Hello everyone, how are you today? This is Marc. I'm doing just great. Thanks for asking. The students weren't paying attention to the lesson. Joshua got a postcard from a faraway country. In this lesson, we're going to talk about definite and indefinite articles, so stay tuned. Let me start by saying that if you think you know everything about this lesson, you're wrong. I'm going to talk about definite and indefinite articles in a very detailed way. So let's start with the. We use the and we pronounce the with consonant sounds and not consonant letter. What do I mean by that? Okay, let's look at car. It's a consonant sound, so the car, the boy, etc. Consonant sounds are not consonant letters. Let's take an example of a word that starts with the vowel that is pronounced with a consonant sound. The university, the European Union. So these two start with the sound ye. This ye is a consonant sound. Now, how do we pronounce it with vowels then? Well, the exam, the hour. And in this case, the word starts with the vowel, okay, the exam. And obviously we have h here, but the h is mute, so we don't pronounce it. So the hour consonants vowel sound, sorry, vowel sound. Now, we also use it for stress something. For example, the flower I gave you last week died. If you want to stress that flower, the flower. Now, I have eight rules that we're going to talk about. So the first one, you can place the definite article the with any noun, but you need to have already mentioned it. For example, the boy I told you about is sick. Okay, so the boy, the other person knows who I'm talking about. So that boy, the boy I talk about. Okay, so number two, the rule number two, when referring to one specific person thing or group, for example, the son, the earth, the, the colosseum in this case, okay, the colosseum, et cetera. So specific is only one. Number three, to refer to living things in singular form. So the home of the buffalo is America. So the group of animals, buffalo. The potato comes from the New World, for example. Potato is singular. And so, but we here we mean the group of potatoes, obviously. Now, for the fourth rule, giving more details about the noun by adding an adjective. So the small church in Rome is very beautiful. The ball man just fell off the ladder, for example. The bold, bold and small are adjectives. The fifth rule that I want to talk about is with general determiners. So few, little, many, other, et cetera. The few who arrived late got a bad mark, for example. The few, so before few, little, many, other. Now, number six, with one, once, and numbers. Mary wanted the red one. Okay, the red one, that one. Number seven, with plural countries. So the United States of America. The Maldives, et cetera. So with plural countries. Now, with geographical names, and this is the last one. The Atlantic ocean, so for example, with oceans and seas, the Mediterranean, et cetera. The Gulf of Mexico, so with Bayes, Gulfs, et cetera. With rivers, the Nile, the Amazon, et cetera. Now, with groups, in this case, with groups of lakes. The Great Lakes. But we say, we have the lakes, we don't use with Lake Ontario. We don't say the Lake Ontario. We say Lake Ontario without article. The Himalayas, the Andes, so it's a group of mountains. So if you want to talk about Everest, you just don't say the Everest. You say Everest, the name of the mountain. The Gobi Desert. So with deserts, we need the. And here I noted that with single lakes or islands, mountains, we don't use the. But if you want to be specific, for example, the Isle of Man, you can say the because we is that specific island. But for example, Australia, that is a continent and is an island. We don't use the at the beginning or Greenland, for example. Now let's talk about the indefinite article. We use before consonant sounds. So like I said, a university. So the you here is a vowel, but the sound is, is a J. So it's a consonant sound. So a university, a book, etc. Now and before vowel sounds. So and our DH is mute, like I said before. So and our and apple. So this a is a consonant is a vowel sound. So it would be something like this is a vowel sound and apple, etc. You have many examples. Now I listed five rules that I want to talk about with you. So the first time you mentioned something, you need to use the indefinite article. So a postcard from a far away country, I said in my example. So this is the first time I mentioned the postcard and the far away country. So the second rule, adding more information to the noun. So with, for example, an adjective, a Spanish tycoon. So Spanish would be the adjective. Tycoon would be the noun. A Spanish tycoon. Another example or the third rule is with professions. So an English teacher, like me, an English teacher. And this, in this case, we have also the adjective English. So I'm a teacher, but I'm an English teacher or a lawyer, etc. So with professions. Number fourth rule, when using one individual person or thing to make a general statement about all the people or things of that type. So for example, an adolescent generally eats more than an adult. So an adolescent and an adult. And monkey, in this case we have the animals, monkeys.  I specify one, but I refer to the whole, the group of monkeys and turtles. The fifth rule and the last rule with singular nouns, which refer to just one thing. For example, a full moon was lighting up a dark sky. So singular nouns, so full moon. And this specifies only the moon. So a full moon was lighting up a dark sky. The sky is only one and it was dark in this case. Now let's recap. I've listed eight rules to use the definite article the. So watch the lesson again if you don't remember it. I've listed five different rules for the indefinite article a or an. Remember how to use them and with what words to use a or an. Well, that's it for today. I hope you enjoyed the lesson. Thank you very much for watching. If you haven't subscribed to my channel, you may do so by clicking subscribe. And if you have any questions, comments, or if you want to give your own example, type it under this video. Enjoy your day and see you next week. Take care. Bye bye.


Someone said, oh, addiction is really an important subject, and it's everywhere. And I know that we're hearing a lot of data and facts and figures about addiction, but I had, coincidentally, just in Springfield doing some work, heard of a group called Writers for Recovery, which focuses not so much on facts and figures and data, but on individual stories and storytelling as a way of recovering. And I found Gary Miller, who is the co-founder and artistic director, creative director of Writers for Recovery, who also happens to be a neighbor practically next door, and that is also coincidental. Gary graduated from the Burma College of Fine Arts with his MFA in writing and does what many of us have only dreamed of, makes a living as a writer, doing advertising, marketing, and all kinds of other things. And there's anything else about him I'd like to let him tell you. So, welcome. Thank you. I apologize, I know it's Halloween, and I probably should have worn something appropriate, but I didn't, so anyway. Thanks so much, I really appreciate you all showing up. I think you'll agree that it's a really, that the addiction and recovery are a really important topic for Vermont and for the whole country right now. We're in a crisis. And so anyone who shows up to find out more about that makes me feel really good. So I appreciate your showing, and I appreciate the invitation from Osher and from the Montpelier Senior Activity Center to come and talk to you folks. So, as Lawrence mentioned, I've been the, I was a co-founder of Writers for Recovery, and I'm the Creative Director. And if you don't know about us, first of all, before I forget, you can find out a lot about us by going to our website, WritersforRecovery.org, online. But what we mostly do is we go around, all around Vermont to community centers and recovery centers and correctional facilities, and we give free writing workshops for people in recovery from addiction. And I'll talk a little bit more about that later, but it's been an incredible experience reaching out and engaging with people from all walks of life all over Vermont and trying to just teach them how to use writing to aid in their recovery to kind of process the things that they've been through to try to figure out what their path is and where they need to go, you know. And it's all works through writing, and it's been really amazing. It's been an incredible time, and I feel very grateful for that. I myself have been in recovery from drugs and alcohol for 22 years, and I did not do it through AA or any of the other traditional means. I just did it on my own. And so I was kind of an outsider to the recovery community, and there wasn't a lot that I really knew about addiction and recovery other than I had a problem with drugs and alcohol, and I managed to stop that and put it behind me. But I've learned a lot in the last four years, and so I thought I would share some of that with you all. I got started through The Hungry Heart, which is great. Has anyone seen The Hungry Heart? If you haven't seen it, I'd highly recommend it. It's a fantastic film done by the filmmaker Bess O'Brien about prescription opiate addiction, mostly up in the Northeast Kingdom. At the end of producing that film, Bess wanted to give back some thanks to the community of people who'd agreed to, you know, take the risk of going public and saying I'm a recovering addict and I'm still in addiction, and be in her film and she wanted to give something back. So she held a six-week arts workshop in St. Albans at the Turning Point Recovery Center, and we did writing, radio production, black-and-white film photography and theater for six weeks, and I was lucky enough to be one of the writing teachers. It was fantastic. It was mind-blowing. I had no idea what to expect, and all of a sudden these people are one of the most incredible pieces of work, you know, just... it goes straight to your heart and really, they really had something to say. But we thought it would be just a one-time thing. We had, you know, we closed up at the end of six weeks. First time I'd really worked with Bess. It was great. And then a year later, I got a call from Bess and she said, Burlington Labs, which does all the drug testing for people in Vermont, who are both recovering addicts and very supportive of the recovery community, they want to know if you... they heard that writing part of it was pretty fun. Would you like to do a writing workshop in Burlington? We'll fund it.  I said, yeah. Since then, we have done workshops from St. Albans, Newport, all the way up, all the way down to Brattleboro, all over the state. We did one last fall in Mohawk Territory in Quebec. I'm headed off this weekend to do one over in Cerenac Lake in the Adirondacks. I've done one at McLean Hospital in Boston, psychiatric facility in Boston. So we've really grown a lot. And it's been a great experience. So that's a little background on how I got started. When I started, I had, when I first saw the Hungry Heart, I had no idea there was an opiate epidemic in Vermont. I mean, for one thing, I have nothing really to do with drugs anymore. And I was quite surprised, as I'm sure many of you were, to find out that in Vermont, there are a lot of people suffering from opiate addiction. And in the Hungry Heart, I learned a little bit about that. One of the first things I learned about the epidemic was how big it was. I don't know if you have any idea how many people in Vermont are addicted to drugs and opiates. And I wouldn't know either other than the Department of Health has created this really handy chart. I may have to step out a little bit. Can I take this with me? Yes. So I don't know if you can read all this. 17,844 people misused a pain reliever in 2015. So that means people who are quote-unquote abusing opiates, that's about 3% of the Vermont population by my math now. I will say that I'm not a good math person, so maybe a little off plus or minus. 8600 opioid dependent people treated, that's about 1.5% of Vermonters. But when you look at that figure, I think you also need to be mindful of the fact that a lot of people who didn't seek treatment, they're not going to be treated. So I'm going to go back to that figure. 403 community naloxone reversals and 204 emergency department discharges. 1375 EMS overdose calls. Those numbers have gone up since then, but that's just 2015. So that gives you just a little bit of an idea of the numbers that we're talking about. But it's also important to remember that that's only one type of addiction. In Writers for Recovery, we don't ask you to tell us what your addiction is at the door or to prove that you're addicted to something. We just ask that you show up and write for us. There's no, you don't have to share any information about yourself if you don't want to, but I will tell you that in the course of the four years I've been in there, I've dealt with people addicted to meth, cocaine, marijuana. And I know people say there's controversy about marijuana addiction, but I can tell you that there are people who are addicted to it. It may not be as addictive as some other drugs, but it's definite because I've worked with these people and I know and they suffer because of their marijuana addiction. Alcohol, of course, is probably the biggest one. But we also deal with people with food addictions, with sex addiction, with gambling addiction. All of these people have made their way into Writers for Recovery. Now you start thinking about those numbers getting a little bigger, right? 1.3% opiates. And you start to realize that there's a lot of people about one in ten Americans according to the National Institutes of Health are addicted to a substance. So do the math. Oh, before we do the math. In elders, the addiction, it's often underrepresented or misdiagnosed, but it's huge. I read a figure that the highest percentage of addiction to alcohol is widowers above the age of 75. Percentage-wise is demographic. 6% of hospital admissions for elders are for substance abuse. 14% of ER visits and 20% of psychiatric admissions are for substance abuse.  And I think a lot of time, people don't really think about that.  And I learned about that in all sorts of different ways. For instance, heroin addicts tend to be a little older than you might think. You know? So this is the demographic of concern to people here at this center, but also it should be to everybody. About 63,000 Vermonters are addicted or suffer from addiction. That's based on 10% of 630,000. That's a lot of people. I don't know what you think. The population in Montpelier is about 8,000. So think of it in those terms. And you start realizing that you're talking about a real number of people who have a substance abuse problem. And we know who they are, right? Do we? We know who they are. Because we see them on the street. They're out there. They're sleeping in the street. They're asking us for money. They're breaking into our cars, right? That's who it is. Or do we? And so the second thing I learned in Writers for Recovery is the amazing diversity of people who suffer from addiction. And it is just those people who fit the stereotype. They're part of it, right? It's not to say they're not, but other people are less visible. And so in Writers for Recovery we've had everyone from that person who comes in off the street who's living in a tent, who's addicted to heroin, to a college professor, an educator, a professional engineer. All these people have made their way. And age groups, we probably range in age. We've started recently working with kids, but we mostly work with adults. And so literally the people we've served range in age from 18 to 80. And Vermont doesn't have a lot of cultural diversity as far as race, but we have racial diversity too, although like the rest of Vermont, most of the people in our groups are white. And so you see that it's not just that stereotypical person. So that's one thing to recognize, right? But another thing to recognize is when you think of someone who's an addict a lot of times, you might think of them as not having a lot to offer to the world or maybe not having their I guess their act together, you know, and what I've learned over the last four years is that people in addiction can really, really surprise you. So as I said I had been in recovery for almost 20 years. I hadn't had a lot of contact with people in recovery, but I met people in recovery right away. And I was terrified, by the way, because I had no idea what was going to happen when I interacted with these people because I'm not a social worker. I'm not a trained recovery. I don't have a recovery certification to be a recovery coach. It's one of my goals for this year and I hope I'll have it done by the end of the year. But I'm not trained in that. I'm just a guy who wanted to go in and, you know, my primary skill is writing and, you know, and reading. And I just I was a little nervous going in. One of the first people I met was a guy named Stan Worfley. He came to our very first Burlington group and it's by the way I want to let you know, we do have a confidentiality policy in our meetings like anything that's said in the room stays in the room and identities are kept confidential and less permission is given and I want to be clear that Stan has given me his permission to talk about him. He's in fact become a great friend of mine and he's been a great spokesperson for Writers for Recovery. So Stan came in to the first group I was in. He had crippling post traumatic stress disorder. He had crippling shyness in addition to that. Stan was raised in Gloucester Mass, an efficient community in Massachusetts to both of his parents were drug addicts. He was a high school dropout. He was very, very angry. He had a hard time you know any kind of social interaction. He was terrified of. He self-medicated with all sorts of drugs and he was living in I believe it was the Burlington area but I could be wrong about that and he had a roommate who also liked to drink and take a lot of drugs and one day his roommate got a big old bottle of vodka and said let's take a ride in the car. So Stan went along with him and about halfway through the ride it became clear that what was happening was that the roommate was going to murder was on his way to murder his estranged girlfriend and he had a gun and Stan immediately started to panic but he couldn't jump out of the car so they pulled into a parking space. His roommate got out with the gun, went around the corner Stan heard gunshots ran around the corner and his roommate had been shot dead by the police in the middle of the street. Stan had very, very severe PTSD from this situation because it was involved, for instance when I met him because it had involved a telephone he couldn't talk on the phone he couldn't use a phone for probably three years not even for texting because it was so associated because his roommate I think had called him on the phone and invited him along or something so that was Stan when I met him keep in mind all those things that he's not an educated person that he's really struggling that he's having a hard time, that he's got PTSD that he's got crippling shyness. The first night Stan showed up he kind of mumbled his name and sat with his head down pretty much the whole time. The second time he didn't write at all he didn't read anything he wrote because he didn't write anything. The second time he came he wrote a poem and I gave them I gave out the prompt I am from which is a common prompt that's given to school children to talk about family and around in history and I'd just like to share with you now I want you to keep in mind try to develop a picture in your head of who this person is what he might look like I'll tell you he was very sullen and angry and closed off and tight and this is the first poem he wrote and I'll read it to you too I think I will will I? okay we have a technical difficulty here we go I am from I am from the small towns of New England where everyone knows what you had for dinner where the sea was once a way of life in a badge of pride and the resting place of lost loved ones I am from the back country roads we drove with no destination in mind where the leaves on a cool fall day danced to the sounds of small block v8 thundering by and the rubber left at stop signs was the only proof we were there I am from the place where memories both good and bad where I bowed as a peasant and stood as a king where the greatest of hardship showed what would become the greatest of strengths I know where I am from but if you ask I do not know where I'm going are you surprised by that? I was extremely surprised and delighted by that and that taught me a really valuable lesson that I hope if nothing else you'll carry away with you today and that is people in recovery just aren't who we think they are you know I'll talk a little bit more about that Stan I think two weeks after that wrote a poem a long poem about the incident that led to his PTSD with his friend shooting you know getting killed and read it out loud in the group he never told that story even to his therapist over two years he'd been with for over two years he'd never told the story to anyone he read it out loud in the group like a week after that he agreed to have it published in the Burlington Free Press and probably four or five weeks following that he went with me on live television to talk about Readers for Recovery and how much it had changed his life so these are the kind of things that I've been experiencing you see why I'm excited about this program and why it's really been great but the main lesson from Stan I only wish he were here and you guys all could get to know him he just moved to Maryland to kind of start a new life he's doing really well he's now been in recovery about six or seven years since I first met him I wish you could meet him but I just want you to keep that in your mind you know here's this guy who's uneducated addicts and I just kind of held on to that for my whole time to say even people who have slipped down really really low can make an incredible comeback and that's the lesson to me of Stan so this is what I learned here from Stan addicts aren't someone else they're us okay they're all of us one in ten means technically probably someone in this room has has had in the past an issue with drugs and alcohol yeah someone just raise your hand me too and don't feel pressured to say that but it's true it's your brother it's your employer it's your employee it's your best friend it's your niece it's your nephew it's your daughter it's your son and if it isn't it's somebody else's daughter son niece nephew and all these people are as smart as we are they all are they all have that potential in their minds I've worked with people who can barely spell can barely read and yet they write the most amazing sometimes we even have to spell for them and yet they have really profound insightful and interesting things to say and so that's a huge lesson for me that I learned don't underestimate them there is talented and resourceful too I've met people in writers for recovery who are amazing artists stands an incredible mechanic you can do anything on earth with a car make it fly practically computer programmers and comic book artists and musicians and all sorts of people with just remarkable talents and resources because when your recovery addiction can bring you down so low that you need remarkable personal resources to come out of that and so anyone who's made it into recovery you know even for a little bit it takes an incredible amount of fortitude and courage to face up to whatever that issue is and try to do something about it and there is flawed as we are too okay and nobody's perfect in this world I'm not a perfect person no one's a perfect person nobody has their flaws everyone has the parts of their past and maybe their present that are really painful that contribute to kind of things like addiction and so they're not really different from us they are us and one thing is the decisions they made cost them more than they ever could have imagined they would no one imagines when they take a first drink or smoke a joint or even snort heroin for the first time where they might end up and I think that's critical to remember that you know we'll talk more about that does anybody have any questions by the way yeah I don't know maybe he reads books maybe he watches movies I don't know but yeah it was pretty impressive maybe unschooled maybe unschooled yeah he's a very interesting guy in a whole lot of ways yeah absolutely absolutely it is it's clear yeah I apologize for that I'm just trying to make a distinction that we think that we're not part of that but we are that we're not all this population so I hope that answers your concern this one okay so I just I just want to talk a little bit about the nature of addiction and I want to make clear that I'm not an expert in this department I'm learning and I'd encourage you to try to learn too if you're interested it is a critical subject and the more people who understand it that we can get the better so can you just click that pat again what is addiction we say we use that word a lot right oh I'm so addicted to chocolate or I'm so addicted to candy crusher I'm so addicted to Facebook or I'm so addicted or boy that stuff sure is addictive and I think you know by and large we understand that there's a difference between a statement like that and real you know actual addiction and the way it's been explained to me is that the difference is addiction is kind of the compulsive there's a compulsive nature to it and you keep doing doing it despite the fact that it's causing damage obvious damage to your life and that was certainly the case with me I you know drugs and alcohol had a big negative impact on my life and yet I just wanted to keep doing it and I would you know the hangovers the you know the scenes that I caused the breakdowns with friends who were telling me you know hey you're not in good shape right now and I thought yeah my response to that was oh you don't know what you're talking about you still understand I'm having a great time and you're you should be having one just like me and so I think that's a clear distinction and that's a way that it's been explained to me why do people get addicted in the past I think especially there was this idea that if someone had an addiction issue it was a moral failing on their part you know he's a drunk she's just a drunk he's an addict you know and there's still a lot of that too there's still a lot of negative kind of attitudes about people with addiction and you know I think it's great that we're coming around as a culture to recognizing that it's not a moral failure to be addicted to something it's not so why is it that drugs are so addicting that's the idea that you'll hear about a lot of things you know heroin heroin is no you know you'll hear like heroin is 20 times more addicting than alcohol or cigarettes or the most addicting I mean I'm sure have you all heard things like that is it genetic you know you've heard there's a genetic predisposition could be part of it my father was an alcoholic chances are that made me you know studies show that that made it more likely that I would be maybe they don't understand how and why that works certainly there is a genetic component that you've probably heard about it or is it something more complicated you can probably guess what the answer is it's wait ah hold on you gotta go back a few here keep going okay you didn't see that number flashed up there did you okay so let's just take an example here we all hear that heroin is extremely addictive you've ever heard like try heroin once and you're hooked you know I tried heroin once and for some people that is most certainly the case but how many of you and I've taken prescription opiates anyone want to share that they've taken prescription opiates and I'm guessing that most of the people here who've taken them are not opiate addicts and maybe someone is but you know you go to the hospital you get a course of opiates sometimes you know it could be for a long time I mean if you have a severe hip fracture or something you know you're going to be in the hospital for a while with a lot of opiates going through your system and yet they're going to stop doing that when you go home probably or taper you off and you're going to be able to deal with that and not become an addict and I just also want to put a little quiz in here how many opiate prescriptions were written in Vermont in 2015 anyone who didn't see that number up there when we accidentally flipped through hazard a guess 76,000 76,000 that's a pretty big number that's a lot of prescriptions that's like a what's 76 it's almost one in ten that's over one in ten one prescription for every ten people in Vermont that's a boatload of prescriptions how about 600 1,506 prescriptions for opiates in Vermont in one year that's a lot of prescriptions what were those opiates what were they they were probably oxycodone percadone what percocet just pain meds for people who have wisdom tooth taken out or have a surgery of some type or break their arm surgery quite a bit fentanyl yeah fentanyl right so one would think that if 601,000 to me the math is if you look at the math 601 that's almost a one prescription for every person in Vermont and yet only about 1.3% 5% of Vermonters are seeking treatment for opiate addiction so something's going on like clearly a lot of people are are taking opiates but not a lot of them are becoming addicted so why yep rat park that's why rat park rat park is a science experiment um way back in during the time of the Vietnam war a doctor was working with returning Vietnam vets and he observed that a lot of these vets had taken heroin in Vietnam uses coping mechanism whatever um it was pretty prevalent among GIs um and yet when they came back home the vast majority of them did not continue to use heroin he didn't understand that because he knew about a famous experiment you probably know about it too where they would take a rat and put it in a cage and they'd give it two bottles of liquid one would be pure water and one would be water with heroin in it and that rat would drink the heroin water until it died effectively and that's all it would do would just drink heroin water um and so this guy designed a different experiment rat park he built a big big enclosure um not just for one rat which was the case in the um in the first experiment but for lots of rats and he put in climbers and toys for them to play with and lots of snacks and food and all the rats could run around they could be social they could play games they could have sex they could you know do all these amazing things that rats naturally do and put a bottle of water in there and a bottle of heroin water in there and guess what happened they didn't drink the heroin water at all okay and he theorized from that that um there's a huge huge environmental component to addiction okay um and I think based on just my work with people you know and hearing all the stories of the people that I work with um in their backgrounds and the environment they grew up in particularly the guys in prison you know um I fully support the idea that there's something to this um that it's that it's you know an environment in which there's so much pain um and inescapable pain that you need something to take to medicate you for that um I know I grew I grew up in not the most stable house it was kind of stable in ways um but I also grew up with a really low sense of self-esteem and I really struggled as a kid and boy I still remember the first time I took that big slug of beer and it was like tada tada everything is great right now because I've got this my system and people describe that again and again you know and so some people I've worked with a kid um actually in prison he was a he was a um a lacrosse player at emerson college in boston and he hurt his shoulder and he had to keep playing to give in order to keep his scholarship where he'd have to leave school so they jacked him full of oxycodone that was it for him instant instant love with that and he ended up a heroin addict in prison very promising very bright young journalist um and similarly I keep doing this but it's not working um yeah does anyone know about In the Realm of the Hungry Ghost a book by Gabor McTae anybody know about that book um he just he he ran a clinic in van hoover he predicted people for decades and this book is considered one of the um the best books about addiction and he describes um addiction as this hungry ghost that's inside you that can't be filled by anything but the drug there's something that you need to have in your life that you don't have and that drug fills the hole if it incidentally it's a fantastic book if you're interested in finding out a lot about addiction a lot and hearing some great stories that's a great book he also focuses on the idea that a pain most often developed during childhood um is at the root of a lot of addiction so um so what does addiction do it stops it stops development if you are 13 years old when you start using drugs and you use you're an addict and you stop at 25 emotionally and as far as coping with the world you're still 13 um and so that's a problem um addiction alters the brain um it actually physically changes the way the brain works it severs your human connections and creates an isolation and those are all very damaging and um isolation in families is also a big sign of addiction you know people are isolating that's um a good way to tell if there might be something up so these are kind of the negative no one wants to be an addict people say oh they did it they did it to themselves it's all their fault no one starts out and takes heroin and says you know what I really want to be in my life I want to be on the street looking into cars for money to get money for heroin so I won't get sick nobody dreams of that that's no one's dream and for good reason and the best thing I learned from this whole thing is that recovery is possible recovery is possible there's a great um graphic novel and it's called larceny in my blood a memoir of heroin handcuffs and higher education and it's about a guy who was raised by a mother who was a drug dealer an absent father started selling and using heroin at age 16 was in prison for most of his life until he was about 50 and then decided he was going to get sober went to Columbia University got an MFA in journalism and wrote a beautiful graphic novel about his heroin addiction he's an incredible artist and now teaches in a university in Arizona just think of all that time a life where he was down so low and he can come back and that's a huge lesson I've learned again and again with the people and writers for recovery is that recovery is possible and I've seen it again and again in Vermont we're a model like you guys know this we're a model for the entire nation for dealing with heroin an opiate addiction all states are looking at what we're doing we're doing it right we're having an impact we've got a goal of treatment on demand that in many cases is actually being met prior to Governor Shumlin's initiative of a few years ago that was not the case there were incredible waiting periods for people who even wanted to get clean and they just couldn't do it there were no resources now we have this great hub and spoke system where we have nine intensive detox facilities state they're the hubs and then smaller places doctors offices and things where people can go and get medical assisted treatment it's called MAT you'll hear that a lot with buprenorphine methadone or naloxone I'm not sure if we're using naloxone as a treatment we're using naloxone as the drug that revives people from an overdose but it also can be used in smaller levels to prevent heroin from activating in the body so if you're on naloxone and you shoot heroin it won't have any effect and then support groups like AA and Writers for Recovery and all sorts of other ones and you know this makes me so hopeful because years ago and believe me every six months you see an article about how AA doesn't work it's a waste of time it's this ridiculous obsession with God and all this stuff I don't like to hear that because AA I know so many people who've been helped by 12 step programs and indeed had their lives saved by them and B because like back when that was probably the only thing you could do but now there's all sorts of options AA doesn't work for anyone everyone but that's okay because for the people it works for it really works but some people prefer Writers for Recovery some people have you know sober book groups and sober hiking groups and sober you know whatever other things some people live in sober houses you know there are all these new kind of approaches to sobriety that we didn't have before and they're really critical and they're you know they're a way of getting ahead of this a little bit and they're doing it in Vermont in particular some places aren't New Hampshire's terrible right now they have a real mess over there and they're not part of it is they're just not putting enough resources toward it they're just not interested in doing that and they don't I think it's a shame because they're paying on the back end with people dying with tremendous costs for emergency care and all sorts of things like that so you should be glad you're part of Vermont where we're really looking forward to setting an example but recovery is a difficult process and relapse is common it's very common we used to think like oh he went to recovery and he got sober and that was fine and if he didn't if he fell off the wagon or she did that was a that was it that was a failure they didn't do it now we understand that it's a process you know and good analogy is like quitting smoking like who quit smoking who quit smoking on the first try hardly anybody it's really hard you know and we don't we tend to applaud people oh try again try again and recovery from any other drug is very much a try again kind of scenario you know someone will come to a writers for recovery then I won't see him for three weeks then they'll come back well what was going on well I went out for going out I went out you know I went out and I used for a while and now I'm back ok great I'm glad you're back that should always be the response this idea of judging people as failing and you know because they don't they don't get it right on the first time but it's a really really hard thing and a lot of people have you know lost so many of the resources lost so many of the people who could help them like they're really rebuilding from the ground up and that's not easy for anyone it's particularly hard when you're at the same time trying to fight against the lure of addiction and wanting to use again when you don't have the financial resources that you need if you come out of prison and you can't get a job because you have a record like all these things are really weighing against you so how can we help people in addiction to recover how can we we all of us help people by practicing the opposite of addiction and this is the big finish so get ready but to me the one thing that I've learned over this entire four years is that the opposite of addiction is not necessarily recovery the opposite of addiction is community and community is the solution to addiction when people in with addiction are welcomed into a community who loves them who supports them who cares about them who's willing to help them in their recovery to accept them to forgive them the mistakes they've made that is what we need as a society the condemning the belittling of people with addiction the marking them as moral failures that's not going to work people in prison is never going to work it's not it only makes people feel worse has anyone seen Bessel Bryan's new movie yeah so if you have you know what I'm talking about it's called Coming Home it's about the COSA program which welcomes people back from prison and supports them volunteers meet with them once a week to help them find housing get a job deal with their problems go see this movie if you don't cry at the end I don't know what because I cried twice I saw it twice and I cried both times it's an incredible movie because it's about what it takes to heal this problem right people and if you are involved another great thing that's happened to me and this whole thing is that I'm now within a part of the recovery community and you've never met a more amazing group of people in your lives you know how much they care for each other how much they love each other how much they support each other how non-judgmental and compassionate they are toward people with addiction is just remarkable to me it's just remarkable and I have to say you know I've made so many I've met so many amazing people and made so many amazing friends in the recovery community and to me that's you know like I didn't go in this trying to get something for myself but I ended up getting something incredible which is to be part of this incredible community so I would just encourage you if there's any way that you think you can contribute to creating a welcoming supportive community for people with addiction and people in recovery I'd encourage you to do any little thing you know whether it's write a letter to the local paper or call a representative and say can we get more funding for more treatment beds can we get a particular problem housing for people coming out of prison it's hard for them to get out of addiction when they don't have a place to live can we do something about that any the smallest tiniest thing you can do because if we all work together as a community everybody doesn't need to spend 40 hours a week doing it it's all by little pieces I think that's it can we I forgot yeah that's it pretty much anyway and I know there's probably some other questions you might have about addiction and again I'm not an expert but I will try my best to answer any questions you can ask yeah shopping addiction shopping addiction addiction yeah what a worker right yeah and I think also eating disorders possibly could be classified as you're addicted to the idea of losing weight or maintaining a perfect body and that's a very addictive thing too I think there are probably some I found some writing programs online just searching for them but nobody's doing it there's to my knowledge there's not a dedicated organization I mean we are a we're a non-profit we're funded mostly through Department of Corrections and through the Rona Jaffee Fund which is a New York City literary foundation and through and we get private donations from you know everyday people I'd encourage you if you want to donate to us we promise to use the money wisely to do some goodness area so as far as I know we're not the only one but we are looking to expand you know at least into the rest of New England and that's a it's kind of a chicken and egg thing like we need to raise more money but we really want to do it yeah sure it's that that's yeah that's absolutely yeah absolutely a number of people who have been in and are in Writers for Recovery have co-occurring mental health issues and that's a big that's a big driver and a kind of yeah co-occurring condition with addiction certainly so yeah yeah yeah oh great I'll do that so basically it's really it's really simple we get together once a week for an hour and a half and we usually do a 10 week session so we do 10 weeks of one and a half hours each week anyone who's in recovery or has a family member in recovery or is has you know other issues of recovery affecting their life is welcome to come and join we use short writing prompts and let me give you an example I will say to them to a workshop here's your prompt finally I understood the truth and you have seven you have seven minutes to write it go the only rule is there's no way to do it wrong we don't care if it's a poem or a song or fiction or nonfiction we don't care if it's spelled right we don't care if the grammar is right we don't care if the punctuation is right we don't care about any of that right for seven minutes no way to do it wrong then people write for seven minutes at the end of that I'll say who would like to share but you don't have to share you can keep to yourself whatever you wrote because sometimes people write deeply personal things they don't want to share people most often share sometimes they don't that's okay sometimes they don't even write and that's okay we told people you don't even have to write just show up and spend some time welcome to come hang out and listen to other people when someone reads their work then we talk about it and there's only one rule two rules for that first rule I've already mentioned nothing leaves this room okay unless the writer gives permission so or the or the people get permission so they go what that's right that's right I mean we're not we're not strictly twelve-step but we do abide by that and of course I should say we have a great blog where we publish people publish a lot of the things they write and writers for recovery and we also publish an anthology I'm going to leave a couple copies of this you get a copy for being the closest guesser on the on the number anyway so that's the first rule is you know everything stays in confidence unless a person says hey will you publish my poem on the blog that's okay and people can publish incidentally anonymously if they want or they can use their own name or they can use a pseudonym so we try to make it easy and then the other rule is all comments need to be positive and supportive so this isn't a traditional writer's workshop where you read someone's work and you go your descriptions are terrible your dialogue sucks and you have no future as a writer so you might as well quit now we're not about that you know we're not about that because we're not really a workshop designed to teach people how to write we're a workshop designed to support people in their recoveries by telling their stories on paper and out loud that's a significant difference although I will say that when I compliment you know you or you on something that you've written I say oh you wrote a great description hey everybody can learn from that try it she wrote a great description try it she wrote great dialogue try it he wrote a hilarious story how did he make it funny give it a try write a funny story yourself so people become better writers as a side effect but it's not really about that so we do that for 10 weeks and then we if the people in the group enough people in the group are willing for an 11th week we do a public reading of our work so people sign up they each read for about 3 or 3 to 5 minutes and invite family friends community members it's open give a reading I usually bake a couple cakes and then we have cake and everyone goes off and goes home and then once a year we publish the samphology we also we had a podcast with VT Digger last fall and we're actually we will be having a podcast on Vermont Public Radio starting I believe in January I'm actually going to record an episode and some interviews for that tomorrow up in Newport and it's going to be really great so keep your ears open for registered recovery on VPR anybody else yeah it depends honestly it's mostly me we do about 15 to 17 workshops a year so I'm really busy a lot I mean literally I'm doing like 4 a week sometimes Bess O'Brien does a couple and then we have we've had like 3 other 4 other teachers do workshops when I wasn't able to schedule them in so you know like half a dozen probably yeah yeah I'm sure I'm sure it has been one of our goal one of our kind of dream goals is to get someone from a university you know addiction treatment department or psychology department to come and do a study on us to see because I have incredible amounts of anecdotal evidence mostly people saying you know this is better than therapy this really worked for me this helped me a lot but we would love to get some real data on how effective it is I mean there's data already that shows that if you write in a journal every day you tend to be mentally healthier than if you don't but there's a lot of room for more study yeah oh yeah sure we have them all over the state right now there are no groups active at this point but we'll be rolling out some more in probably in January and if you go to writersforrecovery.org you can find a list of workshops unsure of where we're planning them for January I should talk to her I've seen her name and so it's a recovery based workshop it's just a writing workshop yeah you know I used to think the only way to teach people to write was to kind of yell at them and tell them what they did wrong but I'm flipping the coin on that one yeah the workshops are free yeah oh yeah almost everyone who's in a writersforrecovery workshop is doing some other kind of thing to aid in their addiction the vast majority do do 12 step a lot a lot of people therapy some medication assisted treatment some you know meditation or you know mindfulness all sorts of different approaches yeah we're not a we're not a when we never would pretend to be a place where you know you come and write with us and your addiction is done yeah no we don't that's only happened once in the entire time that we've we've done it people have generally been really good about that but we did have a gentleman in Burlington who showed up and was obviously heavily under the influence and someone just said you know you look like you could use a little rest why don't you just go home and maybe come back next week and he said okay we try to be channel about it I mean but yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah say hi I'm a hi sir hi hi yeah there's all sorts of ways um and you know we're so it was amazing I went to so I lived in Boston for 16 years I used to take the T the train to work every day people would read books people would have conversations you know whatever on the train friends would be sitting talking to each other and I haven't I've been down there much and I went back recently and rode the train everybody everybody everybody just like that and I I mean I recognized it even when we first had the cassette tape Walkmans and everyone would have their own music I thought that kind of sucked because music is something you share with people it's not something you isolate over and so our society has just become so atomized by technology there's no you can you know in theory be in contact from to the whole world from your living room so why do you need to leave and and then when you're out in public you're too busy you know looking at your phone and I'm just believe me you'll see me walking through my failure I'm as guilty as the next guy maybe guiltier but yeah so it's you know it's tough to get community yeah they say hello I like the people on the subway in Beijing that was even before the cell phones there is something open about the community that Maria House is talking about and how I contact it yeah enough thought about that too you know when I lived in a bigger city you know you're surrounded by people all the time and it's really hard to get a little private time to yourself so I understand why people just want to go boop shut the world off not say hi to their neighbor I totally get it you know but it because I tend to be not sometimes not very social but there's there's detrimental in ways and yeah I'm telling that's a great point thank you I should probably should have talked about that but you know when someone comes into a writer's recovery group and they've got all this baggage and they're really struggling in their recovery and then at the end of 10 weeks they can stand up in front of a crowd and read their work it's unbelievable what it does for them it's just unreal to stand up and say this is my story I'm owning this story I'm not ashamed of it this is who I am and I'm trying to be a better person I'm trying to get my act together I'm trying to move up in my recovery we had a guy who had such crippling anxiety that he couldn't walk down Church Street in Burlington he couldn't he was a recovering heroin addict early in recovery he'd have to go around you know to get to our meeting which was off Church Street because he just couldn't stand it his anxiety it was so bad being around people after like 10 weeks he stood up in front of 60 people and read you know three of his poems it's like wow you know and how did he feel after that he felt fantastic you know and I should point out too that like we're not saying recovery is for everybody it's just like any other thing it works for who it works for some people come and they try it out and they don't really like it and they go and that's totally fine I don't I don't have I'm not insulted by that I'm not you know I'm not ready to defend writing as a great you know even though I'm a writer it's not it's not a be all end all be all whatever it's just another another way to get at the problem who else what I think we're making progress a little bit with opiates but I've heard late and you know you should it's hard because we don't have that we only have the data from you know two years ago whatever I think we're making a little progress against opiates but then I've heard about a resurgence of math and I don't know and that's one of the problems is you know fighting the addiction will get you so far but fighting the roots of the addiction is really the way to get at it and stop it and I'm honestly I'm really really worried because we have a generation of little kids right now who've had their parents taken away from their parents have had their lives disrupted by heroin addiction who've been you know put in foster homes of very in quality who've been disconnected from their families whose fathers and mothers are in prison and you know you couldn't create a better recipe for building another generation of addicts and like what are we going to do to make sure that doesn't happen do we have the will as a society to do it do we have the resources to do it I don't know but I'm worried about it yeah yeah that must be hard did you see the article day before yesterday I want to say that in Silicon Valley where all the tech people live they're now like they're hiring all their nannies and they're saying my children absolutely not allowed to use any technology what does it tell you that the guys who invented the stuff are keeping it away from their children we should heed that message I'm horrified by the fact that you know school high school whatever kids are allowed to have their cell phones to me that's nonsense they don't need them they need to call someone they can go to the office and call somebody and it's an incredible distractor to learning and to learning socialization which is a huge part of becoming a responsible adult yeah alright well thank you very much really appreciate it


Welcome back to the Tracy Johnson show presented by Buffalo Wild Wings. I'm Sam Murray joined now with Stevenson Women's Ice Hockey head coach, Tracy Johnson. And coach, you guys didn't have any games last week, had an early off weekend. How has practice gone in the week following your season openers? Well, given that we played such high caliber teams, it gave us a good opportunity to reset, think about the things that we need to improve on in order to compete at that level. Because ultimately that's where we want to be as a program. So it gave us an opportunity to focus in on the conditioning piece. We need to be able to keep up for 60 minutes, actually 120 minutes on the weekend against teams like that and revisit our special teams. Because as we talked about last week, we just needed to blow the whole thing up and get back to basics with that because our special teams just can't ever be as bad as it was basically last weekend to put it bluntly. So going into this week, you have a unique opportunity. Your first UCHE games and you get to play them at home. You welcome William Smith, who's also a newer program. They're in their fourth year, so you probably don't know much about them. But what are you expecting from your team this weekend? I'm glad you put it that way because we try to focus on what it is that we can do. And what we're going to measure ourselves on based on a good game. And I think that's us playing to our potential. So I think moving the puck quickly, again capitalizing on special teams and really making that something that actually is successful. Keeping our feet moving the whole time and communicating a lot and bringing the energy on the ice. Well, Coach, we wish you the best of luck in those two games. And we'll see you back here next week. Thanks so much. For Coach Tracy Johnson, I'm Sam Murray. And this has been the Tracy Johnson Show.


So, I am participating on the poster competition. It's my third year participating on it, but first year as a graduate student. For me, I've been working on this project for two years already, and I've been able to present. It was on recovery after prolonged kneeling. How does a person recover after being kneeling for a long period of time, and what is the best technique, either sitting, walking, or standing, in order to recover? My poster is on ladder recovery. Our research has previously looked into slip and fall prevention from ladders. If we train occupational employees, this will reduce workers' compensation claims and save companies in the long run, and also save some lives. The student poster competitions are actually really challenging because the students have to convey a lot of information in a short period of time to other engineers that might not be from their background. So it challenges them really to communicate and to highlight what they're doing. Well, it's just a wonderful opportunity for students to be involved in research, working on cutting-edge technology along with our faculty members, and then the chance today really to showcase their work. So I graduated from UWM 25 years ago, and I think it's great for me to come back, take a look and see how this university has changed, all the great things are happening here. For a person who works in the industry and evaluates talent, it's very important that not only students have the normal classwork, but they actually do activities outside of the classwork to help develop their skills as an engineer. A lot of industry people come in to judge, and we need to know how to communicate to the industry so that when we have an idea, we can communicate it properly to get companies to take our recommendations. Today I did very well in the research competition. I was able to present my research during the podium presentations, and then I got first after that, so that was cool. These are the future Milwaukee engineers, so it's just a way to really support the fabric of what we're doing here in terms of our research and education mission.


Hi there, I'm Sandy Alnok, artist and paper crafter here on YouTube, and today I'm going to show you how I made a nativity mini tri-fold card. I did a mini tri-fold card previously, I'm going to show you a snippet of that one, but this is what it actually folds down to be. And there are directions on the package that show you how to stamp it, exactly where to stamp everything. And I'll link you up to a video that I did a little while ago showing you exactly what my measurements were, how I did them, and how that all worked out, because it can be a little bit confusing. The first time you try it out, I recommend you try it on a piece of scratch paper first, just to make sure you're comfortable with the measurements and how you're going to lay them out, etc., especially if you're going to use watercolor paper like I'm using because I don't want to have any accidents with it. But on this one, I give you all the measurements and everything in that video, and then I show you how I used my MISTI to do it and to line everything up using a piece of acetate and everything. So there's a little bit of complexity you can get into. I know there are lots of people who simply stamp it, they just have a good eye for it and they stamp it. I'm not quite that good. So the MISTI is really helpful for me in getting it to all work out. But for the two panels on the left and right, there are two little dies, and the dies cut out something on the inside. There's a whole bunch of different mini tri-folds. They all work about the same, which is why I'll link you to this video.  And if you want to see how to do that, obviously go click on that video at the end of this one. And this one was for spring, but the idea is still the same so that you can continue to work your way from the outside to the inside of your card and have everything peek through the way that you would like it to. So I've got mine all stamped out onto watercolor paper and I'm going to show you how I use my hydras when I don't really feel like using a palette. A lot of times I'll take a few drops of the colors and put them on a palette and pick up the color from there, especially if I'm going to be mixing colors before I put them on the paper. But I thought I'd show you kind of an easy way to do it and some tips on what to do if you do it this way. I'm just picking up color from the dropper itself. I'm not dipping the brush all the way in because that way I can control just picking up a tiny bit of color if I want to use a lot of water on my brush and then just touch it to the edge of the dropper. So I'm only picking up a small amount of color. And sometimes with hydras watercolors, the color is really strong. You can see how strong that yellow is. And here's a little bit of a difference in how strong that brown can be. I'll show you in a bit that you can get a bunch of different shades out of it depending on how much water you have it mixed with. When you have it on a palette, you can mix up those different consistencies. But when you're picking it up off of the dropper itself, you just mix a certain amount of water on the brush. You use water on the brush to pick up just a little bit of color on the dropper itself and just recharge the dropper by dipping it in there. And then you're not dipping your whole brush in and always picking up super heavy pigment. And so I'm going to try to use a couple of different colors of the brown, a couple of different shades. You can see now I'm getting a little stronger color because I haven't picked up more water from my water cup yet. And then I'll switch over to the burnt sienna that was raw umber previously. And this is burnt sienna. The yellow is new Gamboge, of course, the best yellow. It's the closest to Y17 in Copic land. If you're familiar with my love of that color. And this burnt sienna is a little bit on the redder side. So you can get a couple of different colors of wood. The hydrous watercolors come in sets of 12. And you can see what all the colors are. There'll be a link on my blog to the color chart that I made that shows you what the different colors are. If you want to pick out which set might be most appropriate for what you like to paint. But one of the cool things about these is that they don't really go through the paper. So if you're using some thinner watercolor paper or if you're using them in your Bible, because I use these in my Bible quite a bit, the color doesn't go through, which is nice. So they definitely don't bleed through. You can use lots of really strong color without without the color seeping through. But they also are permanent once they're dry. So you can do a layer over top of them without lifting up any of the color underneath. And there's a lot of times that will be a really helpful thing. And one of the reasons that I have, by the way, a paper towel underneath of that dropper is that one time when I was practicing this earlier, I accidentally was holding onto the dropper a little too tightly and I squeezed out a drop right onto my card. So that is my tip for you. Make sure you protect your paper. So I'm using some cobalt blue. And what I did was use a lot more water at first and just get the whole area good and wet. And I wanted to have a rough watercolor looking edge. So I let the edge be kind of dry brushy instead of trying to make it all perfect and let it just kind of let it be loose. And I'm going over it kind of with a second bit of color. I dropped some heavy color onto it. And as long as it's all still wet, I can continue to move that color around. But once it dries, it dries. And I'm careful to make sure that the only area that I have to worry about blending now that the left side will be wet and the right side is dry is that little tiny area right above the stars. I have to be a little careful there to make sure I don't get a hard line. If you're ever working on an area and you want to make sure that you don't get that hard line, just start on one side and keep moving. Just keep rewetting that edge. But here, since I do only have that little spot, I wasn't too worried about tackling each half at a time. And I will continue just spreading that color around and managing the amount of water on my brush. If you use too much water in there along with all this pigment, you'll end up with some blooms. So I'm just going to be real careful to make sure I keep moving until it's all good and dry so that it comes out nice and even. For the second panel, I'm going to use some yellow for my little hay down at the bottom. And then I wanted to have this blend out into white. I didn't want to have a big solid area. So I'm just painting some clean water around the edges and then dabbing some off. Even though this color is permanent when dry, it lifts fairly well. Most of the colors lift fairly well while they're still wet. So I'm going to take the burnt sienna and paint in the fence. And I'm going to use the burnt sienna and use it a little heavier. So I have some good dark color to contrast with my sheep. With sheep, you can, I know they're white, but you can color them in a variety of colors. You can use grays, you can use blues, but I'm actually going to use a brown color because I wanted them to feel a little more natural looking. And if you were actually looking at sheep in the field, you would probably see some grays and browns on them. So I wanted to make sure the fence looked like it was a very different brown than I'm using on the sheep. So the umber color, I'm going to use lots of water with it and then just tap onto the edge of that to pull in a little tiny bit of color. So I don't end up with a ton. And then leave some highlight area in the center of each one because they're looking into the scene on the inside and on the inside is where the little baby Jesus is. So I want to have all my shadows out behind them on the rear ends facing away from the light source. So even though it's technically not going to be glowing from the inside, this allows me to create that effect looking like there's light coming from the inside. And then I'll add just a tiny bit of yellow along those leading edges. And then finally, I will be working my way to the inside here. Again, I'm going to do a light yellow and blend it out into white by just adding clean water all the way around it and dab off. And then I can just add a little bit of browns to both baby Jesus, a little bit of the umber color.  It does not have to be a really dark color. A really dark color. And then I want to add again another darker bit of the burnt sienna in order to make sure that it's nice and hefty color compared to the flesh tone on there. Add a little bit since I had it on my brush to the bottom of the the ground where little baby Jesus is sitting. And there is the finished card. I love how these telescope inward so that you can see the inside of the card from the outside. It's just an intriguing thing that helps people to open the card and be interested in seeing what's in there. I hope you enjoyed today's card. And if you're interested in seeing some more, here are a couple other videos that center one will show you how to do one of these trifold cards and how to do the setup with the misty, etc. And the other two videos are a little bit more with the hydrous watercolors. And remember on my blog is a chart with the colors that are in each of the sets of 12. If you're curious about which one you might want to choose, be sure to hit the subscribe button and the like button. And I will see you next time. Thank you. Bye.


My name is Jessica Ekmovich and I'm from Pasco, Washington. My parents and my family decided that they wanted to move here but before we actually moved here I was really against it so I made a list of 50 reasons of why we shouldn't move here but my parents didn't listen because they knew that this is what we needed so we ended up moving here. Before my life with Christ I was suffering with depression. I always felt lonely, I always felt like there was nobody there for me and I felt this pit inside of my stomach that I felt like it could never be filled. During one of the youth services I realized that the pit that I had in my stomach could only be filled by one person and that person was God and that was the moment that I realized that I should dedicate myself to Him so that's what I did. My life now with Christ is different. I'm a lot more happier now. I don't suffer with depression. I'm a lot more open with people and my relationship with God is growing every day. My relationship with God is continuing to grow every single day and I hope that it will be stronger than it is now. I'm getting baptized because I want to publicly declare my relationship with Christ and to show that I'm going to continue to follow Him. Alright Jessica, so do you believe in Jesus Christ as God's Son and your personal Lord and Savior? Yes I do. Do you promise to follow Him with good conscience for the rest of your life? Yes. Based on your faith, confession and your commitment will baptize you in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.


It's always nice to be able to take a trip. Vacations are always fun. It's always a good time to just get away for a little bit. But this week, today, actually, for the Rams, it's not gonna be a good trip because they're getting ready to visit Upset City because the Ravens are getting ready to shock a lot of the world, not myself, but they're getting ready to shock a lot of the world and win today against the Los Angeles Rams. I almost called them the Las Vegas Rams. I always forget where they're from. Anyway, this should be a very fun game. The Ravens have their backs against the wall. And like somebody brought out in a recent episode of Questions From Subscribers, this is normalcy for the Baltimore Ravens. This is what we as Ravens fans are used to when it comes to the end of the season. Again, 2019, that was a dream, that wasn't real because Ravens never have anything locked up in the last couple of weeks. They're usually fighting for a playoff spot, fighting for seating, they're fighting for something. And this season is no different. Of course, Lamar Jackson, they keep running the same thing. Oh man, he's questionable going into this game. We know Lamar's not playing, it's okay Ravens. You're not fooling anybody. You're not fooling anything, that's okay, it's no problem with that. Let Lamar rest, let Lamar get healthy. Make the smart decision as it seems you guys are doing, even though it seemed like with him being out in practice that day, you were trying to rush him a little bit, but all right, he ain't practiced the next two days. Cool. But Tyler Huntley, Tyler Huntley came back on Wednesday, I believe, no, he came back on Thursday from being on the COVID list. He got activated and was practicing again. Josh Johnson is still there, of course. But Tyler Huntley, having him in this game, a healthy Tyler Huntley, hopefully he has no lingering effects from COVID, anything like that. But I expect him to go off again. I expect him to have a good game again. And for me, my confidence in this game is the same confidence that I had going into the game with Green Bay. And I knew we were gonna win that game against Green Bay and we should've won that game against Green Bay and we should've had a better chance of winning that game against Green Bay, but you know what happened at the very end. I just hold up two fingers and let you decide to rest. But anyway, this game, it's the same thing. Nobody's gonna see it coming. Well, again, I'm letting y'all know ahead of time that it is coming, but nobody's gonna see it coming. Nobody's gonna expect it. Yeah, Rams got a tough, tough defense. They got Jalen Ramsey, they got Herndon. They got a lot more guys than those two. Those two guys are just the household names. They got a former Raven, Darius Williams, number 11, who has been playing amazing since he been with the Rams. They got some nice, they got a squad, man. They got a squad, they had Kenny Young too, but they traded him away earlier this season to the line. I forgot where they traded him to. And that was a sad story. But anyway, that defense is something serious, man.  But we've talked about that, and I'm sure we'll talk about it more later on. But Greg Roman, the expectation is that he calls the same type of game plan. Now, this could be a big game for Rashad. Now in this game, I expect Rashad Bateman to be consistently involved because for the past couple of games, we've seen Rashad Bateman early on. He's involved, it's like, all right, let's go Bateman. But this game, I expect consistency. Reason being because Hollywood Brown, he hasn't practiced much this week, if at all. And if he goes today, cool, but if he doesn't go today, then it's gonna be next man up. So guys like Tyler Wallace, a healthy Devon Duvenay, he should be back. James Prochet, who a lot of Ravens fans been knowing about, been knew about, and they got shown a lot of him last week. So, and Sammy Watkins too, Sammy Watkins still around. It could be easy to forget. And that's not a shot at Sammy Watkins at all, it's just because he just hasn't been out there. But they still got him in a back pocket. And then we got, of course, Mark Andrews. Mark Andrews, ooh, you know Mark Andrews. One thing about Mark Andrews, I think it was my guy, Jake Vogel. He and my guy huddle it up films in this preview that he did with my guy, Garnett West. And he usually does it with Jake Vogel. Jake mentioned that he expects Jaylen Ramsey to cover Mark Andrews. And I would as well. That makes sense because that's their best corner. I mean, he's one of the best corners in the league. Could have been a Raven twice, almost was a Raven twice, but of course things fell through. But it is what it is. But him being on Mark Andrews, that would open it up for other people around him. It certainly would. Now in this game, as far as offense, again, I expecting to do their thing. Ben Cleveland, hey, Ben Cleveland, show your stuff. This is your chance to really make some money. I know you can't get a raise for a couple of years, but this game and Bradley Bozeman, this is your chance to price yourself out of Baltimore. Even though I'm sure he would love to stay, but you know, money talks. If you ain't paying me, then you ain't staying with me. I'm out. But anyway, this is Bradley Bozeman's chance to earn some cash. You put up a good game today against Aaron Donald. Ooh, your price is going up. It's going way up. And the Ravens, oh man, I just, I can't wait to the end of this game. I can't wait to see y'all, because I know everybody gonna pick the Rams, Rams, and I can expect that, but not today. It ain't going down today. And on defense, Matt Stafford, hey, it's 2022. It's 2022, but we wanna see some of the 2021 Matt Stafford that we've seen from time to time. We gonna see some of that throwback Matt Stafford from the Lions from time to time, where he just loves to give. He's gonna do it again. Ooh, I can't wait. I know they got Cooper Cup. Cooper Cup, he gonna get his. Odell Beckham, he gonna get his little bit too. But Matt Stafford, he gonna get some touchdowns now, but two interceptions, two costly interceptions too. Today Ravens gonna make it happen, y'all. Got Jimmy Smith back, got Chris Westry back. Anthony Ava is out, which that sucks, but they gonna make up for it. Now, with Odell Beckham, Jr. and Cooper Cup, they are especially Cooper Cup. He is a quicker wide receiver. I would expect Chris Westry to be on him. Odell Beckham, he can move too, of course. And I would expect Jimmy Smith to be on him.  The only one that they really did that with was Marlon Humphrey, but sometimes, they wouldn't even keep him on the same guy the whole game. But Chris Westry gonna play his side, Jimmy Smith gonna play his side. But the matchups that I like better would be Chris Westry versus Cooper Cup, rather than Jimmy Smith, because Chris Westry is at this point in his career, he's much quicker than Jimmy Smith is. And he's very tall, very lanky, six-four, he's a giant. So it'll be tough going against Cooper Cup, but maybe Ravens will play some of that Devonte Adams defense against Cooper Cup. I don't think they'll play it early. I think they'll try early on, see what they can do, see how the matchups are looking.  Cause you know, like Cooper Cup, the thing about him, similar to Mark Andrews, but the thing about Cooper Cup is that you know he's getting the ball. You know he's the best wide receiver on the Rams. And you know he's getting the ball, but they still throw it to him 50 times a game anyway. They still do. So again, he's going to get his. He's gonna get his for sure. But Ray Ravens are going to get this in the end. Oh man, it is going to be so nice, man. And I can't wait, team keep it clean. Y'all make sure y'all come through to the live stream. Of course we're going to have a lot of fun out there. Ooh, I can't wait. I can't wait. And again, Ravens are going to show everybody why it ain't over till it's over. It's not. I know the Ravens have put themselves in this position to where right now they're on the outside of the playoffs looking in. And they've made some pretty bad decisions down this stretch, a lot of greed involved. A lot of just unnecessary stuff involved. It didn't have to be this way. But hey, it is. And they know what's at stake. Shout out to Rebi. I like my stake medium. But anyway, they know what's at stake for the season. They know what's on the line. And their backs are all the way. Not even against the wall. Their backs are through the wall. But this is the way that they like it. And this is what they know most. Yes, I know they got 50 million people on injured reserve. They got every reason to lose this game. They got every reason to lose so many of the games that they've played this year. But injuries haven't been the reason that they've lost, especially recently. Especially recently. They've lost it because of themselves. They lost it because of their decision. And it's not even one of those things where it's like our whole man, well, no. The other team was just that much better than the Ravens. No, not necessarily.   Not today. Let's be smart today. And today, if you're gonna be, because I mean, we expect greed at this point at a season because it's like, okay. But when you're gonna be greedy, have some good play calls in. That's the biggest thing we ask. Have some, have some good play call.  Have some good play calls in there, please. Please. Ravens just got pounced on last week. They got trampled last week by those bingles. So, oh, this the perfect setup, man. It's the perfect setup. Cause they got beat down last week. Shout out to 52500Burl, 500Burl. It's the perfect setup because nobody's gonna see it coming. Oh, this is gonna be the heist of the century, man. I can't wait. I see y'all soon. I love y'all. I appreciate y'all. And like Rams are gonna be when it comes to being in this game after the fourth quarter. I'm out.