Absolutely. You know, you have to find compromise. You have to reach agreement on some tough issues sometime and in Burlington, local government and politics was not a spectator sport. Everybody was on the field. Yeah. I wonder how many people benefited from that engagement process that actually changed their life in their own careers because of it, you know? Many, many. Many, many. Yeah, I would think. Yeah. Good work. What did you learn from Bernie? You know, so as we've talked, my career prior to joining the administration in Burlington was mostly around management. And what I learned from Bernie is that yeah, management is important, but it can't simply be management. You need to be bold. You need to be introducing and implementing ideas, programs, practices, policies that will make government work for ordinary people. So I learned to blend kind of a radical approach that supported an activist city government with good management. Yes, right. So... Both are important too. Both are important. One without the other. Right, so, you know, I'd like to think that I continue to be a good manager, but also became more out there in terms of advancing new progressive ideas to make government work for all of us. Yes, I think you did a great job here. Oh, thank you. Absolutely. You know, I think many people would say that you could have been a mayor for life if you wanted to be. Yeah. You chose to leave it. Well, 15 years a long time. It is. Sometimes it fell for life. It felt like it was for life. It takes its toll, I'm sure. You remember that even during that period, I wasn't always mayor after serving for two terms to the surprise of many in the community. I think myself included. I lost an election in 1993. That's right. And at that time I said, forget it. I'm done with Burlington. I'm done with politics. I said to my family, we're moving. Need to do something different with my life. So we packed up our bags and without having a job, we moved to the Caribbean island of Grenada. Wow. We lived there for full year. That was the plan, not to move forever but to live somewhere for a full year. The idea of living in the tropics was something that had great appeal to us. It was a wonderful experience. Both for the kids, but for Betsy and I, I mean, living in a society where the white folks constituted maybe two or 3% of the population. You know, I kind of went there to escape politics. I hadn't been there about a couple of weeks and became involved in politics, supporting a guy in a party that was running for office at the time, became very much involved in that. Did some volunteer work in the nonprofit sector. Had my first assignment in international development was from Grenada where I actually, the family stayed behind and I went to work in Gaza Strip for a month on a USAID funded local governance project. So it kind of wet my appetite for international development and world affairs but it also got me in tune with the concept of sustainability is living on an island, you see what's sustainable and what's not. Right. And so after much reflection I decided that, you know, I don't quite have Burlington out of my system and I can't think of anything that I'd rather do than be mayor of the city of Burlington. So I began to think about running for reelection while I was in Grenada and then when we returned it was still a year before the next mayoral election but it began to build a creative platform and build a base of support and ran again in 1995 and was re-elected but one of the key themes that I took into office in 95 was sustainability and I wanted to work to make Burlington. A sustainable community. A sustainable community and it took me a while to get my head around that but it really hit me when I said, you know, it's not all that complicated we just need to make certain that everything that we do every policy that we support, every project that we built makes this a better place for our kids and grandkids other people's kids and grandkids than it is for us. And if we can't push it through that filter then forget it, we shouldn't do it. And I also learned around sustainability that building a sustainable community all four legs need to be strong. It's like a table and the four legs are yes, economic development and environmental protection. We've been talking about that for a long time. Yes, education which also included engagement but the fourth leg which often was the shakiest is equity, you know, how are decisions made? How are resources being shared? How are the marginalized being engaged? And so, you know, on my second time around as mayor, there's a lot of focus on equity. How did you tell me some of the ways you actualize that? Well, again, in terms of decision-making, making certain that all voices were being heard. In terms of housing, making certain that the housing that was being built in the city was not just for folks that had a pocket full of money but that folks with low and moderate incomes could afford a house. And I know that this continues to be a huge challenge in the city of Burlington but it'd be a lot worse if some of the policies were not in place such as inclusionary zoning, such as the condominium conversion ordinance, such as the creation of the Housing Trust Fund. And also in Burlington, some people sometimes forget that, you know, the city worked real hard to make certain that the resources were in place and many of these were federal resources that would make housing affordable to low income people by pegging the rent that they pay to the income that they earn. To this day, I think approximately 25% of all the rental units in the city of Burlington are subsidized and you're paying rent based upon your income. But also dealing with issues such as taxation and putting place alternatives to the property tax, creating a waterfront that was accessible to all. It's a few examples. Yeah, well, that's great. Yeah. So I know you have an amazing wife, Betsy. How has she helped you in all this? She supported me all the way but she's also had her own life as a public education, as a guidance counselor and later as an executive director of a nonprofit organization in Burlington, Mercy Connections. Yeah. But she also, you know, while I was mayor, the one regret that I have is that it takes a lot of time and energy and a lot of that is away from the family. And you know, I would have, if I had to do over again, I'd do a better job of balancing the work-life dynamic. That's a tough one. Yeah, and I try to get home, at least have dinner with the kids but so many nights I'd be off for another meeting or, you know, sometimes I could have said no, I can't go out tonight. And I should have probably said no more often but you're trying to be connected with the community and be visible and accessible. So it's a difficult trade-off and that's where Betsy stepped up and supported me but also... Took care of the family. Took care of the family and, you know, not only our own family but we were for a very short period of time empty nesters and a young boy that I had mentored because as a mayor I was advocating for a mentoring program and, you know, connecting particularly men with young boys particularly that did not have a father figure in their life. And I said, you know, if I'm gonna be out there trying to pitch mentoring as an approach, for those that say, I don't have the time, I don't have the energy, I need to have a mentee. So I had a mentee and the second mentee that I had was a young man who came to Burlington without immediate family. He's from Somalia, raised in a refugee camp in Kenya and, lo and behold, he'd been here for about a year and he needed a place to stay. So we took him in, treated him as our own and he lived with us and we raised him and brought him through those challenging middle and high school days and he graduated from high school, he's doing well now, he's got three kids of his own. No kidding. Does he live in Burlington? He lives in Burlington. He lives in Burlington. Yeah, yeah, so that was great. That's wonderful.  We had an array of sister city programs. I had been involved in a nonprofit organization many years on the board of the Institute for Sustainable Communities. And I said, I really want to do this work. And so I left the mayor's office in 2006 and I immediately joined an international development consulting firm that happened to be based in Burlington at the time it was led by a guy named George Burrell. That's right. And so I joined them and I had a very satisfying career with them, which included working in some very fascinating places. Some of the countries. Most of my work was working with local governments or sometimes with central governments that were interested in strengthening local governance. And this was particularly important in the former communist countries, but I've worked in some interesting places. Jordan, Uganda, I visited on a frequent occasion. I spent three, four months once starting off a large project in Afghanistan. Yeah. And then my last major gig was living and working in a fascinating country of Albania for four and a half years. Wow. I was the manager of a project that I like to think was quite successful strengthening local governance in Albania. That's fantastic. I still dabble a little bit in that work. Mostly retired, but on occasion I now participate in developing a proposal or implementing a project. And I'm also very involved in an organization called the VCWA, the Vermont Council on World Affairs. Oh, yeah. Right. And the chair of the board of that organization. So that keeps your finger in there. Keeps my finger in international affairs. Is there anything left that you haven't done that you want to do?  It is a big world. And I'm very curious to other people, about other people. And I want to continue to grow and develop my understanding of the world's problems and challenges and maybe make a modest contribution. But more than working, I'm interested in traveling. And you know, since retiring from full-time work we spend most of January and February just going to interesting places and escaping Vermont winter. And we've been in South Africa, Seychelles this past year. We spent a couple of months in New Zealand, beautiful country. The Polynesian island of, I used to call it Samoa, but now I know it's Samoa. And also exploring the United States, the Southwest, the civil rights sites in the South, Cajun country. So I'm going to continue to do that. Have Morocco on my horizons for next year. Good for you. Do you do any writing about all of your life experiences? No, I sometimes think that maybe I should, but I haven't done that yet. One of the problems is that I really can't type or process words very quickly. But I might find a way to do that, yeah. How about your kids? How are they doing? Kids are doing great, yeah. And I'm very appreciative of the fact that most of my family, my African son, but my two biological boys, they all live in Burlington. Oh, it's beautiful. Yeah. One son is a very, Luke is a very successful realtor. My son, Will, followed in the old man's footsteps. He works for the city of Burlington and economic development. Wow, no kidding. Yeah, he's doing good work, very good work. And my daughter, Jay, who we adopted when she was, I don't know, four months old. She was born in Korea. She visits quite often, but she lives in Providence, Rhode Island. She's married to a Providence firefighter. Wow. She's a world traveler.  So that spirit of adventure and travel was passed on to the kids. That's great. Yeah. We're getting close to the end of our time together. Any words of wisdom or any quotes or special thoughts that you used in your career that you could pass on to other people? I think it's a, what's the Nike slogan? Just do it. Go for it. Go for it. Don't hesitate. Take risk. Yeah. I mean, that's, if that's one thing, and you can always make an adjustment going forward, but don't hesitate to do something because it's a bit risky. And be yourself and stand up for what you believe in, even though it might not be popular, mainstream. Those are great words, Peter. Absolutely.  You know, being elected mayor of Burlington on seven occasions is... It's pretty special. That's special. I think I'll go down. That is special. But I need to say, it hasn't always been, you know, I haven't always won. As a baseball team, I'd have a pretty good record, but I did lose that one time in Mayor's race, and I ran for governor once and did not do as well as I'd hoped I might in that race in 2004. But it never hesitated, I never looked back and said, oh, that's a crazy thing to do. I mean, it was a bit of a fool's error and running against a one-term incumbent. It's only been defeated once in Vermont history, but no regrets. Good, you put it out there. All right, well, thank you so much, Peter. It's been great having you here. See you, thank you.