It's one o'clock on a Monday afternoon, so you must be watching Think Tech Hawaii Research in Manila. I'm your host, Pete McGinnis-Mark, and every week we bring you updates on some interesting research which has been done in the Hawai'i Institute of Geophysics and Planetology. And unfortunately, this is my last show for a few months because I've got a teach next semester, but I thought it was a really good idea to actually bring in, as our final guest of the year, Dr. Robert Wright, who is the Interim Director of HIGP, to sort of explain to us some more overview kind of topics as well as fill in some of the missing gaps which we haven't had in the last few months. So, Rob, welcome to Think Tech Hawaii. It's a pleasure to have you here. You're my boss, so I have to defer to you on a number of things. But let me just start the discussion. We know that there's the Geology and Geophysics Department at the University. Explain to us what is the difference between HIGP and the Geology Department. So historically, many professors in the current Geology and Geophysics Department had split appointments with the Institute of Geophysics back in the day, 10, 20, 30, 40 years ago. Two things. First of all, HIGP does a lot more planetary science. So the P part of HIGP kind of spanned off from a planetary science group, which had its origins kind of up in Manoa, the Institute for Astronomy back in the 80s, moved down to the Sinclair Basement. And then the P part of HIGP joined with the G part of HIGP was born. So HIGP has a much stronger planetary science focus. Strictly Geology and Geophysics is an instructional department, whereas HIGP is an organized research unit. The consequence of this is twofold in terms of how we function maybe differently. So Geology and Geophysics is an instructional unit. HIGP, most of our faculty of research faculty, now nobody in HIGP receives more than three quarters of their salary from the university. We have 41 faculty, almost all of them have to find one quarter of their annual salary from external grants and contracts. Many of the faculty get no support for us. We've had many of our guests over the last few months. They seem like geologists to me. Is that somewhat different? Is there a special theme that underlines the kind of research which Institute does? So our focus on planetary science in particular has led us to more in the direction of developing our own technology to make the measurements that we use to do science. So if you're studying the planets, it's very hard to go out and collect rocks. What you have to do is design instruments, which will go on spacecraft, which will be launched into space, which will go into orbit around a planet, and then make measurements of the chemistry of the atmosphere, the chemistry of the rocks and minerals of the planet's surface. So much of our research is in technology development. NASA funds, NASA has several different programs across the terrestrial and planetary sciences aimed at developing prototype instruments which might one day make into space.  Now most of NASA's, most of the things that NASA launches into the solar system are designed to do one thing, and that's to measure the chemistry of things without touching them. If you can do that, you can work out an awful lot about the history of a planet and its current state. And you mentioned NASA. Is that the primary funding source for the institute, or do you get people getting like National Science Foundation or other kinds of all? So our primary funding is from NASA. But many of the things that we do for NASA also have rollovers and application which other sponsors are interested in. So for example, if you're making a device which measures the chemistry of the gas, gas is in the Martian atmosphere for example. There are lots of applications on Earth where people are interested in measuring gases in the atmosphere. So we also get Department of Defense money, not for developing weapons but for strategic awareness. There are many applications where it's useful to know if there's an explosive which is giving off some kind of vapor. Right, because Margo Edwards has been on the show in the past and she talked about underwater technique. Is that something the institute is still working on? One of our faculty, Anna Pam Miser, is currently developing a laser-based instrument which can detect targets of interest through a length of water. Most of what we do is, I mean, I have research projects funded to measure volcanic gases coming out of Kilauea Volcano. I'd say Anna Pam and Shiv Sharma are the only people who are currently making instruments which use light passed through the water column to work out the chemistry of targets that are submerged. Okay, so it's technology development as well as just making scientific measurements? Yeah, I mean the technology development is important. I mean, I said earlier, most of NASA's instruments measure the chemistry of things without touching them but there are many ways to skin a cat and the key is making instruments which make the science measurement scientists need with more accuracy and precision but at the same time making them smaller and smaller and more power efficient such that they don't cost as much to launch. Okay. And how long has the institute been in existence? So the institute was established in 1959 and... Before the space program, presumably, we weren't getting... Yeah, I mean, I assume it was on the books a period of time. So, I mean, it's not just HLGP doesn't just do planetary science, I mean the G-part of HLGP is focused on terrestrial geophysics and geology but then also one of our main roles and the reasons for our existence is to provide service to the state in matters of the geophysics of Hawaii. So this is... Yeah, we've had Brett Butler previously talking about tsunamis. I think Gerard Fryer was here a couple of months ago talking about tsunamis as well. Is that the kind of role that HLGP plays? Tsunamis is a focus. So another faculty member, James Foster, was in the news within the last couple of years because he developed a system for using GPS receivers on cargo ships to measure the height of ocean waves that maybe provide an early warning tsunami, a tsunami warning system. So tsunamis is a big focus. We also have... We've recently made two joint hires with the Water Resources Center associated with an NSF-funded project called the IQI project, which is basically aimed at discovering, if you like, new resources or better managing the resources of drinking water in the state of Hawaii, which is really important to the people of Hawaii. And again, Nicole Loutse was on the show early this year. We had Niels Grobe last week. So IQI is part of the HLGP effort or their faculty members involved in this kind of effort. Yeah, and we also have two other faculty members, Jenny Engels and Barbara Bruno, who are working more on the educational aspects of trying to get students from underrepresented groups involved in science via the IQI project. So would you count this sort of thing as service to the state, or is it outreach to the broader community? How does this differ from what the Geology and Geophysics Department is doing on instruction? Well, I mean, the GNG department do an awful lot of their research. It's also a service to the state. Now, our instructional role is reduced compared to the Geology and Geophysics Department. But as I said earlier, the way we make up for that is by getting more research funding. Service to the state, certainly some of the things we do are obvious that they're relevant to the state. Other things are less obvious. But the grants that we get into study stardust, for example. Hopefully she was on... Yeah, so Hope, Gary, Sasha, Croft, Gary Huss. So the relevance to the state of those things might not be particularly obvious, but they are relevant because all of the NASA grant money that they get to fund those projects is an influx of money into the state of Hawaii, into the Hawaiian economy, which wouldn't come here if they didn't get that money. Secondly, it establishes HIGP as a world leader in those fields, as well as my chemistry. Thirdly, we graduate a good number of graduate students who go on to become leaders in the space industry and the space sector themselves. So, for example, one of your former students is now the principal investigator of a... Mark Robinson, for example, in the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter. Yeah, we're well known for it and we train them well and they go on and get a good job. Can you put some numbers behind this? Do you say there's, like, just about 40 faculty? In general terms, what's the annual budget? So last year we raised about $8 million in external grants and contracts, primarily from NASA, DOE, Department of Energy, so Don Thomas does geothermal work, as does Nicole Lant. And we probably... We're about a three-to-one multiplier in terms of the funding that the state give us when we go out and get... Historically, we've always gone out and get three of the dollars from NASA. So the state might provide two, two and a half million in salaries? About three. About three, and so you raise eight. So it's a pretty good return on the investment, isn't it? Yeah, yeah, I think it is. I mean, I don't know where else you would get, you know, on an annual basis. I mean, it's been like that for a decade. Certainly not my mutual fund, that's probably that way. And he may have offered it. We all know where he is now, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so we've been in existence since 1959. We've got a number of faculty members that have continued to do this huge range of research interests. Over the last few months, we've had a great diversity of faculty coming in and some of the students sort of things. So, you know, is this typical at the university at Manoa, or is this kind of unusual? I think research intensive departments are not unusual at universities on the mainland. I mean, they're not the norm. I mean, you know, universities are primarily places where things are discovered and new knowledge is created that those discoveries and that knowledge is disseminated to the world. And we also train young minds. I mean, that's the focus of a university, right? Now, any university will have research specialisms in which they're particularly competitive for raising extramural grants and contracts. Now, in those departments, and this is true on the mainland as it is anywhere, in those departments, the faculty will have a lighter instructional administrative load because they're expected to go in and raise the external dollar. And H-H-E-P is part of World of Ocean, Earth, Science and Technology, correct? So who does the faculty actually collaborate with? Is it just internal to H-H-E-P, or do they have collaborations across campus? So, there are collaborations within SOAS, within issues to SOAS, but also at the scale of the wider university and increasingly so. So recently, Hopi Shi'i, who's a cosmochemist, was part of a group which was funded by the Manoa Vice Chancellor for Research to develop a center of excellence or an instructional center of excellence for material science. So we have a transmission electron microscope in the basement which can image individual atom. Now, geologists might use that to study interplanetary dust particles. But people who are interested in building and developing ultra-hard materials which have industrial and other kind of applications are also interested in making the same measurements. So Hopi is working with a group from the Natural Energy Institute which is in our basement and also physics and chemistry to try and pool our intellectual resources to take this asset and make it more productive at the scale of the campus. And also when we had Carolyn Kaplan on the show, the kind of kit she's using, she had this huge, huge iron micropobe. It seemed to me as if that's, you know, is it unique or are there many of them at other universities? Does HIGP have sort of this specialized equipment in various disciplines? So the micropobe is not unique, but they are by no means common. Okay. I would imagine so. It's quite expensive. That was a very expensive piece of kit, which was, again, I mean, the university had to pay some towards it, but it was funded to a larger extent by the Keck Foundation, as well as by NASA. The Transmission Electron Microscope, the university invested in that facility. But it was also a large investment on the part of NASA. Now, NASA invests in us because we're good at what we do. But NASA, you know, NASA and Keck don't just go around handing out millions of dollars to any old department, any old university. So, yeah, we do have quite a lot of specialized equipment. And as I said, if it doesn't exist, then our faculty have a good track record of building it themselves. Okay. And one of the other items which I've been impressed by is that there's a group called the Hawaii Space Flight Lab, which also has pretty unusual facilities in the basement of the school's building, correct? Yeah. So the Space Flight Lab kind of started in 2006, was kind of when it was first established. And then two years ago, launched its own rocket from PMRF over in Kauai. The Pacific Missile Range. Using a launch vehicle that, the design of which was led by Luke Flynn and his team, H-A-G-P. They installed the launch pad on PMRF. They shipped over the rail launcher. They had a spacecraft built in the post-building on the Manoa campus in H-A-G-P. So that project is a collaboration with the Department of Engineering as well, College of Engineering. So, you know, to almost backtrack to your earlier question, we don't just live in isolation. A lot of the things we do, we can collaborate with physics, we can collaborate with engineering, the Ikiwai project. I mean, as you know, there are collaborations there with economics. Yes. And Nicole and Neil's have been telling us in previous episodes some of the innovation. Yeah, yeah. So we don't exist in isolation. HSFL is, I mean, that's... No other university has launched its own rocket. Now, the rocket failed after a minute or half. I guess one thing people don't understand is, the first time you launch a rocket, it always fails. The first one always fails. Well, I'm going to have to stop you here because we're getting ready for a break. But when we come back, I'd like to get some perspective on where might the institute be going and what is track record in the past been. So let me just remind the viewers, you are watching Think Tech Hawaii Research in Mana. I'm your host, Pete McGinnis-Mark, and my guest today is my boss, Rob Wright, who is the interim director of HIGP. And we'll be back in about a minute. We'll see you then. I just walked by and I said, what's happening, guys? They told me they were making music. That's my life. I love music. I saw a dude.  So far up in the confusion. Nothing is making sense. There's got to be solutions. How to make a brighter... Welcome back to Think Tech Hawaii Research in Mana. I'm your host, Pete McGinnis-Mark, and my guest today is interim HIGP director, Rob Wright. Welcome back again, Rob. I guess one of the signs of a successful research group at any university is the quality of the students that graduate. Can you just give us some idea of, we've had Casey Hannibal on. We've had Bill Barney on. They seem to be really tough flight. How would you gauge HIGP compared to some of the other national programs? Well, HIGP, we have good faculty who train good students. They do interesting things. They learn a lot with us. Quite often, what they learn straddles the disciplines of science and engineering, which makes them employable in a whole different range of fields. Getting high-profile jobs, doing what they were trained to do, is a sign of a job well. So where do they go once they leave UH? So from people we've graduated in the last 10 years, we have at least two who are now working over at Johns Hopkins in the Applied Physics Lab, involved at high levels in various NASA planetary mission. Only recently, one of our postdocs, David Trang, was selected by NASA to be on the OSIRIS-REx science data analysis team. So OSIRIS-REx launched next year, will return material from... And that's the space mission, right? Yeah, so it's gonna be launched next year, will return samples back to Earth from an asteroid. David's been selected on the team to analyze that material. I mean, that's a big deal. Not much is gonna come back, and that's people looking at it. When he came on the show in the fall of this year, he was just hoping to be selected. So this is a new discovery? He's one of a relatively small handful of people that were selected to be able to look at that material. Yeah, one of my former postdocs who graduated with Paul Lucy and H.I.G.P. Sarah Kreitz, she's now working at the Japanese Space Agency over near Tokyo, and she's involved in all sorts of Japanese space mission.  We mentioned Mark Robertson earlier, but there's been a whole bunch of people who've fluxed through H.I.G.P. But Bob Brown, who built a camera that went into orbit on Cassini around Saturn, for example, Lucie McFadden, Beth Barg, they're all... Fraser, Finale, Tom McCall. So does this mean that most of H.I.G.P. students, when they graduate, continue their research, or do they go into teaching, or do they disappear into industry and make lots of money? I mean, some go into industry. Academia is a broad-based pyramid with a narrow tip, right? So there are more MS students than there are PhD spots. There are more PhD graduates than there are postdocs, there are more postdocs than there are faculty. So not everybody can end up doing what we train them to do, but what we train them to do is applicable to many other things than simply studying tsunamis or studying the chemistry of the surface of Mercury. So they learn, they can all program when they come out. They're all very new. I was amazed when Casey Hannibal was on the show. Her diverse range of experience, she was flying this balloon in Antarctica, looking at microwave, telescope, and then she's trying to be an astronaut. Things like that. Yeah, well, I guess our contacts open up avenues for our graduate students. Yeah. Because of the esteem with which the H.I.G. program is held, we get a lot of funding from NASA. We collaborate with a lot of people from top universities on the mainland, and that opens up opportunities for our graduate students. So in the past, they've been highly successful, but where do you see the future going? Is it with planetary missions? President Trump says we go back to the moon, for example. Or is it more of the direct service to the state? I mean, I think both. I mean, NASA's not going to go away. The aspects of our planetary science or terrestrial science research, I mean, I primarily use satellites not to study the planets, to study the Earth, to study volcanoes on Earth. The research that we do is funded, and I don't see any reason why it's not going to be funded in the future. NASA is well funded. The DOD and the DOE are well funded. So I see us continuing in those areas. David's selection just proves that there's a demand, that his skills aren't necessarily acquired for another five years, but he's funded by NASA now. In terms of service to the state, the state is going to face an increasing number of environmental challenges. Now, the Ikea-Wi project's a prime example. I mean, deserts are not deserted because they're hot. They're deserted because there's no drinkable water or usable water. Now, we're surrounded by water. Unfortunately, we can't use it for anything unless we try and take the salt out, which requires a catastrophic amount of power. So finding new drinking water resources is essential to the state of Hawaii. Linked with the drinking water waste or the groundwater question is the geothermal energy question. Now, you know, Hawaii is a... We import a lot of oil. We use a lot of non-renewable. It's expensive, as everybody knows. We hear on the news every morning how much gas you're going to try and fill at the car. You know, Don Thomas over on the Big Island has had a long history in looking for geothermal energy resources. For no... Not for a sinister reason, just because it'd be nice if we'd generate more of our energy locally. It covers the base load as the state's trying to become 100% renewable by 2050. And it's a job creator. Yeah. It's a win-win. Now, you have to be sensitive to how you do it, but it's not. It's somewhat noble. And, of course, one of the other themes running through this program over the last few months has been the impacts of climate change. Water is one issue. Are there any other climate change-related activities, like sea-level rise or coral reef? Certainly in Seawist and certainly within the wider university. Sea-level rise... There's a large sea-level rise group in the Department of Geology and Geophysics. Yeah, Matt Barrett became non-rude. Yeah, yeah. I'd say in HLGP, we... I mean, we have an affiliate faculty member who uses satellites to study the urban heat island effect, so the warming of cities during the day by virtue of the excess energy that they produce, which is bad for the human health. But we... I'd say our service to the state environmentally is largely with the water resource questionals, geothermal energy... Geothermal and earthquakes... So, the geophysical environment would be the earthquakes... The geophysical environment. And then we've got upcoming... Back to the financial side, we've got upcoming missions, I believe, of agents, Shivshama and Anupam Mishwa. They're engaged in this new fantastic mission to Mars in three years' time. Yeah, so we've always had people on NASA's science team. You know, NASA, when they're planning a mission, they ask people's opinion on what it should do. Once the mission is launched, they ask for scientists to bid competitively to be funded to analyze the data. So we've always had a mixture of people on science teams in various guises. Sarah is basically going to be a roaming geologist on Mars. So, Sarah, they have just a regular kind of camera on the Mars 2020 mission. Now, a field geologist, a traditional field geologist, would wander around with a lens and their notebook, and they'd look at rocks and they'd make notes and they'd get the microscope and look up close. Sarah's job is going to be to try and be a virtual geologist on Mars using this hand-lens image. And I should point out that the PI on that experiment is another one of our former grad students, right, Jim Bell, out in the state. Now, Shiv and Anupam are doing something quite different. They're not looking at the texture or the position of rocks and whether the rocks are layered. They're part of a team that's building an instrument to measure the chemistry of rocks using a technique that they've been working on for a long time and they've, through their brain power, they've managed to work out a way of making it make precise measurements from a very small package that can go on a planetary rover. So it sounds as if the best tones for HAGPO in the future, correct? I think so. By virtue of how successful we've been in the past. I mean, we are like building on previous experience. Yeah, we're trusted to do well. We're trusted to succeed on projects that people fund us to do. Well, this is your institute. And let me just say, as the host of Think Take over the last six months, it's been a great pleasure to have many of your faculty and your students come and be on the show because it's really been exciting, actually learning a lot about the kind of research which they're doing, as well as the value to the state, not only in terms of direct relevance, but also the economic drivers. So thank you again, Rob. I'm afraid we're running out of time. Thank you, Pete. So let me just remind the viewers, you have been watching Think Tech Hawaii Research in Minnaa. I bring you host Pete McGinnis-Mark. And as I said at the beginning of the show, this is my last show for probably about six months. I actually have to go and teach one of the classes for Rob. We hope to have a new guest host coming in the new year, but until we return, probably in the summer, thank you for watching and continue to watch Think Tech Hawaii Research in Minnaa. Goodbye for now.


This is Think Tech Hawaii, Community Matters here. Welcome to Voice of the Veteran on Think Tech Live Streaming Network Series, broadcasting from our downtown studio at Pioneer Plaza at the core of downtown Honolulu. I'm your host, Helen Dora Hayden. Joining me in the studio today is Raleigh Alvarado, a Marine Veteran and Veteran's Outreach Program Specialist from the West Oahu Vet Center, and Ron Wisterfeld, an Army Veteran and Outreach Specialist at the Wounded Warrior Project. Gentlemen, thank you for being here. Thanks for having us. Thank you for having us. Yes. Today we're going to talk about vet centers and a little bit about the Wounded Warrior Project and how they help our veterans in the community. Remember that our talk shows are streamed live on the internet from 12 o'clock noon to 5 o'clock p.m. every weekday, and earlier shows are streamed all night long. All our shows are streamed on livestream.com. If you want the links to our live streams or previous broadcasts, which are available on youtube.com, or if you want to subscribe to our programs or get on our mailing list and get our program advisories, go to thinktechhawaii.com. If you want to post a question or a comment during one of our shows, please tweet us at thinktechhi. Raleigh, Ron, thank you both again for being our guests today, and thank you both for your service. Being an Army Veteran, I'm really proud to have this show and have veterans on this show. Thank you. Thank you. I have a little bit of knowledge about vet centers in the community. So I definitely want to talk to you a little bit about that. My involvement was as a work study in Fairbanks, Freezing, Alaska. And I'm so glad to be here in Hawaii now, of course, but vet centers are a little bit like a jewel that's in the VA system that a lot of veterans and community members don't really understand how they're different from the VA. Can you talk to us a little bit about that, please? Yeah. The Vet Center program is part of the VA, but we are the direct connection to the veterans within the community. So we are community-based, although we're part of the VA, VA doesn't necessarily have access to what we do. We are a separate, we are a program within the VA that provide readjustment counseling services, and it's a range of different services that we do. Yeah. A little bit about the confidentiality. So the records that the Vet Center holds for the veterans are not shared with the VA. Is that correct? Correct. So again, we're strictly separated in that way also. So records are maintained at vet centers, even from one vet center to another. We're still, we have no access to those records. And a lot of the employees are combat vets themselves, so they can help with readjustment issues.  Is that correct? Correct. Correct. So the Vet Center's, again, what we do is provide services to veterans that have served in a combat zone, but it's not limited to that, again, as you mentioned. Military sexual trauma is another eligibility side of the Vet Center where we do provide confidential services to those that have experience, no, they're assault or sexual assault. One thing that I enjoy about the Vet Center is that you have extended hours and weekend services for eligible veterans. Can you talk a little bit about that? Yes. So we are mandated to be open during non-traditional hours. And that has to do with access. And one of the biggest issues for a lot of veterans is access, right? So a lot of veterans are working, they're going to school. And so we want to meet the veterans where they're at. And so the Vet Center does provide non-traditional hours. So for instance, the Vet Center I work at today, we were open from eight to we're open until eight today. That's right. So stuff like that, each Vet Center is going to have different hours according to the staff that are there, the team that are there. So it's going to differ from one Vet Center to another. But there's going to be non-traditional hours for those veterans that cannot make it during the traditional hours. The other thing that I really learned in my work study was that you, the Vet Centers also work with family members of veterans. It's a little bit different, it's non-traditional. A lot of times veterans come back and there's issues at the home, right? And so you guys have a much more holistic approach for the whole family. And I think that's an amazing concept that you don't see a lot at the main VA, is they target mostly the veterans. And if they have space, they might do some couples counseling here and there. But overall, it's the primary concern of the veteran. But the Vet Center, it's much more the whole family picture dynamic. Yeah, correct. So you realize that the veterans transition into the community does not only include the veteran itself or herself, but it includes the family members, right?  So we want to make sure that we bring in the family members, especially the significant other or boyfriend, girlfriend, spouse of the veteran or service member, right? Because we will offer services to active duty service members. And so we bring in their family so that we can help in that transition. Because we do know that there are some issues that comes up. Absolutely. And as an outreach program specialist, tell me a little bit. I've seen the mobile van, the mobile office, the big monster truck. It's amazing. And I have been inside of it and thought, wow, this is great. And you guys go all over the island, I'm sure, to do outreach and education for the communities. Talk to me a little bit about that. So yeah, so the mobile vet center, across the United States, there's about 70 of those. The one here assigned to the state of Hawaii, we've been able to take it not only here on Oahu, but actually go out to other islands. So we used to go out to deploy to Big Island, Maui, and Kauai. And thanks to the partnerships within the community with the vet center, that we were able to do that. But yes, we do the education. So we provide information and education to all veterans, not necessarily just those veterans that may be qualified or eligible for the vet center services. But we help all the veterans and meet them where they're at. So we don't turn them away. If there's anything we can do, we'll go ahead and provide basic information or help them in the process of maybe starting the process within the VA. So yeah, a lot of my job is really connecting with the community, the veterans community, and anybody else that has a stake in terms of the veterans transition into the community. Yeah, well, what you do is amazing. And we absolutely appreciate what you do for the community and for the veterans. Because a lot of times, it's hard to get to Honolulu, fight traffic, fight parking, fight everything and trivlar, not saying anything bad. But so it's nice that you guys have an outreach program like that.  Thank you for being here with the Wounded Warriors. Thanks for having me today. Yeah, absolutely excited that you came. And we're very excited because we're only gonna give you a snippet of Ron today because in two weeks on the next show, we're having him back as the Wounded Warrior and his whole team will be here with him. So I'm looking forward to that episode. Don't miss that episode. But Ron, tell me a little bit about your outreach and what you do a little bit different than what Raleigh does here. So my outreach with Wounded Warrior Project is we're kind of designed. I like to use the phrase, get them out and about and off the couch. So we deal with OIF, OEF veterans. So that's the veteran serving on or after September 11th, 2001. And our programs are kind of designed to spark an interest. So as the outreach coordinator, I'll take them out, scuba diving, horseback riding, dinners, movies, stuff like that. And it's to get them away from that everyday monotony of life or what might be bothering them. So taking them out, scuba diving, it might spark that interest. And instead of sitting at home drinking or bothering the wife or loved ones. They find a passion, a reason to change the lifestyle that they are currently in. And hooking up with other Wounded Warriors too for the camaraderie shift that they. Once we get out of the military, we kind of lose that connection with our fellow soldiers. And so having Wounded Warriors, they afford them to reconnect with people that are going through the same issues that they're going through. When I got out, I got involved in DAV. That was my organization, but I got out in 1990, shh, and so, that's all I am. But to have Wounded Warriors here for these transitioning veterans now, it's just phenomenal. I've been following Wounded Warriors since its inception, and the program is amazing in what they do, all the different services. Could you highlight a couple of the different services your organization offers? So we do have Warriors to Work out here. So that one is Fitha Dahana-Ellis. She's our Warriors to Work specialist. And she helps with job placement, interview preparations, and finding gameful employment for the Warriors. So it's not just trying to find something like a McDonald's or something, but actually find that career for them. And then we have Ralphie Alperis. He does our benefits out here. So he helps with disability claims. If you want an increase or you don't agree with the rating that you got from the VA, he can help advocate for. And he's over at the E-Wing, correct? Correct, so he works out of Tripler E-Wing. Yep, by appointment, yep. And we'll get his information later in two weeks. Everybody can have his information to reach out to him. He'll love us for that. He's an amazing service officer. Our families utilized him in the past, and he's just, he's one of those guys that really takes the time to get to know the service members' record, get to know the service member, their family. He takes the time to answer questions. And you never feel rushed with Rafael. He's always there just to be helpful and impart knowledge. He's been a great addition to the bus here at Win the Warrior Project. Yeah, absolutely. So can you gentlemen tell me anything that you'd like any veteran or veteran family member out there in community know about your organization? Let's start with you, Raleigh. Something that they would like to know me. Yeah. Know that, so the veterans are, again, are community officers. And so, and we're not, we're not there to disqualify anybody. We're there to help. So again, we don't turn away anybody. We have individual counseling and group counseling. And we also have, you know, family couples counseling, right? So those are important. And again, it's not, we're not limited to just veterans. We're, we have services, or we offer our services to active duty service members and their families. So, and so the two vets are, they're here in Oahu, is the West Oahu Vet Center and Honolulu Vet Center. We are on Facebook. So there's, it was Search Vet Center, VA Vet Center on Facebook. We're there. We are, we have a national combat call center. So, yeah. We have all that information at the end. We can talk about that a little bit. Ron, if you hold that thought for a minute, we've got to go to break, short break, and we'll be right back and we'll talk about Wounded Warriors again. Okay, we're taking a short break. I'm Helen Dora-Heiden. This is Voice of the Veteran on ThinkTech Live Streaming Network Series. We're talking with Raleigh Alvarado, Veterans Outreach Program Specialist from the West Oahu Vet Center. And Ron, oh, I had new at Butcher's last name. Westerfeld from the Wounded Warrior Project. We'll be right back in a minute, so stay tuned for more of the story. This is ThinkTech Hawaii, raising public awareness. When I was growing up, I was among the one in six American kids who struggled with hunger and hungry mornings make tired days. Grumpy days. That kind of days. But with the power of breakfast, the kids in your neighborhood can think big and be more. When we're not hungry for breakfast, we're hungry for more. More ideas. More dreams.  When kids aren't hungry for breakfast, they can be hungry for more.  Aloha, I want to invite all of you to talk story with John Wahee every other Monday here at ThinkTech Hawaii. And we have special guests like Professor Colin Moore from the University of Hawaii, who joins us from time to time to talk about the political happenings in this state. Please join us every other Monday. Aloha. We're back. We're live. I'm Helen Dora Haydn and this is Voice of the Veteran on ThinkTech live streaming network series with Raleigh Alvarado Veterans Outreach program specialist from the West Oahu Veterans Center and Ron Wisterfield, Army Veteran and Outreach Specialist at the Wounded Warrior Project. Talking about vet centers and Wounded Warrior Project and how they can help veterans in our community. So we left off talking about what the community needs to know about these programs. So Ron, I believe it's your turn to tell us what you want the community to know exactly about the Wounded Warriors. I think for Wounded Warrior Project, what I'd like the community to know is we're here for you and we just don't serve under just under the programs here in Hawaii. We do have over or have 20 free programs that we utilize to help veterans transition and also part of that transition is actually getting into the community. So we also do community service projects as well. So that way it's veterans giving back to the community that they live in. I know you both are very active in the community and doing outreach. Tell me a little bit about the other different organizations you guys are involved in now. We talked a little bit outside before the show started. I'm very excited to learn about some of those. Go ahead, Ron. So I think I'll let Raleigh cover some of them but some of them that we're involved in are AccessSurf. So we do partner up with AccessSurf and they can get out veterans or veterans and their family members out on a surf board or out in the water regardless of the injury. And it's kind of a therapeutic experience and then also partner with some smaller organizations like HOH 808. They help with park cleanups and then the mission continues. Yep, I got to meet the mission continues at the Thanksgiving event at the Vet Center at Salt Lake. And that was an amazing event. Lots of people, lots of food. I won a prize, but you know. And I didn't know what to do for Thanksgiving. Normally I do service work for Thanksgiving, giving back and this year we just sat around and talked about it and we said, let's go, if they're gonna go through the effort of putting this on for us, we should attend. And that's how I feel about these events for veterans. If organizations are willing to step up and do these programs for us, the least we could do is veterans is attend the events. And there's so much going on in the state of Hawaii for veterans. This is a very veteran friendly, very veteran rich state. So Raleigh, tell us a little bit about what you're involved with. So being in the Vet Center kind of definite with the Vet Center, we're kind of connected or not kind of are connected to different organizations within the community and that's how we operate and that's how we help veterans transition, right? So getting involved with Winter Warrior Project, Ron mentioned Mission Continues, Accessor, Team RobeCon, you got Team Red, Red, and Blue. These organizations that are free to join for veterans and their families that has a lot of different projects within the community, volunteer project. And as you mentioned, as veterans, the least we can do is go and participate and make a difference in the community. So yeah, the Vet Center is, I call the Vet Center at least where how I see it is because we're connected to different organizations. If the veteran needs assistance in the VA healthcare, where they're to educate the veteran, we can get them connected with the VA. The benefit side of the VA, we partner with or work with Winter Warrior Project to get the benefit side going or other organizations, the VAV, the state of Hawaii. So just all these organizations that we're connected with, we can help veterans and kind of get them to where they need to be. Absolutely, because the name of the game, right, at the end of the day is getting veterans connected because we all are very much aware, unfortunately, of the number 22.  We lose 22 veterans a day, right, to suicide. And so whatever we can do as a community, as a veteran, one on one even, to reach out to that veteran that may be lonely, that may be disconnected, that may be suffering still, and getting them engaged into anything that would spark their interest to get them outside of themselves, I think, is golden.  So I think it's all of our responsibility to step up and make sure that doesn't happen. And I think if we all work hard, we can make that number go way down, especially here in the state of Hawaii. So I thank you guys both very much for being on the show. And the only last thing I wanted to talk about briefly is Ron, we're gonna invite you and your team back in two weeks and talk about Wounded Warrior more, looking forward to that. Thank you. Yeah, excellent program. And anybody that is a veteran supporter, a veteran, they wanna be on this show, I am open. This is Voice of the Veteran. I'm just here to host you. Contact me, please. I would love to have you on this show. You got your work cut out for me. Absolutely, absolutely. We're gonna have you put down all kinds of projects. We have a lot of community projects happening. I want, you know, prior to the events, if we can backdate it and get you on to promote it all the better. And love to showcase what's happened to these, to all of our veterans in this community and their family. Cause it makes a difference, right? And that's what we're about. So you can contact the Vet Centers on Facebook, like Raleigh was talking about, on www.VetCenters.va.gov, on Facebook with www.facebook.com slash vaVetCenters. Combat Call Centers, really important. 877-warVets,<PHONE_NUMBER>, especially after hours, weekends, and on holidays. And don't forget that there's the Veterans Crisis Line that I can tell you from personal experience, I have used sometimes multiple times a day, depending on my situation. But they are always there. They are always concerned for your health and safety. That is number one issue. And they are always there to listen. And what I have found is at the end of the day, they're always on your side. And they don't know you. So it's, you know, anonymous. So sometimes it's nice just to talk to somebody that you're not connected with, but they can be there to listen and help you out. There are six Vet Centers throughout the great state of Hawaii. Hilo Vet Center in Hilo, Hawaii. Kailua-Kona Vet Center in Kailua-Kona. The Maui Vet Center in Wailuku. Am I saying that right, Raleigh, Wailuku? Great. West Oahu Vet Center in Honolulu off Kapilani Boulevard. And where Raleigh's from? West Oahu Vet Center in Kapilei. There's a, last one is not but least, Kauai Vet Center in Lihua. Lihui. Lihui, Hawaii. Yes, I wish I was local. I can tell you from personal experience that they are there in an effort to better serve the veteran and their family members. Upon request, Vet Centers will provide services after normal work hours and or on the weekends. I just can't thank you enough for your service once again and for the dedication that both of you have chosen careers to continue the mission to help our brothers and sisters, veterans. Thank you both.  Ah, thank you. Thank you for your service as well. Oh, my pleasure. And I know you've done your country great and you continue to serve the veterans' populations. That's amazing. Yeah, we're very fortunate that we have a station that is very veteran pro-active and pro-friendly that we can voice our opinions, we can share with the community the resources that are available to them and all of this will be uploaded into YouTube. So you can share it with all your friends and family and make it a link to the Vet Centers. So, but thank you again. Okay, we're out of time and we'll have to wrap it up. I'm Helen Dora Hayden. This is Voice of the Veteran on ThinkTech's live streaming network series. We've been talking with Raleigh Alvarado, Veterans Outreach Program Specialist from the West Oahu Vet Center and Ron, I'm gonna say it, Wistafels from the Wounded Warrior Project. And we wanna thank them again for their participation in our show today. We are, we just wanna make sure that the community is aware of the services that the Vet Center offers and give you just a little taste of what the Wounded Warrior Project is all about. Don't forget in two weeks to make sure you watch our show again and we will be airing the episode with the Wounded Warrior folks here.


We continue today with Chapter 29, The Antichrist. What is an idol? Do you think you know? For idols are unrecognized as such and never seen for what they really are. That is the only power that they have. Their purpose is obscure, and they are feared and worshiped, both, because you do not know what they are for and why they have been made. An idol is an image of your brother, that you would value more than what he is. Idols are made that he may be replaced, no matter what their form. And it is this that never is perceived and recognized, be it a body or a thing, a place, a situation, or a circumstance, an object owned or wanted, or a right demanded or achieved. It is the same. Let not their form deceive you. Idols are but substitutes for your reality. In some way, you believe they will complete your little self, for safety in a world perceived as dangerous, with forces masked against your confidence and peace of mind. They have the power to supply your lacks and add the value that you do not have. No one believes in idols who has not enslaved himself to littleness and loss, and thus must seek beyond his little self for strength to raise his head and stand apart from all the misery the world reflects. This is the penalty for looking not within for certainty and quiet calm that liberates you from the world and lets you stand apart in quiet and in peace. An idol is a false impression or a false belief, some form of antichrist that constitutes a gap between the Christ and what you see. An idol is a wish made tangible and given form, and thus perceived as real and seen outside the mind. Yet it is still a thought and cannot leave the mind that is its source, nor is its form apart from the idea it represents.  Yet the light is there, a cloud does not put out the sun, no more a veil can banish what it seems to separate, nor darken by one wit the light itself. This world of idols is a veil across the face of Christ because its purpose is to separate your brother from yourself. A dark and fearful purpose yet a thought without the power to change one blade of grass from something living to a sign of death. Its form is nowhere for its source abides within your mind where God abideth not. Where is this place where what is everywhere has been excluded and been kept apart? What hand could be held up to block God's way? Whose voice could make demand he enter not? The quote more than everything is not a thing to make you tremble and to quail in fear. Christ's enemy is nowhere. He can take no form in which he ever will be real. What is an idol? Nothing. It must be believed before it seems to come to life and given power that it may be feared. Its life and power are its believer's gift and this is what the miracle restores to what has life and power worthy of the gift of heaven and eternal peace. The miracle does not restore the truth, the light, the veil between has not put out. It merely lifts the veil unless the truth shine unencumbered being what it is. It does not need belief to be itself for it has been created so it is. An idol is established by belief and when it is withdrawn the idol quote dies. This is the Antichrist. The strange idea there is a power past omnipotence, a place beyond the infinite, a time transcending the eternal. Here the world of idols has been set by the idea this power and place and time are given form and shape the world where the impossible has happened. Here the deathless come to die, the all-encompassing to suffer loss, the timeless to be made the slaves of time.  Where is an idol? Nowhere.  An idol is beyond where God has set all things forever and has left no room for anything to be except his will. Nothing and nowhere must an idol be while God is everything and everywhere. What purpose has an idol then? What is it for? This is the only question that has many answers, each depending on the one of whom the question has been asked. The world believes in idols. No one comes unless he worship them and still attempts to seek for one that yet might offer him a gift reality does not contain. Each worshiper of idols harbors hope his special deities will give him more than other men possess. It must be more. It does not really matter more of what. More beauty, more intelligence, more wealth, or even more affliction and more pain. But more of something is an idol for. And when one fails, another takes its place with hope of finding more of something else. Be not deceived by forms the quote something takes. An idol is a means for getting more. And it is this that is against God's will. God has not many sons, but only one. Who can have more and who can be given less? It is for him the Holy Spirit speaks and tells you idols have no purpose here. For more than heaven can you never have. If heaven is within, why would you seek for idols that would make of heaven less to give you more than God bestowed upon your brother and on you as one with him? God gave you all there is. And to be sure you could not lose it. Did he also give the same to every living thing as well? And thus is every living thing a part of you as of himself. No idol can establish you as more than God, but you will never be content with being less. And from the workbook lesson 232 Be in my mind, my Father, through the day. Be in my mind, my Father, when I wake and shine on me throughout the day today. Let every minute be a time in which I dwell with you and let me not forget my hourly Thanksgiving that you have remained with me and always will be there to hear my call to you and answer me. As evening comes, let all my thoughts be still of you and of your love and let me sleep sure of my safety, certain of your care and happily aware I am your son. This is as every day should be. Today, practice the end of fear. Have faith in him who is your Father. Trust all things to him.  Amen.


Good morning, everyone. How is everyone today? Good, good. So today I wanted to start off by talking a little bit about homes and about apartments. Remember we talked about that about a week ago, right? So, right here I have the keys to my apartment, right? Actually, right here. Now, I moved out from my mother's house a few years ago. Now, where you are from, what is the normal age to move out from your parents' house? Anyone? Yes, Brian. 18. Wow, 18, okay. So 18. Do we think that's normal? Is that young or old? Yes, yes. Elena? Okay, so 29. So that's a little older, right? A little older than 18, right? And is that normal in Russia? Okay. Okay. So, oh yeah, go ahead. Okay, 25. Okay, so in between, in between. Now, why do we think it may be different? Different ages. Okay, yes. Okay, so it may be different. People work at different ages. Yes, right. Okay, good. So, maybe it's a little harder, maybe. Or you start to work earlier, I understand. Okay. Yes, for me, I went off to school through the university and I came back and I started working. And so that is why I moved out and when I moved out. Now, the age that people are moving out at is changing. Do we know why? Since years ago, it has gone up. Do we know why? Okay, yes. Right. So, the economy maybe, right? The economy is changing. Things are changing, right?


It's Aaron Forrest-Elf. I'm here with David Randall. And we are excited to do the startup for the first stop of our 15 Nations Global Tour. I just wanted to share a little bit about how this came about. At the end of last year, we asked for suggestions of what people might like to do for events or something special to do since this is Wikitree's 15th anniversary year. And one of the suggestions was from C. McKinnon and she suggested selecting 15 underrepresented countries and figuring out how to manage their last names of birth, how to get their heads of state to have profiles on Wikitree. And we all thought that was a really good idea. And the first person he popped into my head immediately to take the reins and run with us was David. And he has done fabulously, as I knew he would. And so we picked, he picked the first country and it was India and they've been going for three weeks. And so I'm gonna let him tell you a little bit more about how this whole Global Nations Tour works and where it's at and what they're doing and all that good stuff. Okay, thank you. First, I apologize for the glow in my face. I don't normally glow quite this much. But, so I took on this project really blind as to what I was getting into. I was told there was a special project where I wanted to take charge and wasn't giving much information beyond that. But when I was told what it was all about, it actually really kind of sparked my interest. And what we've done is, well, we haven't selected all 15 countries, but we're gonna pick 15 countries throughout the year. Some of them are still up in the air. But we decided to start with India. For those of you that are not aware of the project, we started with India and selected 15 notables from India and set out to build their profiles, build their biographies, and ideally to get them connected to the global tree. Now, unfortunately we weren't able to connect anybody and we'll talk about that a little bit in a bit, but we did accomplish some pretty amazing things. And I'm going to share that with you today. First, what I wanna preface though is to say, when I put these 15 profiles up, I knew nothing about India genealogy. I knew nothing about what resources may or may not be out there. And I pretty much knew nothing about most of these personalities. So it was really random and up in the air as to what we were going to accomplish. My biggest fear was we would accomplish nothing.  But that turned out to be anything but the case. The 15 people that I put up, I deliberately added no family members, no parents, no siblings, no children, no spouses. And as far as their bios were concerned, I put up typically one or two sentences that I got off Wikipedia summarized, just letting people know who they were. And from there, we as a team, and I should say that team as opposed to myself because I was busy doing other stuff for the most part and not building bios, but the team took the reins and ran with them and they were able to build up all 15 profiles. And to those original 15 profiles that again had zero family members linked to them, we have added 226 family members. Wow. 226 additional profiles that we did not have. That's fantastic. Now, that's impressive, but it's even more impressive I think when you hear that prior to three weeks ago, India had 400 profiles on Wikitree. People born in India, there were only 400 profiles. So we increased by over 50%. That's amazing. There, we're now up to 600 and something, so. That's true. And the idea now is to continue this, even though we're gonna be moving on to another country and our focus will be somewhere else, I went on today and was able to add on almost a dozen more family profiles to what we've already accomplished over three weeks. So there's still plenty of work to be done on India. So if you were in the middle of a project, if you've actually didn't have a chance to get over to India and wanna go over and work on some profiles, there's still a lot that needs to be done and a lot of opportunities. Some of our profiles have many, many more family members connected than others. Interestingly, the current prime minister of India has only three connections. So far, family is next to impossible. I won't say it's impossible, but it's been next to impossible for me to find anything on. He married and left his wife almost immediately and never remarried, didn't have any children. So there really isn't a lot of information on him that I've been able to find. So that's part of the problem. The other problem is that he has a living personality. So his profile is locked. I don't know how much that discouraged people, but I've mentioned it a couple of times in G2G, if you wanna work on a locked profile of a living person, let me know and I can add you to the trusted list and you'll get in there and do some improvements. The only living people I'm picking so far are the current heads of state and heads of government. So in this case, it was the president and the prime minister. So there were two living personalities. Everybody else I make a point of choosing only deceased notables in order that people could access their profiles. Definitely. So again, we've done some pretty good work. One of the things that I had the most fun with was that a large number of the notables that we selected had a huge number of other notables in their family trees. There was a couple that had literally dozens of people in their family tree. Wow. Who had their own wiki tree pages. Wikipedia pages. Look, I'm sorry, Wikipedia pages. So that actually made it easier because then on those pages, you hear about their spouses and children, et cetera. So I added something to it. And I picked out a couple that just impressed me the most. I'm on the wrong page of my notes here. But I'm gonna say all of these names incorrectly because I don't speak any of the languages. I'll give you an advance as I say these names. But Ravi Shikhar or Shekar, he is a well-known musician, a very popular musician in India. He turns out to be the father of Nora Jones. Yeah. And I did not know that. So that was interesting. And they have dozens of musicians in their family who are all well-known, not only in India but around the world. World wide. Many of them moved to the United States and are here. So I'm hoping we've been working on getting Nora Jones' profile open. I think that's about to happen if it hasn't already. And we may be able to make a connection through her family because she had American roots on her mother's side. So we'll see what happens once we get there. Great. He used to, this is just a totally random side note, but my dad, my dad is very into Ravi Shikhar. Okay. And so I grew up listening to his Sitar music and then I was really, I'm really into Nora Jones. And so there was a day where we figured out like, hey, these two are father and daughter. Yeah, no, I had no idea. In fact, when I was first told, I thought, oh, that's funny that his daughter's named Nora Jones because they're looking for a singer named Nora Jones. And it turns out to be her. It turned me, but it was her. And yeah, there were a few others. There were a number of our earlier ones were freedom fighters that a lot of people that work with Gandhi and some of the founding fathers of India. So it was a good history lesson to learn. You know, I don't know a lot about Indian history. We didn't really study that in our schools. Learning about the partition between India and Pakistan. There's one story of a woman who she's an actress and she married an architect, but together they created a production studio. And then when Pakistan broke away from India or was split from India, they had to make a choice as to where they wanted to live. And the husband went to Pakistan and the wife stayed in India with her children. Oh, wow. But then she went on to become a very famous, she was already famous as an actress, but became a big producer, Bollywood, I guess they call it, but a big producer in India and had a very successful career, despite not having a husband around, which that surprised me also was how many really strong women there were in India in the late 1900s, early 1900s. And also a number of the men that were women's rights activists that well ahead of what I think was probably going on in the United States at the time. Sounds like it. That was interesting too. But again, just a lot of really, you get beyond the notables and into their families, there were just dozens of really interesting stories. It was hard to keep moving on because I wanted to say. Rabbit holes. Read more. Well, I think that's one of the really cool things about this global nations tour and I hope a lot more people get involved is it's a chance to kind of touch base in a culture and the people that you probably aren't super familiar familiar with and learn a little bit about their histories and their practices and their culture and their people and kind of branch out beyond your own tree a bit. Yeah, and that's, I think that's one of the really cool things about this project is there's a number of benefits out of it. There's a benefit just learning a different history, something to take a break from your own family tree and learn some skills maybe that your own family tree doesn't allot you. It's hopefully will encourage people with Indian ancestry to get involved and to make some more connections. We're trying to make a world a global tree and we can't do that if half the globe isn't participating. It's true. So hopefully that'll encourage people when they see that we have a number of profiles from their areas. So there's a lot of benefits. It also, because we're focusing on the notables, I don't know how many people have tried Googling something and getting wiki tree as a response but I've had that several times and we get pretty high up in the rankings. So somebody looking for information on some of these obscure, more obscure personalities may very well be directed to wiki tree and become hooked like many of us have. That's the goal. So now do we have, I don't see on the screen the chat room do we have might just expanded too big. You might be, you might have to click on the comments. Okay, there we go. All right. Just know we had any, oh, I see I had the wrong button pushed. Okay. So I'm just curious if anybody listening that was actually actually participated or people tuning in for the first time. Do you have anybody had any questions on India before we move on to our next stop? I was gonna say you had a, there's a, I know you're gonna share a screen but I think there's also the, you guys put together a resources page, right? Yes. You wanna show that because that's another kind of cool benefit of this is there's this whole page now. Okay. There's a screen. So just above our list of notables we did add a resources page and first off we have over on the right we have a map of India with the various states. So if you are curious where in India one of your profiles is from you can expand on that and hopefully be able to read it. It's a little bit small but and then we'll go back here. Oops. Okay. Try that again. Take two. Okay, for some reason I'm having trouble. Okay, here we go. I'm in trouble going back space but okay, here we are. So this is our resources page and you can see we start out with just Wikipedia sources to get you some general information. We've enlisted our family search resources. Family search has a number of databases that are all free. If you actually have an ancestry account we've included some ancestry databases as well. And then we just listed alphabetically any other sources that people were able to come across. There's the BBC, How to Trace Your Roots on the Indian Subcontinent. There's Cindy's list here. Find My Paths, British India Office, Births and Baptisms, Google Books, Dictionary of Indian Biography. So it's just a bunch of sites that people have been able to find that have either genealogical information or general history about India or links to places where they may not have online resources but archives and libraries that you can contact if you're so inclined. Yeah, that's really cool. Yeah, and again, I hope that this will continue so if anybody has, anybody can go on and edit that so you can just add, if you have additional resources you can add them in. And hopefully that will continue to grow so that it's something that I think is lacking across the internet. If you Google India genealogical resources you're not gonna find on this as long as what we have and even on Cindy's list they don't have an India section. They have an Asia section, but not an India section.  That's awesome. That's pretty cool. Are there any, I know you have that one page that had a list of profiles. Were there, is there one of those in particular that's like reached some kind of completeness that you wanna share? Well, I can tell you if we go to, now this one I'm gonna have a real hard time saying, Satya Jit, Ray, he was an actor. And he is the most connected at this point. He has 59 relatives connected to him. Nice. And again, still not connected but the problem with connecting when they're, when the family was entirely in India is there aren't a lot of profiles from India to connect to. So, you know, it's kind of the problem coming from the other end as opposed to from our end. But he has, his wife was a not so famous actress but an actress nonetheless. And I believe it was her, no, I think I've got the wrong one here. I think I did the wrong person, that's the one below him. So this individual was an actor named Dilip Kumar. And I was infusing him with the one above but his wife was a, and still is alive. She is a famous dancer in India. Cool. And she has, let's see, I really like this profile. Her mother was one of India's first superstar actresses. And I just, I really like this portrait. It's a beautiful picture. Yeah, it is. And she was considered the first female star of India film. Cool. And she's got a really nice little biography here. Yeah. A couple sources. She got her obituary was found. So I think once they moved past Wikipedia and which is spelled wrong here, but we'll fix that. She got on the internet movie database. And then also her obituary, which was I think our biggest resource in my experience was the most helpful resource. But I found that Indian obituaries are not nearly as complete as what we're used to in the West. Yeah. They didn't give spouses, main names and all of that. They usually, they talk more about the professional life and the career as opposed to the family life. But sometimes these individuals were notable enough that they got into the Western press and they might have more biography at that point. So. Very cool. But yeah, this is one of those unexpected notables that we didn't know were gonna be on her radar, but there she is. Yeah, that's cool. They had a number of actors and actresses. It does appear that in India, families tend to follow similar careers.  It seemed to do a lot of following in their families, footsteps, really generations. Very cool. In fact, yeah. So again, it's you start out with one person and then that's interesting enough that you start moving on and you just get tons of fascinating stories. It's hard to know, like I said, when to quit and move on to the next person. Yeah, that's fantastic. Okay, so for our next stop, our next station, we're gonna travel all the way around the world and I'm gonna type it in here. See if we can pull it up. Sorry for the line, let's not go like that one more time. Okay, I think I have to log out in again because it's not letting me change the... It can be a pain sometimes. Yeah, that's... So Darren was saying he worked on categories for India. He wasn't comfortable making the profiles but he did add categories, which is great, every little bit helps. Okay, I figured out the glitch, so let's pull it up here. Yeah, one of the things that I tell people if you're not comfortable doing research and particularly in a country like India that you're not familiar with, there's plenty of other stuff that needs to be done. We can do just pulling the biographies together and making them enjoyable, readable. You can, even just doing checking for typos, just going through and reading them. And if you notice any errors, go in and clean them up a little bit, that's helpful. Okay, here we go, here we are. Are we up? Nope, nope. Okay, now I got to share it. Okay, our next stop is going to be Argentina. Argentina, other side of the globe. That is far from India as you can get. So Argentina is an interesting country. Obviously they speak Spanish down there but they also, there's a lot of... They don't have a national language. Most of their records are done in Spanish but there's a lot of English speakers and there's also a lot of people of a variety of backgrounds there that speak all kinds of languages. One of the things that I learned already about Argentina is that after the United States, they have the largest number of immigrants in modern history. Really? So they have people from all over the world and the statistic that I read and I can't remember the exact number but something like 99% of Argentinians have a European background. 99% huh? Yeah, which is comparable. I don't know what it is in the United States but we have a very small portion of Native Americans who have no other, you know, who are pure Native American. Right. It's a small number of our population and it's the same there. They do have a native population and they have a lot of people with native blood but most of them have had some European blood either from the Spanish that first came over, other Europeans later on and now there's a lot of Arab and Jewish population there. So they got a big group of people. A lot of German. I was gonna say, I remember reading about a lot of Germans going down there. Yeah, so it's gonna be interesting. It's gonna be different than... India. Yeah, but it's gonna have its own challenges so we'll see how we do. You can see on the screen we've got a little bit of information on the history and stuff just to give you a little intro before you jump into the profiles and once you do that, let's go down and look at who we're gonna be visiting once we're in Argentina. Starting with Carlos Saavedra Lomas. He was Latin America's first Nobel Peace Prize winner. He was a foreign minister and also worked as a leader in the League of Nations which preceded the United Nations and he brokered peace between Peru and Bolivia and that's what he won the Nobel Peace Prize for. Wow. Second, we have Jose Maria Sobral. He was an explorer of the Antarctic. He's the first Argentinian to have spent a winter in the Antarctic and later on, he became an ambassador to Norway. Now the next one, and what I'm wondering if you recognize her, Violet Jessup. She ring a bell at all? From the Titanic? From the Titanic and the reason I'm asking is because you are her profile manager. I am. You are. From a long time ago. From a long time ago. That's I wondered if you still remember. That's so funny. But I don't know if you wanna tell the story but she was more than just on the Titanic. You'll go for it. Yeah, she survived three shipwrecks. The Titanic, the Britannic, and the Olympic shipwrecks. I think after two, I maybe wouldn't get on a ship again. Yeah, that's probably, although you probably figured if you did it twice, what's the odds of it happening? I know, what are the chances, right? But she found out. Yeah, three for three. But she was a nurse, apparently, I haven't read her whole story, but I believe she was a nurse with the shipping line. So she wasn't just going on a pleasure cruise. Next we have Victoria Ocampo. She was a magazine publisher and a writer. She did a lot of writing for women's issues and serving head of the underprivileged, getting them recognition. Antonio Burney, he is an artist. He was part of the, forget what they call it, the Nouveau Revolution or something like that. I'm not an art person, but realism, that's what Nouveau Realism or something like that. But yeah, so I'm not doing a good job of explaining what he did, but you can go learn more about him by doing some research. The next one, Antonio Zerilla. He was an Olympic swimmer. He was one of the first individuals to bring a gold medal home to Argentina. There were three individuals that year, so I don't know which one is considered first, if any. And I believe that four years prior, there was a team gold medal for I think the polo team. He was one of the first three to bring home a gold medal to Argentina. Libertad, and I don't, this is a French sounding or looking name. Oh yeah. And I don't speak French, but Libertad, Lamarque or Lamarque, I don't know how that's pronounced. She was a very famous golden age actress from Argentina. Juan Manuel Fongio, I believe. He was a Formula One driver. He has the second most wins. His wins were surpassed at the time. He had the most wins in Formula One racing, but again, it was surpassed by someone later on. He's currently in second place, but he was very famous worldwide. Raul Alfonso, he is considered the father of modern Argentine democracy. Argentina has been through a lot of turmoil in its government, and I found that out when I was trying to summarize its history up above. That was not an easy task, but he was a real key figure bringing democracy to Argentina. Great. And he has no connection so far. Isabel Sarly, she is a glamour model and an actress. From what I read, she's kind of like the Marilyn Monroe of Argentina. Looks like it with that picture. Yeah, not so much known for her talent as much as maybe for her beauty, but that I can't say, because I've never seen her perform, so I'm judging. And this one I'm gonna pronounce Kino. He is a cartoonist. Let me see if I can click on his character. I recognized his character. Here she is. Oh yeah. So it's a very, very popular cartoon in Argentina. And he is the animator. Mercedes Sosa is a folk singer. Then we have Christina Fernandez de Kirchner. So some of you may know her from the news. She was in the headlines for a while. She was the former president of Argentina. And after serving her term, she became vice president. So she's now the vice president of Argentina. And previously, she was married to another president of Argentina. So she was the first lady of Argentina. So she's had a number of roles there. And then she and Alberto Fernandez, who are not related, but Sherry, last name, he is the current president of Argentina. Those are our two living personalities this period. So again, if you're interested in working on those profiles, drop me a note and I can give you some access so that we can get them built out. And then the final one is Emiliano Sala. He was a football player, a very popular football player. And sadly, he was killed in a plane crash when he was, I believe, 29 years old. Yeah. That was back, pretty well exactly, but over in Europe. It was a very devastating event for the country. There's a lot of news on that. So that may give us some leads for him. But again, none of these people have family. None of them are connected to anybody. So we can get in there and... That's a really cool, diverse group of people. You know, I try to look for a variety, try not to get too many people in one category. So it's got some, whatever you're interested in, maybe you'll find something that strikes a chord with you. Yeah, I like it. I'm gonna have to work on Violet now. Yeah, I know. It's gonna be fun, there's some... Like I said, each one, you know, I only, I try real hard not to do too much advanced research on these people. So I just get that, you know, the bare minimum. But even that was enough to spark my interest in several of them. I don't know which one I'm gonna start with, but there's some really interesting stories here. And Violet's not the least of them. Oh, there's many, many more. So we do have a... Well, I will be posting tomorrow a G2G announcement that we've moved on to Argentina. So we'll have a thread there that if you have any questions, comments, you can share them there, successes. And we've also started a Discord channel page. So if you're a fan of Discord, you can go over there and I'll post the link on the Argentina. It's already on the India thread, but as I said, tomorrow I'll have an Argentina thread. I'm gonna put two threads up. I'm gonna put an Argentina thread and I'm also gonna put a wrap up for India as a separate new thread. Oh, great. We'll have two places you can go depending. And again, if you're still working on India, go ahead and post there because we'll still be checking in on the messages and that. So keep us updated on what you're doing. Keep going because just because the three weeks isn't, it doesn't mean that if you're loving working on India, keep working on India. Yeah. And even if you're kind of all done on the research, if you've kind of stretched yourself in on that, you can always just go back and start doing some cleanup. There's some really good profiles up, but some of them are a little bit disorganized or maybe need some headings put in. One thing I would ask is that when we're doing the profiles, we don't want to do too much cutting and pasting from Wikipedia. I did notice on a couple of occasions there were large amounts of material that we just kind of brought right over from there. So we want to put our own spin on it and make it ours, not theirs. But otherwise- Yeah, that's a good reminder. Yeah, but otherwise there, the profiles were looking really good. But again, we can use more, find more sources if you can make a connection. I would love to get one of these people connected. And it's tough because we don't have a lot to connect them to, but I'm hoping again with Nora Jones, maybe she'll have some connections on her mother's side that we can- I don't think so. I would be surprised if she didn't. Yeah. Except I think her mother's name is Sue Jones. Oh, then yeah, perhaps. That's a good question. I don't have trouble there, but. Well. You know, maybe her grandmother has an unusual name that we can trace. We can hope. Well, that's exciting. So cool, that's exciting. Argentina, onto the next stop. Okay. Anything else before we go? I think that's it. Cool. Well, we will try- And again, I encourage people to communicate because that's part of the fun is knowing what everybody else is doing. A lot of stuff got done in India that wasn't really shared. I kind of had to go back and find it, which is fine, but it would be, it's fun to hear as we're going along, kind of sharing your successes. So make sure you're posting. Either in Discord or GDG, we love to see that stuff and you can interact with other people who are working on similar things and that's always good to do. Yeah. So. All right, we'll see you again in three weeks. Okay, thank you everybody.