You're tuned into the COVID-19 community report here on KDRT 95.7 FM in Davis, California. I'm your host, Autumn LeBae-Renaud, and today is Friday, March 27th. We're sharing local news and resources, not focusing on what everyone else can read out there in the world, but really on what's impacting Davis and nearby cities in Yolo County during the COVID-19 pandemic. My call-in guests today are Yolo County Supervisor for District 2, Don Saylor, and Dr. Mary Ann Limbos, who is the Deputy Public Health Officer for Yolo County, and we'll have that first interview in just a few minutes. The show airs live at noon on Tuesdays and Fridays, and repeats at 5 p.m. both days. You can also listen online at kdrt.org, and you'll find a compilation of resources there as well that we have compiled from all the shows we've done so far. This Tuesday I'll speak with Heidi Kellison of Downtown NorCal about local businesses, and Jessica Hubbard of Yolo Community Foundation regarding the impact of the pandemic on nonprofit organizations. And on April 3rd, I'll interview Congressman John Garamendi. So here we are, folks, week two of shelter in place, and the United States hit an unwelcome milestone this week as it became the country with the most COVID-19 cases. And in Yolo County, as of this morning, the news is that there have been 13 confirmed cases and one death. I'll take a moment here to thank our medical professionals and our first responders, public servants, and all involved in our food supply train, from farmers and farm workers to transportation workers and grocery clerks for their work out there while most of us are doing our best to adapt to social distancing. We appreciate you. As always, I'm going to share a few announcements before we get to our first call. So despite some welcome news this week that SEIU union representatives found two huge domestic face mask stores in this country, there are still massive shortages of masks for healthcare providers, first responders, and other essential workers. In response, grassroots groups devoted to sewing protective face masks are popping up everywhere. Peter Davis Hospital wants us to know that they have a PPE donation line, and that stands for Personal Protective Equipment, and you can call that at<PHONE_NUMBER>. They're accepting donations of N95 and surgical masks, any model, including homemade, isolation gowns, reusable face shields, goggles, latex free gloves, disinfecting wipes, and more. So please call that number again, that's<PHONE_NUMBER> to schedule donations. Davis High School newspaper, The Hub, and community newspaper, The Davis Enterprise, collaborate on a weekly podcast. Their most recent episode looks at some of the ways healthcare operations are forced to be modified as COVID-19 continues to spread. A Davis orthodontist, pediatric, physical therapist, and family physician each share their perspective. Find the podcast online at bluedevilhubhub.com, that's H-U-B. We all know businesses are taking hard hits right now. With all our local breweries, wine tasting rooms, and bar shutdowns, no surprise sales of off-premise alcoholic beverages have soared. Earlier this week, the California Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control, known as ABC, issued a wide-ranging notice of regulatory relief dramatically increasing the options for selling alcoholic beverages in the state. The notice expands options for delivery of beverages, as well as addresses the legality of selling alcoholic beverages to go. And you can learn more at abc.ca.gov. And thank you to Joe Denizio of Davis Chamber of Commerce for that tip. And I'm particularly thinking here of Sudwork Brewing Company, Parkside Bar and Lounge, Woodstock's Pizza and Blue Note Brewery, all of whom are strong supporters of KDRT. All right, please enjoy a little music while we get set up to talk to Supervisor Saylor. Something I've learned from years of producing local election coverage is just how many services are routed through our county-level government. With an annual budget of nearly $500 million, there's much that happens in Yolo County, including efforts to improve access to health care and address food insecurity, as well as voter registration, tax collection and more. Here to give us some insight into the county and how it's managing during the pandemic is Yolo County Supervisor for District 2, Don Saylor. Thanks for joining us today. Autumn, thank you so much for this series. Really, it's a very important service to get the message out. Well, we are happy to do it. So I really want to do a little bit of a deep dive here with you in the 10 minutes we have. I know some county offices are closed. I know that, like many of us, you're working remotely. And also that, on any given day, your office feels a lot of public inquiries. So what are you hearing from your constituents right now? Well, Autumn, I think I'm delighted you're going to have Mary Ann Lembos come on later in the hour or two in the show to give an update on some of the health issues. I'm sorry to tell you that we just added two more confirmed cases that we now in Yolo County have 13 confirmed cases. And one of those has passed away, sadly. So what's happening with Yolo County is that we are 100% devoted to an emergency operation center. That is, I think a lot of people don't know what that means. The emergency operation centers are activated when there's a disaster, emergency fire, earthquake, flood, or in this case, a public health emergency. So many of the county staff might be trained as a financial analyst or as a code enforcement officer or a child support director. All those folks have been repurposed. And many of them are, many county employees are furloughed. But many of them are engaged in the activities that are otherwise going on. So what's happening around the counties, people have, by and large, have accepted the public health order that was issued on March 18 by our health officer Ron Chapman. And the health order is effective from March 19 to April 7. And when you travel through our communities, you're seeing empty streets that are typically pretty congested or at least busy. Most people are staying home. That's really appropriate. We're getting questions from folks about the interpretation of the order. And if any of the listeners want to follow that up, the YoloCounty.org website has a page devoted to a shelter in place 101 and there's a survey online that you can access and kind of drill down and see what's going on. But initially we were having a lot of questions. What does this mean for my business or can I do this physical activity or can my children come and visit and those kind of things? That's kind of tapered off as people have kind of buckled down to doing each of us doing our part to reduce the rate of infection. Right. And should we expect that the order will be extended past April 7? I think it's it's undoubtedly going to be extended. We realize that when we first step in, we needed to just get it in place. And as we're as this is all unfolding, we're continuing to see cases rise. And of course, we all know that the United States is now with about 86,000 cases confirmed is the leader in the world. Over 1200 people have died in our country. So we're seeing this going to continue in California. It's doubling every three to four days and we're over 3000 now. So, yes, I expected it'll it'll be extended. Some of the just amazing things that are happening. The food bank has picked up the has really picked up their their efforts. They're with Rob Davis, former Davis mayor, he's doing an incredible job of coordinating the food banks, COVID-19 efforts. This they're doing three major new food distributions every week. This this week they've served 1500 and 36 households, including 3600 family members. And they're not just doing that by going to a single location and waiting for people to line up because they've got to be very careful with the social distancing, the physical distance. They're delivering food boxes to individual households. So that has kept 180 volunteers busy. Farm fresh to you has even pitched in and done some driving in West Sacramento. There's just a lot of creative energies going in. And one of the things I wanted to be sure to say is that if people are the listeners want to know how to volunteer, well, one of the things they can do is is sign on to the Yolo Food Bank's volunteer website. So that's YoloFoodBank.org and that would be a really good place for you. Yeah, I've been mentioning them on each show. They're really doing Yeoman's work out there. And Rob Davis, if you're listening, we were in touch about this early on, but I'm planning to reach out to you to come on the show as well. So how does, Don, how does the county coordinate with the various cities in Yolo County during a time of emergency? Well, it's a hand in glove. Actually, there's there's not a there's not a sliver of paper between the efforts of Yolo County and the four cities in the county. So the city managers are all involved with the county administrative officer, ongoing communications between elected officials and at the and at the and on the ground level, the the an example here would be the city of Davis. Police chief is responsible for enforcing the public health order. So the county health officer issues an order that's enforceable by law enforcement. That means there's got to be a lot of coordination with law enforcement. The four city police chiefs and the sheriff are all in contact with the emergency operations center. And if you're in Davis and have a question, some of the questions that are coming up now out of our things like, well, my employer doesn't seem to agree that that since we're not an essential business, that I need to come into work. And so what do I do about that? Or I see that across the street, there's some kind of an active gathering going on, isn't that a violation? Or I just am curious about how I'm puzzled with how I can get my medication or something like that. So you need to there's another website inside the city of Davis, police web at cityofdavis.org. That's police web at cityofdavis.org that people can send in a question or a comment or a concern and then get a direct response. So that's the direct involvement Another another activity that's under way that is I think very exciting and necessary is something that the Board of Supervisors approved on our our March 24th meeting, the creation of a YOLO community benefit fund. And this this is in the works, but it's the this is a collaboration among the YOLO Community Foundation, Yochita He tribe, several of the larger health systems and the four cities and the chambers of commerce and the idea in the county and the county dedicated two hundred and fifty thousand dollars as a seed money. So the cities are each participating in the steering committee discussions to create this benefit fund that will be dedicated toward stabilizing the nonprofits that are struggling as as businesses are as well. So there are other needs as well. But this this is another area that the cities and the county and nonprofits and the business community are working together on. Yeah, and I was very excited to hear that news, obviously, running a nonprofit here. And I'm very engaged with other nonprofit leaders in the community. And just last week before the supervisors met, we were having a conversation online that we're hearing about a lot of support for businesses and support for this and that. And the one thread that wasn't coming through was nonprofits. And yet many of us who shore up, you know, many social services, many basic needs in the community may not make it through this without without some assistance. So thanks to the board of supervisors for that action. And I'm really looking forward to being involved and seeing how that plays out before we run out of time here, Don, because we're almost there. How can people reach you and and what's one takeaway you'd like to leave us with? Well, I really encourage folks to check out the county's website, YOLO County dot org to reach me is very simple. Don Saylor at YOLO County dot org, or you can you can reach me on Facebook, on my personal Facebook page. There's a lot of activity going on with the COVID-19 YOLO Community Response Facebook group. Indeed. I encourage people to to access that because they've done a really good job of curating issues. One thing I want to show mention to folks is that you got your census forms in the mail in the last couple of weeks. This is a good opportunity. You're sitting home doing nothing, looking for what to put to keep yourself busy. So fill out your census form and make sure you send that in. And the other thing is there's a suicide, we're just one last point out of the suicide prevention for YOLO County, typically has about 500 or 600 calls in a given month. In March, they're going to they're they're running on a pace to get 900 calls. That's just an indication of some of the concerns that individuals are having. So we are at a time now, we need to be patient and calm with each other and with ourselves that YOLO County Health and Human Service Director Karen Larson has done a public service announcement that that folks can access on the YOLO County Facebook page that gives some tips and tidbits on how to keep your own mental health at a good even pace during this challenging time. So be kind to each other and yourself and keep in touch. And we'll we'll make it through this together and it'll be soon. It'll be history. All right, that's a great note to end on. Thank you so much for making time for us today. Appreciate it. Thank you very much. Take care. Bye bye. All right, I actually watched that PSA from Dr. Larson this morning and we'll bring that forward on DMA social media so it can get a little bit more attraction. All right, let's share just a couple more resources before we take our next call. We've been talking about county government and this week, the Davis City Council voted unanimously at its March 24th meeting to adopt an urgency ordinance, which states that residential and commercial landlords cannot evict renters impacted by COVID-19 during a local emergency period. This is consistent with information from the county and the state. But in addition, the council voted to approve a resolution suspending water shutoffs for residential and commercial customers. And if you've been reading the news about the continued situation in Detroit, there are people left without water for hand washing during this time. And no one wants to see that happen here. So and the they'll also waive late fees through the end of May of this year. And the city also asked me to direct people to these additional resources. They're on Facebook, Facebook dot com slash city of Davis. They also have a page at their website cityofdavis.org slash coronavirus that's devoted to all of their resources. And you can sign up to receive emergency notifications at yolo dash alert dot org yolo dash alert dot org. All right, the Davis Night Market. I talked about them recently, but they've changed their hours. They provide free food for people suffering from food insecurity and hunger. And they're even even mapping locations of those in need. The night market is open Tuesdays and Thursdays now from 8 30 to 10 30 p.m. In Central Park, if you need food, please head on down. Just be sure to observe social distancing guidelines. And once again, Yolo County Jury Services has announced all jury panels have been canceled through April 30th. So if you were scheduled for jury doing that during that time, you are off the hook. You don't need to do anything. You may be called at a later date. In fact, I think you can probably count on that as they deal with their backlog. And I'm I'm I'm in that group. All right, the Davis Joint Unified School District continues to make breakfast and lunch service available to children under the age of 18, Monday through Friday from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. at the following school sites. Marguerite Montgomery Elementary, which is on Danbury Street. Harper Junior High on East Covell Boulevard. Davis Senior High on West 14th and Patwin Elementary on Shasta Drive. Meal packages include lunch for the current day and breakfast for the night for the next morning. And you can learn more about that at DJUSD.net. And if you've lost income due to COVID-19 or shelter in place, you may be eligible for paid sick leave, family leave or unemployment insurance. Find out more from the California Labor and Workforce Development Agency's website labor.ca.gov. All right, we'll take just a brief break as we get ready for our next caller. As Supervisor Saylor mentioned, I want to keep steering people listeners to the Yellow Public Health COVID-19 resources, which you'll find spotlighted at yellowcounty.org. And with us today is Dr. Mary Ann Limbos, who serves as the Deputy Public Health Officer. Thank you for joining us. Thank you for having me, Autumn. Well, there's a lot of messaging and directive that comes from the state and federal governments, although perhaps not as much as we'd like to see from the CDC at present. Can you help us understand public health's role at the county during this time? Well, we are trying to provide a consistent message. And like you say, there's a lot of different information coming from the federal government and the state. And as much as possible, we try to distill that information into ways that are useful for our community. And we try as much as possible to keep that our community updated. We host a weekly call with community partners to provide them the latest information on what is going on with locally as well as nationally. And it sounds like you spoke with Supervisor Saylor about our Yellow County website, which we update daily. So, you know, there are a lot of sources of information. We try, you know, through different media to reach as many people in our community as possible. And we really rely on our community partners and TV and radio programs, such as yourself, to try to reach those folks that we might not be reaching, perhaps with our website. And we're more than happy to help out with that. This morning, I read that the county announced it would begin allowing home delivery on non-essential services in an effort to help boost the local economy. I'm hoping you can give us more information about that. And what kinds of businesses are we talking about? You realize that this can be a really difficult time for our local businesses. And it's going to be a struggle for some of the smaller ones. So, many of them don't fall under the category of essential businesses, but we'd like to support them as much as possible. And at the same time, try to keep our residents from going out as much as possible. It's really trying to encourage them to stay home. And so, the way we were hoping to accomplish both of these goals is to still allow our non-essential local businesses to continue to provide some of their services to the community by delivery, but still keeping their storefronts closed. So, in that way, we're not having our residents go out. They're still staying home. But then our businesses can still provide at least some level of service. So, would that include things? I'm trying to get an idea of what sorts of businesses. So, for example, one of the businesses that was, I can floor stay open. Well, they're not an essential business, but they can still deliver. So, a member of the community can't go into a florist to buy their flowers or products, but they can still call and the florist can still make that delivery to the home. Great. I'm sure that's really welcome news out there for a lot of business owners. And before we run out of time, the question I'm hearing most frequently is when will testing be more widely available? So, what can you tell us about that? Sure. You know, over the past couple of weeks, we've gotten some commercial labs up and running. So, our testing capacity has increased over the past couple of weeks. And because of that, our case counts will continue to go up. And, you know, we've heard, we're hearing that people want more testing, but the message we want to get across is we want our testing to make sense. And what I mean by that is, you know, when COVID-19 isn't in the community, it's good to have this widespread testing so we can isolate our cases and keep them from spreading disease to the rest of the community, but we're not there anymore. You know, we know COVID-19 is in our community. And it doesn't make sense to test people with mild symptoms and fever because we would give them the same recommendation, whether we know that they're COVID-19 possible or whether we don't know that. And that would be to stay home and self-isolate. And honestly, we would have the same recommendations for people who are asymptomatic. And that recommendation is still to stay home. And wash your hands. Wash your hands, absolutely. All right. I just want to remind people, again, that you can visit yolocounty.org. And right on the front page, there's a big spotlight with all of the county's resources. And Dr. Limbos, thank you for joining us. And please pass along thanks to Dr. Ron Chapman, too, because before we were isolated, he came in here and did some important programming on this. I certainly will. I'll pass it on to our team. Thank you so much for helping us get the message out. All right. Appreciate your time. Thanks. Well, you know, it's actually a pleasure to talk to people who are really boots on the ground and making things happen here in the community. And I want to thank everyone who's tuning in. I'm getting some nice comments and feedback on social media. And putting together a local radio show on the COVID-19 crisis was really the most expedient way that we here at Davis Media Access and KDRT could make locally relevant content available. Again, I'm not getting into politics here, and I'm not covering the news that the national news outlets are sharing. I'm really trying to focus on how this impacts our community and what our local resources are. So our staff here at Davis Media Access is hard at work developing options to bring some fresh new local radio and TV programming to our community soon. Some of them will be interactive, all with remote capability. I'll share more soon, and I'll continue connecting with community groups and non-profits. I'll be back next Tuesday. And from the KDRT studio, I'm Autumn Labirino, and this has been the COVID-19 community report.


Point of care, POC, technologies have been used for decades to provide rapid and accurate diagnoses in limited resource settings. These technologies have become increasingly advanced with the use of microfluidic technology allowing for miniaturization and integration of complex functions. Microfluidic devices offer many advantages, including low cost, ruggedness, and the ability to produce accurate and reliable results quickly. These advances make them ideal for clinical and social settings in developing countries. This article was authored by Shikha Sharma, Julia Zapaterarad-Rides, Pedro Estrella, and others.


Now if you have a look here what I've done is I've put in 50% leafy greens. Now those leafy greens are kale and English spinach. Now don't worry if you don't like the taste of those it's not they're not usually something I'd have for breakfast either. What will happen is I've added in there I've added the strawberries some raspberries and also some blueberries wonderful wonderful research out there on these three together with cognition not to mention the benefits of immunity wonderful wonderful start to the day and I'm going to add also some oats and I'm just going to put in a few because these are quite quite filling I like to use some organic oats my secret ingredient is is some GoFigur but the reason I'm putting GoFigur in there it's one of my own formulas but it's got lots of cinnamon in there this is really in vogue at the moment the coconut water


It's to the best of our knowledge, I'm Ann Strainchamps. Before family photos or school pictures or Instagram, there were hand-drawn and painted portraits, and artists who specialized in capturing faces and personalities. Those old master portraits can be mesmerizing and mysterious, both in what they convey and in what they leave to the imagination. I was making costumes. I was getting into character and actually performing these people that I was encountering. We do think we're being given more than just an image of what they look like, but some feeling for who they were. Today, on to the best of our knowledge, we talk with a philosopher, a musician and a novelist about falling in love with a face. She looks worried. She looks anxious. And, crucially for me, she looks as if she has something she wants to say. Reframing the portrait.


Thank you all for joining us. We have the honor of having with us here today, Joyce Mitchell, a truly esteemed arbitrator, mediator, and attorney internationally. She's been on Zoom connections with people all over the world today alone. Sandra Sims, one of our retired judges and author, and just an incredibly strong contributor to the community in so many ways. And Louise Ng, not only an outstanding, outstanding attorney, but one of the women's rights leaders professionally and personally in Hawaii for many, many years, more than you would think, looking at her young face. So today, we're going to take on just some easy stuff. We know we're coming out of a time, hopefully coming out and not staying in, a time of extreme chaos, high risk, high tension, high stress. Where are we? Where do we need to go? How can we get there? And what might that look like? Joyce, Sandra, Louise. It's like we're coming out of a storm. And there's there's there's the sun is is peeking through the clouds.  And then another cloud comes over. There's a little bit more rain. And then it opens up again. But we're still feeling in that place of hopefulness that the sun is coming out. That's kind of how I'm feeling at this point, that the sun is coming out. Obviously, it's not going to be the perfect day. But we've got more sun than we had at another time. And that feels good. Feels better. That's why I'm like this. No, and that's spot on, Sandra. I mean, and these are not just rains. These are Mississippi floods. These are these are hurricanes. These are hurricanes. I feel so much better about the openness that I think we're going to see as time goes on. I'm I'm sensing and feeling that the new cabinet will get a chance to get over their honeymoon. They will bring their expertise to bear. And we will be able to tell them what we think we need. But you know what I think most of all is going to be great for us is with all the technology we have now and the people that we've seen here, we're going to get a chance to touch each other again and see each other as humans. And it's going to be a great model for our kids because we're going to learn something that our kids felt while they were requested. And those of us who've moved through many, many channels to get where we are know that sometimes the basic foundations that we got years ago have led us. We go back to them, sometimes depend on. Maybe we might find ourselves. How do I say a bonding more with the younger generation? Because they really will need us to help understand some of those interpersonal things that are happening with them that they've been missing. And we need them for the technology to be able to survive in this world. Yes, yes, yes. Louise, what's your take? Well, well said, everybody. I certainly relate to that feeling of emerging from a storm. I have to say that almost on a daily basis, I am still grateful that when they refer to president of the United States, it is Joe Biden and it is a competent president who has the interest of the country in mind and unity and competence and social justice, you know, and getting things done in a competent, efficient, principled way. So I am really happy about that. And although, of course, we can't treat our youth in the next generation as a monolith, they all have different views. I see so much help too in our next generation, what they've been through their social conscience. So I think as our population ages and we get ready for the next generation, as you say, Joyce, we need to focus our efforts and work together with them to make this a better place. I think the president, I'm sorry, go ahead, Joe. I think the president and the vice president are going to be great models for our kids. I think there's a lot of unlearning that has to happen for the next couple of years. And that's going to be the difficult part. How do we unlearn something when they were over the last four years bombarded with things that they were perhaps told prior to then should not happen between us? So the unlearning is going to be necessary. And I am looking forward to spending time with my grandchildren to work through that. And as Louis says, to have the two competent leaders there, two people who worked in the Senate and one who has served under, I see he served under one president and he's been in this, he was in the Senate for many, many years. So he understands the workings of government, the legislature, and he understands the importance of negotiation. And I think that's going to work very well for him. And thanks, Joyce, and all of you, for kind of grounding us in a couple of things. One is that we have been given our humanity back. We've been encouraged to not only manifest it, but to share it, to connect with each other through it, to support each other with it. And a few weeks, no, months before the election, Brian Schatz, our state senator, really good guy. Also my daughter's high school classmate. So I get to have a US senator to call me Uncle Chuck. So that's not. So I'm asking Brian, this is months before the election. He said, and I said, so what do you think? What are the chances? And he said, check, I'll tell you three things about Joe Biden. Number one, he's been there for 40 years. Everybody knows him. You will never hear a single person in Congress say a bad word about Joe personally. They'll accuse him being liberal, progressive, communist, whatever, the political rhetoric. Personally, not a bad word from anyone, not Mitch, not any of them. Second, he said, he is a team leader. Every issue he targets, every decision that evolves, comes from a team of people who are the cream of the cream. They are the scientists, scientists.  And look at how much money Bill has to bring his team together. In education, his wife and the team that she is putting together and helping him put together, they're incomparable in health care. When he named his team, the health care scientific professionals in this country applauded. They were elated. That tells you, in the people who know the most about the areas that have the worst problems and the most harmful effects on those who are marginalized and underserved, he has the people who know how to approach those and heal those for the benefit of the people they serve. He said, one more thing. I know, he said, Joe Biden, I will tell you, Chuck. He has suffered. He has lost family members. He has gone through things that none of us can imagine personally. And he is a decent human being. The scene of him reaching out to the little boy with a speech impediment, he said, that's Joe Biden. We have been given back the choice to be human beings with and for each other. Joyce, Sandra, Louise, you are spot on. It is a gift that is incomparable. How do we make it long term? How do we systematize it? How do we bring it where it is needed most? I think we're starting to see that in communities. You stress a good point about his humanity, which comes from having lived life and suffer things that people go through and understanding what that feels like and empathizing with those things that occur in life, including serious loss. And so that does make you see and relate to people in a different way. So when we come to our communities, I think that encourages people who are engaged in community activities to understand that that is now value. I don't think that we value that sort of humanity, that sort of compassion and caring for one another. That almost, I won't say we lost it, but it was certainly not something that we saw in leadership in the last few years. But I think that's an important component that's returning and making our community and our community organizations and our community leaders be more effective as well. And then, like you said, Joyce, reaching out to that younger generation, to those grandchildren, and they're able to see that again. That is going to help you because you've got to start there. You've got to start with having some sense of empathy and humanity and compassion for your neighbors. It starts there, and if you lose that, then you just kind of, you're lost. But when you have that, then it helps you to be able to focus and do other things and be able to do better for your community when you see leadership here and you see... I mean, that's one of the things that we used to see with the Obamas. You know, going to the shelters and going to places where you were one-on-one helping people and people understood that. That really helps. It's necessary to teach our children how to be better citizens. You start there because you've got to care. Yeah, you know, I just recently decided to get active again with my sorority that's involved in community activities and chats. I think that's one way we help this process along because whereas the president and the vice president have a role to play, our role is, I believe, the talking, the listening, the hearing of what happened because sometimes just hearing how people feel and what they've been thinking and what they'd like to see as their future is gonna make a difference in the lives of many. So how else can I do that? Except to, I like to work through organizations that are involved in things that I can participate with because last night I heard that one organization had put together some black history books, et cetera, for groups and they couldn't get children to take them. I said, well, you've got to realize there are a lot of things that are happening to the parents right now. They don't want you to bring books and gifts to their children right now. We can't touch each other. But if you have the intent and the desire and the belief that there will be a time and you can do that, it's gonna happen. It'll happen. And we can be successful. So I told them that I'd like to be successful. And in the meantime, they can give me some of those books and things for my grandchildren. And that's a point that cannot be overvalued, Joyce, because if we break it down into the human connections, maybe it doesn't need to be a book, but maybe sharing stories like you and I did a few days ago, as Sandra and I have done in the Louise and I in the past. Stories connect people. They're personal, they're human, and they promote mutual respect and understanding. So maybe exactly as you point out, maybe our most valuable role here is to rebuild from the ground up our connections with each other, our human connection, our connections of respect and understanding and kindness. And I think that in some ways, I like to think of the silver linings that came out of 2020. And one is technology, more virtual meeting platform, but I think that has helped us maintain or keep a connection while during the times that we cannot keep physically connected. And I wanna give a shout out to Sandra. We just discussed this a little before this show started about her role in this multidisciplinary approach to just teaching about racial and social justice, which is this joint effort of the Judiciary, the Bar Association and the Judiciary History Center in January, February to educate about racial justice issues. I love the first session about Black Lives Matter and its impact in Hawaii and how the issues manifest themselves in Hawaii. And it reminded me actually of something I heard from my law school friend who's a law school professor and he had a book reception last night and most of his reading, writing, it's way above me. But there were three words he talked about that are sort of the purpose of his writing, which is that in America, we tend to have a willed forgetting of our history that prevents us from seeing the context. So we need to realize we have that and then kind of remember, go back to what the history is and learn from that and then prevention. We understand history, then we can prevent. And I see what you're doing, Sandra, with that Judiciary, the project is kind of reminding us of the historical roots of many of our biases and then what we need to do. How do you take that teaching to the next level, which goes into systemic and cultural change? The big questions. Oh, yeah. So how do we take that? How do we offer it in human, personal, connective faith to the people and the communities who have been marginalized, excluded, underserved? We know who they are, we know where they are. We need to get them vaccinations, but we need to get them shared humanity. We need to bring them, not just to the table, but into the living room, into the dining room, to sit down and to be human connections that have meaning and value in our lives. How do we do that? One of the things that please mention about the program, I can't take credit for doing that, I've just been involved in the process, but what it also takes is leadership in those institutions that we value. Leadership in those institutions has to kind of set the tone and set the pace for how we address those issues. And one of the great things about the program that we've gotten involved with is the Judiciary and the Bar Association and the History Center. It's a leadership within the judiciary, our Chief Justice. We've kind of really just taken the lead and we need to see that coming out in our institutions. We're seeing it now on the national level where someone has to step forward and say, this is the standard. This is what we're going to be pursuing, whether it's in the area of science, paying attention to the science for COVID, paying attention to the racial disparities when it comes to the distribution of health procedures for disadvantaged communities. When it comes to racial equity, then there has to be this leadership that takes us to that place where our communities feel engaged, feel that what they're doing is going to be effective. And that they can connect with one another. So, I mean, at least when a part of that program is well, we're going to be coming up in a few weeks talking about implicit bias and what that looks like and how we do that and how we can get people to recognize that and how that then impacts how we interact. So, it's important to have leadership that understands the importance and the necessities of these states as well as the community input that's going in. And it also includes involving our young people and making certain that they see us and understand what's taking place so they can step up as well. Elise talked about the Black Lives Matter and white experience. The beauty of that was that it was done by young people. And it was just a step. They took the lead in that and that was just, it was very hard. And I apologize. We have a fewer question and I don't want to get off this track. I want to come back to it. The viewer question on a different track is, historically, Gerald Ford pardoned Richard Nixon saying that he felt it was necessary in order to try to unite the country at a divisive time. There are people now who are claiming that impeaching former President Trump will only divide the country. What are those people need to hear and understand? I don't know if there's anything we can say to help them understand. I feel like it's maybe or maybe we're speaking to the rest of the populace who is open, but I just think that there needs, what I've heard from the impeachment team is there needs to be accountability before you can unite. Exactly. Exactly. We know that in our families, don't we? Is that people have to take responsibility for the acts that they've done and it helps you to feel respected and appreciated once they acknowledge what they've done. That's how you move forward with individuals, I believe. And what you've just pointed out is absolutely critically important to both personal and civic responsibility. How can we claim to be models or to have a leadership model for our children, for those who follow? If those in power can abuse it in that way, that destructive with that divisibility, that harmfully. We've now seen how close they came to Vice President Pence, how close they came to Speaker of the House Pelosi, how vicious and dangerous the stated, yelled intentions of those people were, how many months they put into it, how much money had gone into it, how much work and communications and how aware of it, the forces that might have been able to thwart them were and the leadership of those forces essentially blocked them from acting. They were not prepared, they did not respond and they called for help and they didn't get it until it was too late. I think that those principles that, you know, Eric had talked about, go feed in right there on the will to forgetting, remembering prevention. If we just let it pass, people are not going to remember it and they're going to, not only that, we won't learn all the details. We need to come have a reckoning of what actually happened, how dangerous it is and then figure out where we go from there in terms of not just security prevention, but how do you bring people along? I have a sense that there've been some studies done on what the profile of the insurrectionists were. Seems to be a lot of sense of, you know, maybe if not entitlement, that they didn't get what they expected, economic dislocation.  You know, that's true.  You just don't get to do this and walk away.  That's it. Well, no, there's a consequence. Your apology is accepted, but if you understand now what you've done, that it is wrong, but there is a consequence. And that has to be addressed as equally as well as your acknowledgement. So now you can take your, you know, your apology and the consequence, the sentence that goes along with it. And when that is completed, then you begin this new life, this new perspective. You've got to serve jail time.  But there has to be, you know, we don't let criminals just walk in and say, oh, I'm sorry, I need to do that.  No, no, you know. So is what we're talking about here, not just accountability, but prevention, protection? Absolutely, yeah, back to that. We know, we know this person and this group of supporters has told us they will be back.  They will be more strategic with plan. They will be more funded and resourced and they'll be more dangerous because they'll be more committed. But we also know, we also know more about some of the issues that affect what run in that place.  But at the same time, we also have as a society need to maybe understand and address the issues that are raised by this interaction as well. I mean, we certainly, we're beginning to address our marginalized communities. We're beginning to address the diversity that needs to be addressed. Inclusion, we're needing to address that. And that is happening. But we need to also maybe look and see, what are we saying to this group as well that makes them feel that there's nothing to accept burning down? And that's just, that's not it either. So let me ask you folks a question. If the leadership and the dominant factors in that attack group, the invasion group were black, they wouldn't be dead. They wouldn't be in the capital. Our history says that Sandra is correct. You know what has happened? When any group of African-Americans raised up, they were hung, all kinds of things happened to them. But these were establishment people in many, many ways. They served in our military. They served also in law enforcement in some ways. There's an attorney that was there. These were people who were part of the society. But I just have to tell you one thing. I just wish I could figure out a way how to send them down to Mar-a-Lago to stay for a while. I think that, I don't think they would be very welcome there because their leader did not see them. I believe as real individuals that we would respect. That's what I find. It's his lack of respect. I heard he was a germaphobe, but I'm also mindful of the fact that he didn't think very much of the people who followed him. Okay, so as we go to our last couple of minutes here, let me ask a harder question. If Trump were not an old, purportedly rich, white American with the evangelical, rural, undereducated support that he had, how would he be treated differently? Is there a racial and class component to this? Is he getting protected because he is the member of a sector that has been protected by the intentionally unequal advocates in this country for hundreds of years? Is that where the protection is really coming from? Look at who it is. But he's not, I'm not sure, you know, because he's not them either, not really. He's not. He's not the people who he leads on the one hand. And on the other hand, I think our Congress persons, and if I'm hearing what you, I think some of the senators are afraid of the violence that those people will do again to him. That's what I'm thinking here. I think when Sandra talked about how you have to bring people to some kind of first restitution or recognition and getting them to move on through education, I'm not sure it's all because he's a white male. He raised up some of that. But there are lots of facets to this right now. And we have to figure it out. Yeah, not just one facet. So we're out of time for today, but that's a great place to leave off. Let's come back. And in the meantime, the next two weeks, let's think about what do we most need to learn from this for ourselves, for our children, for their protection, for their welfare, for their humanity. Thank you all. Thank you. It's been a really, really good. Thank you. Thank you all. Thank you. And goodbye to those who listened in, yes. Yeah, come back in two weeks.


One thing that I do really enjoy about being down here is people really do care about sports. The passion that I've seen from these fans is just, it doesn't compare to many other places. My name's Nick Caprio. I'm a kinesiology major, I'm a junior from Marsville, Massachusetts.  I actually played baseball with a kid who came down here and one of my good friends from back home, she came here and she told me to tour it and I toured it and I just fell in love. I was just blown away by the beauty, just the architecture. It was, it just blew my mind. I'm kinesiology, I'm also pre-med right now. You know, I fell in love with the gym in high school and I just wanted to learn more about anatomy, muscles, just how everything works. So I'm looking to go to med school, football, it's awesome. I mean, it's really just heaven on earth. Just getting to interact with the guys as they go by at the end of the game, it's awesome. But sometimes it's like, man, like that's Bryce Young, like everybody in the world knows who he is, but then you see him and it's like, oh, he's just a student. I mean, the decision on Alabama was the best decision I ever made. Like I really found a home here, like I feel at home, I'm probably going to live down here.


Yeah, prayer is a very interesting topic because you might say a synonym or a word that means the same thing as prayer is desire. So whenever you have a desire for anything, that is the prayer of your heart. And what we're really trying to do, and this is more on the line with where Armel was taking you and talking, is that if you think of like the core of your heart as like the desire or like the altar, the altar, like temples have altars, whether it's a Jewish or Christian or Buddhist or whatever, that ultimately what you want to do is you want to clean the altar. You want to clear the altar of every desire for idols and then leave the altar empty because that's kind of a way of saying, just you God, nothing else but you, you know, kind of like in the Bible, you know, it's like love the Lord that God with all their heart, soul and might, and hold no graven images before God, and it's in all different traditions and spiritualities about really having peace or love and God at the core and then letting go of everything else. Now when the mind falls asleep and believes in the ego, it can't help but pray for idols because coming to earth means that there's a desire in the mind for idols. Nobody comes here with no desires, they wouldn't come here, that's no need to leave Nirvana or leave heaven if you just are one and you know who you are, but the mind falling asleep and dreaming of a world of separation. So you're going to have, there's going to be desires there, there's going to be prayers and you might think of the return back to that pristine state as kind of like a ladder of prayer and so the most important thing about prayer is, is don't try to skip over any steps so if you heard your whole look complete and perfect, you have no needs, all you have to do is accept your completion, your perfection and your mind goes, I don't get it, that's because there are steps that you will go through to get it, you know, to experience it and the most important thing is looking at really the purpose or the motivation, God knows the prayer of the heart before a word is spoken and while the ego is still in the unconscious mind, you cannot help but pray for things for specific for people, you know, it's quite common, you know, pray for my mother, I pray for my mother's physical and psychological health or I pray that I have a safe trip on my travels here or so on and so forth, but you do notice as you go higher up the ladder that whenever you're praying for specifics, you're still praying for the past to be repeated in some way that you think is good or better and the prayer is still getting lifted up towards that, you know, let me accept myself as God created me, as pure love, that's the highest prayer is let me know myself as I truly am as you created me, there can be no higher prayer than that but it will just be a very much like our one-on-one the other day, I said, oh you'll just be taken and carried and carried and your prayers will go higher and higher and higher and higher because that's the natural movement of all those prayers to go up there and then we we could say that the final prayer is more just again a prayer of acceptance, let me accept myself exactly as I am exactly as you created me, but you can't skip over all the others, you know, it just short circuits the whole thing, you know, to just say the words without having it be truly where your heart's desire is, you know, it's kind of just trying to leapfrog and so you have to, you know, be practical, you're a natural prayer so up the ladder you go, I'll see you there and I'm with you every step of the way as well too.