Here are some of you last week when I talked with enthusiasm about the senior games because this is a smaller crowd and these three athletic people can't wait to talk to you. Ginny Callan was going to introduce them and I'm filling in for her because she wasn't able to be here. So I have to read my little notes here. We're going to hear from George Maltz who's the only paid person for the senior games who lives in Rochester, Vermont, a very small town in south central Vermont. And then two participants, Margaret Gibson from East Montpelier who has won podium honors at the National Senior Games in Tracton Field and she'll tell you more about that. And Sarah Bombadier who's nice enough to come from Richmond, Vermont and has competed over the years, I don't know how many, in swimming, biking, power walking and triathlons. So just to give you a little bit more information, from what I know Margaret's father and mother, well she grew up in Montpelier and her father and mother used to walk downtown and I'm sure you've all seen them, Ernest Gibson and his wife Charlotte and Ernest Gibson as you know served as a superior court judge and also on the Supreme Court. And so here she is from East Montpelier but all three, welcome them please. And before I turn it over I'm supposed to give you two notes, one, turn off your cell phones. Oh, there's one or two people who have to do that. And the second one is there are more pamphlets of what's to come and also at the piano there are pictures of what's to come. So without further ado, I don't know, do you want this mic on or not? George? I'd love to. Okay, so he's going to try it without the mic and if he needs it then he'll pick it up and if I turn it off just press this little button on the side. Anyway, thank you for coming and I'm sure we're going to have a great time. My husband participated in the senior games, those of you who were here last week know that and I have found it to be really wonderful thing for older adults and I think Margaret's going to tell you what her response is when I was talking about whether or not people our age were too old to pick up the discus. Thank you very much. George? Oh, could I have the lights off? That would be super helpful. Thank you. And you can see my beautiful colors. Okay, I'm George. I am the games coordinator of the Long Senior Games Association. We have one of the cooler logos around I think. I see some of the other states are not so great. As you can see, we started in 1983 and I would echo the sentiment that we have so many stories of athletes who have just started because friends said, oh, you should try this because a lot of women in particular didn't do a lot of athletics back in your day. And one of our greatest athletes, Flo Myler, only got into senior games because our Jordan talked her into it. And Flo is now 89 and a world record holder in multiple events. Anything's possible. Okay, so see if I can just sing for you. Okay. So first of all, I want to say something about my PowerPoint. As it says here, I used to be a high school teacher. And because I used to be a high school teacher, I know a little bit about how people learn. And some people learn very well verbally. Some people need to read and process things. So I am going to, I know you know how to read, but I will read what I have on here and hopefully between one of the two modalities you'll be able to process the information. So again, I am the games coordinator for the Long Senior Games Association. And my role is that I'm the liaison between the athletes, the individual sports coordinators and the various venues that we use around the state. I'll get all into this later on. I'm also the link between the state and the national senior games. If something happens at national, it comes to me. If something happens at national, I send it to national. Before Dominique, the Monty Games Association, I taught history at Rochester Middle High School for 30 years. And I also served as athletic director and coach of multiple sports. So I had never heard of senior games six years ago, even though I was pretty involved in athletics. So that's one of our challenges, getting the word out to the people. So I'm really glad to be here and share with you. My co-presenters, Barbara Gibson from East Montpelier, again a track and field athlete who has participated in national senior games multiple times. In 2022, she won the national championship in her age group in both the Long Jump and the Triple Jump. And she told Sarah and I that she's interested in trying to get into her roles which the senior games don't offer. So she's going to be looking into some master's events. And picture on the left there, I'm Margaret Sarah with my good friend from Rochester, St. Verwal at the Pittsburgh Senior Games. Sorry, not changing. There we go. Hey Sarah, Sarah has participated in multiple senior game sports, but swimming is her passion. She's gone to national senior games many times and has a large collection of medals and podium ribbons earned in freestyle, breaststroke, butterfly, relays and individual mentally events. She told me I had backstroke on here and had me take it out because she's not one of the metal and backstroke. But I believe backstroke is part of the mentally... It's part of the IM. Right, so technically she's not a metal and backstroke. And she's also started to compete in other senior games championships and she'll probably tell you about that when she speaks later on. The picture of her there is at the pool at the University of Pittsburgh where we had the national meet.  It was like how many lanes? Like 30?  And the stands were packed. It was really, really cool event. Really cool. Oops, hold on. Wow, big jump. Okay, how it works. So here's the basic breakdown. The Vermont Senior Games Association is the state affiliate of the National Senior Games Association. There are branches of the NSGA all over the country and in Canada and I think there's some in some of the Caribbean islands as well although we tried to check that I wasn't able to verify it. At the state level we stage state championships each year in 14 or more sports for athletes 50 and over. The results are determined in five here age increments so 50 to 54 is one age group. 55 to 59 is another age group. Our oldest athlete this year was 91. And the way it also works is we do medals in each age category and then the medals are also broken down by each individual event. So for example in track and field if we have an event like the discus we give a gold medal, a silver medal, a bronze medal to every man and woman and five year age group so we give out a lot of medals. Which is cool. They're nice medals too. And then the state games serve as the qualifiers from the National Senior Games which are usually held every year. So the rules for that vary by sport. A sport like golf for example only the top person gets in because golf is so popular and the competition takes a really long time. But on other sports such as triathlon anybody who competes he goes to nationals and triathlon is trying to encourage more people to do it. So there's no hard and fast rule by sport. Most sports is the top three. And also I want to mention that the BSGA is part of the Vermont Council, Vermont Governor's Council on Physical Fitness. This is my biggest slide. So on the left is our calendar of events for this year. So you can see we started May 21st with swimming. Then we did a pickleball tournament in Berry and then over a Labor Day weekend. We did 10K road race in Montpelier. We did track and field in Burlington. We did the 1500 meter power rock which was at the track and field meet. Then we had the National Senior Games right in the middle of our season. And then the way our season went this year was that's when it started raining. And so the triathlon got rained out. Racquetball got canceled. Our golf barely took place. The course was closed for three days before we played. It was unbelievable that we even got out there. Tennis our last day was rained out. We had rained a pickleball. The 5K was beautiful. Beautiful day on 5K. Sightling was touching all the whole time but we got it in and then basketball and table tennis were inside. And table tennis was Saturday and court rain all day. It was really great to be inside. So a little bit of background here. The Green Mountain Senior Games began back in 1983. That was the original name of it. And I believe your medal is the Green Mountain Senior Games medal. Right? Very nice. I'll get to that. Good question. So I don't know why they changed the name to Vermont Senior Games before I was involved and I wasn't able to find anybody who knew. So I don't know the answer to that. So at first the games were held in one location over a short span of time like the regular Olympics. In the 1990s they were regularly held at Green Mountain College in Polney. In some states like New York still staged their games in this manner. In New York they have the senior games at Cortland State University and most of the games in Massachusetts are Springfield College and it's kind of an Olympic fashion all of one week. We went away from that because what we discovered is it limited what the athletes could do. You couldn't do a lot of different things because if you space it out we have people who do multiple sports like Sarah. The other thing was as I was mentioning I'm the only paid person and I'm part of time. Everybody else is volunteer and if we do an Olympic week like that everybody else. Most of us are quite pleased with the way it works. So in any case for many years there were winter events held as well. However as time went on it's proved to be too much for volunteer staff and the one person I know Betsy who was around during this time he just said it was just all out all year long and they just couldn't keep up with it. The other thing is Don Kellerman who was running the problem at the time passed away and with his expertise and the winter sports went with it and so it just kind of evolved that way. The season was made to stagger the games over the spring, summer and fall months and to only offer sports officially recognized by the National Senior Games. In 2023 the first competition as I said took place on May 21st and the last was on October 21st. So I should mention that you are allowed to offer other games such as skiing which is not recognized by the National Senior Games. The most unusual state sport that I know of is the state of Maine offers buoy tossing which is exactly what it sounds like. And the Massachusetts has a hot internment which is really big but we just again don't have the acclaim to do that at this point. So we like to spread the venues around the state and that's probably the one thing I'm most proud of with my involvement in the senior games when I joined it really was the chip and how many senior games everything was in chip and cow just about. And so I've worked really hard from my 700% of the law perspective to kind of spread things out and I think that's been a really positive development for us. So as it says here currently we're swimming at the Gagher Maze Center in Springfield and that's one of those things that as an organization I'm just super proud of. When I started we had our swim meet was at the Gagher Wilson and then when COVID hit we shut that facility down it's not even like gym anymore it's a warehouse or something. So then we kind of floundered around and had a couple of events in an outdoor place in Essex which was okay but it wasn't great and then I was just totally lucky to find, running to this guy who runs the Maze Center and we offered the host to me and it was just so cool to go down there this year we had the biggest tournament we ever had even though it was in Springfield and we are so excited to make our partnership with him. We tried really hard to become good partners with the people we work with and I'll talk about that in just a second as well. So Springfield football was in Barry, the track and field when he isn't Burlington. We played golf at the Ralph Mottet course Bill Berry Vermont State University's castle in the campus, host for cycling and basketball the bridges at Sugarbush has been home to the tennis tournament for a few years now and Table Tennis takes place at the Sheldon Town gym. The State Championship Pickleball tournament is so big that we need two fan venues Airport Park and Culture and the VSGA also partners for the Central Vermont Runners to stage the road races the 10K is in Montpelier the 5K Run Power is in Northfield and we also partnered with Vermont Sun to offer the Triathlon which is a little late done one. So that's a lot of information but that's basically the overview of what we do on the nutshell. This is a really interesting slide because this is the overview of what we've done in the last decade in terms of sports and in terms of how many people participated and you can see there's some really interesting stuff in here. So let me just start out by pointing at the bottom line here the total this is how many total athletes we've had all the sports combined and so you can see back in 2012 we had 351 and this year email was a bit of a down year we had 635 so we've almost doubled our participation in the last decade. It does take people up and down whether it's a qualifying year for national senior games because that motivates more people to participate. So you can see in 2016 we had 615 people and they asked the rest up there top is indicating that that was a qualifying year for national senior games and then the next year we got 434 because there was no qualifying. I should also just mention I personally think those numbers in the blue there for the 5K are completely misleading because I was told by somebody that they just counted everybody who ran the race whether they were seniors or not so I don't think those numbers are at all accurate so that's why I have them in blue and the same thing happened in the 10K but I'm not able to verify that so and I should also mention that was one of the reasons why I would talk about the partners being so important is that the center Vermont runners are so great to work with because they do the registration for us they give me the information and we do have people who are not seniors running in those races they aren't just senior only races but the CVR separates them out for us and it's very, very well done whereas other people we work with for the road races we're not really willing to do that and we're not super helpful so when I talk about getting good partners that's what I'm talking about you also can see the sports that we have phased out racquetball bowling and horseshoes and I can tell you although not supposed to that racquetball isn't going to be dropped as a national senior game sport in the next few years so racquetball we cannot host a racquetball tournament anymore because the biggest racquetball facility in Vermont that we are aware of is two courts you can't have a tournament with two courts so we were partnering with New Hampshire and they were doing the same thing they just phased it out because no one's signing up it's just the sport is dying pickleball on the other hand yeah state championship pickleball started with 43 and last year we had 186 and it sells out we can't handle more than 186 so it's certainly we're not taking any more registrations that's how crazy popular it is so in any case you can see though we've done well the last couple of years and as you can see the swimming 32 swimmers this year was by far the largest we've ever had so that was a really really nice turn out for us I also think you know triathlon has been pretty consistent number wise having it rained out if we had had the triathlon our numbers of course would have been higher so the other sport that we did really well this year was golf our sports coordinator Kevin Pleat voted that and since he took over sports coordinator in 2020 you can see it's gone up quite a bit last thing I want to mention about this chart is 2020 you can see during the year of covid we actually had three events only we were the only state in New England that had any events at all so we were really proud to even put on three events and I should also mention one of the things that happened in covid that was really great was I joined the national the brazilian games in 2019 and everything was done in person in burlington and when covid hit we couldn't do that and so one of the things that happened during covid is this how we made now zoom and if you're on zoom you can do that from anywhere so did that make my life easier you bet it did you know what else it did it allowed us to get other people who live in different places so we have Jim Flint who's our running guy he lives in west rutherland Matt Kyle who's our webmaster and it's really helped us to expand our group of people and be a much stronger organization it also makes it easier for us to talk to our partners and venue hosts we're just a set of zoom calls and talk to them, it's great so that's been a really positive development so the covid was an awful year and that was one really positive thing that came out of it okay now I'm just going to show you some various pictures this is where the point will be much more fun so on the left this is from our track in philly in burlington which we had waiting for that as well but at least we got it in and that is Margo right there 618 and that looks like 50 isn't it and that's Sandra Wall next to her and I don't remember who the woman number six is I don't remember on this picture over here this is our swimming and you can see all the medals on all the people's just Sarah is right there in the middle right here and you can see she's won just a few medals over there as a nice thing about these pictures you'll see everybody is so happy that's one of the wonderful things about organization is that it's just a really really welcoming and positive environment the bottom picture was at the pickleball tournament in berry and these people they were just wonderful to work with Dave Roulot sitting in the center was the mastermind behind this tournament and it was just a really really good time the other random pictures and I don't think there's really a whole lot to say about any of these they're all pretty self explanatory but again just a lot of smiling faces and they love the picture on the bottom right because one of the things that is really cool about our organization is there's competition but it's friendly competition and that is Peter Mitchell there who's 83 went to nationals and track and field and in the row races and I think that's one of the French Canadian guys that she hands with I'm like 100% sure about that okay more photos here that 10k row races in Montpelier starts and finishes right outside of Union River sports I heard that they're not going to be reopening there but it was before the flood so it was a really nice place to be and the finish is really cool because they turn and they go down that street spacing on the name of it right now it's a one way street and it's just a really cool that we'll run out right in front of Capitol building out to a high school and back the woman in the middle with the purple shirt her name's you know she is a wonderful person and I put her in here because this was at the 10k Northfield and the 5k Northfield and they had a kids race and she finished the race and the kids race was coming up and she was like charging the kids to run and I said yeah that's the central amount where there's policy she goes here's 80 bucks the next bunch is on me so it was so nice and I told these people really but that's the kind of people we have in our organization just really really nice this woman in the top center here she's from the in this room down here from Connecticut she's from the shopper and one of the other things that we did this year again Jim Flint that's all the credit he got this veterans group in Woodstock to participate in our 5k race where the veterans who participated I don't remember the name of the organization but that was a new outreach for us which was really great this guy right there he was an oxygen and he walked the entire 3 miles pulling his oxygen it was really inspirational I mean he finished last and everybody cheered up and he said it was great okay national senior names are held but because of COVID we've just come off two consecutive national games in 2022 Florida was the whole city this year's games were played in Pittsburgh and I always love this fact more athletes participate in the national senior games than in the Olympics it's the truth there were 11,037 Olympians in Tokyo and we had 11,576 in Pittsburgh and I felt like we took over that you guys didn't you said Albuquerque was even better would you talk about that later and so the cool thing we did in Pittsburgh was they invited us all to go to a Pirates game and this is outside the Pirates stadium we got to march in they marched all over the field and it was really a cool experience whoopsies come on okay the 2023 nationals by 7th through 18th in various venues around Pittsburgh 86 Vermont athletes participated including the two you have here today as a group the BSGA won 9 national championship gold medals 11 silvers and a dozen bronze medals in addition the NSGA awards honorary ribbons for 4th through 8th finishes so all total 41 Vermonters won at least a medal or a remit so almost 50% made the podium the guy on the upper left is Chris Hamilton who won the national championship in the discus this is Elizabeth McCarthy who lives in Hardwick runs all the road races and she does track and field on the two women on the upper left are Joan Weir and Susan Madrigan from gravel borough they won the doubles title in their age group and then these two guys here actually are both Vermonters they were in the singles finals in the men's 50 to 54 that's Joan Tishiro and this is Damon Fitch they're both from Burlington but that was the coolest thing ever we had two people from Vermont in the tennis finals I mean who would ever have fought that and they played a great match and John beat them out but they're really good friends and it was so much fun to watch them play the other thing that was interesting was it was very well routed performance by the Vermont athletes we earned podium honors in 11 different sports basketball, cycling, golf, pickleball power walk, road race swimming, tennis, triathlon and track and field and actually there are two different road races so actually it's 12 different sports because we won both the 5K and the 10K the people on the bottom right there that's the group who ran the 5K and they had those cool Vermont shirts that women the women here today are wearing and they were just so much fun to be with and that's Sarah there on the left with the women who did the swimming what event was that on? that was triple job that was triple job and one of the cool things is you weren't competing with people from all over the country so you're meeting these people that you never knew and you never see again and that's also really really cool the guy on the bottom right was doing the Javelin his name is Zane Rodriguez he lives in Norwich he's a really really good Javelin thrower and he was throwing and this guy he was in a particular distance and his next guy up through like even farther and he comes back to me and he said somebody just told me this guy used to play majorly big sport and I was like what? can you look it up for me? so I keep my phone out and I look it up and sure enough this guy pitched for the Yankees and the Mariners back in like the 1990s and then he had elbow surgery and ended his career but he was sorry he was like usually baseball was so cool Zane came and said come on so the picture on the left is Matt Gile, the webmaster from Bella's Falls he won the 800 meter race which is two laps around the track and his story was really great he won the 400 and the 400 prelands and then he fell literally leading you from the finish line and he was way ahead so it was like heartbreaking so we came out to watch him the next day just to support him and he won the best race he was so smart he would let the whole way he went by like 20 yards which is a lot in that 800 and then two days later he won the mile as well so he had a really really good race and I met this guy from Connecticut who was really really friendly with us the guy from Connecticut was there all by himself the finished second so he hung out with us for quite a while I can't remember his name, he's a really nice guy what's the question? Matt, Matt is he's in the he's in the 55 to 50 million group pretty sure no, no, no, no, he's not he's in 16 to 64 that's in 60 to 64 and then the picture on the left there is all of us who went to the Pirates Game you can see I am not in the light blue shirt because I've had multiple knee surgeries and I'm not an athlete anymore so I didn't feel like I should wear the athlete's shirt so I wore an old shirt instead so I'm in there in a dark blue but that was our group that went into Pittsburgh beautiful city, really really nice what was the time of the fellow on the mile distance? oh, it was four something yeah, it was fast he's a very serious athlete people were really really serious and people aren't very serious he's a serious one so the last thing Vermont Senior Games also has a very unique tradition that we do to honor the confidence of our athletes at Nationals March 15th, 2023 was officially proclaimed Vermont Senior Games Day by Governor Full Scott athletes were invited to the State House in Montpelier for a ceremony that included a house resolution we also did a press conference and a private audience with a Governor in a ceremonial office the March ceremony was to honor the 2022 National Senior Games athletes, we plan to have another ceremony next winter to recognize the athletes who went to Pittsburgh and know what a state does but they only state that does this and I tell them the states that would do this in their life they did these blank looks what you really do that and I have to say both of you were there Governor Scott was wonderful and he was authentic he was not just he he was really really engaged with the athletes he was funny he took a picture with every single person he gave us a lot of his time it was a really really nice time Sarah is right here and Margaret's right back behind her okay there's a picture of Margaret with Governor Scott really good picture and the picture on the bottom right is doing the press conference and the guy with the long beard his name is Gerud Hall who's from down south Dumberston and he was national champion in pickleball yeah oh and I should also mention that's Flo are super sorry oops I'm sorry look at that sorry this is being so finicky too far away yeah that's Flo right there and the other thing that's really cool with my position is I know all these people because I'm the only one who goes to the event so I can tell you who everybody on this picture is um and um it's really just fun to see them all out of the sports arena just one of them every year okay so my final thing I want to say about this from my perspective the best thing about my experience for the BSGA has been all the wonderful people that I met over the years with Margaret and Sarah included it's an exceptional feeling of being part of a remarkable group and a team you really feel part of the whole thing and um everybody is so well doing and um you know it just it just positive all around that's it so what I'll do now at this point is I'm going to turn it over to our athletes and um yes and they'll each take a turn talking about their experiences thank you for your time those pictures were great George thank you for sharing those um I am not a public speaker so bear with me as I look at my cheat notes here um and I don't want to talk too long but um I just want to start by saying that being part of the senior games is inspiring um I got involved about nine years ago when I saw a news clip featuring Flo whom you've all heard about and at the time she was 80 um and they were talking about how she was talking about track and field including pole vault which she took up at age 65 who does that at age 65 will flow and now of course she own you know has world records in multiple age groups along the way including the Decathlon that she just competed in as the first woman at age 89 to ever do so anyway she's just back from that needless to say Flo is still going strong and is still my inspiration that news story years ago ignited my curiosity I was 54 at that point in my life my days revolved around full time work and watching my kids do their sports I wasn't doing anything to stay fit or active in my life at the time and um I also wasn't really doing anything just for me so in a brave moment I took the plunge signed up for the Vermont senior games long jump happening in three short months and then there was no turning back so when I first started sprinting I had a lot of pain in my hips um due to 30 years of sitting at a desk job and I was googling my things like how do you know if you need a hip replacement and um but a physical therapist told me that she gave me a lot of hope but she just said uh when you know injuries come and go and you just work through them so that was what I needed and the hope that got me to stick with it she was right I worked through it slowly and now at 62 I can do things I couldn't do back then and I'm in much better shape fast forward eight years so I've been to eight Vermont senior games I've been to three nationals Flo and I are now friends we train together on occasion and even room together at nationals um my roommate my training partner I should say Sandra Wall good friend of Georgia's she comes to train with me every week she drives an hour to come here to train with me at the U30D track we do that all year long and then when the weather turns we go do that at UVM the indoor track up there so um you know I've gained Sandra as a wonderful friend and also I've added events along the way so including jumps like the long jump the high jump the triple jump um I do the 50 and 100 meter sprint and I'm just like George mentioned trying hurdles which is a little scary but a good challenge so to wrap up being involved in track and field as a senior has been really added so much to my life it's given me a sense of purpose it's gotten me through some rough times because it's something that I'm doing for me and having that competition ahead gives me the extra push I need to keep at it and stay fit and as George mentioned it's a wonderful community of people at all fitness levels coming together to be active and have fun as you heard also the senior games has all kinds of sports so I just encourage if you're thinking about doing it find one that you love and just do that I recommend track and field because there's a low bar for entry with 14 events there's something for everyone whether you want to throw something walk or run around the track or jump and I'm so grateful for the senior games and for that opportunity that makes it possible for us seniors to stay active engaged, have fun and be inspired My name is Sarah I didn't prepare anything so I'm just going to go off the cuff here participating in the Vermont senior games about as long as Margaret I started the year I turned 50 and I did my first swim meet I heard about it through one of the swimmers I met through the masters group that I was swimming with at the time and he said you're turning 50 this year aren't you and he said well why don't you come try senior games competition he's like no no no come on up you'll win medals oh well then let's see what we can do about this so I went at a tender age of 49 because senior games start the year you turn 50 I turned 50 in December and that swim meet was actually in June so there I was 49 years old and I'm like sure you're being here yep I'm here, I'm here I did two events the 50 free and the 500 free and I got a gold in both of them but I have not been able to stop I haven't been able to look back I have encountered a few musculoskeletal issues and the next year when I did senior games I only did freestyle events but I have since branched out and I'm now doing the 200 fly just become one of my favorite but what I wanted to talk about also with senior games is you've got people like me I actually do the start competitively swimming close the year I turned 50 I could swim, I swam lacks in college I did it to stay in shape and I just went back and forth and back and forth and did my own sort of self imposed flip turn that was probably atrocious but I did it but I have since learned better technique, better skill and then this year I went to New Jersey and did their state senior games and I did the 200 fly and I got a personal best which was really exciting but also during the 200 fly was a man in the 80 to 84 age category and he did it in 12 minutes to give you comparison my time was 3 minutes and 44 seconds so I passed him, I passed him I finished, he's going he's doing his best I would come over to the next lane and did a cool down I got out and he's still going and he's still going so we're all cheering and when he finishes with his two hand touch that's his rock star moment everybody on the deck is cheering for him because he took 12 minutes but he got there and he did it he was the one in there swimming and we're all on the deck watching him so that's what drive me to continue with the senior games and also like Margaret I've done three nationals to me as a swimmer I call him my swim con we show up, we hang out the pool for four days we're all in our swimsuits we're getting in and out, we're doing laps I could walk down the deck, I could be high five I'm just thrilled to be there everybody's like, how'd you do? I did it well done, you're here it's a really, really supportive, encouraging environment it's a lot of fun I have to say I'm not super close with my relatives they're not super supportive about what I do they're not discouraging but they pretty much don't have anything to do with it but senior games, it's filled with people who are like, high five, well done so I have branched out to Power Walk and I did the bike race last year on a borrowed bike that I rode four times before I did the event I came in last but so what and I also did the triathlon at Nationals because I could, I trained up for it my goal was to do the triathlon try to do it in an hour 45 and do the run without stopping and that's what I did and I was last as well but I was out there doing it and that's really what it's all about like Margaret said, take a look at the website see what we offer pick something, come out and say hi if you're not comfortable competing, come volunteer we always need people to help out with that and you'll see how friendly and what a wonderful, warm supportive group it is that's really what it's all about and it's a lot of fun so I encourage everybody to come say hi we've got a medallist right here I'm sorry we're not doing winter games anymore but Massachusetts does still have some winter games there's snow this year that's the problem with winter games isn't it so anyway I thank you for listening do you have coaches you can get coaches, I don't and senior band doesn't offer them but I know a lot of people through the swimming group there's a masters group that swims and I know there are probably track and field people who can hire their own coaches but they're not coordinated through senior games and I assume you have to pay your own freight when you go to one of these events yes, that is one of the questions that people have asked the Vermont senior games are very, very affordable the swimming I think is $35 and you can do up to six events and then there's three laid out awards I think the most expensive might be some of the track and field it was up to golf because it's golf we have to pay the course fee but I know the senior game the Vermont senior games also offer scholarships for people who are not comfortable unable to pay the fee but yeah we have to drive ourselves to the venues and then when it comes to nationals nationals is $180 I think for the one event and then it's $35 for second event which is why I added the triathlon because I'm like it's $35 bucks we're neither $35 but you don't so and I drove and I could take my bike but then I had to pay my own gas and accommodation and meals so yeah it can add up I'm hoping to find a sponsor one day as well so any questions for anybody we'll have a comment more than a question really inspirational that's really wonderful I have a very small village of family and we have races there and two women who are incredible are the Spires and Darvin does the triathlon international and I want to say Donna is the physical therapist that was told me that injuries come and go and she's right she's had some injuries since but you just wanted to listen to your body and take your time but yeah she's got to know she's got to know 100 mile miles right, the ironman the ironman is there a medical staff at the event you're working there's you so that will really depend on what the event is so for example we had table tennis this weekend we did not have medical staff present however the facility we're in the rescue squad was literally on the other side of the parking lot we do have an emergency action plan for all of the events we do so again it's certain events like basketball, we had an EMT there and we needed her we had several people get knocked over and one guy I thought had a concussion we don't want 85 year olds playing basketball against each other it's scary scary and I was really glad she was there in the traffic field we will have a a trainer there but again for like golf we didn't have anybody there but again the rescue squad was just down the road so we do consider that we are trying to get a grant to get an AED which we think we should have and we don't AED it's a familiar a lot of the facilities that we go to like the table tennis and swimming they've got one there but other places don't and the other thing I should mention is this spring 6 or 7 of us have seen games for CPR for state trained so I wish we had the resources to have somebody there for the event but we do put thought into it and we're in a lot better place than we were a few years ago where we really didn't have it was just like hope things go well but that's a great question Sarah said that she had been a swimmer in high school I'm wondering what sports you had done before you started back in your early years my early years I did tracking field in high school back then you all probably know you didn't start when you were 3 doing things you start when you were in high school so I did tracking field in high school and I did one year of college along jump and so that's really why I got back into it because I was just curious to know what I could do again of course your legs are really different your legs are near 20 also just to add on to that there's some sports for example pickleball didn't exist and so everybody who was there a pickleball tournament has learned as seniors to play that's definitely something that is doable and pole vault you couldn't pole vault or triple jump in high school back then for women that was the guys did that they were at triple jump 3 years ago so not many women my age do triple jump it's sort of like a long jump but you're doing three steps so they measure from the third step and it's kind of a technical event not many people do it but you can meddle doing triple jump because not many people do it for example how did you learn to do this how did you learn to technique for triple jump I had coach who taught me I found her on porch form she's a really great she still holds multiple records at high school level so she's like now 27 ish so I started out with some help from her I want to comment what Margaret said about there's not very many people who do triple jump there's also at the Vermont level there's often not very many people in each age category in most events so you have a very strong chance of meddling regardless of what you do or how well you do it and that's just a real morale booster but what we say is not my job I'm the one who shows up and does the thing so there you go it's really a morale booster we had a guy who was a table tennis on Saturday who was 73 and he played in a tournament and said it was the first time he played table tennis in 30 years and he lost every match he played and still got a bronze medal in his age group and he was thrilled so the other thing I should mention too is although the national senior games kind of frowns on this but it's because they don't understand the logistics of Vermont we combine age groups a lot so like when both of you when you go and run an event she's not going to be all these people in her age group it's going to be younger and older people and I personally think that's a really cool thing and we had a guy in tennis this year who was 84 and he was the only person who was playing who was over 75 and he played him with all these other people and he said to me after the event he said George that was the most fun I've played playing tennis in years because I got to play different people who I'd never played before and he won his age group because he was only one and he didn't win any matches but he had such a good experience and that's kind of what we're talking about you had your hand up before what is it about pickleball people are crazy and I can't have you guys want to comment on it I can just say from personal experience I can't play racquet sports because I've had knee replacement and there's one thing they didn't want me to do but I have played like hit the ball two times and the thing that was incredible to me is I'm not a good tennis player by any stretch of the imagination I felt totally competent to play pickleball in about 15 minutes it's so easy to learn it's so easy to learn and I think the other thing that is really popular about it is it's a very social event because most people play doubles and I haven't thought about this but the court is so much smaller than tennis that you can't help but interact with the people you're playing with and I think that's a real reason why it's so popular and the other thing is mixed doubles it's a really good way to meet people I'm sorry I cut you off I'm so happy to see all these young women participating and they are young to me when I was in school in the 30s and 40s girls didn't have a chance to be unwedded or could play basketball and stopping the movement and doing any of these things and now you're out there working towards your personal best and the competition isn't learning and nearly it's down on females that still lives in many cases and reaching your personal best is so important and I've seen the games everyone cheers for you it's a very good group support so I'm glad that women are out there that's all and the venues provide their facilities for free it depends on the venue swimming is a great example with swimming it's a community center down in Springfield and what they did was they had a fee which they agreed to waive for us but what we did was we then gave a donation to their youth swim club so because we figured they're losing all this business by us being there for a whole morning so it depends on the venue we pay for the track and field and the road races we don't pay tennis we pay a court fee for tennis but we don't pay for pickleball so it really depends on the sport that reminds me I want to comment about the venues are also some of them are very community oriented like George mentioned the swimming is at the Springfield pool and they were very welcoming their staff were there on hand to help us to help check in the staff lined up for volunteers to help with the timing and count the laps on the 500 and it really it just brings out that group too and they're all cheering us on as well and then the same with the 5K it doubles as the run and the power walk and that is piggybacked onto the 5K fun run that Northfield does just kick off their Labor Day weekend and so the Central Vermont runner they oversee it but yet it's also this community organization the townspeople come out they're cheering us on and the people volunteering so a lot of the senior games events are in venues and in situations where it's also very community oriented it's not just we show up we do our thing and we leave there's lots of other activity around it it's very welcoming, it's very nice very Vermont-y yes and again I should also mention that's not the way most other states do it the most other states they have a specific senior games event that's run by their group and there's no mixing of the ages or a lot of our events are mixed so a lot of us love to go out and cheer you guys on I love it we even did one here with a younger we did that's right yeah yes yes that's one of our challenges we have had a really hard time getting media to do much of anything I mean the first year I was with senior games I would send out a press release after every single event and basically nobody would print it on the flip side the Hardwick Gazette which Jim Flint writes for they have Jim writes an article for them every single week which is heavily senior focused so it really depends on the media it's on Jamie Dicca is it time service I know yeah the best place to get our information is on our website I know for some people that doesn't work but that's where we're at at this point any questions comments if not I don't know can you hear me or do I need the mic good so I want to thank George and Margaret and Sarah sorry I remember it's Bombardier you're French Bombardier Bombardier Bombardier we used to have Bombardier drinks over in Berrytown so anyway thank you for coming and they'll stick around for a few minutes afterwards for personal questions and inspiration if you decide to take something on but don't forget to turn your tags into Alice and then Marge over there and thank you all for coming I hope to see you next week


Welcome back to the school of calisthenics it's challenge Tuesday 49 and it is gonna be Jaco's got a special one in his box of tricks this week. Well it's it's I've stolen it off of Tim a while ago I did and you have to look back on Instagram for that. I was in Brazil actually. Yeah, this was nice. Anyway, so it was he done the world's slowest pull-up and we are gonna do today the world's slowest push-up Tim just give him the insight into the rules for this. You have to keep moving that is the number one priority there's no pause in but it's literally how long can you take to do one rep of a push-up not something people train a lot but interesting to have a play around with but we do want to see continuous movement and a failure or you don't just fail if we see a pause. Yes, if you stop in then it doesn't count. I'm already nervous about how much grief I'm probably going to get. It's going to be brilliant so it's not how many you can do in any matter of time it is how slowly you can do one push-up. It's way easier if you've got longer arms so let's just well I've got one arm shorter than this. It's a bit to go I'm quite short though. Right let's get into it. Let's get into it. You ready? Hold on you're not moving wait three two one go. You see the other one. It's going to be very moving. Oh it's going to be the best one. That's 10 seconds. It's going to be really slow. Is he moving folks? He's definitely moving. He is moving. That's 20 yeah. So tongue at the top of your mouth that was a good yeah. Not reaching like you got sense of tension and isolation before. 30 yeah again. There you go. He touches the floor and then he's oh that was fast up 35. 40. He's shaking back. 45. 50. He's trying to get stuck. You do have to be able to get back up. You have to be able to complete the one rep. That is a minute. When are we there? Are we there? No we're still going. And stop. 109. Can you see that? Are we close to the moment? Yeah 109 87.  I'm starting new to please people. Right three two one go. I am moving. I am moving look. You just need to look a bit closer. You can see your hips getting lower. Look my elbows are bending. It's because I've got bigger arms than you. You can't see them moving as much. All right come on there. You've got to tell me. I told you. I think I'm going a bit tight with my elbow as I'm turning it into. There's been a lot of hip movement so far. Look my nose is on the floor. Give me a time. What am I on? What am I on? 15 seconds.  You need to get a little ahead. I can do those. I'm doing that. Chicken. Tim is doing that. There's me. I'm in a good position. You're 50 seconds already. Oh really? There you go. I thought there was a pause in the way. There was not enough. There's one nose. Stop again. Stop. I'm shaking. How many warnings do I get? That's the one. First one. He has a lot of shaking in there. Let's have a beat now. Stop. 128. So if you haven't yet subscribed, make sure you click that up there. If you haven't got a free beginners guide, check that bad boy out down there. Exactly. And then for last week's challenge, challenge is 48. Check it out over there somewhere. Until next time. Class dismissed.


Everybody for us here ripping 2023 fanatics under wraps MLB authentic baseball jersey edition six box case number nine. It's a long title We've got six jerseys in the case six names of the break We'll open all the boxes show all the jerseys random them off at the end to see who gets what and don't forget We're giving away the pinini father's day pack and late in sports cards card stand as well to the top name When we get to the random best of luck everybody No, no, it really doesn't only go but thank you. Thank you What is this the what's the what's the award like what what is it shaped as? The best breaker the West Coast of Florida For us probably just like a gator Right only flawless left tonight everybody All this basketball five ago two teams first spot Teared full case. Well, that's like a met to me and it's an inscribed. It's penal on zoe 2019 NL rookie of the year Good luck on that one everybody. That's an awesome Pete a sweet Pete if you will Do authentication Brother of Kiko. That's Pete Alonzo. That's one of the coolest ones we've pulled so far Any of the cases yeah, seriously good luck on that one y'all that's nicer than the Pete they have on the box When they have in the box just has his autograph Yeah, I'll show you the next one that the one we just pulled is it's nicer than one that's on there We've got a good case brewing here bo Jackson Bo Jackson, yeah, I love this one Yeah, Sean to be wearing this out. Oh, yeah, if he got this one, I'd be a fly royals are to be wearing For sure is he for sure do Jake saw you he'd just be like I Don't know if all sides are the same I I don't know I would assume They're all like Excel or XXL because usually when you get the framed ones or get there a little bigger the ones you would like collect Yeah, see the Alonzo on the box. It only has the auto light ring. That's it You pull a nicer one. We didn't pull the other one to the right of it. Let me pull the Otani say Oh, that's an Andre Dawson the Hawk clean auto there is an exposure is he? Cubs blue Cubs blue Andre Dawson. That's a pretty one Haven't seen a ranger yet. Well, it's all the Nolan. I guess but this one's like a current ranger. It's Corey seager Corey seager awesome looking rangers. You're here.  We've got a Lucas G. Leto This auto is bigger than the last one that we saw Lucas G. Leto Or just like a cheer We go got a Zach Wheeler Zach Wheeler Jersey, let's go ahead and do the random luck that Pete is probably the One of the coolest ones all the inscribed ones seem to be very awesome. Good luck y'all three and two five times And again remember the names part of the random you're gonna get whoever's at top of the names portion We'll get a penini father's day pack and late sports cards card stand With their order so five times on here and then the hits will put them side-by-side to see who gets what One two three four and five Brandon a gets the Card stand in the pack than David M and five times on the hits. Good luck y'all one two three four and five Bo Jackson down to Lucas G. Leto Awesome break for a brandy got the the bow and the the father's day promo All right, so you have it Brandon a with the bow Jackson Rakesh the Peter Lanzo Robert B Andre Dawson Got John I with the Corey seeker John a with the Zach Wheeler and David M with the Lucas G. Leto Get these results posted to the site moving on to case number 10


Hello everyone and welcome to Blackstar Potential. My name is Lee Fuge and I'm here today with musicteacher.com and in this video we're gonna be talking about how to use power chords. So if you're new to guitar playing, power chords are an essential part of rock, punk and metal guitar. They're really simple chords that you can play with two or three notes. So in this video we're gonna talk about what power chords are, how you can get started with the shape of a power chord and then I'll show you some exercises you can use to get used to moving power chords around in some different styles. So all the tones you're hearing in this video today are coming from my Jackson Adrian Smith SDX guitar which is plugged into the Blackstar HT20 Mark II which I've got running on the Drive channel. So the first question you're probably asking is what is a power chord? So let's have a talk about that first of all. So a power chord is a type of chord like I said that is used a lot in rock, metal and punk music but it does go across every style of music imaginable. A power chord is actually neither major or minor. So if you're new on your guitar journey you're probably learning major and minor chords but a power chord does not actually fit into either of those categories. The reason for this, and there's a bit of theory here is it does not contain a note called a major or minor third. The third in a chord is the note that makes it major or minor. So a power chord is actually made up of three notes but actually one of those notes is a duplicate of the other one we're playing. So if we talk about power chords on a theoretic level let's start with a G note here. So the third fret of the low E string is a G. This is what's called my root note. The other note I'm gonna be adding to a power chord is a note called the fifth. So in this case it's gonna be the fifth fret of the A string. The reason this note is called the fifth is not because it's on the fifth fret but it's the fifth note of the major scale. So if you know any theory about chord construction that is where that terminology comes from. It's the fifth interval of the scale. Don't worry too much if you don't know any of that stuff yet because there'll be plenty of time to catch up with that later on. For now let's just think about this as a shape. So we've got our root note, our fifth. So that's a simple power chord there that we can play with two notes. We could play that together by playing both notes at the same time. Notice I'm just moving that shape back and forth. The good thing with this is it's a transposable shape so I can literally move that all around the fretboard if I want to. The other thing I can do is I can add another note at the top. This is an octave of the first note. It's just a duplicate of the lowest note in the chord so this would be the G which is the root. I'm playing a D note here which is the fifth and then another G which is the octave. This just gives the power chord a little more depth. You don't have to play that additional note if you don't want to. Now you'll notice there I'm playing this with my index finger, my third finger and my little finger. You don't have to follow this finger format if you don't want to. You can bar those two notes there with the third finger. All the way that I usually play this is I actually bar those two notes with my little finger. So you may see me playing power chords like this. But you may also play them this way or this way. There's no right or wrong way to play them. It's just whatever way is comfortable. So that is a transposable shape. This works when you root the note from the E string or the A string. So we've got power chords rooted from the E and the A. We can also root power chords from the D string, but this shape doesn't actually work. The reason for this is the distance between the G and B strings is slightly different when it comes to tuning. So the highest note is actually not full octave away from the lowest note. What I need to do there is move that note up by a distance of one fret. And then I get my octave. So my power chord shape when it's rooted from the D string is like this. So if I'm playing from the third fret, I'm playing three, five and six. Not three, five and five. Because that's slightly out of tune because that lowest note is a semi tone flat. So again, very transposable. I can just move that around as I need to. So here's a quick power chord moving exercise you can use. So I'm going to use the third, fifth and seventh frets of the E string. Then I'm going to drop it to the A string and then down to the D string. So the whole idea with that exercise is just to get used to shifting power chords along the string and also crossing to adjacent strings. We can also do power chords rooted off open notes as well. So if I'm playing a power chord rooted off an open low E string, my notes would be the second fret on the A and the second fret on the D. Now again, you can play this with two fingers or you can play it with one finger. This is also true on the A string. If I'm doing it from the D string, once again, I need to move that higher note up. So now I've written four very simple riffs that are based around power chords in a few different styles for you guys to use in your practice with your power chords. So the first riff is a punk style riff and it goes like this. ["Punk Style Riff"] So here I'm playing power chords on the third fret of the E string, A, and the fifth fret of the A. I'm playing each of those chords on the first beat of the bar. But then for the remainder of the bar, I'm playing eighth notes, which is two notes per beat, on a palm-muted root note. So I'm going one, which is the chord head, and then from the end of one and two and three end, I'm palm-muting the root note. ["Punk Style Riff"] So I'm repeating that rhythm for each of the chords. ["Punk Style Riff"] The second riff is a moving power chord rock style riff and it goes like this. So this is a useful riff because this deals with some big position shifts because I'm starting up here on the seventh fret of the A before coming down to the third of the A. Then I'm doing a drop down to the third of the E before going back to the fifth on the A. Notice that quick little shift back there. On the second repeat, I'm doing the same thing. But then I'm going to eighth notes on the third and fifth of the low E. The third riff is a slightly faster paced rock style riff that's based around an A power chord and an open low A string that gets palm-muted between other moving chords. So this is typical of some hard rock style riffs. This is really great for your coordination when getting power chords on and off a string very quickly. ["Punk Style Riff"] So the chords I'm using here in the first bar is the A power chord and then the third fret and the fifth fret of the A string power chords. And the second bar I'm using the open A again with the third and the second. Rhythmically, I'm just playing eighth note here, one and two and three and four and. After the A power chord which lands on the one beat, I'm doing two open A palm-muted notes. Before hitting the third fret power chord, I'm doing two more. Then the fifth and one more. The second bar is the same thing but I go to the second fret instead of the fifth. That's really useful as I said for getting used to shifting in and out of power chords very, very quickly. The fourth and final riff is a little bit more on the heavy metal side. This is like a classic 80s metal style riff. So this uses power chords that move around rooted on the A string and fast picked open low E strings which are going to be palm-muted. So this riff, we're using all power chords on the A string. I'm using the seventh, the fifth, the third, and the second. And with the picking hand, I'm doing these fast low E palm-muted notes in between. So there's six of them there. These start from the end of the beats after the chord. So the first chord hits on the one beat and then I'm doing the six palm-muted notes and a two E and a. The next chord lands on the third beat and then the open low E strings come on from the end of the three up to the end of the bar. So it's three and a four E and a. So we've got one and a two E and a three and a four E and a. The next bar comes down to the third fret. So it's the same thing again. But then I'm changing it up slightly on the final bit. I'm going three and a, four and a. Then I'm doing an and a after the four. Back to the start. So there you go. There are some tips to get you guys started with power chords. These are essential chords. If you're playing rock, punk and metal music, you're going to definitely want to be learning these and using them in your playing. So have some fun with those. Let me know down below in the comments what your favorite power chord riffs are because power chords make up a lot of classic riffs. So throw your favorite power chord riffs down below in the comments as well. Don't forget to check out Black Star Amplification on YouTube for more free video lessons just like this one. And if you're looking for a music teacher in your local area, please check out musicteacher.com and check out the database of great music teachers all around the country. Thank you guys for watching and I'll see you soon.


When words replace love and action and dogma replaces concern over humanity, we have lost the Gospel. It is much less risky to make a hollow declaration about where one stands on an issue than it is to enact the salvation story through the sweat on our brow, the calluses on our hands, and the thin fabric on our knees. In our frantic pursuit of believing just right, we run the risk of missing the good news. God's steadfast love and mercy ask more of us than this. Gospel is and always has been good news to the poor, release to the captive, sight to the blind, freedom for the oppressed, and the Lord's favor upon all.


Boom, what's up everyone? Welcome to Simulation. I'm your host, Alan Sokian. Very excited to still be at COFES, the Congress on the Future of Engineering Software, with our second annual partnership with them. We are very excited to now have the president of COFES Institute, Vincent Caprio. Hello. Thank you, so Alan, I've loved being with you the last two cycles here at the event. Thanks. And so many of our sponsors and speakers, just, you're a great interviewer. You really not handle things. I'm very honored that you said that. Thank you. And it's, this place is loaded with, it's a big brain trust, this, you know, we've had some epic conversations that people that have sat here. Vince's background is awesome. Not only has he been the president of COFES Institute, he's also a technology historian and a technology event producer over the last 30 years. And the conversations that we've had, he's just been dropping lots of wisdom on me. Let's talk about your life. Let's talk about this journey.  My grandfather was a civil engineer. My grandfather believed in education. My grandfather put himself through night school and he graduated from NYU. Took him seven years. My grandfather believed so much in education that he put his other seven siblings through college. One of them became a cardiologist, three of them were teachers. So another engineer. So my grandfather believed so much in education, having, you know, been from Italy. And then my father was, my father was in the Korean War and came out of Korea and he graduated from Seton Hall in accounting. And my grandfather, even in the earliest days of Univac, loved computers and he started working with computerization when he went to the IRS in the 50s. And so my father, from an early age, talked, had me go into, you know, the computer room at the IRS and the tapes and the whole bed. And so he worked for the IRS for 40 years. And I then went off to Villanova in 1975 to study accounting and MIS and data processing. And I loved all that. And while I was at Villanova, I've read in Fortune magazine and Wall Street Journal about these two fellows in the Silicon Valley, Jobs and Wozniak. And then I said, gee, this is really cool that someday you can have a computer on your desk. And then I got out of Villanova and I went to work for the IRS and I was working, you know, with the big mainframes, the IBM mainframes. And then so I got involved with really looking at the mainframes and then the minis and the LSIs and the VAX machines. And then in 1981, when IBM introduced the first PC, I went out and bought one for $4,400. And I was recently telling somebody that story. They said, $4,400, you bought an IBM PC and you were making $15,000 in 1981 or 82. That'd be like spending $20,000 now. And I said, I never really thought about it because when I heard about the IBM PC, I really wanted one and it had an 8086 chip. And I really embraced technology. And what was really great is my grandfather and my father loved history and I loved history. So I started making sure I understood who the giants in the history of technology. One of the first things I remember reading was about IBM and how IBM in 1959 worked with ADP. ADP, most of you get a paycheck. It's called ADP now, but it was called Advanced Data Processing. In 1959, they did a partnership and that was the first time people got automated paychecks. And I had known about that by 1968 when I was in fifth grade. So I always looked at the history of it. My fifth grade project was on computers that I won the science fair in fifth grade for. And of course, I won the science fair in seventh grade, sixth, seventh and eighth grade. So I loved science, but I always loved the history of science. It was always interesting for me to read the biographies of the men and women that brought us this technology. So what's really been cool in my 40 years is that I've seen this whole revolution. I was there when Gates and Paul Allen had Microsoft and I bought Microsoft when they went public in 1986. I was a stockholder. So I always followed everything. I followed Wozniak and Jobs and Apple. And it's really been interesting to live the history of it. And it's very rewarding to be able to explain the history of it to some of the younger people that are in their 20s now. Yeah, there's so many things that you brought up there that are crucial. First is the grandpa. It's crazy that he worked to put the other seven siblings through college as well. Because when you realize that when the mind is so young that it has the potential to absorb stimuli and then become at another whole level of understanding reality, a higher level, a more powerful level, that's why it's so important to get at a young age these really powerful knowledges. No, it's just because those people that have come up to me and I've spoken at hundreds of conferences. I've spoken at NIST and DOD and I've spoken at Cybersecurity conferences sponsored by the FBI. And obviously I've spent I've spoken at over a hundred colleges and universities. And many times somebody, you know, we'll get done and we'll go to the cocktail hour. And the student will say, Well, you're self made. And I said, No, I'm not self made. No, who knows? I said, My grandfather and father made me. I'm not self made. They it wasn't and no one gave me money. But no, they provided the platform. And they provided for me to understand that I needed an education. And my father and grandfather. It's interesting. My grandfather and father told me Christmas is for women and children. My grandfather believes so much that every Christmas my grandfather gave me two gifts, a $25 savings bond for me to have for when I went to college and a book. So I never received like toys and things like that. It was here's a book and here's a bond. So that's why people say you're self made. You started out at the IRS making $10,000 a year. No, no, I'm not self made. My family made me my grandfather and my father's belief. My grandfather and father used to say, You know, America is all this opportunity. You are what you're perceived to be. Yeah, this this notion that we stand upon the shoulders of giants a lot of the time that the giants are within our family, right helped us get to where we are. And a lot of time, then you read all those books. And then the giants are also in those books. And so those components are really critical to to your growth. And then as you as you ended up indicating there's this, there was a strong desire for you to read about what Wozniak and jobs we're doing and what Paul Allen Bill Gates were doing. And when you did that, you really started absorbing what technological revolution was happening. And so this is this, this is this critical notion that for young people, that to be able to really find these sources of the most signal during time periods and the least noise, the the ones that are ramping up, you know, who are the ones that are driving the synthetic biology age, who are the ones driving the neuroscience and AI neural network age, the cloud computing age, the engineering software age, who are those drivers? Latch on to them, read about them, hang out with them, do all these things that will then drive you to best understand the transitions that we go through. Then it's also interesting that from from this perspective of technology history, you've really been around like you said, you were young, but you saw when paychecks became automated, right? And now all the way to to cryptocurrencies now. So so now you're really good at explaining this technology history.  Well, you know, and speaking at these colleges, universities say the student is 22 years old. I know that they've been on the internet their entire life. Now, look, I'm 62. Do you realize all my friends, none of us were on the internet until Netscape came with the browser? Okay, and it was an unbelievable revolution because one day, there's this browser. And we've heard about the internet. And we might have friends that, you know, got onto a worldwide web. I mean, look at it. Most of the younger people don't know what WWW. So I was at a time that people would say, What's your website? Oh, my website is World Wide Web Vincent Caprio.org. So could you imagine when I first got my website, instead of saying WWW Vincent Caprio.org, I'm saying World Wide Web Vincent Caprio.org. So then one day, we have a search engine. And within six months, everyone's on the internet. Okay. And so it was that adoption was that quick. Yes, this was 9594 to 95. And so PCs at home, okay, it went from 20% market penetration. So by the end of the decade, everyone had a PC everybody had a device, a laptop. And at the same time, the convergence of the browser and then AOL, letting you get online AOL within two years at 35 million users. That's why they got to be the largest company they bought out time Inc. So to think about it, before 90, early 94, I'm at home using that IBM. And it's not even Microsoft. It's not even Windows 95. There's no GUI in it. That's another thing I use terms like GUI. Nobody knows what that means. Graphics user interface was brought to us by Apple products. Windows 95. Windows was all text driven. I'm at home in 1992, you're working on a laptop. It's all text driven. There's no icons.  And even to this day, my daughter laughs, I hit print. You know, I don't even know where's the icon from the print. So all of a sudden, the convergence of now you can go on the internet with AOL. Now you have a browser. Now everybody's on the internet. And they're in a chat room. There's I want to be in fantasy baseball.  Oh my gosh, I can go on ESPN.com and look at the score. I don't have to like stay up until 1125 to watch the local station see if the Mets or Yankees one or if the Red Sox one, you know, you difference. Yeah, it all happened. So you go from not being able to use the box to the box being extremely intelligent, the box, you know, looks like with me, Vincent Capra. Next thing I know, I figured, I want to find every person with my name in the world.  And I'm sending them emails. Hey, I'm Vincent Caprio from, you know, you know, Boston, I'm this I'm that I'm there. You know, it's kind of cool to think all of a sudden and the democratization of it, you're communicating with people all over the world and all over the United States. It was really cool time. It the these these little the pockets of wisdom that you're shedding these awareness expansions for us is that, you know, when so many people are coming online, you're you're able to then query the internet with whatever the the question is like, what was the score of the game or what's the weather like tomorrow, you can now get these data points in without needing to send a message through instant messenger to someone else across the world in in in like that rather than needing to wait for a paper to arrive. And this is this is a very important advancement time period. How did AOL lose 35 million users? That sounds crazy that they blew that opportunity. Well, and so then when they when they acquired Time Warner, it was the largest deal in the history of deals.  So you so you would and there was a noise. Do you remember? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. You heard it. Yeah. So what happened is called you did not so when you finally got a DSL line, you didn't need AOL anymore. You got it that you buy a DSL line at your house, you don't need an AOL account anymore. You can just, you know, go directly with somewhere else. And that was it. They're their business. Then they thought that they could maintain those 35 million people that were paying like 10 or $12 a month. That was think they would bill you every month on a credit card, $10, $12, like $20 a month, they think it was. So, you know, every month, $20, $20. But then one day, you didn't need them. So everybody canceled. See, as fast as they went up, they came down because nobody needed them anymore. You know, what were people using instead of AOL at that time then? Well, they would just go to a DSL line at home. And then they would use Yahoo email address. They didn't need to because Yahoo, it's free. And then, of course, Gmail came out and it's free. I mean, think about it. You were paying AOL for an email. Okay, so yes, for 30 years of doing technology event producing. Yes. Teach us about what you've been producing and why those conferences have been so crucial for people to gather. So, you know, all the conferences that have been the event director of, they're dealing with emerging technologies. So the emerging technologies, when I started, they were talking about digital printing, you know, with IBM, we were talking about moving from mainframes to minis to then PCs and network PCs. And then eventually, the obviously access to the internet, and then Netscape, and then Windows 95. And you pretty much, it was very easy to communicate with people with the speed on the internet and then messaging. And then, you know, you get to 2007.  There's some kid from Harvard who wanted to meet girls and his friends. Now we can go on Facebook and find all our old girlfriends from high school, and we don't have to pay somebody to find them.  And they're communicating with friends from since they had heard from a kindergarten. I mean, Facebook, you know, for all the criticism and the privacy issues, let's be realistic. I mean, a guy like me, I mean, I got on and my first day I got 2000 people. I thought about every person that I knew K through 12, I graduated from Villanova. I thought about every person I knew from Villanova. I thought about every person from my MBA program. And I thought about every person I worked. So I obsessively went on for 20 straight hours, and I had 2000 people and the next day I had 4000 people. The next thing I know, I'm talking to somebody I want to kindergarten with, it really is cool. I mean, look, and a lot of baby boomers love to complain about it. Come on.  I mean, I was the president of my high school class. And we had a 40th year reunion. And when we had a 10 year reunion and a 20 year reunion and a 30 year reunion, it goes through all these hoops to try to find people. One of my one of my girlfriends, she was already retired. So I said to her, she was how are we going to find everybody? So, you know, think about this, I took out the high school yearbook, I put everybody in an Excel spreadsheet, that's a use of technology, I then emailed her the spreadsheet. And then she takes out the spreadsheet. And she says, well, how am I going to find everybody? Just type their name and search in Facebook. Did you know that every person I went to high school with all 200 people were on Facebook? And the ones that weren't on Facebook, she was here the following people are on Facebook. Where do you think they are? He said, LinkedIn, Twitter, no, no, I said, tragically, that's what you're going to do. Take their name and type in O bit. And every other person was dead. So they came up as an O bit. And so 20% of my class of 200 people, 40 of them had passed on. But how did we finally passed on? We typed their names in on Google.  So think about that. We tracked everyone down from Facebook or Google. Yeah, with the power of the internet. Right. Right.  I have so many Go Daddy accounts and websites.  Nowadays, it's nothing. The kid doesn't in the frigging an hour. Now I have my high school reunion page up.   You know how hard it was for me to do my 30th reunion, you're collecting the money, you're mailing me a check. I got everybody to pay me before. Yeah, they're this this brings up a really interesting trajectory. So it goes these technology events that you're producing and directing there. They take us all the way back to you know, 30 years ago, when technology when your reunions were so much more difficult to coordinate and execute all the way until now where they're just so much easier to get done, we're much more easier to bring communities of people together. So there's really definitely this, this in many ways, a trend of in this in this light that you shed at it, it is it is a beautiful way of bringing people together. Now, identifying this these last 30 years and identifying this, this this exponential technology curve and being here and seeing these peoples, you know, these young people like me, the college students that you go and speak in front of when when we're just so shocked about technology history. Right. When there's when the when students today don't don't don't even necessarily know about Wozniak and jobs and how they put things together for us, that why is that so important? Why is technology history such a crucial awareness expansion for young I think it's so important because of how productive it's so important to be able to live a life that's not debatable, that it's a bad thing. See, unfortunately, there's a lot of negative people that believe philosophically, it's hurt us. And that's not true. You have to look at the enormity, you have to look at it in a 360 view. You can't take bits and pieces of the pie and say, well, this privacy issue and blah, blah, blah. No, if you look back of the last 30 years, it's enormous. How much may it's made our lives so much easier. And I also contend, which a lot of people say is not true. I believe it's made us be able to communicate better. Now, I grew up communicating with people without the devices and without Facebook and without LinkedIn. However, when I stopped communicating with people when I got out of college, it is really cool that I can communicate with 16,000 people on LinkedIn and 5000 people on Facebook. And there's people that I haven't talked to since 1968.  And it says, you know, I went to I went to fifth grade in 1968 with a guy with the same name as you, you know, and he was a real, he was a real big talker and he was a blah, blah, blah. It's really crazy. He has the same name as you. And then I type back. But that's me. And he's like, get the blank out of here. But and they get to see your entire history of what's happened. Right. And that's why they say it. They say it's hurt communication skills for younger people. And for people I fundamentally disagree. Because I wouldn't have been communicating with these people anymore.  But for them to communicate with me, I've got into some really great communications with people that, you know, I really never talked too much in 1971 was a freshman in high school. And next thing I know, you know, the woman is talking to me about this and that.  So now I'm sharing the point that I'm a diabetic. Well, look at all the it really builds up a community of people. And my father's generation, they didn't have it. And he got out of high school and say it's 1975. He's not talking to these people. You know, so and I was talking about this the other day, say my father in 19, so 1955, 1965, 1975, 1980, America was not that much different in the workforce. And with people in 1955, 65, 75, 1980, everything changed with Wozniak and, and, and jobs. The next thing you know, they forced IBM with that PC as we earlier said, then the 80s changed with the whole PC revolution. So like I said, that this country was the same for, you know, you had the war ended in 45, you know, from 45 to 55, there was a lot going on, you know, the Russians, you know, we found that the Russians had nuclear weapons in 49. So let's get the 55 Eisenhower. America because of the lack because of where we were in technology was basically the same place and the way we communicated. But once again, people started with those PCs and they had PCs at home. And the next thing you know, Andreessen and Netscape and there it just opened everything up onto, you know, the web. And then what you just mentioned there I wanted to get, I wanted to get us to get to is that you not only have a technology history background, you have an overall history background and especially a focus on the last 100 years of United States history.  We talk about this on the socioeconomic status level that we see things like GDP continuing to increase over the last 40, 50 years. Meanwhile, median male income stagnates. What's going on, right as the 1% with this technology boom just getting extremely wealthier. Meanwhile, the average American families are continuing to struggle. So why don't we talk about your also your synthesis on the history? Yeah, and so if you look back, say in 1965, so the Great Society program started in 1964, under President Johnson, he recognized after President Kennedy had this vision and Johnson carried it out after his assassination of President Kennedy, and he got elected in 64. So the Great Society program comes in and they recognize finally that 20% of our of our people were impoverished. Then they said that we had another 60% were middle class. And there's the top 20% and of the 1% of the top 1% is the upper class. But there was a really an upper middle class and a middle class. So now fast forward the clock, you know, 50 years later, we still have the same 20% impoverished. And we have a lot of entitlement programs to help the impoverished where there were people when I was a boy in 1965, you know, I'd go into New York City, I'd look through the train, you saw really poverty. So we've helped a lot of the 20%. But now what's happened, the next 60% of people, they don't have $1,000 to fix their car, they are living paycheck to paycheck. So income inequality is true. It is true. There's no doubt about it. And actually, who's benefited is people that are involved in information, let's be candid here. So it's it when you talk about educated, you become educated, but you became educated in technology. I mean, a person that became educated, and how to work in a steel mill or coal mine, that's not that didn't work out. Okay, it's hard to retrain, right? You know, so the so the the students that had an opportunity to get involved in a technology society benefited. And unfortunately, we have too many people that didn't embrace the new economy. And that's really and now and now we have this income inequality.  Well, if you put a data center in those places, and they had to hire 5,000 people, there's not going to find 5,000 people to go into the data center. Facebook could put a data center in Bridgeport. How are you going to hire 5,000 people? Where are they going to come from? And this is why, you know, whether it's Cambridge Mass, or the Silicon Valley, a research triangle park, or Austin, or certain other technology, you know, Seattle, you so all the technology clusters, the economic have done well. And if you're not in a technology cluster, but the people who live in technology clusters have been educated into this technology. Yeah. Yeah. And this, there's also another. So there's a social fabric issue as well, in terms of the way that we've, we've highlighted and propped up conspicuous consumption and not extended our inclusive fitness out to the global village. And and that is that's something that I think we're we're changing as well. You and I could talk for such long periods of time about history and technology history. And I'm really excited to have you back on the show. Sure. Sure. Let's wrap on COFAS. So the Conference on the Future of Engineering Software. This is our second annual partnership. Thank you. And we want to be with you forever. I really do. You've done such a great job interviewing our keynote speakers. And you know, we've had you from Microsoft and Facebook and Dell and it's just been wonderful. And this is this was the big thing is Vince did an incredible job at bringing COFAS to Silicon Valley and making sure that we're positioned right here next to Facebook, having Microsoft Facebook, Dell sponsors, having their cutting edge speakers here. This is one of the ways to really birth an organ. There's so many young people here now. This is a really powerful way to to re birth an organization powerfully moving forward. What is your synthesis on both the state of engineering software and the future of engineering software? This is a really cool brain trust that the COFAS has.  And then 30 years ago, when I heard about AI, and I remember hearing about machine learning, I was like, no, how can that be? How are they going to have software to pick up what you're saying? And it just seems so remote. But it is it's been developed. It's being used. And it's only going to get better. It's it's like the cars, the car from 1965 was the first year they had seat belts. It just got better and better and better. It's only going to get better and better and better. Because the men and women that are coming out of schools and or start using these products, they're starting at a completely different starting point than say anyone my age. So they're so much more advanced, you know, with the technology, it's it's like taking a shower in the morning for them. It's not some big deal for them to do. So I'm my last couple. This is my third COFAS. I just can't believe what you see, and what some of these younger people have been able to do. Yeah, yeah, the current state of extremely young people being able to pick what they want to learn and learn it like it is their passion and having access to that information is so crucial. And what we've been able to highlight in the interviews from the conference, the state of engineering software is just blowing up. And it's so beautiful to see that because it's applicable to and you know, my message that I like to leave with everyone as a person that's been involved with emerging technologies for 30 years, I have to say it, I said it before and I know I'm repeating myself. Technology has really done wonderful things in America and the world. And I really take it to heart that when people think that we're not at we're less productive, and we've had some trade off, you know, there's people that are negative that say it's the devil. I heard the same thing about Gates, like 25 years ago, Microsoft this Microsoft that Microsoft. It's like, and now you know, Facebook, this Zuckerberg, the same thing about photography. Yeah, it's really, you know, look, this country has brought all the technology advances this world. I mean, you take a look, what changed our country? The Interstate Road Act of 1956, we put these interstates everywhere. Technology gave us those interstates. And all the transportation systems are helping are from technology. And now lastly, the last mile, they're doing digitalization of the water industry, which is important. And technology is going to help clean the environment. Technology is not destroying the environment. And that's like I said, it's only positive. You know, it's all positive. Yeah, there's there's a lot of nuance. And I'm really happy that that you're providing us with this a little big history perspective on on on the role of the evolution of humanity. Thanks. Thank you so much, Alan. Thank you, bro. We love you. You're the man. You're the man. You're the man. Thank you everyone. Thank you. We greatly appreciate it. We would love to hear your thoughts in the comments below. Let us know what you're thinking about technology history about cofes, cofes links below. Also simulations links are below. Support the artists and entrepreneurs that you believe in. Also go and build the future manifest your dreams into the world. We love you very much. Thank you for tuning in and we will see you soon.


The mission of the joint task force in Dominica is specifically to facilitate the evacuations of American citizens who got trapped on the island as a result of Hurricane Maria. We have a search and rescue capability that's out locating isolated Americans. Once they are found, they're brought over to Charles Douglas Airport. We escort those individuals into our evacuation control center. They're a team of Marines as well as State Department officials help process these evacuees and essentially prep them to travel back to the United States. The State Department is the lead agency here for the evacuation process. They've been providing that guidance for us as to, hey, we have individuals or pockets of individuals in these locations, so they drive our operations to find the Americans and then once here, they're processing people, they're explaining how to get home. So really, we're enabling them. The biggest challenge has been communications, like locating American citizens on an island that's pretty much been devastated by the hurricane, finding where they're located, whether or not they want to evacuate and if they have any special medical conditions or they're elderly. Generally, U.S. Marines, we're helping those who can't help themselves in foreign countries, but in this situation, not where the face that's helping Americans. So it puts us in a really unique and a really gratifying role to be here.


You need a financial advisor with the freedom to focus on your specific needs. Whatever your goals, Reeve Potter can create a game plan tailored to you. Call Reeve at 432-0777 at Pikeville, Kentucky to learn more. This week, Friends of the Tugfork River will be holding its tire tug-of-war river cleanup event on Tuesday, September 20th and Thursday, September 22nd at 9am. Monday, Mountain Top spoke with Friends of Tugfork River Representative John Birchett about their cleanup efforts, and how you can help. We've been pulling tires out of the river here in Williamson since 2019. We've recovered 5,099 within the city limits of Williamson. We're well over 6,000 through the length of the river, but right here in Williamson, we've got a really large concentration of tires that we're trying to clean up. Tomorrow, 9am, we'll be right here where I'm standing, getting in the water with the West Virginia DEP Reeve and some local volunteers, some local agencies, and we need some more people to come out and help us. This is a project that is a long time into making and it's going to take a long time to finish, but every year we knock a little bit out of it and every year we get a little bit closer to a cleaner river. With the goal of preserving the river and enhancing tourism, efforts will help maintain many of Williamson's activities such as a river's fishing presence. The Tugfork River is a tremendous smallmouth bass fishery. We have a lot of people that enjoy fishing on it and it's a beautiful river too and people enjoy floating. One problem that we have are all these tires that have been in the river for decades and it's time to get rid of them. Again, the river cleanup event will be held Tuesday, September 20th at 9am and Thursday, September 22nd at 9am. Volunteers can enter the river from the South Williamson flood wall, walking track, or at the staging area. For Mountain Top News, I'm Joel Korgel.


Okay, so apart of the Deathbringer Exotic Rocket Launcher quest, you will come to a stage where you have to collect necklace scraps for the Memory of Cymorta. To do this, you have to defeat nightmare enemies anywhere on the moon with arc abilities. This can be quite time consuming, so finding this method of getting this done in a few minutes, I thought I'd share it with you guys to try and help you out. How's it going guys, my name's DP Jen, I'd like to thank you for stopping by and checking out my video. If you do enjoy it, leaving a like really helps out when if you're new around here and want to see more Destiny 2 videos, be sure to subscribe. Okay, so this stage of the quest requires you to use arc abilities only, nut weapons and you have to kill nightmare enemies on the moon. Most people spend time running out of last sectors which can take absolutely ages. This simple method you will get this done in no time at all, so apply your arc subclass and head to the Sorrel's Harbour area on the moon. Here in the Olga constantly spawns with a few smaller nightmare enemies. Kill them, even just the smaller ones if you ain't high enough to damage the Olga, but once you are done, simply fast travel back to this spot and rinse and repeat. So kill what you can and simply fast travel back. Melee's work, even if you ain't got a charged melee, so getting smaller ones with melees is much easier. Now these ogres can spawn on any other place within this area, so doing a quick circle, you'll find them within a few seconds. So yeah guys, this simple method in getting the nightmare kills, for whatever purpose you have, mine must account toward the quest which inevitably gives you the Deathbringer Exotic Void Rocket Launcher. So we enjoy guys and I hope it helps you out. But I know we have come to the end, if you enjoyed the video leaving a like really helps me out, if you're new around to see more Destiny 2 videos, be sure to subscribe and if you never want to miss a video I upload, you can turn notifications on by hitting that bell button. But guys thanks as always for stopping by, hopefully you enjoyed the video and hopefully I will see you on that next one.