Okay, now it gives me great pleasure to introduce our next two speakers who will be speaking one after the other and we're going to be talking about adding DNA to your family history society. Now the first speaker is Maggie Little. Now Maggie is a member of the Ballamina North of Ireland Family History Society and it's fair to say a very active member of that society. As her day job she is a retired police officer and as her night job she is a 24-7 genealogist. Now Annmarie Coughman on the other hand is a member of the and a very active member of the Cork Genealogical Society and both of these people Annmarie and Maggie will be talking about how there are a variety of family history societies in Ireland and many of them have recently started to incorporate DNA testing as part of their society's activities. In this presentation we hear from Cork and from Ballamina, Annmarie and Maggie and they'll be telling us how they did it, why they did it and what difference it has made to the members of their respective societies. So could you welcome our first speaker Maggie Little. Yes I'm Maggie Little and I'm here to represent the North of Ireland Family History Society, NIFHS for short. The North of Ireland Family History Society is different from Northern Ireland because we take in the nine counties of Ulster and so whilst we don't have any branches in Donegal, Carvin and Monaghan at the moment we have branches in Lunderry, Anthrum, Dyn, Carone and Armar and Formana well we don't actually have Formana anymore but with several in each county. It's not Brexit. I think they got out before Brexit. So yes we were founded in 1979 and there's the 11 branches that we have at the moment myself, I belong to the Ballamina branch, Belfast, Colrain, Colrain is now called the Causeway, Foil, Kilileigh, Lorne, Lisburn, North Irma, North Dynanards, Newt Naby and the Oma branch have now changed their name to the Taroon branch. At present we have currently 659 associate members but that's gone up today so we've got a lot of members downstairs. 368 branch members but that will rise and has been rising steadily each month because the branches would have their membership running from September to August so that's why that's going to rise considerably in the next couple of months when the branches send in their forms. So we normally have around 1100 members worldwide. The Society is a registered charity recognised by Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs and we are a voluntary non-profit megging organisation. Some of the, this is only some of the benefits of actually joining our society would be that you get North Irish roots. They have journals that are issued twice a year. This is one of, I'm giving each one of you the old type of journal. We're now, we've gone up in the world and we're colour coordinated and glossy and nice. So you have free access to online JSTOR, Ireland collection of many digitised journals that are online so you get membership of that. You free access to the Society's well stocked research library which we have in Newt Navi in Belfast. It's open every Tuesday from 2pm to 8pm and I'm one of the volunteers along with Sandra and Kathleen. We would go there on Tuesdays and help members of the public or indeed you don't have to be a member of the Society for to come in and we would can give you help. We offer a lookup service for associate members who can't get to the resource centre and that's everything includes transcriptions, books, journals, directories, maps and a lot more. And you also have the opportunity to attend any monthly branch meeting or indeed the mall if you want to do. So why did we create the FTD&I project? Well in the Ballamina branch we had, we had meted about the the DNA and in 2014 probably 2013 we contacted Morris here and he came along to the Ballamina branch but it was open to everyone and gave us a talk on just the basic basic DNA and there were kits there so at that there was over about 120 people came to that talk and there was at least 50 took the test on that night and then once we got the results we were just hooked with this. So we encourage and support the use of DNA to further our gene genealogical research among our members and our DNA results can be discussed via the NFHS Facebook groups. Several of the branches have groups and pages but within the groups then that you can you can discuss things and more often than not that that's where we're actually talking about is DNA this and DNA that. DNA results can be discussed by the Facebook groups and at the society's regular branch meetings and we now run a family finder course at the three four times a year and they're very well attended. We also then have the last Saturday of the month in our resource centre we have a for autosomal DNA it's just to get together where we literally talk and help each other out and just see how far we've got on with that. Our members are also encouraged to join the other relevant projects within DNA the specific surname projects they're relevant hollow group projects geographic projects the Ulster heritage project and one of the main reasons for us is we want to connect with the Ulster descendants in the diaspora and help locate their family still in Ulster. Some of the facts with regards to our group the majority of our Y DNA members belong to the R1B Y hollow group so it's very difficult at this point to see any clear patterns with regard that. The YSTR groups R1B Rosbra and R1B McCracken there are family genetic STR patterns that become an evident now with those. We have 364 members now in the NIFHS project and we promote the use of DNA testing particularly the autosomal DNA test and I think that's because within the family history certainly me and a lot others it's the one we find the easiest but it's the one that gives you so many fantastic results so to date out of 364 202 of our members have actually taken the autosomal test so basically thank you for taking the time to come with this presentation today and I would welcome you down if you're hopefully coming tomorrow someday I would welcome you down into our stand at B3 and if you want to find out more about the society or indeed our project thank you. Great thanks very much. Can I just stay there for don't go away because we will be coming back to you for a Q&A shortly and I already have a few questions that I want to put to you but we will be talking to Anne Marie, Anne Marie Cochlan now and Anne Marie will be telling us about her experiences adding DNA to the Cork genealogical society so Anne Marie if you want to come up we will put your slides up here and I will you can work for the mouse indeed yeah and what I'll do is just give you this for now and put the well if you hold that and then I will take this and take that thank you very much and put you on there like that so you're ready to go is that comfortable enough I think so can you hear me okay if you talk a bit louder yeah and that just goes into your pocket if you have one or hook it onto your uh if you you won't be moving around so let's just leave it there shall we we leave it there grant okay you're all good to go and there's the clicker if you want or you can just advance it using the for forward and back once we've worked out what we could do right um as uh Morris has introduced me Anne Marie Cochlan or Anne Marie Cochlan if uh if I'm down at home um big argument with my granddad but dad which way which way it should be and my granddad was church of Ireland so of course it was calling because it was posher so um I work I work at Cork genealogical society it's more like a lifestyle than an as you pursued and I also manage them social media for them as well and I try and keep off the Twitter because it's completely addictive but I do go on occasionally mainly I run um the official Facebook group and the DNA Corky group which is private and you have to get past me to get into it um also we've got the Nagel group I always call them the Nagels um Nagel group who are sticklers for information and accuracy so they're talking to each other and everybody's got um a relative called either Richard or Garrett so you know they're happy enough together so they've got their own group and we've just recently taken over the Nagel um one name project as well and we've got 15 members already and we've got a lot of links with northern France so that's a bit bit of a surprise to me anyway um but that's that's part of of what we do so this is us right so my my first thing is why bother okay why bother partnering a DNA project with a family history society first of all you're knocking at an open door okay um we're all working with DNA we're all volunteers sitting here probably I don't think many of us are getting paid for this um and the family history societies have got um a background of volunteers people are keen on what they do so if you want someone to run your project go and visit the family history society and there'll be some person who will look slightly interested and get the job um I am not a scientist anybody who hears about me doing DNA laughs because um science and I don't match quite naturally at all but I am very very interested in relationships and how people connect and where people come from and uh so I wouldn't be I'd be interested in the why as far as it goes I need to know more about it myself uh but again as Maggie said with the autosomal women can get involved we have an investment in the autosomal and I'm very interested in the chromosome matching as well so volunteers we bring a lot to it we've got outside skills other than the straight academic so we've got we will have a different slant on what it means to research our own DNA and it's a tool so we use it as we need it okay um so local expertise you would be stunned if you came down to Cork probably the same as Balamina if you throw a name out into a conversation somebody will have you placed and related within about five minutes everybody's connected and this is what we're finding with the DNA the oral memory is very strong in Cork too and um we have a a tremendous amount of local expertise and contacts contacts in Cork uh scary actually um people who know people and local specialists we have a lot of local specialists too uh the good I think one of the main points about having your local history society and DNA is the fact that with DNA your international members can become more active in your society and every time we have a committee meeting it's what can we do for the internationals you know because we do so much locally and this is one area where they can really take 100 percent um ownership of being some old and core heritage and a lot of people that I'm I'm uh I should say working with because I do actually I live the job um uh people I work with are actually they are living all over the world um I've just been given the walk for at half past four this afternoon by one of our um colleagues shall I say I tell him what I need to tell you and she's in um where is she now she's in the south of of the US at the moment um so the international perspective for DNA is just mind blowing um possibility once you've got the the internationals involved the possibility of them coming back and connecting with their own extended family is is again just incredible people looking I mean our matches are actually pre famine you know the hunger the great the great exodus um those were our matches coming in um so we've got a discrete group of people in cork who know their history they've got real trees they've done their traditional research they know who their people are people are coming to them in DNA matching are getting a very good deal they're actually getting a very accurate um feedback if you like from the society um the other thing is that you're drawing people into the society and the society is getting more and more membership and more investment so that's the reason why you should do it right this is us now I fought the top one in because I thought you might like it um the society was um established by two people somebody's got the joker ready uh it was established by two people wendy wendy quirk who is actually a sister for the latin day saints and the gentleman called dekna charmers who was totally obsessed by his own tree and has just um done a limited run of his own pedigree um six copies and it's like that and that's just been produced so the two of them got together and they decided that court needed its own genealogical society so the the purpose was to promote the study of genealogy as a leisure pursuit now you know the rest of it well you know that was where it started the rest was a little you know that we would say we would argue it was a leisure pursuit it was definitely interesting so we have 6040 local international membership we meet twice a month in the family record centre in cork we're one of the three I think people of three locations in Ireland we've got a family record centre and we have a library there as well so which people offer donate give acquire books and we've got a phenomenal amount of records um so we meet twice a month there one is for the meeting and because of our international membership it's now on video so it's videoed tidied up by our local um filmmaker called Tim McCoy who comes in and does it and uh puts it when we put it online onto our website uh second meeting is the one that I'm more involved in is the drop-in workshop so you sit there with your computer and your books and john granham's find your very ancestors and you wait for them to come through the door so um that's that that is very very popular and we do have actually have cues for people to do that and it's also giving um a lot of the folks who have trained um they've done the course that you see the diploma in genealogy it's giving them chance to flex their muscles a little bit and to try out new ideas and to help people um the facebook and twitter I do for them and we have a journal we were having a journal every year but we've now putting everything on the members website and we have a biennial conference every two years and we've just had one in the spring which was shared with the igrs okay flew south for the day and uh celebrated their 80th 80th years in in existence um the the big secret unless you're actually in the society you won't know about this but we've actually got an offline database which we are loading onto a hard disk and there's only three of us have actually got the password this is this is decant charmers idea um brainchild and anything that's sent into us trees or um information or databases is going on this hard drive and only two people will have access to it so you've got to send in your queries um you'll get lookups done for you but it's completely private um the the purpose was to protect any material that's been sent in by members and to order that privacy um we are very proactive in linking with other local and international family histories of how it is and we have uh we share their newsletters what's going on there and it's now a meeting place to court DNA research so um we are very lucky um in the fact that we've actually got a genetic genealogist on our doorstep and she has been giving us an annual presentation for many number of years on how to do your DNA and what it means and it's Margaret O'Shea Jordan not only has she been helping us out she's actually she was one of the first project leaders for family tree DNA in YDNA island YDNA surnames and so the the the society's unique in the fact it's actually DNA's been part of our DNA if you like for five or six years um so she's been she's been actually mentoring us minding us and helping us all the way through and she's been obviously marvellous with me for the work that the stuff that I've been doing she's been there for me and she's been on the other end of a Facebook message whenever I needed it okay um so she's um as I say she's got the Y island YDNA project now all these these websites are all together on our website so don't worry about copying them down because we've got them um she runs her own O'Shea project now again first one of the first ladies to actually incorporate autosomal into a surname project and she's been fired the last two years she's been fine-tuning extended family testing as well again I think one of the first genetic genealogists in island to do it so she's she's she's following her own path but she's really really ahead of what's going on this is the one that sold it to me team Munster Irish, Elizabeth O'Donoghue Ross, Fimbor O'Mahony and Nigel McCarthy I saw them 2013 here in this very room and it was blown away with the fact what what YDNA could do uh Fimbor O'Mahony this was this is the gentleman who when I got my results back I emailed him and said how do I get my kit retested this is the wrong kid I've got the wrong results so he talked me down and said no they are yours I'm afraid but you probably won't expect him what you've got so again Fimbor is a court man living in Dublin he runs his own family surname project so he's very got a very heavy investment in extended family and the O'Mahony if you if you're an O'Mahony you would know Fimbor the heart and at Ari's mother's side he's working with them and this is where we all genuflect Nigel McCarthy he's ours you've cut off him um he has um he's he's leading a leading geneticist absolutely straight ahead of the rest of us we can only sit and just thumb in amazement of what he's doing um when I put my head over the parapet so they'll have to do DNA at the end of the meeting this about six gentlemen gravitated towards me said we're in the McCarthy project and they all looked identical it was just hysterical they've all got the same nose you know and he's working very very strongly with our local McCarthy's I mean just they all know Nigel Nigel knows them Nigel I'll let you in to a sequel Nigel has now sorted out the McCarthy's into haplogroups and he's giving back haplogroups to other surnames okay so that if you have got um if you've got a surname in westcourt you might be hearing from him he's actually sorted it out Susan Beretta now Susan has been beavering away in westcourt because you probably know she is just doing phenomenal work that's her website courtgen.org and her husband is the other part of the team now she would I was hearing my I was talking to her like you do on on Facebook and I said would you come and give me a hand with the Cork Island project so she'd come on to co-admin and then she's been she's like a go on a sweet shop she's she's been loading the mtdna onto Cork Island's website almost to our Cork Island project website okay and I was she's a lady who's been giving me what for half past four this afternoon um the public journeyology she's got loads of stuff on there even if you're not Cork um she's got um handouts she's got uh trees that you can you know you can print off and fill in um her her initial interest is why the ydna westcourt surname projects and again they're all loaded on our website um and she's done she's put them on for me but what she was doing in the summer was just fine-tuning her extended family and she was um she's been going and testing um on autosomal awful lot of autosomal she's she's been you know cornering people in pubs in all sorts and then she's also been working on her extended maternal line in westcork which again is another first um she's got she's getting a profile now on maternal DNA that's really about that the minute um and now Martha I've not had much contact with her but that's one of the projects of the court of coca leaf project um westcork again what she's it's it's connected to one of the annals one of the pedigrees that was written um technically should have been 1400 but was written up in 1800 and she's not got any promises on this whatsoever if your surname fits in that you can join but she's not guaranteeing that you're going to have to be related and then the oh and apt they just amazing group they're um quite a young group actually and I think could do with a bit of flagging up and that again that's to do with the ancient the ancient annals and pedigrees right now this is my tribute to Dan Bradley my map um I got this idea from the blood of the Irish which is it's probably not spoken about in DNA circles but I I loved it the program with democrat Gavin if you turn a map around and look where cork is all of a sudden you've got another perspective on what's going on in Ireland hey we all I've got a little mouse on um everybody knows where cork is don't you yep uh possibly Kerry as well might be of interest to you where those shipping links are where are they the Iceland um I'll talk about the the local links in a minute um northern northern France the iberia peninsula north Africa that is a natural trade route and what I'd say to you is what DNA does is it turns things on its head and we're so used to seeing a map the right way around because you email the back so you've got him up the wrong way around there are no right way rounds wrong way around with DNA or with maps if you turn something on its head you will get a different perspective and um if if you look at her and all of a sudden we're not connected to Europe anymore are we we're out in the ocean doing our own thing and this is what the early Irish were doing this is what was going on it only took six days to leave Galicia to end up on the cork mainland on on the um you end up in West cork from Galicia six days in a sailboat pre pre everything nothing I mean if you're looking at a trade route you know you might just pop over to cork drop a bit of uh jewelry over and come back you know I mean you've got it you just you need to really look for line I I was just blown away with this looking at you the logistics of this that we're not we are in Ireland but we're in Ireland in the middle of water and where we can go and if you go for you know the next stop the other way is uh is Canada and Australia it's in Australia US sorry Australia's next right so this is cork this is one anybody didn't know where we are now if you actually look at the coast line with more coasts than we have land in cork okay it's a nightmare for the um for the customs every time every beach you go on there's a little science saying if you see anybody unauthorized on this beach please contact the guards you know there's no way you can police it you know people are dropping in and out of that coastline 24-7 even nowadays the north of the county is covered uh is surrounded by um mountains and hills difficult to get out of cork and I should actually go in by water um the trade link there's a there's a false border with waterford um and also I think with chipper areas well definitely with Kerry there's a definite a false nightmare border if you're looking for um parish records in in west cork because the Kerry border sits in and out of there um so you know we we have to look at what our people are doing and how they're how they're using the land because those um administrative borders are false borders especially for cork now the closest trade rink with yaw and I haven't got a little pointer but it's actually in the far yeah right we're just at the bottom of the black water uh we had a lot of movement was that there was um uh a Viking settlement on that corner there the trade link with yaw is bristol okay that's where the trade link is it took 24 hours to travel to bristol by sail proceed that's that that was and it took I think two and a half days to go travel by water to Dublin so where are the links the bristol and cork um the closest link with corky swansy swansy and and the pemberham coast if you if you've ever been to swansy and listened to the market you might be in cork the accent's very similar the food's very similar to as well um so the land versus water thing that we are as a county we look out we don't look in um trade as I said bristol uh the bottom markets we were supplying um ships for the the british military right up to independence um we were supplying the caribbean with um with with food and we were supplying the the us links without with you know we would automatically say yeah the us next stop we were also the holding place for the transport east australia so uh anybody who was transported whether they were political or otherwise went to spike island which is off off the uh the coast at cove um there is actually spike island in bristol the uh us and caribbean caribbean I was this is what got me going i carra a project um the cork clam leaders went out of cork city to barbados at the end of the willy might ward whole lot they weren't killed they were transported um i met a gentleman called carbara solovan from barbados at the accents conference how many years is that down the line it's very very strong links with the caribbean they're also irish um slave owners it's been improved and we also know from the dna that they were the middle of management for irish as well um so we there's a very strong link there with with caribbean I've called it the mainland um quickest place across if uh during the hunger if you don't money you could get out of island by going to england so that was the cheapest way across and the boat is three I think it was only four hours even then um there's no um there's no uh whether it wasn't any due to your customs well how long that's gonna last I don't know but um uh you know you could go you can free travel between the two so there will be a lot of irish people and there are a lot of irish heritage in england whose dna will come up as irish okay so um I could talk on this ride because I'm fascinated with it um the peter robinson project so went to Canada they were north north corg and they were locked and so we do get we get a lot of contact from them the immigration the comorinas the months the plantation um the decimum rebellion all got the landlord got given back to quite the crew it was taken back by queen blitibus and given out again a lot of the people settled to those duty settlements can be checked through the book of survey and disproportion and the chrome early implantation they came and they liked it and they settled there are a lot of chrome early in families and we've actually got somebody um logging at the moment at the moment and I said call them puritans because we don't like chrome well in in court very much um so we might be looking at puritan families the soldiers and sailors um kinsale was the um the the main base for the british military up to recently up to the war of indipence and uh also we have barracks in cork and femoy the sailors I've got my list of sailors because obviously that the the border as you can see is all water is malice um we have the black amore's in court city from the 1600s uh we have um where are we let me get my list um we've got the black amore's we have got um the huganoes big segment of huganizing talk um we have the tin miners at the veera they they moved around a lot and they turned up in they've turned up in butte as well the vikings now the vikings we have got the known settlements on the on the um to say in your earning cork city um but i'll come back to that in a minute uh the other um we've got mercenaries um staying in kinsale they were based in kinsale in the 18th century so we've got germans in there as well and i've met somebody who's actually german court descent um who put me onto it um so looking at that you know there's no for what's coming and going going on um the other one the unlikely ones the westcourt pirates they're my next that when i've got five minutes i love these they're brilliant um the westcourt pirates technically the old riskals but what happened was james the first um took away the pirating license and he wouldn't let them go and settle back in devan so they all decamped over to westcork and they were using um the westcork um for a freeway if you like down and they were settling um algeria was their winter residence um these were all devan people so these devan names are sticking out and there's been a lot of research done on them and the last one i've just found out about were um the lombardy princes were settled in york because um edward the second day of the money so they they actually moved into york for a while so there we go this is us i'll leave that where it is and i just quickly go through what we've found so far um the um corke island one we've got about 200 people in there i just quickly got the top of my head what it is because it's been out time um susan's been feeding in the empty dna and it's coming out very strongly with h a couple of mixes for h um the y dna is very interesting we've got a lot of r but not many r m269 but only about a third um and that that's the r's are the main ones uh dna corke is the one that we're using for the autosomal and we link that with jedmuch and that's the one that's throwing up all the interesting uh matches we're getting an awful lot of matches up fourth and fifth cousin everybody who's in there we've got at least 200 kits in there everyone's got someone too much it's scary when you think about and um the fourth cousin um problem we're getting because of the um so shall we say the concentration of families there's only um we're probably matching on two or three lines so we're actually probably we're having to go further back into our generations to see what what's where the matches are pedigree collapse is a big one as well freeze cork um cloying diocese are known for their consanguine a entries um so that's a big big problem but when the parish registers came out all of a sudden people were very happy um so those are the latest outcomes and this is what's happening in the um society we're getting a growing membership involvement in dna um we've i've just had somebody test today he's mapped one particular surname in the whole of cork and he's decided to go for a big white test today so he that's what he's done today and so that's going to be coming back we've got mainly mainly the autosomal but anybody who's started doing the y is really taking on to it and i've got somebody else is actually doing a woman studying in in his surname and that's taking him into wales and all over the world um our specialists i've i've outlined our specialists they take their leading what we're doing they're advising us and they're directing us we're using online support an awful lot where that's how we communicate uh the monthly workshops with a dna um yeah uh the monthly workshops uh as i've spoken about with the dna uh get-togethers with um people are just taking from it what they need i've got a group of them that have found out they're related and they're micro researching individuals uh which is very very you know nitpicking but that that's what they're into and then i've got people doing broad stuff like one-name studies um we have annual events where margaret comes and talks and as i say susan came in the summer and fed back on her results and we do an awful lot of networking and the both of them that is just phenomenal um so that is us so thank you very much and go look with your own research thank you keep that on you um i'm going to push this back to the previous one and maggie um come out and join us as well um how many people in the audience are actually a member of a family history society in ireland okay so there's a lot of people here from ballamina anybody outside of ballamina or cork anybody who's in which one are you're in clear root of course and you're in i mean the northern ireland family history is the ballamina branch or the associate member possibly of yes which are you an associate of the actual society i'm an associate and jill kerry kerry family history society because i i don't think there's that many family history societies in ireland because you guys are completely voluntary aren't you you know it's not like the um roots ireland or the family history centers which are commercial concerns working with the parish records but you guys are completely voluntary do you get funding from anywhere not that i'm aware of we would like to get funding uh certainly for the nifhs we would but um we just make it ourselves you know do do different things to try and raise funds what kind of things do you do um well i was really sort of put in charge of a like a little subgroup of the council uh to look at ways of trying to raise money and one of which was last year was we did a a fireside quiz and sell them for one pound and just went out round all sent it to all the branches and then they sent the money in and we actually had or were given ft dna kit um for a first prize so that's how we try and get uh some money in it's a good time to mention the competition that you're really downstairs yes definitely again we have been given another uh family tree dna auto sumo kit um and we're charging one euro and all we need is an e-mail address and that that will be um drawn on sunday after the show so you might win one so go downstairs to the bellamy in the north of ireland family history society stands straight downstairs you don't actually have to walk very far be three there will be somebody there to take your money and and riz do you get any funding from anywhere uh we've a very good team on the committee who consumes magic money out from places and we've also got um the local council county council city council very interested in what we do so there's a there we usually we usually at the top of the list of the funding for that as well okay questions from the audience then um because i'm just wondering how many people can carry and clear and unclear has a very strong dna component to the society does carry jill okay okay i haven't heard anything either and anybody else any other family histories because there's not that many voluntary family history societies in ireland are there i grs but in terms of a county um family history society uh gsi is kind of done there and ireland um carry is really just carry but south east scullway okay south east scullway have an active society i don't i don't i'm not well open it but i i have heard them do talks and organized and is there anything i'm just interested in hearing from from paddy and from the other people who are in family history societies anything in in the presentation that you think you can take away and maybe bring to your own societies in terms of uh well you really run a special interest group yes for a dna special interest group and um i'm quite quite um interested in the the monthly workshops they they tend to work extremely well yes very well um mark mcdowell would run our um otto sumo family finder courses and he runs our special interest group last saturday of the month and very well attended and uh any questions from the audience yeah we have a question here first of all i'd like to ask you where how you fit into this he was invited over to northern ireland for for her i i um started doing genealogy about 10 years ago and then found dna and gave it to my dad as a christmas present hoping that he was my biological father and then just got hooked on the whole thing so i've just been kind of uh uh a bit like gerard being evangelical if not addictive to genealogy and genetic genealogy for the last eight years or so and um uh maggie was kind of up to invite me up to do a talk on dna many years ago and we had about 50 people um doing the dna test on the evening yeah we moved 50 tests in three hours i think i lost a half a stone and i i uh my fun has had the uh wide dna test i am i'm actually researching my husband's family who's from cattidary so that's why i i'm a member of the n i mhs and i'll say i'm very i've been a member for six or seven years i would say and i'm very pleased with the what i have found out in unexpected ways uh from through the n i but i want to ask if i were um starting out today what test would you recommend to me i mean there are three there's the main and and y dna the p way and then there's the open soma could you just give me some feedback on that well i would i personally would recommend the orosomal uh the orosomal test the family finder uh that's the one that interests our members the most because it gives them a new lease of life basically these brick walls that they hit and they don't know where to turn for their ancestors the family finder actually finds living relatives and it's uh what what i see happening is the ones that emigrated way back they were the record holders on that and then they're now coming back to us and that's how we're getting the records and that's how relationships are being forged network network network network last one from firstly for the months routine i mean have to sponsor a test if you If you find the current Donald Klan or someone there, is there a descendant? Can you say? Yes. Oh, no. He is somewhere. I believe he's living in London. But I believe it's the monster group who should offer it. But I think that we have to sponsor it. And for Fermanne, if you find a cork in Fermanne, we have to sponsor it, because that's where the origin is, I think. Thank you. Thank you. Two free tests, I like it a little bit. So that is going to cause problems. So I'm going to come over this way, John. I'll come over this way. Yeah, that would be great. I'm from Canada, from Ottawa. And these days, to answer that question over there, I'm recommending that anybody who starts out in genealogy these days should be taking it over so much. Yes. Because it's as basic as talking to your family and finding documents that are in the addicts' basements. For cork, you put on YouTube a presentation by, I think it was Ross McCutcheon, was it? That's you. I did. Which was wonderful. It was one of the teams or something. Yes. Ladies, for the record, it was wonderful. Please put more of your presentations on YouTube. If you join the society, it's 20 years a year. You can go. We've got three lots of presentations in there. You can walk your way through. Yeah, I have to say that coming from Canada and listening to these two presentations here, I wish you could be a little more proactive in getting out information to societies in Canada, probably in the U.S. in Australia. You know, people, organizations that publish newsletters and things are usually desperate for information. And a well-written article talking about your society, what it has to offer to people in other countries, I'm sure will be very well received. You could write it once and probably have it published in several places. Thank you. Well I could actually follow up on that. I had a girl that just had never met her before until June of this year, in the beginning of July, and she came from Ottawa. We met up Facebook, all the old social media sites. Yeah, different genealogy sites that you can go into, forums and things. And she came over to Northern Ireland, but she went back with the NIH S-Leaflets, because that's what I push our society. Well hopefully this is the start of something and we'll take on board what you said. I'd like to say that some of our, I was a membership secretary for the Northern Ireland Communist Discipline in many years, just escaped this year. I'm only four years of volunteering, but we have very strong links with the other communist societies in Canada and Australia, and they receive our journals and they receive our newsletters twice a year, and so they would be aware of all these developments. And of course now you're on YouTube, so you're going to be seen by thousands of people tomorrow. So we have to stop it there, because it is six o'clock, but thank you all for attending the first day's lecture at the Nativity in the Owls Yarns, and a very big thank you to Annemarie and to Maggie for a wonderful presentation. Thank you. I've got to do about the deep parachutists I'm not dead. You survived, you survived. Don't know those pranks, that was really good. I'm going to turn this off, I'm going to turn off the recording. We're still recording it just so that you know that all of that is on YouTube now.


What's up you guys, Dano here. Today, we're doing a little lamercation. Yes, that's right. I'm gonna educate you about some limes. So did you know that when you get those limes, like notice I can barely squeeze these, they're hard as a rock. So look at this thing, both of these are similar. These over here, they're squishy.  So check this out, I'm gonna cut this lime open. Both these limes are super hard. So look at this. You know when you cut a lime open and it looks like that, they're super hard to juice. Look, I'm squeezing the heck out of it. And there's no juice coming out. Here's what you do. Check this out. Throw in the microwave. All right, that was about 30 seconds in the microwave. It's definitely warm to the touch. I'm gonna slice this bad boy open. And you can tell that that was super dry. Look, looks just like that, but check it out. You can now squeeze it and get that juice just by putting it in the microwave. Look, you can see the steam coming out. That was just from 30 seconds, but you can still get that juice.  Now let's get to this little hack trick. It's not really a hack. I notice this all the time. If you don't know, I used to be a former bartender. So this is how you gotta cut your limes, my friends. When you cut your limes like this, let's go on the edge of your glass. Yeah, it's fancy and all, but when it comes time to squeeze it, you gotta use two hands and then you can barely even get any juice out of it. This is how you wanna cut your limes, my friend.  And then what you gotta do is you gotta put a little slit just like this. Now I'll show you what that does. You should get four slices out of a lime like this, a half a lime. Those are four slices. Now let me show you, this one has the slit in it, this one does not. So that's a huge difference. So look at this. When I go to squeeze this one, watch where the juice goes. It's just all over the place, right? Now, when I go to squeeze this one, watch where the juice goes. It goes right down to the tip. What's happening there is it allows that little slit, allows the juice to come down to the end and go where you want it to go, maybe in a bottle of Corona. I don't know. There you go, hope you learned something today. Love y'all.


I wanted to introduce myself as the Executive Director of the Brackermage Park Conservancy and to say just a few brief words about the Conservancy. We were formed as a nonprofit organization in 2008 and were organized to be a steward for a steward of an advocate for the park to work with you the community to represent you and work with the city as a partner in what might be improved at the park what needs to be sustained and what could be and enhanced to improve all of our visitor experiences as we walk through the park. The Conservancy operates under a memorandum of understanding with the City of San Antonio however we do not manage or operate the park. We are in advisory capacity in working with the city and the community. It's important I think that we are all talking about Brackermage Park now. It's time. Our Much Love Park is visited throughout the year by people from throughout the city not just one district or no our district too but it it is unable to keep up with the heavy usage. So part of the reason we are all here is to see how can we adapt to what is needed for the park for instance maintaining river walls or restoring the pump house which Homer will go into. But the purpose is not for us to end the discussion. This is the beginning of the discussion about what is going to happen long term to the park and it's up to us as citizens and so I put myself out there and members of the Conservancy are here tonight to talk with you, answer additional questions and hear your comments and I look forward to working with you over time. Thank you. Thank you Lynn. So I'm going to provide a summary and overview of just the process and some of these strategies to date and then once we're done we'll go into citizens and signed up to speak and then after that it'll be in open house form where you can circulate and rotate through the different strategy areas to ask additional questions of the project team. But kind of want to highlight sort of how we got here. So obviously we have strategies to share with the public and through the process the community and former councilman Betty Osable reached out to councilman Trevino district one highlighting the need for additional public input and so the parks department was challenged to do just that and we want to be responsive to the community and so tonight is one of six public meetings after this evening where there's two public meetings left for citizens to come out and continue to provide input through this process and so at this point nothing's been decided no plan has been adopted these strategies you see are just that they're concept ideas no design elements have been considered this is not an implementation plan there is no funding for this project there's funding to develop the master plan but no funding for implementation we're not working with a blank slate so that's challenging for the project team to go through and figure out how we can improve this park at the end of the day public use of this park will not change there's been some misinformation about fees being charged and Easter camping going away that's not accurate this master plan does not address programming in the park what it does is it addresses how we can protect preserve and restore the cultural and historical resources of the park and that was the overarching goal and so what these everybody's holding and what these vision boards have in the back has that in mind and so through this process at the end of the sixth meeting the design team will be charged with putting all that information together and figuring out which of these strategies ultimately move move forward and maybe become part of a final recommendation first off strategy number one increase visibility and pedestrian access to and within the park and so you see three kind of sub components that make that up and depending on where you're coming from or if you're a tourist or not you may get to the park a different way or if you're a tourist you may not know that you just passed Breckenridge Park and so one theme was or one element was to create a common park entrance and theme so that depending how you're accessing the park you'll know you've arrived at Breckenridge Park there's a lot of neighborhoods that surround the park and so research showed that there was poor pedestrian connectivity to the park and so there's opportunity to strengthen that you see in one of the vision elements for number one the third one talks about adding multi-use pathways to increase pedestrian flow one of the comments that we've heard is how can we increase safety of pedestrian traffic north and south of the park east and west and so this in part addresses that second recapture green space and Lou of impervious cover and parking through asset mapping of the park by the project team one of the things that they shared with us which is that 20 percent of the park is impervious cover whether that's rooftops or surface lots one-fifth of the park impervious cover so how can we recapture green space in lieu of that and there's four elements on how that can be accomplished first is to reduce interior parking and access impervious cover to recapture some green space that doesn't mean all parking in the park will go away just it strategic maybe stress points within the park that's where we look at and focus implementing this part or this vision to be establish parking garages on the premier of the park that you'll see relates directly to to see the large surface lot in the park as it exists today is right by the Bracken Ridge Eagle the train depot and so by recapturing that impervious cover as green space a grand lawn the parking has to go somewhere and so the project team identified opportunities along the perimeter of the park not on parkland that garages could potentially be developed and so obviously if we have parking along the perimeter with limited parking on the interior then there's a need to get people to and from points of interests and so one possibility is through providing what is referred to as a people mover or a tram of sorts number three restore natural park features and improve water quality so there's four components there that work towards this end first being restore and stabilize the San Antonio River banks one of the things that the the project team identified apart from the impervious cover ratio is it's a large park with a vast portfolio of features amenities and assets with that comes high maintenance costs so the stabilization of San Antonio River banks is something that the department's doing now but maybe there's more we can do in that regard so this looks at that along the east side of the park is the Katapa Pershing channel which basically is a man-made concrete channel and so one way is to soften that look restore it so still functions as a channel but do it in a way with the natural design and pedestrian walkways there's a lot of invasive species this is not unique to Bracken Ridge Park we encounter this in many of our parks and natural areas so this is also a strategy to restore natural park features how do we better manage our invasive species and eradication and while we do any development whether it's new development retrofit look it including low-impact development features number four restore preserve and articulate park cultural and historical features this directly ties back to what the purpose of this master plan is to protect preserve and restore the cultural and historical landscape of this park so in in 4a it talks about basically raising the profile of the park achieving a certain designation that doesn't exist today with this park that will lend itself to possibly outside funding non-city funding to accomplish just this preserve protect and restore these critical features of the park we know that there is a lot of history of the park was Spanish colloquial dams the sacias and and waterworks and so one strategy one element of the strategy is to look at how we can restore those to provide an understanding for future generations of how this park was once used versus to how it is today there's a number multitude of historic buildings and structures on on the property that also through restoration can again tell the story of how the park use has changed over time creating outdoor classroom there's a lot of education activities that occur in the park today throughout the park but there's an opportunity as well to have a formal area where this occurs there's a sunken garden theater serves as a venue for many events throughout the year and how do we better integrate this into the park so one element looks at renovating the sunken garden theater the fifth and final strategy reduce vehicular traffic to improve pedestrian mobility this ties back to the first one talking about pedestrian connectivity and in safe passage to you know north and south east and west within the park and so you know and also back to having a common park entrance so there's many ways you can get to Breckenridge Park this first one talks about improving the intersection at Stadium Drive in Hildebrand Avenue and having that be as a formal park entrance and a formal zoo entrance typically people will come up St. Mary's to get to the zoo but this would bring them down a different route and so again people know we've arrived at Breckenridge Park 5 B this ties back to the first one about so with that entrance being solidified and directing traffic as a formal entrance to the park there's the opportunity to look at closing the Hildebrand Avenue entrance on the northern end of the park where there's an abundance of historical assets and five C and D highlight possibly mid-block turnarounds along Red Oak and Toledo and St. Mary's these roundabouts would allow people to still drive up to the designated point of interest within the park offload load up at the end of the day whatever the case may be and not have that traffic coming through the park 5 e close Avenue a to public vehicular traffic and allow this similar to you know we talk about Catapa Port Pershing and kind of restoring that as a natural feature allow this area to become a natural area with pedestrian walkway and so those are the five primary strategies of where we're at thus far in the master plan development process good evening everyone my questions were related or my cons related mostly to mobility I work with a senior population some of our events occur at Bracken Ridge Park and there have been opportunities for vehicles to go into the park drop off our seniors Park elsewhere my question is will this limit those types of events for organizations that want to do that and just to bring in a day trip or field trip whatever to to the seniors to the senior population and also to impaired visitors who are in either scooters wheelchairs or other types of devices that assist them in walking as well as renovations will renovations limit the entrances of those special transit vehicles and I know that I spoke with Bill about some of those and he assured that you know because of federal compliance ADA accommodations have need to be made for those types of vehicles and also something last comment will the existing and renovate usually renovated pavilions still remain on site Jossky's cater all of those will those still remain on site for groups or individuals to use thank you regarding the process and letting people know what you're doing I've handed out probably 150 200 flyers to people who really use the park I walk around the park I go every day for two miles and I've handed out flyers 200 at least 200 and I have yet to hand a flyer to anybody that knew what you guys are doing so the real users of the park do not know what you are doing and the Bracken Ridge Park Conservancy that supposed to be a voice and I'm quoting a voice for those who use this treasured park and quote is dedicated to representing the interest of the park users that is an incorrect statement because the real park users do not know what you guys are doing and with the 4th of July coming up that would be a really good time for you all to go out there with your staff and your people and hand out flyers to all the real users of the park and ask them what they think of what you're talking about doing as far as pervious cover I'd like to know where you get the 20 percent from because I've looked at your map and I don't see how it's possible that 20 percent is the case but if it is you can use pavers you can dig up the the pavement and the concrete in the asphalt you can put down pavers you can put down pervious concrete that water goes through you could even put grass and mow the roads through the park but allow cars to drive over them you could put real grass roofs on top of all the roofs that you're saying are a problem uh all I would say about driving through the park is like on avenue A and and all the whole park you're you're going to stop grandpa from going down there and fishing with his kids on the banks you're going to stop people like me who like to just slowly drive through my park you're going to stop all the picnickers and campers that like to go in the park and don't have all day long don't have time to park in a parking garage and ride a tram to go picnic so you are going to restrict the people's use of their park if there were not people like myself and my cousin and others who decided to block walk and hand out flyers at Brackenridge park for all the people that utilize the park most people would not know that this even existed so for individuals to stand up here and say well nothing is permanent this is a draft plan well I have to differ because this plan was already in the works it was already being spoken of they were already moving forward until a grassroots individual decided to bring it to light and say why we as a community as a staple of this city were not aware of this master plan so please take that into light as they want to say draft plan there are a lot of positives but one thing that I do not want to see are parking garages I think that you know you're going to place everybody in a parking garage that has to potentially pay because they did it downtown San Antonio so who is that really going to keep out of the park we all know that Pearl is being it is a new concept and you have the Alamo Heights area but is that really going to prevent all the people that have used this park for generations this is a staple of our city from actually accessing and making this an accessible park there are a lot of cultural elements to this park that we do need to cherish and we need to continue because that is what makes our city so unique is the culture as well as this park so I want to clarify that this yes is that though it's being presented that now our community input is wanted this was after the fact thank you all very much and have a good evening hope that the density because I know this park like the back of my hand so anybody who actually drops off children at an incarnate word on Hildebrand all know that you have a backup from UIW high school so if they plan on I believe that's your strategy five if they plan on making that a singular entrance could you all see Hildebrand being backed up on that high hill and coming down back up and say oh this is your main entrance for people who are not from San Antonio because that's really who we're catering to it seems like are the are the tourists is what's been happening for decades is that people coming down Hildebrand and going on to 281 if you miss that exit that's it you have to go back around there is no accessible way of walking into that entrance so that was just my additional comment thank you I actually love some of the new creative improvements that will enhance the beauty of the park like the modern drainage designs the stabilization of riverbanks and you know just just a vision for for improving of course the the water quality of our rivers and streams throughout the entire San Antonio is important you mentioned like the cost of maintaining the parks is expensive and definitely cleaning up the rivers and everything the streams is definitely a hard work but it's definitely an investment that I think is well worth and that said though I did not like the elimination of the roads that go into the park because I represent the working families of San Antonio and and sometimes it's just really hard to find you know an hour of block of your time to to go to the park I understand like there's a concern of the that maybe lack of parking and concerns about congestion in the within the park and maybe wanting to use more multi like wanting to use more pedestrian friendly spaces so so I think I know recently the city spent money to improve the roads so it would be a waste of money just to completely dig out like all of the the asphalt to turn into to green space I know that it's um we want more green spaces but I think that by keeping people out of the park is not the the answer to that I'm just here because I got an email and it was very scary because I thought there would be no way you could enter unless you paid and there would be a lot of things in there I guess like the tram or whatever you have to pay and now you don't have to you can walk in or take a bike or take a car and I really would not like to see that changed thank you I have a child with special needs and disabilities I represent Hispanic Chamber of Commerce I'm a part of NYTA Columbus I'm also a part of the Bejar 269 Alhambra's we give back to the disabled folks kiddos that are fortunate that it's hard for them to walk we work a lot closely with the with the zoo itself and we have certain recreations that they have or certain centers that I put together for in Brackenbridge which is a little bit difficult for these kiddos and not only for kids but also for elders that are in wheelchair mobility it's very hard and very inconvenient for them to get off from the vehicle finding parking for the disabled sometimes we have to drive around four to five times around the park to actually find a parking for the disabled so it's really hard to actually be on time in a certain location there with our agency or organization or even with the families of these kiddos and such as in my case my wife's a teacher I know she loves going out there and bringing other families on board to try to you know just have a fun time at Brackenbridge and try to figure out ideas of how we can come together and basically just enjoy a nice little picnic you know and putting things together for the family but you know some of those are main concerns such as I know you have the the parking and the shades and all that other stuff that you want to go ahead and bring in sight but I think you know utilizing that it's really hard to come by with being really cultured here in San Antonio with the whole breaking down the streets and doing this and that you know there's a certain way to do it but that kind of takes away from the value of what San Antonio and the culture is all about that's what keeps me here in San Antonio, Texas not going back to Los Angeles but at the same time just meeting some of these historical landmarks that a lot of people are unaware just like La Vita I know I was also you know against all that proposition but anyhow that's a different scenario but some of the other things that I wanted to bring up was also such as I believe you have a trolley or something there and one of your forums there then you know if that's going to be in sight for the for the whole Bracken Bridge such a little trolley park or something like that I think it would be great to have a little something with the disabled for the disabled to also enjoy that because I know I personally had to make a request with the zoo for our kiddo to actually bring out a certain train at Brack to actually just write that train for what is it 15 or actually less than a few minutes or so and it was really hard for us to actually make that come to life and while we were there actually making that request I believe they mentioned well this is the only little train that we have it's been here for years but this is something new that we brought up and it's only unfortunate that it's only one ramp that we have for those that are disabled and I just think we'll just need more of that especially for you know kids elders in any way of having disabilities so that way they could get around the park and all that so I just want to thank you guys once again for having us here but that's something I wanted to bring up thank you thank you thank you my main concern is about Suffering Gardens Theater I'm a user of that theater pretty much once a year and my concern is about the renovation of the park itself and also the parking around the park and the street closure which can also put a damper on what we do out there at the park and we put a lot of money into the park and there's hardly anything that's been done to the structure outside the park I saw this past year they did a lot of improvement as far as the the outside structure and putting plants in not a pretty looking flowers and so forth and so on inside of the park but also the seating in the Suffering Garden Theater is still not has been not been replenished they've been taking seats out of course for various reasons when you break you know put them back in but there are a lot of things that that I've seen that since we've been using apart for some 31 years that has not been improved and I'm just concerned about the the closure of the streets and and the parking around Suffering Gardens Theater but that's those are my concerns and hope that we can get some of those resolved thank you very much for those of you who are not familiar with what parkour is it's a movement-based discipline a holistic approach to self-improvement through physical and mental challenges our community has grown over the past 10 plus years and we use any number of San Antonio parks for our training and with our unique background skills trained at these local parks it allows us to grow and invest in the betterment of our community its members and its environment our practitioners develop a symbiotic relationship with the natural and man-made obstacles the environment directly affects the progress that we make as humans we are I'm here to express the importance of preservation alongside with innovation and some of the restoration projects that you have in place would take away from the obstacles that we use every day we want to get back and we want to help because this is really important to us but we also ask that you take into consideration the way that other people use the park as well for enjoyment and training and thank you so much for having this we really appreciate everything and if there's anything we can do to get back just let us know this will spend a lot of our taxpayer money it will be totally renovated up to date top of the line and then it will be privatized and you will never get back in the door without paying some private group to use our public facility so i'd like this entire thing to start from scratch and start with the public in a public park a park does not include fees or anything thank you and we have seen as an organization about policy making and policy change we're also seeing a lot of this development coming across with plans like the essay tomorrow the comprehensive plan even essay 2020 where we're seeing that a lot of these things are changes are for looking out for the future residents in the next 10 years however it also disregards the current residents and the past residents of san antonio um one of the biggest change when it comes about policy making is that these plans are the initiatives kind of initiative conversations about erasing current residents we're thinking about new garages that talk about parking where we don't even know if they're going to be charging up to five dollars to ten dollars per hour we're talking about garages our occupation of public or even housing we're talking about how people that have been displaced as it is off a Broadway street where they can't even afford the rent or even the mortgages because people are buying up houses and charging a lot and i do travel across mulberry street into the park onto Broadway and i already know how heavily trafficked it is and it does not talk about that this plan i mean i know it's it's like the conversation about but i do want to see the improvements of of that i do see a lot of the focus actually how the pro burry and this park are getting reconnected with the new residents because it is going to be an accommodation for them but not for us and as far as projection walk it is very dangerous to walk around Broadway to even get alone cross it during the day and even at night because people are usually you know will go across the street to buy something to eat or come back um there's a lot of traffic up on hilderbrand definitely i do see a lot a lot because of the schools and we do get worried when it comes to policy and we do get worried about plans because again as an organization we do respecting honor past generations and the new generations do not remove access to the park do not touch one of those drives do not remove one of those individual two three four parking places that are close to the picnic tables i've used the park regularly for over 50 years that's my park it's our park it's their park and what the things that you need to keep in mind is there are a number of us here but for every one person who is speaking you know statistically how many other people there are out there that are not coming forth and saying what they think and feel but share our sentiment you guys know statistics what i would suggest that you do is go back to the drawing table one do not use pearl as an example that development has hidden the jewel of the pearl brewery so that those of us who live here can't see it you talk about access it's not there you need to look at this park in the terms of improving what nature has had i agree you know put more countries back there take out some of the growth that has strangled the native growth improve the little roadways some of that has been done put more access to restroom facilities so as you're walking or running or biking and nature calls you can get to a facility quickly put in more water fountains with pet fountains attached so that when you have your pets and i've got two dogs and i take them out there that when they need something to drink you can get something to drink and soak in your pets i have seen that done in different areas along the san antonio river development we need to have more that it's not a big scientific issue and you need to also look at accessibility for those that have mobility issues i remember reading my mother around in her wheelchair and somebody somebody somebody somebody somebody somebody so use what you have do not destroy what we have now there is a multi-level parking i think it's on avenue a it's the street that runs parallel to broadway one block over avidabee and it's tucked away it's close to the witty that is done very well you have natural vines rolling along the outside of it it is free you don't even know it's there because it's so well camouflaged with the trees and i think it's like four levels and that's a very good example of using the natural area to improve parking in the area that large expanse over there where the the little train has the stop for the zoo that very large area of asphalt and i was looking at it the other day and i thought you know with some really good ecological designs you could have several of those parking areas in that you could diminish some of the asphalt area put more trees back and you would have some vertical parking but right there was accessible again so you don't have to schlep stuff back and forth this idea of having perimeter parking and having to come into our park forget that folks it sucks remember we are the people this is our park it is a people's park please respect the people who live in this community thank you okay wreck arrange park is personal to me when my grandmother came here um the early 1900s escaping the revolution in mexico um she raised her family to enjoy the park i had my second birthday there in 1952 the family all the cousins just got in a station wagon and took a blanket and got under a tree and sang happy birthday to me so um there are long long deep deep roots for the community that have free access to the parks i understand that y'all are not addressing fees that you want to charge people to go to our free park that needs to be struck down from the very beginning not for parking not for access to water to drink not for access to a tram if y'all are indeed going to put this tram into place okay i don't see picnic tables in your pretty pictures um and my family that's the main reason we went to the park for picnics um we bring something from home maybe get some chicken maybe get something to drink and uh just spend the afternoon there are some other concerns there seems to be an understanding that the european influence is the most important aspect of the park as it has been said earlier thank you um the people who are here well before the the barbarians from spain arrived oh used these spaces first so it's interesting that you want to restore and interpret spanish colonial dams asikias and waterworks but it would also be good for y'all to bear very much in mind the importance of the people who are here first and acknowledge the culture and the heritage of the young oana so if this is not going to be a place where every day san antonios can go and have a picnic where we can just to take a picnic a bundle in and sit under a tree or preferably at a picnic table if y'all are going to charge us for any of that that won't fly so this cannot be another gentrification project that keeps the real people who grew up here whose parents grew up here whose grandparents grew up here and whose great grandparents came in from Mexico and were recent arrivals so i know that people who have been here many more generations than my family and y'all need to take care of it for my family and for my family's families and my family's neighbors and the cousin across the fence that's married to the man down the street so keep it keep it's an antonio keep it young oana thank you thank you so my name is Amelia Valdez and i am a staff at the esperanza peace and justice center who was uh last night a part of the session at the father loopy theater in our our concern it was similar to what everybody's talking about and then what came out of that meeting was why fix something that doesn't need to be fixed to a little modest little part they need a lot of work and my family took care of it and my family before my family took care of it and that's casino park 1718 south salsamora fat kids get stickers or thorns in their feet the swimming pool ball wall has been tagged one toilet to about maybe a hundred people fat they get about a hundred and something degrees that's really hot fat people come there every day families to be with their this we got a 345 acre park that does not need to be put through whatever changes you need to be put on but this fix our other parks the city belongs to the city right but also the community parks in the community they really need work so i want to invite everybody come to me forward come to the west side san antonio come see casino park other parks smith park other little parks they just need something just need something minor right that's a peace and justice center we want to make sure things are going to be done right we want the community to have access to any of the planning and also we want to make sure that we as a community are being notified and we visit other parks too it's just not break and reach park it's it's it's a part of our culture yes but we also need other areas that need to be also below that because we don't want kids to be hurt at a place that you know you know that right it's this as i speak and it's i would be embarrassed for people to come through casino park and see all the tagging that's up there at the park but it's a beautiful little park i can only say that at night it glows of how much richness of people that come to that park so yes the rich park might need its minor but it doesn't need what other parts really need thank you so much appreciate it i have to see the community support there's one thing i want to say did everybody get the stickers okay so we're looking only disagree to any of the proposals that you heard tonight so we need everyone to place one sticker on each item have different choices that you have from strongly agree to strongly disagree and we that feedback is going to be tallied up for all the different sides of town that we're going to and we're going to share this information with the rest of our council colleagues again councilman Trevino and myself share record rich park it is in district two the most of the areas where the changes are being proposed and again we're here to listen please don't think that we're doing this as a waste of time we're not going to take this information that is broadcast for the entire world to see and ignore it that is not how we operate with the city of san Antonio that's not how operate as a council person and i do appreciate everything that we've heard not just at this conversation but in previous emails and previous conversations and whenever you see me on the street when people bring this instance up so again i'll be here as well afterwards i don't want to take up too much of your time i know that you have families to get back to but i do thank you again for coming out and sharing how you feel about the park your passion for the park is it shines through with many of your comments and a lot of those memories that you had i have as well because i i remember the park the same way we very much like to hear when you're going to begin the community input planning meetings well again this potential work was scheduled to be done in phases potentially not all of it potential some of it depending on what went through the bond committees so the bond process starts in november most likely this would happen before November so we do not want to pay for something that we have not yet designed there's no way to pay for it without if you if the project even moves forward to a bond process in its current state which is probably highly unlikely based on the feedback that we've gotten then you vote no and you won't be paying for it and if the entire city will probably vote no there's no reason for us to put out a package that would damage all of the other potential bond packages you understand so we want the bond to pass we want to make investments in our city we need streets sidewalks drainage facilities like libraries and senior centers in all parts of town and to let one project move forward that could potentially damage or stop those other projects from happening is not going to happen does that make sense to you it does in a sense of austin constantly works with their communities asks them what do you want us to do we do not yet have that process here and we better hurry and get that process that's why i think this is a part of that process and again we're we're coming into our own and how we're doing it but i think this is us asking you what what you want and again we're asking for your feedback back on those walls we ask for your feedback on this microphone and we're saving and sharing your feedback so if you go to now cast that say you'll be able to see this for all of eternity at least as long as the internet exists so i don't think that there's any problem with the timing's a little off i do agree we we should have asked earlier and make mistakes as long as we admit to them and make a change as quickly as possible so again this is still plenty of time before november before we even start looking because the final bond packages start in november they don't end in november so then the final packages are approved by council in january more or less january and then we start selling them to the public for the main election of 2017 so we're almost a year out from the actual process so this is still fairly early and again no ground has been broken nothing has occurred that can that can't be turned back um we're these are just drawings on this paper i was asked a year ago to attend a meeting so i mean it's been there there have been meetings last july there have been meetings but i think that i i because i went to two meetings as well i was at tri-point i was at another meeting but again i don't think the way that it was publicized is and it's not just this program it's a lot of city programs if you look at stand-up essay or not stand-up essay speak up essay 10,000 or 15,000 out of two million people i don't think that's acceptable to move forward with any kind of planning but what does it take to get our people out too it takes almost a fear this is like a spurious scenario we're going to take the park away so you come out but you guys should already be out of the meetings because the meetings did happen we didn't hide the meetings they're at public places places being larger than this one but because that fear factor came in we got more people out it's like the Donald Trump thing you know people are now registering to vote that have never registered because they're scared that this person's going to potentially be the president of our country it shouldn't have to come to that i mean we want more engaged citizens and hopefully we can get more engaged citizens out of out of this progress well i think it's different because you can do that with the atmosphere park you guys i was not a council person during that process i cannot the city council kept that on the rat so we wouldn't have a election uh so i'm feeling that's what y'all trying to do here with practically the state legislation we're all asking for input but it seems like your mind's already made up yep so we can give you all the i attended that meeting a year ago in july and i was really blown away by the 30 to 40 different ideas that people came up and said i want to see this in my park i don't want you to take away cars in the park i want you to make sure the feral cat coalition is taking care of in the park so many people came and spoke up for positive things that they wanted to see and what they didn't want taken away and their their family like and how important it was and that was a year ago they went through they made themselves available you could email you could call you could talk to them i called jim gray he was wonderful at you know answering my questions if i had any and they presented it i believe around april kind of you know a culmination and i really thought then well they really heard a lot of those different opinions and people tried to address those i don't think you're getting some of the nitty-gritty in in this presentation because i know there was a plan for a pecan grove um in in the bigger thing that i saw but i was so inspired by that that i joined the conservancy because i i work by the park every day and so after the easter camping which i love that that's a tradition you know sometimes i feel i'm not a real person because i didn't grow up here but i love the park and i love those traditions and and seeing that the conservancy takes the time to like go out monday and pick up trash and doing things you know they still respect it but they want to to still take care of the park so i feel a little bit like there was a little bit of a bad rap tonight with some of the things that went on i do appreciate again everyone's passion about the subject obviously this is not going to be the last conversation that we have on the topic and i look forward to meeting with my constituents and constituents from all over the city because again the majority of the area of the park that uh the master plan deals with his industry too so i look forward to talking to all of you about it


Actors Angelina Jolie and Selma Hayek were among the stars that added glamour to the world premiere of Marvel Studios' latest comic book adaptation Eternals. The film boasts one of the most diverse cast of any Marvel movie. Jolie was excited about the diversity as she spoke during the premiere. I hope it just starts to normalize what should have always been there in the first place and I hope we just see more and more of this kind of diversity and I hope that people watch these films in years to come and it's we don't even think about it as being diverse it just becomes what's normal and what's right and what's the appropriate representation of the world we live in. I mean it is it feels like a bit of a departure from Marvel it feels it's got a different tone visually I think it's going to be quite different and obviously the cast is huge and it's about seven thousand years so it's really an epic story. One of the themes of the film is connection connection to one another connection to the earth. I hope that resonates with people in some way. I just hope people enjoy the movie it's it's different it's a really kind of interesting bunch of characters so I just hope people enjoy our interpretation of what these characters are. Well I have to say I let me just say that I might be the first but I'm not going to be the only one for much longer there's another deaf superhero coming into the MCU very soon so this is definitely a game changer. Hello hope you enjoyed the news please do subscribe to our YouTube channel and don't forget to hit the notification button so you get notified about fresh news updates