more of a turnout tonight, but that's okay. This will be an intimate conversation with the folks who are here. Maybe other people will join us as the evening goes on. I'm Rachel Muse. I'm the director of the library. I've been here for just over a year, I think 14 months now. And the library commission really have long been talking about the library doing some strategic planning. And this is such a great time to do that because relatively new director, a lot of staff transition over the past few years. The library has been fully reopened since the pandemic. Starting last June, and we've slowly over that time loosened up our various COVID protocols. So we're finally at the point where it feels like we are back up and running like a library. Circulation numbers are back up to the numbers that they were before the library closed. We are seeing the after school kids that we didn't see in those years. The programming is always going to look a little bit different going forward. Sometimes we do it in person, sometimes we do it on Zoom, sometimes we do a hybrid. So it seems like a good time to kind of reflect and think about what we want to see from the library going forward. So this meeting was our opportunity to just reach out to the community and say, do you want to sit down and have a conversation with us and provide some input, some of your vision for what you'd like to see from the library, what's working, what's not working, just any ideas that people might have. So Ann Turkle is going to lead this meeting. She is a former Johnson State professor from former Johnson State College and a Waterbury resident about six years, a Vermont resident for many years. And I'm going to let her kind of get the ball rolling with some questions. Okay. Well, I just want to say what a huge fan I am of the library. I figured out I did a little calculation. I think there are at least six things that you offer that I take advantage of, and I really depend on it. I mean, it's just so great to have it here. I love it. And I'm always curious what other people find most attractive, what they do take advantage of. I know that I'm always surprised that there's more going on than I even realized. Rachel, before we started, gave me a printout of the newsletter. And my gosh, there is just an amazing array of things that are happening. And so I'm very admiring all of that and impressed and enjoy it. What I would like to do is just talk. And the thing that we are perhaps most interested in is your sense of what the library is already doing really well and what helps you. And then what you could see is opportunities, things that perhaps they're not doing yet, or they could do more of, or however it might work. So please, just join me. You know, it's going to be so noisy. Yes. The new visa up here for you. Yeah, exactly. We're just getting started. Yes. How do you get a newsletter? And how often do they come up? Newsletters, check in with me with your email address before you go, and I'll make sure you're on the mailing list. And we generally have two a month, one that promotes youth programming and one that promotes adult programming. And you get both if you're on the list. Okay. And I forgot to say one of the things I hope each of us would do is if you have a question or want to make a comment, please introduce yourself just very briefly. So I know who you are. We know who you are. I'm Penny Hallabaugh, and we live in Waterbury and have been here six years. And our daughter married Ava Majer, and so there's no place else to live. What do you, what do you love? What do you take advantage of? I come to the writing group, which meets once a month. Fabulous people on that group. It's really impressive. I get books through interlibrary long. That's one of the things that I have found is so useful. I'm just amazed at the things they can, they can chase down for me. So, you know, what has your experience been? As a former teacher, I always like to say, don't make me call on you. So, please, you know, please just let us know, you know, what are you using the library for now, and yeah, any ideas? Well, I'll say, so my name is Diana King. I've lived in Waterbury now for just over a year. And I'm also on the library commission because I love libraries and I wanted to get involved in my new community. So here I am. And I'll say that my toddler and I have read hundreds of books from this library and all of which I would not have been able to read with her if I had to purchase them myself. So I am forever in the dead of the library for being able to offer variety to my life in the form of kids books. Such a service to everyone who can use them and share them. And I know that it's doing so much good for her and her language development. I'm Teresa Wood and I lived here my whole life and have seen the evolution of our library services. Used to look across the street and used to come to the library as a kid and go upstairs to what I did, what I now know, was the historical society, but I thought it was always the library. And, you know, we were able to kind of look at one of those things where stereograph or something. Something like that. I said, maybe similar to that anyways. So my usage has certainly evolved over the years from being a young kid. What I use it for right now, honestly, is the connection to the digital books that I listen to in my car when I'm driving all around. And I've done that quite a bit lately in the last couple of years. And I'm just grateful. I got the newsletter now. I signed up for the newsletter. And it's, I'm grateful for all the programming that the library does, even though I'm not able to take advantage of it all. I was like, oh, oh, I wish I could do that. Or I wish I could do that. Like the one with the poetry and Pardon? Was it music? It was poetry and yoga or something. Yeah, body, yeah. Yeah, I thought that sounds really cool. So, you know, but you know, didn't fit with my schedule, but it's not for the lack of wanting to participate. And there certainly is such a variety of things, both for adults and for youth. I'm just, you know, really proud of what our library does, and has, and offers. And so glad to support it. Thank you. Thank you, Mark. My name is regulation assistant of the library. We're here for about a year now. And what I love about the library is people from the bases I see all the time, to somebody that I've made with our football search fights. I just love interacting with so many different people. And I love, I love seeing people come into the library and be like, oh, hey, how are you? I haven't seen you in a long time. Like, I like that it's a nice community space in that way. And then like with my personal use of library, I love Libby. I love the audio books and the ebooks. And I use that resource personally so much. I appreciate it. I think I think it's kind of fun. It's great to be the library director, but we've been getting a lot of tourists lately, who are passing through and visiting Waterbury. And they come to the library because it's a place to find a bathroom and a place to sit down and figure out the plan for the rest of their day. And they always say really nice things. They seem to really enjoy our library. So it's we've kind of become this sort of de facto tourist stop for a lot of people, which has been really nice to see. That's great. That's funny, because I just heard somebody this week. We were outweeding in front of the train station and somebody came by and they were looking for the community room to be open. And of course it wasn't yet because it wasn't late enough for Amtrak to be in. But I will say that one of the people I was with said, why don't you go to the library? You can use a restroom there. We've been now calling now. Like I would have never thought to tell them to come to the library, but I was like, oh yeah, well, yeah, this is one of the days, you know, the evening's it's open, so yeah. So it was just funny that that you said that, Jim. I'm Maureen White. I'm a library volunteer, also a president of the Friends of the Library of the Library. I absolutely love the library. I never came to the library. I was just obviously busy working once I retired. I said, I'm buying books I can't afford it. So I'll figure out the library. And I originally decided to be a volunteer because I knew they had a book sale on my back post in finance. I thought they must need somebody to cut the money, right? Well, no, they didn't. But they said, would you like to sell books? I'm like, okay, I can do that. I love that. I love seeing what people are reading.  I really love it. And so I read a good variety of books. I love the programming, the book club that they do. Just being around, being part of the community, the field, the kids in, making noise.  And I find that I come here and sit upstairs with the quiet, was here today. I had to go through like a 50-page document up there. Pretty quiet. It was lovely. Looking out, the people who designed this building did a really good job. So I just find this a great place to be, making more friends with the community. I'm already volunteers at the senior centers. You know, I'm a volunteer too, so I'm on the board. I spend a lot of time there, too. That's nice. You're there. I know, you're just like, back and forth, back and forth. I do, I do. It's a good place to be a part of. Our granddaughter says that the library is so quiet and it smells good. And she gets work done here. She said that the reason that she comes is if she goes home, she's distracted by so many things. So she comes here to get things done. She's 16. So she's asking. So I have a question. I'm sorry I was a little bit late, but did somebody explain sort of is this part of a, you know, what was it part of? So this is, we are working on the library's first strategic plan since 2009. We started off with a community survey that went out, and this meeting is just an opportunity for people who wanted to maybe share a little bit more beyond the survey or have a conversation with us to get their input in. And the next step will be to process all that information and start drafting the plan with a, the commissioners will hold a retreat and figure things out. And then I'm hoping that that final plan will be done early in the coming year, before town meeting date for sure. So you'll be seeing that all over town once it comes out. So that's the goal. Great. Thanks. It's really interesting. The last strategic plan 2009 was all about getting a building. Yeah. Everything just, you know, going through at that point and what happened two years later. We're in a really fortunate position because we don't have a real pressing need like that. We don't need to launch a big capital campaign. We don't need to worry about a building. So this really is more of an opportunity to just say, Hey, what does the community want from your library? Are they happy with things as they are? Is there something that we're missing that they'd really like to see? So that's brilliant. It's just so nice to be able to do that. Yeah. It's a very good position to be in. So we're just listening and getting input from the community at this point. Penny, when we talked earlier, you mentioned that you enjoyed some of the movement classes, which I've never taken advantage of. Yeah. I come to all of the movement classes and now there are not so many. And I was wondering, actually, my question is two parts. Is it because there aren't people available to teach the funds are not there or it just hasn't ramped up yet. So there actually are two right now. There's the cherry yoga class, which is a zoom based class. And that might be part of what the shift was was that that that shifted to zoom during the closure, but people like it on zoom and we're going to keep that one here. And then there's another class that it's being advertised as an arthritis exercise class, but it is open to anybody who might want a lower impact movement class. And that's on Wednesday mornings this fall. So if you're interested, that might be a good one to check out. But so those are the two we're offering right now, but we would if we do, we would be open to adding to it if we if we didn't find a good, it is about finding a good instructor really. In the past, we've had Tai Chi and Chigong, local instructors and some yoga and some wine dancing and all these kinds of things. So I would be interested in having something every day if that was possible, just for me. And so the other part of that question is, what about space? I don't know how the steel room is allocated. The use is allocated. And is there any expansion space in the basement? Because the cell room is lovely, but it's not so good when you're trying to have a group of people doing something physical. The basement has been retrofitted to deal with flood mediation. So it's really not usable. It's kind of it got raised up pretty high. So it's very fun to get. That's kind of interesting if you're ever down there. Hi, welcome. And the steel room is available when we can when we can get it. But we're in competition with everybody else who wants to use it. We don't get priority for being the library. So but it is an option for us to occasionally use the steel room. Our Honey Bees Steel Band is actually going to be performing in this room on October 8th. And I'm really excited for that program. If anyone's looking for a very lively music program with people dressed as Honey Bees. It should be a blast. Our largest classes are also available at the Senior Center. It's the same class as Tuesday Night. I haven't taken part in them, but I've observed them and they look wonderful. And just different, you know, where she's got people moving and different, you know, moving with weights and everything else. Hello, my name's Anne. And we would love it if you came and sat up here. Because yeah, thank you. Well, it's sort of that proposal as we have the chair of the Select Board remaining and walking in and we have another Select Board member. One of the things that I have had people ask me about this isn't as much about programming, but as you know, we think that the future is how, you know, since it's a it's a Waterbury library and we have people from other communities who use the library on a regular basis is how, you know, is there any contribution or something like that? And I shouldn't only answer to that question because I should have, you know, read the chat report from the center all the way through that I have and all of that. So if people want to be members of the library and have borrowing privileges, they do have to pay an annual fee. It's $25 a year. So I feel like that's a steal. We don't we don't ask folks who are coming to programs where they're coming from. That's just been by and in fact, during COVID, when all of our programming went on to Zoom, we started we have somebody who comes to the writers group from Japan. So so so that is that is something that I think has always been a little bit of a question mark is how, you know, should we be asking for paying for folks who are not from Waterbury? Is it is an entirely community library or are we open to, you know, understanding that we're going to be doing this community anyway. It's okay to have other folks drop in. I will say we have an amazing friends of the library group that does fundraising for us. So that's been a wonderful way to, you know, things like with the tourists who drop in and use the bathrooms, they'll frequently put a little bit of money in the friend's jar. They'll they'll buy a book from the friend's book sale. And Marine's been doing a great job with finding some new ways to get the friends out with the community and do a little bit more fundraising. And I think there's a lot of potential there to to do some to maybe do some merchandising for the library since it's becoming such a hot place. Said people want to be, why not sell Waterbury for the library hats and t-shirts and things like that. So farmers market twice this year just did a ton of the book sale on the road. And it was great. It was really people were just they wanted to have a library. Some people who are from out of town love books and you just want to talk about their library and it was a great way to get us out there. What a good idea. Yeah, it was it was fun. It kept raining on Thursdays. We were cursed on Thursdays. So do they pay an annual 25-dollar membership fee? Yeah, it's an annual membership fee and that and I know that sounds low, but that recently was was raised from I think was $15 for many, many years. So so and then most people pay it very happily. And yeah, we have a lot of users from more town from Bolton, even from as far as Richmond, we have folks from Montpelier who you don't have to come through. So we do have a lot of people who take advantage of that. Duxbury residents have a unique situation because they don't have their own library. We're kind of their library. So they pay the $25 fee. They can be reimbursed by the town of Duxbury for that because they don't have a library there. So so we have a lot of Duxbury users who do that.  Yeah. Thanks. Hey, you've been sort of a really cool position to hear people's reaction to what's going on, what they like and you know what might rub their fur the wrong way. What is your sense of that? I mean, most of the feedback that I received has been about like in-person events. I think like moving back kind of what you were speaking about moving back into less virtual events and more in-person programming, which I feel like we have been ramping up. And it's so nice to have the garden space and be able to get outside and things like that. Yeah, I mean, ideally that's the most feedback that I get is about yeah, just like programming and wanting more programming is just really positive. Yeah. Excellent. I just want to comment as much as I love libraries, I'm probably not a good user, although when I was younger, I was a heavy user of libraries. But since the internet, I think I search, I think I'm a typical person. I searched a lot of things on the internet that I formally would normally do in a library. And I think I look at the Waterbury Library, the things that I like are the events. I think it's really kind of important that because it's something different, you know. I'm probably not going to check out too many books here. You know, I'm either going to buy a book. It's like, for instance, I was over at Restore and they have in their book section, if everyone's familiar with Restore, it's kind of like, you know, you could get, for the month of September, a box full, you know, like a carry box for a dollar as many books over. We're interested in the end of the month. And it's a really good deal for them. They have some, you know, it's not something you're going to get. Like if you're going to get a travel book, it's going to be something that's going to be 10 years old or something. But there are kinds of great biographies cooking. And I guess I, I wind up, I find more things at bargain places such as yard sales and stuff like that because everyone wants to, you know, to me, unless it's something I love a book, they don't keep trope, want to keep it. And I think there are so many ways. And I guess, you know, to me, the library is kind of a resource, the kind of things, you know, I do check as things like coming, look at the consumer reports when I want to buy something. But I rarely check out the, I bet you I haven't checked out a book in 10, 15 years. And I think maybe I'm somewhat typical, but maybe I'm not. There are other people maybe who are. I'll give a weird, just different perspective. So my name's Alyssa Johnson. Teresa said I own Select Board, which I will say was made possible by the library because I printed my petition to run out the library because I did not own a printer at the time and then got waved because of COVID. So I will say, you know, certainly I'm really for that, having a computer, all these things. But I do think that like having just a public space, someone can go print. One of my previous roles in town was also working with revitalizing waterway, which does a lot of similar kind of programming for the community. And so two things that stick out to me is just really robust programming at the library. We all have talked about it. But in particular, revitalizing waterway has a community event calendar. And I would say the proportion of events on that calendar that are from the library is often quite high, but just it's one of those places you can always look to for programming. And just folks have touched on, but the spaces, having the smaller meeting rooms for folks, we had a guest coming to a meeting recently who needed to take a separate meeting, not in this room before. And so the fact that there is bookable private spaces, I mean, suggested municipal manager search in the south room, thank you. So I just want, you know, we have some of those spaces in the community, but I think they are really important. And it's often requested inquiries I got in that kind of RW hot. I like the idea of thinking about the technical resources, as you said, relying on the printer. I know that there are other things here that people come and are able to take advantage of. I am one of the people that needs technical assistance. And rather than drive my son completely mad, I come in and ask for help. And it's just for me, it's for what I am trying to accomplish, but it is so nice to be able to do that. It's just remarkable. I'm curious how many people do take advantage of that? Oh, quite a few. So what Anne's referring to is one of our, we have a tech librarian who can book time with one on one time to sit down and get a tech support with. And I think in a given week, he probably can tell me about six people. And he'll sit for a solid hour with somebody. He'll give you a lot of time. And then I'll say that on a smaller scale, Haley, myself, and whoever happens to be running the help desk will be helping people on the fly all the time, who are using the public computers or trying to print something from their phone or something along those lines. So it's, you know, the library really is, we are trying to, you know, focus out kind of the digital divide situation. There's a lot of people out there who don't necessarily have access to the technology or the expertise with the technology or these days of printer or something along those lines. And the number of people who are sitting in their cars using our Wi-Fi when I get to work at nine in the morning would surprise you, I think. Rachel, you need to advertise that a lot. I found that out through you. Like, you know, I've been having some problems with and I'm going to contact Kyle to, you know, have him take a look at what's going on.  I mean, it could be something really somewhat ex-Savvy, but nowadays everything's so, you know, can't be very gaunted sometimes, even if you aren't ex-Savvy. And it's a really good resource for those people. I think there are a lot of people in town who are not, especially the senior generation, which I am one, you know, who are not that ex-Savvy. So I think it's, you know, that's a really important, you know, maybe I'm a little new school because I don't necessarily think, I think a lot of people are less than much borrowing books, but maybe I'm wrong. I would say we have, we still have a lot of people borrowing books. Our numbers, our circulation numbers, 2019 was actually the busiest year this library ever had. And then, of course, shortly after that, the library had to close, but our circulation numbers are creepy, very much close to the 2019 numbers again. What we have seen that has changed is during our closure, a lot of people learned to use Libby, and people who maybe never would have thought they'd be comfortable with audiobooks or with ebooks did get comfortable with that. Interesting thing is those people aren't going away. They're still using Libby, and they're still using the audio and ebooks, but they're also coming back to the library, and they're getting physical books as well. So it's interesting to me that that number of ebook users hasn't really dropped down very much, but the number of traditional book users has longed back up. There are a lot of, I was very surprised, but the things when we did a community survey, we've had 100 responses so far. And the number one thing people think the library should prioritize is still books. A lot of our users are still very interested in traditional books, even as opposed to ebooks and audiobooks. Do you have any number contrast from say like 20 years ago? Would it, more clearly, the internet wasn't as terrible? Yeah, I would have to, I'm sure I could figure out those numbers. That'd be really interesting. In my fingers. Because I know years ago, I used to use the library quite a bit, you know, because you didn't have that research ability. But nowadays, you know, it's a lot easier going on the internet and your sweatpants and, you know, what I love about is that it's not an either or proposition. There are people who will always be more comfortable with this, you know, the book in their hands. But there are many people, and I feel that what the library is doing is so democratizing, because there are people who simply can't afford a computer. And that they have that access is just, I think, terribly important. And along those lines, the borrowing from other sources, I haven't used it, but my husband has had wonderful success for several years with getting things through the library long and then so efficient and so quick. Really nice job, nice job. What is the source now, since we don't have a newspaper anymore, what's the source going to be for the programming, seeing what the programming is besides having the newsletter? Yeah, the newsletter is probably your best way to see everything. Major, major programs get posted to front porch forum. The Waterbury Roundabout does pick up our program information as well. And while they aren't going to be printing the Waterbury reader anymore, you can still get the Waterbury Roundabout emails. Which is helpful. Those are really the best sources. Major items we do have on WDEV. And of course, most of our events we post on our Facebook page. And then some of our events we post on Instagram as well. So those are most of our sources. But I really, I'll make sure that you get the newsletter, because that's going to be your very best method of getting that information. On our website too? Yes, our website is very up to date with the program information as well. So that's always worth checking out. I was wondering, because there's been a proliferation of the little community library boxes around town. Is that had any impact on your visits or the people using? Yeah, I really don't think so. I think that the, you know, it's interesting. I just think there are those readers out there who their way of reading is what they come across. And those are the type of people who take what they find out a little free library or out of a take a book, leave a bookshelf or something along those lines. What we see are really passionate readers who read a lot and who have requests and who have things that they want to get some things on. Yeah, so I think that we see some of those types of folks. And especially our book sale probably has more over that with our book sales by donation. So people just pay whatever they feel comfortable with. And they pay nicely to make a lot of money off of that book sale. Yeah, but I think that the little free libraries, they're so small and they're so hit or miss that I don't think that the library users. Maureen might have a sense of that too. I totally agree with that. I think if you and somebody's reading, you know, they have a favorite author and they're working their way through the series, they're not going to go to the little libraries that they find that come here. But I also know that Penny and I hit the little free libraries and leave books there because that's what I'm always looking to do.  I cannot go to that place that you mentioned that you can get the bucket of books because that would just ruin me. I already have too many books. And so I'm always looking, you know, I'm driving by the little free libraries saying do they have room for a few more, you know, that's like the whole idea is like buy a book. You know, it's so cheap, their books are like soft covers of 50 cents, fine covers. Yes, I know, you know, sometimes it's something you're interested in. Like I get a lot of cookbooks. I like looking like a lot of international things. And you don't want to go and go to Barnes and Noble and pay, you know, $25 for a book. But, you know, if you get it at the restore, you know, for a 50 cents or a dollar, it's a bargain. Yes, then David. Oh, for if you get it at the library, it's free. But you have to get it on that. Right. There's no fines anymore. There's no fines. No fines, yeah. So our book sale volunteer actually takes some of the rejected books from our book sale and brings them to the little free library. Yeah. So it's kind of like full-time. Yeah, a funnel. Yeah, and eventually they end up in this. That's great. Yeah. I was depressed when I was in the senior center the other day. There's a huge table of books there. And that's new since I was in last. They're just trying to clean out the basement.  Because it's more to clean out the space because there's so much stuff from the basement down there. So this was trying to kind of push it around. It's not in competition with this. Well, I went on a bag full. I know. One of the things that I wasn't as much aware of. And I think, I don't remember if it was you or Judy or somebody who posted recently about the things that you can borrow here. Mm-hmm.  No shoes. Right. No shoes. Yeah. I mean, that's something that's really interesting. That's actually something I'd love to hear from you folks as to are there like, what do you see as the kind of most useful things for that? Because I'm always looking to add to that collection. So the telescope's hugely popular. The snowshoes are very popular. And those are the kinds of things that I think are great. Because they're the type of thing that it's a little bit expensive. It's something that maybe you're going to use. If you're somebody who's not an avid snowshoer, you're going to try it out once in the winter and not necessarily do it all the time. And we have some, you know, cake pans that are funny shapes, things like that, some board games, some craft type items of Belting Kid. What do you think was the Chilobot meter? Oh yeah, that's pretty cool. Wood, pile, what do you call that thing? Oh, the moisture meter. Moisture meter to see if your wood is ready to burn. So that's the kind of thing you only need once in a year. So try to bring your wood in. Somebody just donated a very elaborate roughing calculator. Oh, I didn't know that. But it's not in the collection. I just got it. So do any folks have thoughts on the types of things that you think, boy, once in a year, I need blank. I'd love to be able to go to the library and get it instead of having to rent it or buy it or not thoughts on that. I think, like, well, it's my bent and I probably could donate would be like fishing poles. You know, there are a lot of young family life on free fishing day. You know, if they're limited, they don't have, they don't want to go out and spend $25 for a fishing pole. Especially, you know, I would say that's what kept me from being a juvenile expert was going fishing when I was a little kid. And I think, you know, both for adults and kids, but I think, you know, sometimes, especially people on lower incomes just don't have the money for something. And we're right next to, you know, when you ski or stuff like that, you know, I think it would be something that would be appreciated for people who just don't want to maybe invest because they don't use it, only about once or twice a year.  Shover museum they have. Yeah. Museum pass. Oh. Which I was amazed at. A lot of museum passes. Yeah. You don't, you don't, you don't. Okay, let me see. I didn't know that's going to help. Well, that's part of, this is great because it's helping me to figure out what I need to promote from this stuff a little bit. Mm-hmm. It was a good, like, state parks. I don't know if you do or don't work, that's awkward, but given that we have two literally in town, I know, like, for me, it's worth it to get the whole state park-wide one. But there was something in town on adjacent recreation. I love to cross-country ski here. I don't know if the schools already do that, but if not, again, it's like, this is a great flat field for folks to try, and we often do their lights in the winter. So, um. Yeah, that's true. I know, you know, folks, that might be a more complicated rental, which I understand. So that's not a, that's a look into it, and I understand either way, but it is also right here. But apropos, I love seeing kids out here sledding in the winter, and if they built those steps, and that would help. I mean, I'll step down this hill. Yeah, I know. It's our dream. That's how we care. It's on the hill. That's only more of a problem than an opportunity. Yeah, but inevitably, you go down. Yeah. It's all good. This is going to be fun. I'd like to try the Henry Club over a while. Walk up there and try it. Two, what's I'm going to say? What is it that people play on the tennis courts, but it's not? Pick a ball. Yeah, pick a ball. Pick a ball. Like, that's one thing I want to learn how to play. I don't know how to play. Are you sure? A couple more court in town? I think that, I don't know, but somebody told me that tennis courts are marked for pick a ball as well. Oh, I know the tennis court. Yeah. I think that's often the thing. It's the same court. Yeah, well, so maybe that's the immigration committee. Oh, I'm sure it is. So I'll pick a ball. But I'm not, I don't know if I would, if I would like really take it up, so I don't want to run by supplies tonight. Yeah. Yeah, that's true. More and more seniors, or even people of some age, are playing pick a ball. Yeah, and people obviously have a tennis player.  Yeah, smaller court stuff's not as heavy as, yeah. It looks fun, yeah. It's a lot of fun. It's a, if you have thoughts about that after this meeting, because that's an area that I think that we are always, you know, curious, like, what's going to circulate in the library, about the library of things? What kinds of things do people want? Send them my way, because that's an area that I'd like to get some suggestions in. So, like, on the website, I should probably know this, but does it, like, have a list of items you can borrow from them? There's a page of library of things. Yeah. And actually, you can search the catalog, too, which is, which is good, so that you can bring up those items. Oh, you made a list of them. Get a small list of them. Yeah, yeah. And that's just a non-traditional way that I think you support the community. And I think a lot of people, I hate to say this, but I don't know. You know, I'm charity select board. Some of the things I didn't know about what, I didn't know about the park pass, you know, like showroom, museum, and stuff like that. You know, I knew about the telescope and snowshoes and stuff, and I have all that stuff, but, yeah, it's neat to know that. And some people just don't even think to ask. They don't think of that as a library function. The small, what are they, 35-millimeter slide projector? It would be nice to have access to one of those. And then also something that still plays tapes. Both VHS and audio tapes. And all the VHS would hold a scar to them. Yeah, exactly. Oh, I actually had it. Yeah, or you got through the attic and no way to hook them up. They don't go with what you've got. Yeah. Something that can convert them to DVDs. Yeah. Or digital formats. Yeah, a converter would be great. A converter. And that just popped into my mind. Oh, gosh, that would be nice. Wow. Yeah. Well, it really is. This is great. Yeah, to me, it's just more, you know, how you advertise better but making the community more aware of you. I know you try doing that, but it's a hard reach sometimes. Yes, it's great. But how do you get information about what's going on in the community? What are your preferred Trim porch form? Trim porch form is when I look at it. Yeah. I get little circulars at the supermarket. I'm old school. One minute you're old school, the next minute you're new school. I can be very, I go from old school to new school. There's like a lot of community molding boards.  I just love looking at it. I kind of found some neat, really events around the state, you know, just by looking at some of those community molding boards. Does front porch form operate so that you can have a weekly posting of stuff? Yeah, I think post, well, we can post pretty much whenever we want. They do limit. They don't let us post. They don't let us spam front porch form. But between all of us, we can post pretty much anywhere we want. So we mostly use it to remote events, but this is making me think that, you know, maybe it makes sense to kind of use it to just promote. Promote availability. We have so many news. We have tons of those. Or even link to your newsletter. I was, I am also, don't think I'm on the newsletter list just because I never thought to click subscribe. And so that showed up in a front porch form. I believe that's true. I want to say I follow your social media. I don't know who does the book drop update. I do look at them. I also will say though, I think like I'm a pretty weird bend diagram who's like very into the library and also on social media. And I don't know who else exists in that bend diagram, but I'm a part of it. Which is just to say, I share that to say like I do look at it. I don't know that I'm necessarily encouraging investing more time and effort into it, but I do at least. Instagram's been popular. It's been more and more popular. So that's been great. And yet it's fun to do those cook drop. We take a picture of just all the items that we pull out of the book drop in the morning because it's kind of like just to see what people are returning and what's going on at the library. What guys and things did they put in there? Well, it's mostly books, but sometimes there's other stuff too. It was a squash or something like that. A squash? She's ever said that. Surprise, you haven't been finding zucchini. We do find something very odd with that. Yeah, luckily we do. I love our new book drop. I don't know if folks noticed, but there used to be a very ugly green one out there that very much looked like a trash can. So this is, we don't get as much trash. I am so impressed. And this has been fun. And I, and I know that you all really appreciate your taking the time and talking to us and giving us ideas. I thought this was wonderful. Thank you. Really nice to know the support that we have in this community, definitely. Is there any chance that the book group is going to stop being on Zoom and be live? The book group members who are regular goers love it and love being on Zoom. So I think that group is staying on Zoom, but we are hoping to launch a new book group that will be an in-person book group. And the theme of that book group is probably going to be banned books. So if that interests you, I think that's going to be a really interesting group. So watch for that. And a shameless community, you know. I believe Bridgelye Books has an in-person book. Yes, and that's a very active book group that is in person. But I think that the No Pressure Book Group, which I will, I will say is a ton of fun. We all like to be home in our pajamas while we're on it. So, yeah. Something that we should do about that. There is. So you just brought up the topic of banned books. I'm just curious if you've had any, like people coming in and, you know, with complaints about certain books or wanting to know if anything's been taken off the shelf. This community is so supportive. People, we have a really nice banned books this late right now. Yeah, they have a section on it. It's really lovely. They have a banned book section. And mostly I get, we get a lot of comments from people saying, wow, I can't love you yet. People would ban those books. So I've not received any challenges. I think, I'm really impressed with Waterbury. It's a community of readers and very passionate people. And it's been really nice to get that support. I'm just wondering that just popped into my head about, is there any sort of connection with the library, librarians, libraries at our schools? I wondered about that too. Yeah, not as much as there should be because in recent years with the, I think the school librarians have been pretty overwhelmed with what they've been dealing with with the pandemic. But we do talk pretty regularly, especially with the CrossFit Brook Mill School librarians. And actually just today, Cynthia and I, the children's librarian, were talking about making more of a concerted effort to have more relationship with them. But this past year, we did do, we received a grant that was pretty cool that allowed us to give out books that dealt with social-emotional learning topics to kids in all the schools. And so we connected with the librarians to help us figure out the best way to do that and to help us choose the books. And then Cynthia made a little video of herself introducing herself, talking about the library, talking about the books, and then the books went out to the kids. And so what was really fun about that was then when we started our summer reading program and kids started coming in to see Cynthia for summer reading, they said, I saw you in the video too. So it was a good way to connect with them at a point when we weren't really allowed to go into the schools and connect with them. But we're hoping that this year, with things kind of being a little bit more normal with the schools, we'll be having more back and forth with the school librarians.  Do you do that much? We've just come out of a period where we had a lot of major grants going on. Like the town, libraries received Arba funding much smaller scale, Arba funding, which came to us through the Department of Libraries, and most of that was spent on some technology projects, some digital books because that was a big push for Arba, things like that, and actually purchased our new book drop some other major kind of facilities items like that. And we just closed the children's library grant, we just closed was over $5,000 from the Vermont Children's Trust Fund. So that was a really, really nice grant that allowed us to really shore up our children's book collection and let us buy some very cool children's book technology launch pads, which are these little learning tablets that we can loan out to kids and Wonder Books, which are talking books, books that read the story to you, which are really cool. And so we have some grants that we receive just about every year from the Department of Libraries that support things like the ILL service, which is a career service that runs through Vermont, support our summer reading program, things like that. And then other grants that we apply for when something interesting comes along. So we are always on the lookout for potential. We're very successful with getting grants too, I will say. So I think we have very strong grant writing skills on staff, which is really nice. Hey, that just made me think when you said ILA or whatever the initial sort of English language learners. Do you have any resources here for folks who are learning English as their second language? We don't have a lot. We have a little bit. We don't have a lot, and we don't have a staff member who's really skilled in that area. So that's an area that we could definitely put some energy into. I didn't know what the need is in our community, but I know often we have people who have immigrated to the country and have moved to our area. That's something you might learn about more with the connection with the schools, because they will be aware of the people who might need that kind of support in the community. That would be a really good option for people during the daytime. Actually, in another city, I met at the library with some moms after their kiddos got to school, and they were from the Middle East. And we went to the grocery store together. We went to the drugstore together. They talked about how do you work the washing machine and what kind of soapy. You got soap in the box. You got soap in the bottle. You got soap in little things. What do you use? And that kind of thing. And you have to be available during the day to do that. So that would be an outreach perhaps for people who are available during the day. That just made me think of, you know, you have a basic area across the street, and I was just, do you have connections there? A little bit. I've talked to them a little bit. We promote them a lot, and they promote some of our programs, so we've done that. But I think they use our space sometimes. Yeah. What a surprise. How many interlibrary transfers do you have either per month or per year? Oh boy. Because it is a lot. It is a lot. It's incredible. Yeah. Do you have a guess? They kind of think it's a lot. 15 spokes go in and out every week. Yeah. And we send 50 to get this. Wow. I've never seen this. Yeah, it's a lot. And then there's even more that, there's at least a handful more that go out through mail. Yeah, that's true. So it's pretty significant. For folks who don't know, we're part of a consortium, the Catamount Library Consortium. So our catalog is a shared catalog with a number of other libraries that we're not. So it's really easy and convenient for people to place holds on books that are at other libraries. So I think that's something we do really, really well. And it's thanks to that consortium and thanks to the support that the State Department of Libraries provides with that career service. So a little career van drives from library to library with little bins of books. And twice a week they come and they drop off bins and they pick up bins. So it's pretty cool. And you even go beyond that too. I know a few doers have asked for books that were not within that consortium. And you still got them. Yeah, we will. It'll take a little bit longer, but we'll mail things back and forth to libraries that are further away too. So it's a really, and that is supported by a grant from the Department of Libraries. So that's really nice because a lot of that can get expensive, but a lot of that is covered from the state.  A lot of people do like that service a lot. I think I would like to ask on the strategic planning committee you talk a lot about reaching non-users. You know, people are here because you come to the library, you like the line or whatever, but there's a lot of people that don't use it. And I know the farmers market market was walking around and just grabbing people. Just wondering if there's groups like that, like people that were missing. Like how do we connect to these people? And are there groups that, you know, we're not serving that we should be likely, you know, or are there new ideas? I think it's just the services. People think, especially older people, think of libraries in a much different way. They don't think of it as events and borrowing things. They think of it as getting a book. And again, I think there are so many sources. There are so many books out there. John Walter probably hates this, you know, where, you know, we should be recycling all these books and stuff like that. But, you know, it's a hard task. And it's a combination of, I'm not a huge social media person, but it's a combination of social media, you know, more outreach events.  You know, get to know your library. There's all kinds of, you know, and some of those people are just never going to come. I mean, it's, but to at least know, put the thing up on the laundry mat on their bullet board, you know, it's places that they, you know, there's some people who never open up social media and you have to go very old school and people don't think about that. I want a better sign, I'll probably talk about that. I really love your idea about going to the farmer's market with the books too. That's a great idea. Is the literacy project for adults active anywhere in the area? Is the project for adults? An adult basic education. Yeah, across the street is the adult basic education office. So they do those, and they do do some, some of that here as far as advertising and bringing people in. So they're, they're pretty, I think they're pretty active. In terms of outreach, my general sense of waterways, waterways has a ton of awesome, really specific different types of organization. So if you're into mountain biking, there's a group. If you're into biking, there's a group. If you're into the library, you're in this room and there's a group. And so just, I feel like most of the, one, it's a hard and time intensive task. So like it's something we on the select board think about and like, again, it's just, it's hard and it takes a lot of time and resources. So I just want to acknowledge that to like get out of our bubbles. But I think if you can find liaisons in those other groups to share with that other network of, you know, even like people who work in the restaurants in town is a network. People who mountain bike is a network. The more you can get into those different other places that might not overlap. That's where I feel like I've had a lot of success in kind of getting things beyond. I'm going to say the local municipal government circle, which, you know, is a wonderful circle, but often kind of the same. One of the things that I appreciated is that Rachel and her predecessor were, are both members of the Waterbury Roadway Club. And so that's also enabled some connections in the community that might not have otherwise happened. And so that's, I think that's been really, really nice, really nice to have you there and really nice to have that connection. And I know I'm walking with a book. I said, do you have any of these here? Oh, maybe I'll put it in the book sale. So, you know, they're, I think, I appreciate that. Also, just because it hasn't been said, I just want to say I really acknowledge the library as a universal accessible place in the community. Just every time we're thinking about a public outreach survey, where to put a poster.  They're open standard business hours and you all have more extended hours on some nights. So just if there's something that we're trying to get out of the community, just knowing that like those bulletin boards, and I feel like I would not committing you for the future, but I've never had the library say no to like, can this other strategic planning survey also live in the library? So I just think that's really important and also appreciate just like the bulletin board. It's a little gallery space. I know there was just a little opening that I wasn't able to make, but just two other things. When you said accessible, maybe think of there are so many places in a community that has the age on it that ours does, that are not physically accessible to people. They're all library. And so we're moving in exactly. So I appreciate the fact that it's a space where people who have physical mobility challenges are able to so easily access. And the design of the, even the design of the parking lot and the ease of access to the door and stuff like that is really nice. So I appreciate that because there's times when you need to be able to meet with somebody and you look at the library. Okay, last chance. Well, thank you for doing this, though. I appreciate it. I apologize for being late. I had my calendar being started at 6.30 or as early. It's been great to get your input. It's really interesting. Thank you all. This was great. Thank you. And thank you for all what you do for the community. It's really important resource. Sometimes you'll hear the complaints a lot quicker than you will when we're not on time. Maybe we should establish a library appreciation day. Where people drop off some flowers and things. I mean, we just need an appreciation month. We should do a library one. Anyway, future items. Oh, really? Well, thank you. Like I said, we feel very supported in this community. It's a great place to be a lot of people. Yeah. It's a much better space. That's what I get. I see some pictures in it. Oh, it's cool. I always said, I never knew how, I remember when I was going to my job at the USDA, we donated a bunch, we have surplus furniture. And they said, yeah, bring it on. They had, you look at what kind of furniture you have today. You know, I'm sure you got rid of all our old shows. Well, we've been just talking about the smell. And like, you didn't feel that way when you walked into the old library. The smell smelled exactly like a mold building with lots of old books and old stuff. And it smelled like, so musty. Actually, there was probably a lot of mold on it. Yeah, I don't know. That's not what I'm talking about. Not heaven. All right, nice to see you all. Thank you. Thank you.


It's a presentation of T.F. The Tom O'Brien Show is produced every business day. Tom takes your phone calls toll free at 1-877-927-6648. Internationally at<PHONE_NUMBER>. Let's get a mic in Southern California. Hey, Mike, what's going on? Hey, Tom, nice to talk to you again. And I have to start out and first tell you, I love this trading room. This thing is great. This app works great. And getting all the information, you're like instantly there, no delay, nothing. I know. I appreciate you growling proud with us. Your channel is in my pocket all day long. It's wonderful. Thank you, man. Thank you. Now, Tom O'Brien. Welcome, folks. This is Tom O'Brien of TFNN. We have five days a week. We go seven hours a day. We go 24 hours a day on the internet at tfnn.com. Always remember, folks, whatever you think about, you bring about whatever your focus on grows. Hope everyone's having a great day, safe day. It's like you're a great night, folks. Be impeccable with your word. Release the need to be right. When you believe something, you assume you are right. You may even destroy relationships and not defend your position. Let go of the need to defend your position. Mic it wise. Let's take a look at it out here. We have the Dow Industrial's down 169. Nasdaq off 103. S&P's off 31. Gold. Gold contract up $8.60 trading at 2015 and ounce. You get silver. Flat, $25.54 an ounce. Light sweet crew down to buck 87. Trading $77.29 a barrel. Notes and bonds. You get the 10-year note. Up 14 ticks, trading at 1.1420. The 30-year up 19 ticks at 1.3010 and King dollar. King dollar trading down 107 at 101.860. The Euro at 109 at the end at 134 and the British pound at 124 to one US dollar. Our phone number is<PHONE_NUMBER>. Give us a call, folks. Well, I know what's going on in your world. Well, let me get this. Sorry about this, folks. One second. Let me get these shots up. Where are you, man? Tiger TV. There we go. Tiger TV. That. There we go. So let's go take a look at the S&P first. What do we have? We go look at the futures. We bring these futures up when we're just doing the update there. This market here wants to break out its lows right now. So this is going to get pretty intriguing because it could be a nice ABC structure down. So what you have here, you can see bottom line. You came up to the highs of yesterday. You filled the gap inside the spy, but the futures don't have a gap, of course. Bottom line is that we are at, let's see, you're at nine minutes. Well, it's going to need a little more volume. You're at nine minutes in order to get an ABC structure down. The number you'd be looking for is 414550. We're at 414625 right now. It doesn't look to me like it's going to have the volume on a 10 minute to break it. Well, I get 309 right now. So you need 54,000 contracts. And thus far, you only got 39. So when you see something like this, what very well will happen is that it will go back and forth for a few minutes. Because to see this long-ranging bar, folks, we had the long-ranging bar that someone sold into this in a monster way at 61,000. They'll do it again. That's how this normally works. It normally just doesn't go, normally not. It's a one trick pony. That's my point.  And it's, OK, I've got to break this down. And if it does get broken down to your next level here, let's see. So that's interesting. You can't even go back. Huh. No, let's see. Nine days. I'll bring it. There we go. So we take a look at this. This would be a big level to break here. Because we've been hanging out here, man. Your next level, you have what, that 41.39. That's not enough. You'll go all the way down to the end. You go to 41.12. If this breaks, this will be 41.12. It'd be pretty easy to get there, too. If we go to the NQs, we take a look at the NQs out here. What we have with the NQs, this is interesting. The NQs are stronger. The NQs bottom line, they've come down, but not like the S&P, man. Yeah, I mean, the NQs will still have to break the 13046 in order to get traction on the way down. And that's just, that was, that's today's low. That's how we went topside, you know? So we'll see how that shakes out. Gold, we look at the gold contract out here. What do you have with the gold contract? Gold contract right now trading up $8.60. You get 156,000 contracts traded. And you're going to need a lot more than that, man.  So that's going to get back down there. To test that area, if we go into the treasury market, we take a look at the treasury market. What do we have inside the treasury market? This one's higher price, lower yield. So the treasuries, let's pull this out a little and see what kind of retracement we just did. So the treasuries did just over 0.382 retracement. From the lows to the highs, starting to go higher again, that's saying the treasuries want higher price, lower yield. And then if we get our heads wrapped around the dollar, the dollar saved itself again off of these lows. You know, the dollar hit 101, 632 today. It's a couple hundred bucks above that, points above that, rather, ticks above that. Not really a lot of action there, but what I suspect was I said at the beginning of the three o'clock hour on that update, I think what happened here is that, you know, it's so wild folks, okay? Markets pay attention till they don't pay attention.  And what had happened is that I'm coming out of my car and I'm listening to this interview and simultaneously when I get back up in the elevator, the market is tanking. And simultaneously, and what that was about was that the interview is about the debt ceiling. And you know, listen, plenty of folks are staying on a continual basis that, you know, this could be a problem. The difference was this, the senator that they were interviewing, what he was talking about is that, hey, listen, he had wished, the Democratic Senate, he had wished that they had done it on October when there was a lame duck session so that the Democrats ruled everything they could have done, that debt ceiling expansion, they didn't do it. Bottom line, now there's gonna be a fight, right? And then they asked them, like, what do you think the probabilities are? Well, the probabilities, he said, well, the probabilities that we'll get it down is just a little over 50%, it's like, okay. And then simultaneously, had BlackRock come out saying that they didn't think that people were taking this seriously.  Now, the danger thing is that, you know, you didn't make the high, it's rounding out. But, you know, you get that high volume low, so the consolidation's still in place, and, you know, there's so many folks that are saying that, hey, man, I think it's, you know, that's top of the range, well, guess what? It's probably a self-fulfilling deal, right at this particular point. Stay right there, folks. Get out, man. Mr. Tim Ward coming up, and then after Tim, we're gonna have Fred Ernest, the CEO of Vista Gold coming up. Stay right there, folks, come right back. Currencies, commodities, and bond markets are as important as ever right now with how they're driving the volatility in equity market across the globe, which is why it's a great time to try out Teddy Kegstad's Tiger Forex Report. Teddy Kegstad breaks down the forex markets every Monday using his 30-plus years of experience as a trading veteran of futures, forex, stocks, and options. Teddy releases his weekly Tiger Forex Report every Monday morning with coverage of all the major currency pairs, including the Dollar Index, the Euro Dollar, Pound Dollar, Dollar Swiss, Dollar Yen, as well as many more, and he also has weekly coverage of the crude oil market and the 30-year T-bonds as they both influence forex markets tremendously. When you sign up for the Tiger Forex Report, you also gain instant access to Teddy's 60-minute webinar archive. He just hosted forex strategies and fundamentals. What is behind the Tiger Forex Report? For all the details and to start your 30-day Tiger Forex Report subscription today, visit the front page of TFNN.com. TFNN, educating investors. Are you looking for a way to consistently add winning trades to your portfolio? Tom O'Brien is here to help. Tom O'Brien has been successfully trading markets for over 30 years. A frequent contributor to TD Ameritrade Network and CNBC, Tom O'Brien founded TFNN over 20 years ago to help educate investors just like you. Tom's Daily Market Newsletter, Market Insights, is published every morning when the market's open to give you the competitive informational edge you need to succeed. These newsletters are packed full of Tom's advanced technical analysis and are geared to deliver comprehensive strategies for a successful portfolio. Get Tom O'Brien's newsletter, Market Insights today, and try all of our products and newsletters 30 days risk-free with our money-back guarantee at TFNN.com. TFNN, educating investors. Everything in the universe is governed by the Fibonacci sequence. This mathematical principle is responsible for everything from the most aesthetically pleasing artwork to patterns in the stock market. To stay on top of stock patterns you can take advantage of, sign up for the Fibonacci 24-7 newsletter at TFNN.com. When you subscribe, you'll get a weekly report from Veteran Day Trader Larry Pezzavento on stocks you need to pay attention to and you can trust Larry's analysis. After all, he's got 45 years experience as a day trader. Larry will also provide daily charts, videos, and data on the key markets that he's tracking. Expect notifications from Larry on market movement that you need to act on at any time. First-time subscribers also get a 30-day money-back guarantee. If you're not satisfied, let us know and you'll get a full refund within 30 days of signing up. Subscribe to the Fibonacci 24-7 newsletter today. TFNN.com, educating investors. Toll-free at 1-877-927-6648. Internationally at<PHONE_NUMBER>. Welcome back, folks, to Dow. Dow investors right now trading down to 215 to get the Nasdaq off 132, S&P's are off 39. Let's get over to our mam's to Tim Ord as we do each and every Thursday at 20 past the hour and you can reach Tim folks at all times at ord-oracle.com. Tim Ord, what's going on? Yeah, thanks for having me on. Thanks for having me on. Did you get my charts? I sure did. We have them up here ready to rock and roll. All right, all right. The first chart, I think that Pring, remember him, he's actually older now. Martin Pring, yeah. Robert Pring, anyhow, he came out with a inflation thing, a deep anyhow, I made a ratio out of it. Okay. And so that window down, you know, the top one of the RSI for that inflation, deflation ratio and below that is the inflation-deflation ratio itself. Okay. And this chart goes back to, I don't know, 2000, I can't quite see it, I don't know, goes back to 2000, what, 13 or something. Anyhow, so anyhow, when the ratio is rising, then the inflation's outperforming deflation and vice versa. And so I stuck an RSI to this thing and it works pretty well. So it gives a bunch of signals, not very many signals, but it gives about a signal a year, give or take. And the blue lines are when the RSI of this inflation-deflation ratio falls below 30. So the market's kind of getting hit or deflation's getting hard against inflation. So we got a signal back in August of last year because the RSI of this ratio fell below 30 and it turned up. And so this is kind of another signal. So this single, so this method gave a signal back in August and remains on the signal. The cell signals don't work quite as good. They give, when the RSI gets above 70, it's time that the market's gone up too quick. And a lot of times it comes sometimes early last year and nailed the top pretty good, but the one before that, it was kind of nailed a consolidation phase back at that 2020 timeframe and that market went down a little bit and came right back up. But you know, this is, I do a lot of different type indicators and I try to stick to the indicators that nobody else uses. The way it starts using an indicator, then it kind of puts work in. So I don't see anybody from this stuff I read around the internet. Nobody really uses this. That's why we love you so much, Tim. Go ahead. No, no, go ahead. I said, that's why we love you so much. You have indicators that no one uses. Yeah, so anyhow, I put it this way. We had last week, we had a I think an 18 day average uptown volume of mass client indicators that when they fell below 40, which they did again on last August, they kind of matched the signal here. And when they get above plus 40, which they did on April 4th, I think that's the one we covered last week. And what that implies is a surge pattern and that surge pattern usually has a rally pattern that lasts four or five months. Well, I gave a bicycle in March of this year. So you had four or five months to become of August where the surge pattern may end. My point of that is if this indicator of the inflation-deflation ratio, RSI reaches up around 70, say in August or September, that would go well with the other indicators suggesting they see a top in August or September. So I think we may have a rally all the way into August, September. Then from there, it may take a rest. Right now, the surge patterns are pretty rare. So you kind of want to get on them. Everybody's probably calling it a hi here. We had a heck of a good rally, but on the surge pattern, you'll have minor consolidations that may last maybe one or two weeks, but not a month. So I still think this GDX thing is still in a buy. And in general, we're going to work harder, probably higher all the way into August, maybe September. So we'll have to wait and see. Nice, okay. And then the next shot, let's see. The next shot, I got the monthly XAU shot. Yeah, it's a monthly XAU gold ratio, which is in the middle window there. And this, I took it back as far as it could go when it goes back to about 1984. And what I want to point out in this chart, from 2014 to now, the ratio, XAU gold ratio on the monthly timeframe really hadn't gone anywhere. It's just gone sideways. And in my opinion, this is building cause for the next move higher. Gold stocks, they really haven't done anything since the 2000 low. They really had a screaming market from about 2000 to 2011. And you could buy anything and make a lot of money. Right. And it went down. And gold right now is, you know, Robbie speaking has done a lot better than the gold issues. At some point, I would expect this XAU to gold ratio to break out of this sideways pattern. You know, the Bollinger bands are kind of squeezing. I drew trend lines on this chart, going back from the previous highs and previous lows. And also connected to the previous highs going back to 2014. So we're in a kind of a tight range. And it looks like we're trying to break above the downturn line, connecting the highs, going back to what, 1995. We're kind of on that line right now. Yes. And I'm thinking what we're going to do is probably go back all the way back up to 0.175, which is that trend line we broke down through on my eyesight snap. Yeah, and I see it. I see it. But we had a sharp break down below 0.175. And we're kind of building a base way below that right now. I'm thinking we could have a sharp rally back up to 0.175 and from 0.175 from there, I'm not sure. But, you know, things can only remain unfavorable for so long. Gold Fox are not going to go away. There is an industrial metal along with silver. So it's not some product that you don't need in everyday life. At some point, it's going to come back in favor. It's probably going to come back in favor in a big way. Yes. I don't know when, but we get above the upper trend line, which is on 0.09. I think you're going to see a big burst in these gold stocks. That's my personal opinion. Nice. And then the next shot, the next shot, we're talking about the S&P, Tim. S&P, the bottom window is the VIX. Yes. And I do the shaded pink area at the bottom. Yep. So when the VIX got below 17, we're right around still 17 today. And a lot of times when that happened, the market was at which is the blue area posted on the chart on the S&Ps. So every time it got this low, it actually kind of implies that we're kind of in a trending market. I think that's what we may be having here. If the VIX remained high, say, around 20 plus, you got a big downtrend going or a kind of a very scenario. If you get below 17, I'm thinking you're heading into a trending market. Also, if pre-election years, which is this year, April's up 94% of the time. And it's January's up. And a pre-election year, which it was over 6%, April's up 88% of the time. So even though we're down today here a little bit, I think April's could break above the recent highs of 410 on the SPY. OK. Well, listen, man, we appreciate the update. We look forward to speaking in the next Thursday, Tim. All right, thank you. Thank you. And folks, you can reach Tim at board-oracle.com. Stay right there, folks. We'll come right back. HUI, JDX, as well as more than 30 different mining equities. To see for yourself the types of profitable trades that are recommended within the Gold Report, sign up now by visiting tfnn.com. Don't miss out on the next great gold trade. Sign up today. Sharpening your skills as an investor is like getting better at playing a musical instrument. You have to practice, sure. But you also need excellent instruction from experts. At TFNN, you'll get advice and guidance from the authority and technical market analysis. And it's not just dry, tedious text either. TFNN airs live financial content streamed live on tfnn.com and TFNN's YouTube channel with Tiger TV, live every market day from 8.30 AM to 4 PM Eastern. For free, each host is an experienced trader and gives their take on the market while taking calls and questions live from around the world. From the moment the market opens until the closing bell sounds, Tiger TV has eight different shows with expert hosts to help you make the right moves with your money. Watch online at tfnn.com or on TFNN's YouTube channel and become the investor you were born to be, TFNN, educating investors. TFNN has just launched their new trading room, the Tiger Zen. Hosted at Discord, TFNN has been educating traders for more than 20 years with live programming hosted by a variety of professional traders during market hours. And now they are expanding their reach with the Tiger's Den, available to all Tigers and Tigresses for just $1 for the year. There's no catch or added costs when you join our community of traders. In the Tiger's Den, you can look over the shoulders of Tom O'Brien and the other TFNN hosts while they analyze charts during their live Tiger TV programs and join an interactive trading community with hundreds of members exchanging ideas, interact with other Tigers and Tigresses as they share trading ideas, news analysis and discuss the market action all trading day, even at night and on the weekends. The Tiger's Den at Discord is accessible on mobile or tablets as well. So it's always at your reach. To sign up today and become a part of this educational community of traders, just visit the front page of TFNN.com. This segment is brought to you by Think or Swim. For more information, just click the Think or Swim banner on the front page of TFNN.com. Welcome back folks to Dow. Dow Industries right now trading down 209, Nasdaq's up 143, S&P's are off 40 and I'd say we got a movie coming up folks so this is just coming across the tape and so up in the Pearson airport up in Toronto, the bottom line is that someone just hijacked. Check this out. 3,600 pounds of gold missing. Over a hundred million dollars worth of gold and as we know the Canadian Mounties always get there man so this is gonna be interesting. So here's the number. The Canadians National Police Force to investigate a heist and Canada's largest airport that may have netted thieves a hundred million. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police confirm that they are looking into a gold robbery at Pearson International Airport. Gold mining candidate travels through Pearson on its way to the customers around the world. Bottom line is that they're missing 3,600 pounds. The Toronto Sun reported the gold being moved to the airport had been stolen. So it's like this is where this is gonna be a lot of questions like who has the insurance? Who's gold is it? All right there's gonna be all these things that are out there which is pretty intense folks no doubt. Let's go take a look at the NDX 100 and take a look at the strength versus the weakness inside the NDX. And we have out here you got lamb research up six and a half percent. Amides up three and a half percent. Clacks up three and a half percent. Taken away from it. Tesla's down 10 percent. You got Lucid off six and a half percent. Rivians off four and a half percent. Marvell technology is off four percent. And if you didn't see the rocket today folks unfortunately the rocket exploded. It was pretty cool watching it going up. There's no doubt. And then what you saw is that it stopped moving like in circles actually it stopped spinning and then bam, unfortunately it blew up. So like Muskin and his team get a lot more work to do. We're talking about, well let's go to Tesla first because Tesla's getting smoked also. Tesla right now this broke. So first off they had the high volume low that's laying out there at 163. Blew that apart and it blew it apart with volume. So that high volume low had 191 million. Now the bottom were already 191 million. So your next step, the next low, high volume also is 101. And then the next one's 64 bucks man. So bottom line, if you want to see something too this is you know people brought this up a million times but you got Tesla even at these numbers at a 44 PE, okay? And GM is at a five PE, okay? Car companies folks run five to seven PE's. So take it forward it's worth. That's where I suspect it's going. Marbelle, Marbelle come out with numbers out here today. They're hitting Marbelle. Marbelle right now is down, or first off the low for the year is 14, the high is 21, pays a 6% dividend. It's trading down $2.11. Excuse me folks. And this has some volume behind the move. Let's see what this is doing. Oh it's going to take a lot to break down though. Yeah, because this, okay so the top of the high volume low here is 1850. Yeah we'll see how far it gets into it. Right now you're at 1750. The bottom is 1456. Now you get a lot less volume that's for sure. But you need a rejection of lower price also. That's what you'd be looking for. We're going to take a look at the oil market. What do we have with oil out here today? Oil's trading down to buck 87. Yeah it's into the gap. We're talking about this yesterday. So the bottom of this gap which folks are going to be looking for is 75, 72. 75, 52. So 75, 72. Just dropped right into it. Now what's intriguing here, watch this. If we put this up on a continuous contract, even with the Saudis basically pulling the wild card and bringing production back, this had a high time taking out swing points. You get up, you get over it, and then you gave it up in spades. We were over it, let's see. Look at this, actually we never closed over it. Let's see. Yeah this is bad, this one's lower price man. Yeah, so 76.90. If you get below 76.90 you're going to see some real downdrafts inside this oil market. So we'll see where it shakes out. That's pretty intense though, there's no doubt about it.<PHONE_NUMBER>, let's see what we got here. Let's see what that S&P's doing. So S&P get down 40, you're only on down 35. Pull this back, whoops, no, this way, then this way. Okay, so I gotta pull up. Yeah, we still got a high volume low man. That if we go over to the spy, the spy is a small ABC down to 409.10. And right now we've hit 410.27. And this is an interday ABC down by the way. Yeah, plenty of time to hit it too. As you can see on the spy, this 10 minute bar, we are in, yeah well there's only six minutes into it, but it doesn't look to me like it's gonna get 2.8 million. Right now you're at, well you have 1.2. You could four minutes, you never know. But bottom line is that you did break the B, you broke the volume, interday. You know the B point had 2.1 million shares. You took that out with 2.8 when we came down. So these interday ABCs, let's see if the Qs did the same thing. The Qs, the Qs had been stronger, and that was because of those chip stocks. So the Qs, the B point 1.6, 1.4. Yeah, the Qs didn't do it. That being said though, the Qs are having a high time holding price also. It looks to me folks that we get a slow roll. So what a slow roll is, is that it tries to get the higher price, and I've been talking about that swing point for quite some time, but my take is it's not gonna happen now. And this was interday today. I put an update on the newsletter, and what it was is that these are really tricky and they're subtle, but it's like okay, you start slow rolling about 10 this morning, and what was happening is that when you were coming back up to the higher level, it just couldn't handle it. And slow rolls are pretty dangerous actually. And then this high volume lows is hanging out here. So that's what I think we have out here. And what you're gonna see, so you're gonna see this already, you can see the volume is expanding already. You know, what you have out here is that you have the volume right now. You see that expansion by the end of the day, that's gonna be an expansion of volume inside the market. Let's go take a look at Amazon for a couple of the Tigers out here, and Amazon's having a high time getting a higher price. Look at this, you know, yesterday you got up to that price point of 105.12, today you got to 105.25, volumes contracting, high time holding price, you know. The way that baby, excuse me, folks, the way that baby's set up is, you know, it looks to me, more than likely what we're gonna see is that the doll's probably gonna stop moving on a counter-turn bounce, getting a little bit higher. You know, stay right there, folks. Look at that, man. Mr. Fred Ernaz coming back is gonna get us an update. The update today, folks, is gonna be really intriguing because it's an update on policy in the Northern Territory of Alaska, of Australia. Stay right there, folks, we're coming right back. We have the Dow Industries down 179, Nasdaq off 125, S&P's off 36, we'll come right back. If you're looking for potential trading setups in the stock market, then Rocket Equities and Options Report is a newsletter you should try. Tommy O'Brien delivers options and equity trades when the markets present them using a combination of fundamentals and technicals. Sign up for Rocket Equities and Options Report today with a 30-day money-back guarantee so you have nothing to risk. For all the details and to start your subscription today, visit the front page of TFNN.com. TFNN, educating investors. You might think that if you want to be successful at trading in the stock market, you're going to need a crystal ball. After all, it's impossible to predict the future, right? Like any endeavor in life, before you decide it's impossible, get some advice from the experts. You might find that it's not so impossible after all. For daily market overviews that give you direction on the key indices, selective stocks, and commodities, subscribe to the opening call newsletter at TFNN.com. The opening call newsletter is written by Basil Chapman, creator of the trading methodology known as the Chapman Wave. The Chapman Wave up-down sequence gives you an edge in identifying price turns, finding the peaks and valleys in stock prices.  First-time subscribers also get a 30-day money-back guarantee. If you're not satisfied, let us know and you'll get a full refund within 30 days of signing up. TFNN.com, educating investors. Biotech is booming, but for how long? Whether you think the Biotech bull has room to run or has run its course, trade LABU or LABD, Directions Daily S&P Biotech three times bull and bear ETFs. Visit DirectionInvestments.com slash Biotech today. An investor should consider the investment objectives, risks, charges, and expenses of the direction shares carefully before investing. The Perspectus and Summary Perspectus contain this and other information about direction shares. To obtain a Perspectus or Summary Perspectus, please contact Direction Shares at<PHONE_NUMBER>. The Perspectus or Summary Perspectus should be read carefully before investing. An investment in the funds is subject to risk, including the possible loss of principal. The funds are designed to be utilized only by sophisticated investors such as traders and active investors. Distributor, Four Side Fund Services, LLC. TFNN has launched the Tiger's Den, hosted at Discord. TFNN has been educating traders for more than 20 years with live programming hosted by a variety of professional traders during market hours, the Tiger's Den, available to all tigers and tigerses for just $1 for the year. There's no cash or added costs when you join our community of traders. Sign up today and become a part of this educational community of traders. Just visit the front page of TFNN.com. This program is brought to you by Vistagold, traded on the NYSE American and TSX under the symbol VGZ. Welcome back folks, a Dow.  We have our man, Mr. Fred Ernest. Fred is the president and CEO of Vistagold. We happen to own Vistagold. Fred Ernest, welcome back to TFNN. Tom, good afternoon. Thanks for having me. Great to be here. I'm so happy to hear. I've read this news about the Northern Territory government. And I mean, I want to talk about Vistag and how this relates to Vistag because this is like, you do a lot of development in the gold market. I do a lot of development in the real estate market and a zoning change is always good. So explain to us like what may happen here. I guess this is just a final report, Fred. Is that correct from the Mineral Development Task Force? Yeah, that's absolutely right, Tom. A year ago, they formed a task force to evaluate the things that are keeping mining investment from happening in the Northern Territory. And we've been lobbying for years to have reforms in the royalty scheme in the territory. Presently, and what we included in our feasibility study, the royalty that we would pay to the Northern Territory government under the present net profits proceeds regime would be about the equivalent of a 7% to 9% ad valorem tax. And then ad valorem tax is the way that Western Australia and other states in Australia tax the mining industry. Western Australia, for example, has a 2.5% ad valorem tax on gold projects. So you can see that there's a huge disparity. Now, the royalty reforms haven't been determined, but the recommendation is, is that the government needs to change to an ad valorem structure. And we expect that it will be something in the range of three to 5%. And so you can appreciate that when, like in reusing your real estate example, when real estate taxes go down, it's a good thing. Yes, yes, because it makes the aspect folks of more investors, you can hire more workers. There's a whole flow that actually does happen down.  It's kind of, it's pretty immediate because if you're going to banks or you're going to investors to get money, well, you know, if you have a, you know, a two to 3% difference when you're talking millions, it's quite a bit of money. Absolutely, you know, and another part that is being recommended is that there be some sort of consideration so that in the early years of a project, when the project is paying back the capital investment, that the royalty rate be decreased, thereby allowing a little bit more space for investors who really take the risk of the project to receive some cash flow in those early years instead of just all the money going to the bank. We think this is a tremendous win for the mining industry and especially for the Mount Tuck Gold project.   How, what happened in this district? Well, so the mining district where we're located is the Pine Creek District. It's been a gold producing district for over a hundred years. Deposits have been developed, mined out and closed. And so there's been a little bit about, you know, flux in the activity in the Pine Creek District. And inside the territory, and recognize that the territory is a huge place geographically, like the size of North and South Dakota, Minnesota, Kansas, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Missouri, Iowa, and Minnesota, if I didn't name that. It's a big place. And yet there's only a quarter of a million people that live there. So it's largely unexplored. And the reason that it's unexplored is because why would somebody spend money in the Northern Territory to so they could pay the tax that we've been using when they could go to Western Australia and pay a tax that's a quarter? I see. So our structure trickles down and has impacts on business investments. And like I said, we've been working with government for years, but when they form the task force, we were able to meet with the task force, explain our position, present hard data. And I'm very pleased that they've seen the light, so to speak. I think this is just outstanding for us. Yeah, I know. And it's very, it's common sense too.    But the bottom line is that incentives like this actually work.  And I do understand that like, when you're doing feasibility studies, I mean, you have to bring the price of have the price of gold tremendously under kind of where we are, right? Is that how this works? Yeah, we typically use a backwards looking gold price through your average, you know, we do use a conservative gold price. Right, right. And the project in general, is there any updates here? I know that, you know, we're, you know, are there any updates inside of that project? Well, you know, just so we're talking about gold price, you know, the current gold price offsets any of the impact of inflation over the last year and a half and combined with the potential impact of the change in the royalty. And we're gonna have to wait almost a year to find out what the change in royalty are. But those two factors combined adds somewhere between a quarter of a billion and $400 million to the NPV of the project. This is nice. I mean, we've always talked, you and I've had conversations about the leverage to the gold price. Yes. And gold price, it makes a huge difference for Mount Todd and when it goes up like it has, I think we've benefited as much or more than almost any other developer in the value of our project. Yeah, you gotta love it. Well, listen, it's always a pleasure having you on. I'm really happy, you know, for you in general, for the company, in particular folks, because, you know, like all of us do a lot of work, folks, it's easier to do in work when it's kind of going with you, right? Do you know what I mean? It's, you know, we've all had it both ways. I mean, I'm just not talking about, you know, Mr. Gold in general, but things are always easier for all the work that you've already put in place.   That's kind of the reality out here, you know, around the world. So people are getting, you know, I don't see a crash in the dollar, but I can see that dollar going back to 90, which is, you know, which would get that acceleration going in a big way. Well, listen, this is always a pleasure, Fred. You have a great one, safe one, and we look forward to having you on again. Very good. Thank you, Tom. Thanks, Fred. Have a great one. Have a safe one. Stay right there, folks, we'll come right back. We have the Dow. The Dow industrials, let's see where this baby is. And Vista, by the way, folks, trades on the NYSE American VGZ. The high Dow is up, down 189, NASDAQ's up 125, S&P's off 36. Stay right there. We'll come right back, folks. Are you looking for a way to consistently add winning trades to your portfolio? Tom O'Brien is here to help. Tom O'Brien has been successfully trading markets for over 30 years. A frequent contributor to TD Ameritrade Network and CNBC, Tom O'Brien founded TFNN over 20 years ago to help educate investors just like you. Tom's Daily Market Newsletter, Market Insights, is published every morning when the market's open to give you the competitive informational edge you need to succeed. These newsletters are packed full of Tom's advanced technical analysis and are geared to deliver comprehensive strategies for a successful portfolio. Get Tom O'Brien's newsletter, Market Insights today, and try all of our products and newsletters 30 days risk-free with our money-back guarantee at TFNN.com. TFNN, educating investors. You might think that if you want to be successful at trading in the stock market, you're going to need a crystal ball. After all, it's impossible to predict the future, right? Like any endeavor in life, before you decide it's impossible, get some advice from the experts. You might find that it's not so impossible after all. For daily market overviews that give you direction on the key indices, selective stocks, and commodities, subscribe to the opening call newsletter at TFNN.com. The opening call newsletter is written by Basil Chapman, creator of the trading methodology known as the Chapman Wave. The Chapman Wave up-down sequence gives you an edge in identifying price turns, finding the peaks and valleys in stock prices.  First-time subscribers also get a 30-day money-back guarantee. If you're not satisfied, let us know and you'll get a full refund within 30 days of signing up. TFNN.com, educating investors. Everything in the universe is governed by the Fibonacci sequence. This mathematical principle is responsible for everything, from the most aesthetically pleasing artwork to patterns in the stock market. To stay on top of stock patterns you can take advantage of, sign up for the Fibonacci 24-7 newsletter at TFNN.com. When you subscribe, you'll get a weekly report from Veteran Day Trader Larry Pezzavento on stocks you need to pay attention to, and you can trust Larry's analysis. After all, he's got 45 years experience as a day trader. Larry will also provide daily charts, videos, and data on the key markets that he's tracking. Expect notifications from Larry on market movement you need to act on at any time. First-time subscribers also get a 30-day money-back guarantee. If you're not satisfied, let us know and you'll get a full refund within 30 days of signing up. Subscribe to the Fibonacci 24-7 newsletter today. TFNN.com, Educating Investors. Don't forget, you can listen to TFNN live on your mobile device 24 hours per day. Go to TFNN.com and hit Watch Tiger TV. That's TFNN.com and hit Watch Tiger TV.  So let's take a look at these indices.  Well, you know, you just, you're going lower and you have an expansion of volume. That's what's happening out here. So coming into Friday, I suspect that we're gonna have lower prices out here. I think this, I think we gotta turn. And you know, I don't expect the volume to be big tomorrow, but as we pop into next week, we can get some volume. So if that's the case, what you have here now is that you have the lower swing that's gained once again. You know, and the lowest swing out here is that 380 inside the spies. And if we go into the cues, look at the expansion of volume in the cues. That's a big one, man. We had made a high at 46 million. We're already at 55. We'll do about 65 million on the cues. You know, so we'll see whether the cues are gonna basically, the cues in the spy if you're just gonna gap away in the morning. So one of the heads up this morning, too, by the way, folks, I hadn't talked to them about this for a while, was the DAX. The DAX bottom line this morning, couldn't hold price. And that's where I got the heads up, that you know what, I think we're gonna turn in this spy because the DAX has been up at the same levels. They've been up high, no volume whatsoever. And then they've had small price spread. You see how tiny, if you're watching Target TV, see how tiny those bars are? And then, you know, intraday today, this was down. I won't get the volume till tonight, but it was like, okay, you're turning, but that's, you know, this is a one world market, basically. And you know, there's plenty of our funds that are over there and they sell, sell, sell us. They're selling, you know, before they close, bottom line, it transfers right over here most times. We go to the GDX, let's take a look at the GDX out here. What we got with the GDX, let's see what we got. Yeah, it didn't hold price in that light volume. See this, yeah. This is, they, these weren't lower price right now too. The GDX, we're at 34, 65, not the end of the world.  I mean, the GDX went from 26 to 34, not 36, you know. So the .382, five-hour retracement is healthy. Always remember, folks, to back and claw your heart out of the book and run you over. And thank God, there's always another trade. Come back tomorrow morning, time to get a great show at nine o'clock. Wee!