Hello and welcome to the Vermont affordable housing show. This topic today is the coalition says goodbye to long time coordinator air hard manga. I am Cindy read I'm the chair of the steering committee of the Vermont affordable housing coalition. And with me today is Sarah Fleming and tell you goonsberger, who are both AmeriCorps VISTA members of the Vermont affordable housing coalition, and our esteemed colleague, 24 years of coordination time air hard manga, who is soon to be the housing outreach representative at the office of Senator Bernie Sanders. We're really happy to be with you all today, and it's a big change for the affordable housing coalition and we're really keen on interviewing air hard today and highlighting the very successful 24 year career that he's had with the coalition. So first I wanted to welcome you and then I wanted to say that today is this is town meeting week. So the legislature is on break. It's a great time to reach out to your legislator and your lawmakers and emphasize the importance of funding for affordable housing and homelessness, especially supporting increased funding for the Vermont Housing and Conservation Board. We're also happy to announce that the just cause eviction ballot measure in Burlington passed with 63% of the vote. The Vermont affordable housing coalition supports this measure which will increase protections for renters and help ensure housing stability in Burlington. And I want to let you know that the affordable housing coalition has hired an interim coordinator, Brian pine, who many of you know, and he's going to help us facilitate our transition. Thank you very much for a new director in the coming months. The next monthly membership meeting of the affordable housing coalition is next Wednesday, March 10 from 930 to 1115. Hope you can join us. And now we're going to begin our interview with air hard, which is bittersweet. It just has a wealth of knowledge about all things housing policy funding. He's really has an amazingly brilliant mind and we've been very, very fortunate to have him building this coalition for 24 years. So you're known as an as the expert on affordable housing in Vermont at the Vermont State House and in other housing circles. And we want to know how you got there. What brought you to Vermont and how did you get involved in housing to begin with. That's, that's a lot and first of all thank you for the kind words and yeah this is a pretty bittersweet bittersweet moment. I think I mentioned that Sarah and tie earlier when we were talking ahead of the show. I first moved to Vermont in 1968 and 17 years old, and I went to go study at Middlebury College, only lasted a year it was the 60s. I don't know anymore about that time, but you know, it was actually pretty challenging time for me and eventually after going to a couple of other colleges, spending number of years in northern New Hampshire and also studying in Germany. I moved to Burlington in the 70s 1976 actually to become a graduate student at the University of Vermont and have been in Burlington really pretty much ever since so that's sort of the quick story of how I came to be in came to be in Vermont. Got a very useful degree at UVM in masters in German literature and philosophy which I haven't really used a whole lot but I will you know I got to put in a plug for liberal arts education. Liberal arts education really prepares you for a lot a lot a lot and it really helped me I think organize my thoughts, learn how to write well, learn how to speak well and be you know generally organized and be a critical thinker. But I spent several years working as a carpenter, worked for a while for a employee on construction co-op called Moose Creek Restoration which the buildings that I worked on back then are all over Chittenden County and actually all over Vermont. But hurt my back, wound up getting a desk job with the city of Winooski and doing housing rehabilitation for the city of Winooski helped rehabilitate probably I don't know 150 150 homes of low income folks and work with landlords that rented to low income tenants and learned a lot learned a lot by doing that. Learned how to underwrite loans, learned how to spec out you know rehabilitation, did a lot of housing inspections and also served on the Burlington Planning Commission and around the same time served for four years as a city council in Burlington and anyone who follows the city council or who's been on a commission knows you learn a lot as a volunteer doing all of that. And, you know, at the time, there was it was really exciting time because Bernie Sanders was mayor, and people were trying to figure out how to do housing in the era of Reaganomics. And it was a time when things really, really changed, you know, the older housing models of public housing, you know, had fallen into disfavor. And, you know, Reagan was cutting the HUD budget and cutting back on the really the responsibility of the federal government to help provide housing for our lowest income most vulnerable people. So, so very exciting time. There was a lot of colleagues. We first got to know each other back back then.  So we're all colleagues trying to figure out how to do affordable housing in this new era, where just the landscape around affordable housing was really dramatically changing. We're going to take turns, asking questions. Sarah, do you want to go next? Sure. And so we on this screen I think are all very familiar and committed to the incredible importance of affordable housing. But I wanted, I wanted to ask you how you started to see housing as as important and why you decided to basically dedicate your entire career to ensuring affordable housing for Vermonters. That, that is a very broad question very where I can muster up for that. I mean, I would say, you know, really, some of it stems from just my faith in human beings and, you know, the goodness of all essential goodness of all people and that, you know, I've always felt like what I have committed my life to is to try to help folks to live up to be their best selves and to create equity in the best way possible so that folks who may not have, you know, the same, the same privileges that I grew up with.  How does that relate to housing? I mean, housing is foundational. Housing is a basic human right. And without, without housing, folks are, they've got five knocks against them. Unless you've got that stable foundation of, of a home, you're going to have challenges having a successful, thriving independent, independent life. And what I guess what drew me to housing initially was working on buildings. I loved working on buildings. I loved working with my hands. I loved being a carpenter, but had an injury sustained an injury and was not able to continue with that. And so doing housing in a different way was kind of the next best thing. And like I said before, it was a really exciting time of ferment and a lot of creative ideas were coming to Burlington. A lot of very creative people were involved in housing in the, in the 80s. I mean, this was, you know, when we formed the Burlington Community Land Trust and another organization that also eventually became the merged with the Burlington Community Land Trust to become Champlain Housing Trust called Lake Champlain Housing Development Corporation. And we were creating nonprofits that basically were mission driven and that we're going to the idea was to have these nonprofits provide stable affordable housing for our lowest income folks, folks who are, you know, who may have disabilities, folks with vulnerabilities that that needed affordable housing because market driven housing was not floating all boats. Market driven housing was has perennially been out of reach here in Burlington and really throughout throughout Vermont and throughout the nation. And a lot of that goes back to Reaganomics in the Reagan era. I often think about how what we know is modern day homelessness really was created in the Reagan era when the federal government stepped back from its responsibility for providing housing, affordable housing for not just folks with disabilities and, but for really for working, working Americans working citizens, people working at lower lower wage service sector jobs, as long as I've been involved have never been able to afford housing without some form of some form of assistance some form of subsidy. And I think, you know, that's, that's the part of that's sort of the shadow side, the dark side of the American dream is that it's so out of reach for so many, so many people but it's so essential for folks to be able to raise families, or, you know, to live successful, you know, independent lives, you know, on their on their own, regardless of what you know family choices they make. Oh, you got a question. Yeah, yeah, for sure. So, for one thank you for that. I'd love to hear a little bit more about your journey from someone working in the physical construction side of housing to really becoming a state house advocate and just a little bit about where the Vermont affordable housing coalition sort of fit into that timeline. I mean, it was a pretty long journey because, you know, I started working. Let's see, I started working in housing in 1984 for the city of whiskey. That's when I started. Oh, we're talking. What is that 35 plus plus years ago. You know, my career as a carpenter was probably relatively short lived and it was, you know, as a result of a back injury, I needed a desk job.   So, really, I learned an incredible amount working for the city of when you ski, you know, learned about working directly serving and assisting low income Vermonters, living in when you ski both homeowners, as well as as well as renters, I learned how to underwrite loans, learned how to spec out jobs, you know, working with architects and contractors learn how to project. I knew a lot of this already from carpentry.  And at the same time, like I said before, there were just, you know, this incredible time affirm it with a lot of very creative people working in housing in the greater Burlington area and throughout Vermont. And very soon, we actually formed the Vermont affordable housing coalition at that time 1985 I just been working for the city of one of the ski for a year or two. Kirby Dunn, who now works for Home Share Vermont, the longtime director of Home Share Vermont, one of our coalition members, she and a fellow by the name of Jim Libby, who was then working for Vermont legal aid later became the legal legal staff for the Vermont Housing Commission Board. I would basically credit Kirby and Jim with sort of starting the affordable housing coalition and it was a way for people who were kind of trying to figure out this new world of how to do housing in an era when HUD was drawing back, pulling back the federal government was pulling back. When, you know, she mentioned Northgate was starting to people were starting to get worried about Northgate and saving Northgate which folks who are not familiar as to still the single largest affordable housing development in the state of Vermont with 336 units here in the north end of Burlington, which actually provides us our office when when when we need an office and aren't all working at aren't all working at home. But yeah, the specter of Northgate potentially flipping was was in the air and one of the rallying factors was people getting closer to save Northgate and really understand what some of the failures were of old HUD policies where, for instance, the developer of Northgate received 40 year 1% loan, and then a monthly operating subsidy to make up the difference in how income residents in Northgate could afford and what were reasonable operating costs. After 20 years that that owner would have been able to prepay the mortgage and get out from under all the affordability restrictions that came with the federal funding. And it was, you know, stones throw from the bike path the stones throw from the lake and was a time in the 80s when rapidly escalating rents were placing a lot of people out of the market and a time when condo conversions were happening. So, there was, I learned an awful awful lot in a hurry around housing policy, as we all analyzed and figured out what was wrong with the federal housing policies of the past. And as we came up with ways of doing it better and doing it in this new era. And what we basically came up with, including for Northgate was that we created mission driven nonprofits, basically an NGO non governmental sector that was going to do the work of that used to be done by, in essence, government owned housing in the form of public housing. I mean, that was sort of one of the main models was that housing for low income Americans was provided through public housing, through entities like the Brogan Housing Authority or the Winooski Housing Authority or, you know, our other local housing authorities around the state. So that model had fallen into disfavor. So we basically created a number of nonprofits like what ultimately became the Champlain Housing Trust and actually Cathedral Square or Cindy Works had already been created at that point. We also created organizations that served the homeless like the Committee on Temporary Shelter. It was another product of the early 80s and of burgeoning homelessness in the state of Vermont. A lot of this stuff happened first in Burlington and then it kind of spread around the state and it proliferated. It was actually part of a national movement where folks were figuring out how to do housing in this new era. And there were nonprofits created all over the country, many other areas in the country, they're known as CDCs or Community Development Corporations. And in Vermont, we basically put a lot of our eggs in the land trust basket and created a policy within state government so that we wouldn't keep repeating the mistakes of providing, you know, sweetheart deals to private sector developers that could then flip properties. We created the bedrock principle of Vermont Affordable Housing which is permanent affordability and that you when you put public dollars be they federal or state into affordable housing that they that housing had to be affordable for the one term permanently essentially so that you didn't have to keep buying it back from from the private sector with you know new tranches of public dollars. So it was really it was a very exciting time and we invested heavily in the land trust model for single family ownership and then the permanent affordability which is a model for permanent affordability we now call it shared equity and it's not as based in some parts of the state on on the land trust model it's now the shared equity model where homeowners get get a subsidy through state state funds from the Vermont Housing and Conservation Board and in turn for that subsidy to be you know the 40 40 some cases $50,000 in turn for that they don't get market rate appreciation and it's been shown over over 30 years that the housing increases its affordability over time and that people people move on they're able to either think some folks today and shared equity housing for forever and will it to to their heirs and other folks move on to market rate housing because they've been able to afford to save to save money and likewise with affordable rental housing had a lot of that because of the stabilization of rents due to the mission driven nature of Northgate's ownership structure and it's true for all the other nonprofits that only operate over 13,000 units of rental housing in the state of Vermont these days you know if you can stabilize rents and make them affordable people are often able to save they have that stable foundation and here at Northgate we've seen a lot of folks move into home ownership because we've been able to keep the rent slow and folks are able to save so yeah you know the journey to the working for the coalition just to maybe complete that that question you know I worked for probably like eight years from the city of Winooski and then for about four or five years I worked for a small nonprofit that eventually got folded into the Burlington Community Land Trust we called it the Champlain Valley Mutual Housing Federation co-op federation for short the housing the co-op federation basically provided technical assistance to residents low income residents in the greater Burlington area that were looking to own and operate cooperative housing so we helped we worked with Burlington Community Land Trust like Champlain Housing Development Corporation and what was then also housing Vermont to create co-ops like the Thelma Maple co-op on Archibald Street, Queensborough co-op on Patch Road in South Burlington and the Flint Avenue co-op down on Flint Avenue and eventually Road Street artist co-op on Road Street and many many more and also at that time the idea of creating mobile home co-ops was in the air I started getting involved in policy back then you know as kind of volunteer for the affordable housing coalition still working for the city of Winooski worked on you know helping to create the Vermont Housing and Conservation Board bringing helping to bring that through State House we created the first co-op enabling legislation for housing cooperatives Vermont didn't have that New Hampshire did so you know worked on that in the late 80s so it really did a lot of a lot of policy work started doing a lot of policy work in the 80s and throughout the nine through much in the 90s to co-op housing work after we created that co-op co-op like just co-op enabling legislation and once we merged that that that organization was a small nonprofit it was actually turned out to be kind of unsustainable there's just not enough room for enough you know Vermont so relatively under resource state you know we're not a big state so it wasn't enough public funding to sustain that organization hold it into the broken community trust which again eventually became Champlain Housing Trust and soon thereafter I got hired on a part-time basis to start working for the affordable housing coalition and so that kind of brings us up to you know 24 years ago and you know at first it was a part-time job I did do a you know trying to do state house advocacy for a couple days a week but it soon became really clear that to be effective at the state house you really have to be there 24-7 you have to be there every day and so yeah within a couple years I was I was working full-time during the legislative session at the state house and you know throughout the 24 years I mean one of the things that our network has really worked on and I think we really started the early aughts like around 2000, 2001, 2002 to really try to build awareness around the need for affordable housing and so you know the strong network of housing funding agencies and housing nonprofits that you know grew up throughout the 80s and 90s really came together and created a housing awareness campaign in the early aughts that I think really was foundational and seminal for the success that you know that I think is a network of enjoyed with housing in the state house. So Ehrd you have an amazing career of service, amazing commitment to service to make the world a better place especially for those who have less resources and less access to resources and I'm just wondering what and I assume that some of the your accomplishments are your contributions towards saving Northgate as permanent affordable housing and really the creation of permanent affordability as a bedrock housing policy in Vermont to protect public investment to benefit long term affordability but I'm wondering what you know what other accomplishments just come to the top for you over your life of service in housing. I mean Northgate is definitely up there and it's it's not just Northgate because we had three other gates in the state so you know Northgate went first and there's Westgate and Brattleboro, I didn't have a direct hand in that. But you know, Highgate and Barry and Applegate and in Bennington, but I think Northgate really charted the way the other the other thing that made Northgate so pivotal and why I always feel it's a center point of you know one of the things that I am proudest of having worked on is because that lesson of affordability of permanent affordability was one that we learned from Northgate and from the other gates and at the time that we were looking to save Northgate. You know, back in the 80s the state of Vermont did not put any Vermont taxpayer dollars into housing at all it was all federal pass through money. It was all HUD it was from what was then called Farmers Home now USDA Rural Development. So it's all federal dollars passed through the state of Vermont through the city of Burlington. And so, at that same time, coincidentally, the Ron Housing and Conservation Board was created. Former former Governor Madeleine Cunin backed it strongly her administration backed it because people understood that we had to save the affordable housing that we already had. We could not allow it to to revert to market rate market rate housing. And so there was a symbiosis there between saving Northgate and and convincing the Vermont General Assembly that we needed to create a state funding mechanism. To put money into organism into housing development like Northgate to save them. And that was the Vermont Housing Conservation Board. And I think, you know, we had the obviously the unique idea of merging housing and conservation because when there is land speculation and land prices and housing prices go up that to major casualties are affordable housing. Rents and property values, as well as conservation of, you know, farms and important natural areas and important recreational land. So, you know, we were the first state to do that back in the 80s 1987. And I would say, you know, having a small part in helping to get VHCB through the state house, I would say is, you know, another one of, you know, my, my, my proudest accomplishments, you know, working with our conservation colleagues, helping to create the Vermont Housing and Conservation Coalition, which before housing coalition has been, you know, was key in helping to create back in the 80s. And then, you know, just the long road of every year getting the funding for VHCB, VHC is still unique as a funding mechanism as a Vermont grown funding mechanism that is, you know, able to be nimble and to react to development opportunities, whether they're housing or conservation, when they, when they come up without all the federal rigmarole that you get with odd project or, you know, with a USDA Rural Development Project. We've really created an amazingly nimble funding mechanism that can also take some risks and put in early money, which is often the most critical money. Cindy, as you know, as a long time housing developer, it's always critical to get that first, that first commitment before you start assembling the seven or eight other funding sources. Very true. So that, you know, I look upon that the creation of the co-op housing enabling law, which really has enabled a lot of low income folks who might otherwise have just been renters for the rest of their lives, you know, to live in housing that they control through the mechanism of a co-op corporation. And I would say over the last, you know, that a lot of that does go back to the 80s and 90s. What I think I'm most proud of, you know, having worked for the last 24 years for the affordable housing coalition is just that incredible, I think sense of good will that housing now has at the state house. And, you know, the policymakers at the state house know that when they put money in the housing, it's well invested. There is a network of organizations that are ready to deliver that are highly professional, highly creative, that know how to make the maximum use of hard-earned taxpayer dollars and, you know, that really are able to take rare, valuable taxpayer dollars and make sure that they're not in some way wasted, that they're put to good use and they're put to good use by creating thriving communities all across the state of Vermont, whether it's creating new housing developments, whether it's providing housing for folks who are homeless, providing housing for folks who are seniors or folks with disabilities, folks who are just simply the working poor and, you know, single moms working, patching together a life, you know, with a couple kids through, you know, two jobs. These, you know, these are the folks that are not aided by market-driven housing and what our members do is provide that gap in the market that the market is just never going to serve.  And having that network really internalized the mission of housing some of Vermont's most vulnerable citizens, folks who have experienced homelessness, folks, you know, who have that lived experience, whether it's, you know, being on the streets for, you know, some folks have been on the streets for 10 years and they're now getting housing in Vermont. Other folks have had, you know, more shorter term, shorter term episodes of homelessness sometimes, you know, more boring episodes and, you know, a lot of folks are finding housing in our non-profit housing. You know, the proverbial three legs of the three-legged stool, capital dollars through VHCB, rental assistance through HUD or through state rental assistance programs and supported services through a combination of state and state and federal dollars. But yeah, there's any number of individual accomplishments, but I'd say just nurturing this network and growing this network to the point where, you know, VHCB is recognized at the statehouse, you know, by policymakers at all levels as, you know, just an incredible Vermont institution. And where our non-profit housing and homelessness network is recognized as, especially now in pandemic times.  But, you know, we basically suspended homelessness for 25, up to 25, 26 hundred people. And now, you know, the task is to get those folks into housing and to Marshall to make sure they don't go back to home. Yeah, that kind of leads into my next question. So we've kind of, your journey is pretty like easily traceable to this like, this change in housing where in the 80s and when you started, public housing was being defunded and you were trying to figure out, you know, what to do to build a network that could provide housing for low income people. And your work has been obviously instrumental in kind of strengthening that network in Vermont of non-profit, affordable housing providers. And so I'm wondering now, like looking at the current situation where housing, you know, is kind of in the public eye more so than perhaps in years past, because of the pandemic, because it's so clearly tied to our ability to stay safe during the pandemic, having a home to stay safe in. What do you think needs to be done in this current situation? What are the biggest changes that need to happen in the housing world now? You know, that's a really tough question.  And, you know, we can develop as much housing as we have resources, public resources through, you know, those proverbial three, you know, major areas of investment, capital dollars, rental assistance and support of services. And what we can do is limited by how much we have in resources that are available to us. And I think, and I think this has been true for a long, long time. You know, we're the richest nation in the history of the world ever. And to have things like homelessness, because, you know, somebody for someone not to be able to have housing is something that really should not be tolerated in this society that is this rich. It's a matter of political will of creating those resources. And really, what we need is deep tax reform at the federal level, as well as we need significant tax reform at the state level, so that those with the greatest resources and the ability to pay provide that level of equity for other folks to be able to, you know, to level the playing field so that other folks who may not have those same resources that they get a share of that in order to, you know, getting back to that they have that stable foundation and are able to build a life off of that stable housing foundation and, you know, create a life for themselves and for, you know, if they so choose to have a family for their family. Our priorities are completely backwards in this country, and they have been for decades. We, our tax code is structured to benefit, continue to benefit the wealthiest in the nation. And it really, it really needs to be, we need to, in some ways, we need to go back to the Eisenhower era, back to the 50s, when we had a very different tax code. And, you know, the wealthiest folks were paying their fair share and we were able to send white GIs to college and give them down payments on housing. Unfortunately, you know, some of the inequities that have been built into our system forever were built by housing subsidies. And I think that's one of the other things that we need to focus on as we advocate for, you know, some restructuring of the tax code. We also need to make sure that the harm, the deep, deep harm that has been done by governmental housing policies to basically create the segregation of neighborhoods by color, by race. That, you know, we all know still exists and the disparities in wealth building that have come as a result of governmental housing policies that, you know, that systemically discriminate against people of color and black people. I think that's another, you know, that and tax restructuring, I think, are the two major things that really lie ahead that need to be done in order to create a more equitable society for everybody. If we do that tax restructuring so that, you know, folks both in the middle class and in, you know, folks who are low income and folks with nothing get a share of the wealth of this country. I think then we can build the housing that is needed and renovate the housing that is dilapidated and actually, you know, we obviously have problems with infrastructure all over the country where our infrastructure is, you know, is severely dilapidated. Our research and development is not what it used to be. We used to be able to send someone to the moon. We can't really do that anymore because we haven't invested in the right things in this country. We've invested in creating a hyper wealth among a small plutocracy that basically controls. It controls the tax code and it controls most of our politicians through Citizens United and, you know, with the campaign finance reform also the national level. It gets pretty global, you know, it's all of the above, but I think for housing the challenges, we need more resources and we need to write the long standing systemic wrongs that have been created through housing policy. So in that vein of looking ahead. I believe Cindy mentioned that you're going next week to start working for Senator Bernie Sanders. Yeah, I'd love to hear more about what that work you'll be doing will look like and how it will complement and maybe even expand on some of the work you've been doing in your career and with the mon affordable housing coalition. Well, sure. Thanks for that question, Talia. You know, obviously, Bernie's been fighting for many of these things for decades. Since, you know, since he was mayor of Burlington.  I'm just incredibly honored and privileged to go to work for Bernie. And, you know, it remains to be seen exactly what I'll be doing, but I'll be part of the outreach team so you'll probably continue to see me at housing events, much like my predecessor shout out to Sheila read who did this for a number of years. I'm also former colleague at Voices for Vermont's Children and State House Advocate. You'll see me at ground breakings and ribbon cuttings.  I'm also going to be doing veterans issues veterans affairs. So that's going to be kind of a new learning curve for me. But a lot of it is just, you know, being out in the community. Of course, you know, right now during the pandemic, it's going to be on a lot of zooms meeting with different groups and finding out what the needs are and, you know, working with the DC staff and the other folks on the on the team. You know, to make suggestions around policy policy initiatives.  So, you know, they're again, I'd be eyes and ears and then referring that individual, that individual situation to one of the constituency staff to work with the Bureau, the federal bureaucracy to make sure that that tomorrow gets, you know, gets their due. So I have a two part question. One is, if you were to write a book, what would you title it about your years of service and commitment to equity and affordable housing. This is a trick question that would mention to me earlier. I just thought of it because I love to hear the answer. And then secondly, you can get back to us on that. Yeah, I'm not sure I'm gonna have a quick I'm not real good off the cuff. What was that title of the book of my life. I'm not sure I'm going to have equity and affordable housing and, you know, change. And then the other question is, this sort of a wrap up question. What advice or guidance would you give to someone who wants to start advocating for housing justice, because we're, we love having new people join this field. Lots of work to do. Lots of challenges ahead, lots of great work behind us. I mean, I would say, you know, I'll tie this back to like one of the things that I'm kind of proudest of is that we have created a network of younger folks that are getting involved in housing and it seemed to be kind of bitten by the same bug. You know, the mission, the mission driven bug of how important housing, how important housing is. So I feel, you know, as I kind of look back and, you know, leave leave this work, I feel like there's a really strong bench there of folks who are coming up.  You know, some of the younger folks I've worked with, you know, have come from, you know, have come from poverty and have, you know, had experiences with with homelessness. Many are just, you know, already have the bug of, you know, being driven with a passion for creating equity and helping to create equity in our in our society. And say, you know, the first, the first thing is, I think you need to have a little bit of just kind of that inborn passion to, you know, want to make a difference and to want to help other people. And at that point, you know, it's really, you know, whether you get involved in food insecurity issues, or, you know, helping to help direct direct service to direct helping service. Direct services, helping folks, or if you get into advocacy, I think the kernel that's there is the desire to help other other folks and to have a passion for creating equity. But for advocacy, I mean, for me, it's been like learned by doing a lot of it is learned by doing and not to be afraid to take the plunge and make mistakes. You know, housing is a combination of real estate. It's a combination of social services. It's economics. It's so many different things and it touches so many different sectors from healthcare, from physical health to mental health to substance use to economics of, you know, of low wage jobs, service sector jobs, education, special education. I mean, there's no sector that it doesn't touch. So your entree into housing can be through any one of those sectors.  How does the, you know, how does the system work? But then in terms of advocacy, it's really learned by learned by doing and don't be afraid to make mistakes. Get familiar with, you know, with policy issues and get familiar with how the state house works and how the federal government works. A lot of it civics 101 going going back to like your middle school civics class and really making it, you know, making it come alive. A lot of us had those middle school civics classes and, you know, we all slept through them right or passing notes or torturing the teacher. I actually went back to when my son was growing up and did that, you know, a couple of times. Important to make that come alive. I think for for young kids, it's important to do that. I think it's important to go back to high school and do those kinds of guest, you know, kind of guest spots with with, you know, with young kids coming up through educational system. Ultimately, but yeah, it's learned by doing. Don't be afraid to make a mistake and make sure make sure that, you know, you do your homework and that you're as prepared as possible and that you always that you're always straight up. And and that you be careful to pick your battles and that you got to be a junkyard dog because it takes years to move some things forward. And be patient. You've been a phenomenal and forever junkyard dog for housing. What I miss most is working with you guys and working with this incredible network of colleagues all over the state, folks at the State House, you know, during the pandemic, I just miss the collegiality of working with lawmakers. And I believe that Senator Stevens calls you.  Yeah, he does. He let you know about that, huh. Yeah, now you did. Yes, I know I know that you're, you're many are very fond of you at the State House and will miss your presence there. Is there any question, is there a question that you wanted us to ask you that we that we didn't have recovered. I mean, we've gone on for like 45 minutes. You have me. Come on.  I'm gonna have to get back to you on that. There's there. Yeah. Yeah. I'm not going to try that right now. I'm not going to add living secrets from a junkyard dog. Hey, there you go, Cindy. More to follow housing, housing secrets from a junkyard dog. I like that. Please join us at the coalition to find out more about the plot. Well, it's hard to find the words to, you know, state our appreciation for your incredible good, good work and all the goodwill that you've nurtured and built over the decades and more than countless lives have been changed for your good work and we will really miss you and look forward to working with you in your new capacity. And really glad to have this time today to hear more about the highlights as you saw them and the work that you've been able to do and your vision. Thanks for your kind words and thanks for your incredible support and collaboration and, you know, huge shout out to Talia and to Sarah who, you know, can over the last, what's it been seven, eight months now for your VISTA service. If, you know, move, move the coalition forward and another, you know, another large, another great step and thanks for, you know, supporting the coalition and for your year of service that you're spending. Great. And for the listeners interested in learning more about the coalition, we have contact information for you here. We have monthly membership meetings. We love you to join us at the membership meetings. We have a very informative website. Please get involved. Please help us move the needle on affordable housing. Thanks so much. We're 501c3 so you can always donate.


Hi everybody, it's Sam at Mixed Up Craft. Thank you for watching my tutorial today. This is the last of my Valentine series, only five projects. I don't have a desire or a need to have tons of Valentine's things so I've just done what I need but I've also got the five from last year as well. So there's 10 lovely projects for you to look at and hopefully get some inspiration from and make. So this is the last one and this is a really really cute little acetate box, an explosion box with a nice little lid there. It's a reinforced lid and it just opens up and then this all opens up here and revealing these Hershey Kisses. Now I actually wanted the silver ones but they're out of stock so once they come in, because I think they're just the plain chocolate ones, these are white chocolate oreos. That one's open actually and they're delicious. I've been eating these. There's usually a lot more. Anyway, this is what it is. It's an acetate explosion box so there's no sticking with the base, it's just one piece. I did cut these bits but I'm not going to cut them on the next one because I actually prefer it without but it just all comes together like so and then your lid just sits on top so it's probably hard to really pick up but you can see. Obviously you can see there underneath it. This all see-through. It's just gives it just a different take on a box so I thought it was really nice and I just love the finish there on top with that lovely love. So I'm using obviously acetate so the sheets I'm using are Crafters Companion and they're available in the US and in the UK so I'll share all the links to those. It's really nice acetate to use and then everything else you're going to need is here. So the papers I'm using as I've been using mostly through the week are these dovecrafts XOXO papers from last year but as I've mentioned before I'll share the links to their current paper pack and from that I'm using these kisses here. So you need eight pieces because you want to do double so you've got obviously they're all stuck on the outside but because it's acetate you can seal the sticky tape from the inside so when you open it you stick them also on this side here so it also looks nice and I did think it would look good as well to do a heart on the bottom so maybe you could put this heart here and also have it on the bottom or a sentiment something that they would see once they've eaten or if it is sweets that you're going to put in there so I thought that was quite a nice idea for you to do. So you'll need eight pieces and these measure at two and a quarter by two and three quarters okay so eight pieces then I've got my lid so it just matches I brought out the red this time and this measures five and one-eighth of an inch squared okay so just one piece of that. The dies I've used for this here and I've used in a couple of projects this week is this one here it's from this nest of dies now I can't find it anywhere and I've had it a while but I'm pretty sure it is there's one more that should be in there as well it's an X cut nest of hearts anybody out there has this please let me know if I'm right or wrong because I can't find it anywhere online and I always like to try and share the links and this one I just cannot find for the life of me so if anybody has seen it you're always really good and you let me know it would be great if you could tell me that one so I've just die cut that heart and then I die cut this is a net is not necessary it's live, laugh, love and wish I believe and it's by Sizzix and again I'll show those links and I've just die cut it four times this time mounted it on top of each other and it's formed this really nice sentiment and that's going to go through the heart like so and then I've got these little that I've used these little heart encrusted embellishments and jewel encrusted hearts that I'm going to stick on that one there okay so that's those bits I got some foam to stick my heart down a double sided tape then the acetate so the main bit of the box so you can see it here I've already scored it so that you could see it because when it's not scored it's flat and you just it's not good for filming so this is a piece of 8x8 and what you want to do is score it two and a half on all four sides okay so two and a half rotate and you really want to you know really put some pressure into it really ingrain that score line because acetate is harder to burnish because once you open it up again it kind of then becomes it stays open until you burn shit again so you do need to really work it so two and a half on all four sides get rid of your scoreboard keep your stylus and then what you want to do let me just grab grab this red bit of card just to sit under here there we go that's a bit better so you got the three squares along the top here the four outer squares so one two three and four we're going to score from so this is that first square the bottom right hand side put your stylus down you're going to score out to the top left and again really work I just realized I've just ruined a nice bit of red card underneath now with this score line never mind so you can see that I've got a lot of pressure on that you want to create that score line there on that top left hand square then go to the top right hand side and you can do exactly the same again from the bottom left of that square up to the top right and again really ingrain that score line you can see I'm really doing it quite a few times so I really want to make sure I get a good impression so again you can see it there okay then rotate the whole thing again top left that top left square the bottom right of the square you're going to score out to the top left make sure think I was a bit wonky there slipped there we go like I said acetate is a bit harder to work with but you get really nice results it's quite a nice material to work with especially sticking the card on the top okay there we go now you can just about make it out you've got your three six nine squares and then the four outer so the four cornered squares you should have a score line going through okay kind of got a bit of a Union Jack flag kind of effect going on ish okay so now that we've done that you want to burnish it now what I would say first of all is is pick it up and actually pinch it first and put it into place because although I've burnished it heavily it's still hard to actually write that way to get it where you need to fold it there we go so I always pinch it first and then when I'm happy so if you fold it over itself then you can make sure it's lined up as well with each end and all the school lines okay so once that's all in place and I can grab my grab my bone tool there and then just really work that school line there we go see now it stays completely stays in place but as soon as I pull that and kind of manipulate it back it will you know kind of come out of his shape so you do need to keep playing with it a bit then again get the next one just pinch it making sure you've got it and then again like I'm doing line up your sides so they're nice and straight and then you know you've got it so just go around and just burnish all of those score lines you can see those now they're all nicely burnished then with these ones here on the cornered squares you want to fold so kind of bring it up like that okay and again make sure you get the the very kind of point and then just work it down to the inside there okay so you can see what I've done I just burnished by pinching it together there and then if you bring it just like I do with the boxes bring it over and you just want to make sure that this all lines up nicely here on the side okay so I'm sure happy that that's all in place then again get your bone tool and just lie that all down and then you can pinch that corner as well you can see now it's all starting to come together okay so again just go around just pinch all of those in there you have it so it is a bit little bit fiddly because it's obviously hard for you to see it here as well but if I bring that all together now you can see the box forming and these bits here with whatever you're putting in we'll just move to the side like so so it gives you a nice box so now you just need to decorate it so with all those bits and pieces so this side you know make sure you got it the right way out depending on what you your pattern is and you just want to go around and stick them all down on each side so I'll just show you this first one to start you off this is when they'll get stuck to me okay gosh where is it I was finding stuck to my clothes okay so there it is okay so again if I keep this red behind me so I think you can see a bit better you just want to make sure you get a nice you should leave you a nice little like one eighth of an inch border on all four sides so I'm trying to get the light so I can see that I'm doing it right as well okay so go around do that on all of the outside okay so I've done all of the outer ones you can start to see the box much better now and then what you want to do is do the same inside just lie it down and just spend some time really making sure that you get them completely lined up because you don't want to see you know the other side of either one so you need to make sure you get them exact so there you go now so you've got that on that side and it matches up nicely on that side as well so again just go around and put them all in the middle so now that's all done so that will all come in together like so okay so now we just need to finish our lid just gonna get rid of all of these pieces before they stick everywhere okay so we've got our lid here grab your scoreboard I usually do all my scoring together but I forgot to do the lid okay so this is your five and one eighth by five and one eighth and all you want to do is score at half an inch one inch four and one eighth of an inch and four and five eighths of an inch so you should have half an inch half an inch half an inch half an inch okay then rotate and again half an inch one inch four and one eighth of an inch and four and five eighths of an inch okay so that's now what you should have just that like grid effect get rid of your scoreboard and then just carefully go and burnish all of those score lines so now we'll burnish to just grab your scissors and just as I do all of my reinforced lids you want to cut up those two there so you've got that like you see here you've got that square big square in the corner and then four little squares just cut up each of those like so so you're going past the first score line to that second score line then you want to cut out those end ones completely and just take a little wedge off the corner there then cut that one out and again take some little wedges off of those and off of that one so you basically just formed a little tab so again on that one there rotate it cut that out completely cut that one out and then just take little wedges off so okay then rotate the whole thing so that's facing away from you and again cut down so that's now what you should have that shape there and then just grab some tacky glue and I'm just going to put some glue on the tops of these little tabs like so and then just bring it under bring this other side down and just stick them together there so you're forming a nice little corner make sure you get a perfect right angle just hold it there for a few seconds tacky glue is really quick there we go and then the next one okay and again pop that one down so it goes under and again stick it in place like so just repeat that on the other two sides those corners all in place and now you should have these larger tabs still hanging out so again you just want to fold it over a bit put some glue inside like so and then fold it over pop it on its side grab your bone tool and just rub it along there so you're really burnishing that score line and it's also spreading out all that glue and it gives you a really nice finish there on your lid so again just bring the next one over just a little bit of glue they don't need loads because you do spread it out once you squash it all down and again pop it on its side until it's all nicely stuck down okay and just repeat that again so that's my lid now nice little reinforced lids I'm just going to grab my heart and I've got some foam tape here so I'm just going to put a little bit of foam on the back that that's the end of that roll so just sit that nicely in the center of the lid and then I'm going to get some of my glue again okay so I just need to put a little bit of glue just on the main actual love word of this because the end bits actually don't end up touching the heart they kind of go off at the end so a bit like so there we go stick better in a minute and then I've got one of these just sit that slightly at an angle so cute so pretty and there you have it so I have in these are almond her she kisses and these are for my husband so he although he's very supportive he doesn't really watch my videos not enough to sit there and actually listen to me and listen to me going on and watch your box being made I don't you know expect him to it's not his thing so he won't see this so there you go that's packed now of those for him and then just bring it all together pop your lid on top okay isn't that cute so you do need to kind of hold it there because otherwise it's quite I've got a heavy thing in there so but I just I really like it I just think it's really different it's gonna look nice on the table and it's just a little a little treat little something with Valentine's Day so there you have it there's my two little acetate explosion boxes my last project hope you like it I'll link in all of last year's as well so you can see those but yeah hit the like button if you've enjoyed it I hope you've enjoyed this series and please subscribe to my channel so you get to see more thanks for watching bye


So we've got Tom Hayes coming on. Tom is Senior Manager in EMC's Ionix Group, Tom. Good to see you. Nice to meet you. Nice to meet you. Joy, how you doing? Nice to see you. Good, nice to see you guys. EMC World 2011, Las Vegas, great event. How you doing? How you feeling? Oh, it's going great. It's a wonderful event. Customers are great. We've met some of the analysts here. It's unifying, isn't it? It's going very, very well. Booth is full. And so it's exciting. Yeah, good traffic at the booth. Good traffic at the booth. And great conversations. A lot of exciting things happening. We're rolling out some new products, which I'm sure we'll get a chance to talk about. So good things are going on. Yeah, I kind of want to reset for people. So Ionix, not a lot of people know what Ionix is. There were portions of the Ionix asset base that were moved in, or quote, unquote, sold in, kind of an internal transfer to VMworld at one point in time. So we've been, John, systems management, right? You've been following system management for years. And this whole cloud and virtualization thing makes system management, in my opinion, a do-over. So we're talking about systems management. It's a very important area. So talk about what Ionix is and the pieces that you have maintained inside of EMC. And then we'll talk specifically about what you're announcing here at the event. Sure, and Ionix's infrastructure management, IT infrastructure management, we're focused on the infrastructure. So compute, network, and storage is really where we spend our time. We still work very closely with VMware. So even though we moved some products to VMware for the application, the VM, the virtualization management, all of that comes together. And in fact, if you look in the Ionix booth, you'll see the Ionix infrastructure management combined with VMware management right up through the application, putting together an end-to-end answer both on the provisioning side as well as on the operation side. So even though some of those products moved into VMware, still a sister company is still important of how we put that together. So the Ionix piece focused on infrastructure, VMware focused on the application and the virtualization layer that sits on top of that. Okay, so the stuff they're doing with Spring and the platforms, it made just sense to put that over there, and that's just a matter of integrating and working together. Okay, so your piece infrastructure management, you talked about server storage networking, obviously that leads us to VBlock, so Ionix, the UIM piece, is central to the whole VBlock. You know, architecture, right? VBlock, we've had a lot of discussion around VBlock, and this notion of a single logical block of infrastructure, going in cloud ready, cloud optimized, some good buzzwords, we want to understand what that means. What does it mean to have this cloud optimized a block of infrastructure, and what does that mean from a management perspective? Oh, great question, and if you think about the VBlock, the VBlock made by VCE, virtual computing environment, which is a- Vice, VMware, Intel, Cisco, EMC. People think of it, VMware, Cisco, and EMC, but the three companies have put together a company called VCE, VCE company, that builds infrastructure in a box, data centers in a box, compute network and storage, that is a purpose built for a cloud virtualized environment. The key component of that is the management component, so unified infrastructure management, which is made by EMC, the Ionix group within EMC. What that means for customers today is that, as opposed to buying compute, network, storage, all separately, having it put together, and build it out to be able to deliver services to the business and their internal or external customers, with converged infrastructure, they can move much more quickly, because they get basically a data center shift in a chassis, the VBlock, all preconfigured, all balanced for performance, delivering a certain number of virtual machines, where the 6,000, 3,000, 1,000, depending upon the customer requirement, so it's a much more efficient, effective way to build out infrastructure to support virtualized applications leading to cloud computing. Yeah, so it's... What is, so again, Dave, we got 3,000 people out there who might not know what all that meant, so let's take a step back. Some of them do. What is unified VBlock for the cloud means? That's one of the things you guys are touting, is this unified VBlock for the cloud. What is that? Yeah, why do I need to unify all of this? What is that? What's the benefit? So when you put compute, network, and storage together in a single chassis, you've just made it simpler and easier for customers to be able to deliver the infrastructure to support business applications. What's critical in putting that together is the management component of that, so we put together unified infrastructure management on top of that. What that allows us to do is provision compute, network, storage right up through the ESXi cluster with a single click. So as opposed to you've got a commute administrator, a network administrator, a storage administrator, the person that configures the ESXi cluster or the server, as opposed to having all of those individuals with a lot of handoffs, a lot of telephone calls going on to provision that, we do it with a single click, with a management component that's purpose built to do that. The objective of course is to deliver services much faster to support the business applications so we can turn it around in minutes or hours as opposed to weeks or months to stand up that infrastructure. So that's really what it means in supporting business, to supporting the business. So it sounds like a better mouse trap, I mean, in essence. And now we always hear about stovepipes, so we're breaking down stovepipes here. What are you seeing in terms of, you mentioned storage admin, network admin, server admin, what are you seeing in terms of the organizational changes that are taking place as a result of things like VBlock going in, are organizations struggling with that? Are they eager for that? I mean, nobody likes change. But what is it, from an organizational standpoint, what does that all mean to the IT practitioners out there? No, that's a great question. And as you think about it, this is the number one question. When I talk with customers that I'm talking to several a week, they talk about what do I do with my network storage and compute administrators? First of all, those professionals still need to exist in the organization to set up those policies when we deliver the services to the business. So the infrastructure service is set up based on a policy that UIM then goes ahead and implements. So you still need the experts. But once those experts set up those policies, we then use a machine, a provisioning and automation machine, unified infrastructure manager, to eliminate all of the manual, repetitive, error-prone tasks that these IT administrators used to have to do. We pick a single administrator, ideally someone that has some experience across those technologies to be able to provision that infrastructure, compute, network and storage using a single click with UIM. So it frees up the IT staff to focus on more strategic initiatives, get to things that they haven't been able to get to in the past. It is a change in organization, but it's a good change and most customers that I talk to are embracing that because the IT staff is looking at getting involved in more strategic, interesting stuff. The management software, Dave, I totally agree is the key to this because if you look at cloud and big data, the number one issue is automation and configuration management. So those are white spaces that are underdeveloped and I think you guys are highlighting some real automation simplification in the network management or cloud management, that's the network management, so used to saying network management. But the management software is the key. If you look at Hadoop, you look at big data, you look at what Green Plum's doing, look at what these guys are doing, whoever nails the management software piece wins it. Yeah, so I talked about better mousetrap before. So to me, Tom, if it's a blank sheet of paper, this is like a no-brainer. But now, of course, as you know, we've got legacy infrastructures, there's a lot of stovepipes out there. So how are people, how are you helping people or how are your customers getting from point A, which is all these stovepipes, all these different roles to point B, which is kind of this nirvana single block of infrastructure? Right, great question. And most customers that I talked to today are taking the VBlock, the VBlock platform, and deploying it for the next critical application, be it VDI, for example, they may put Exchange on it, SAP on it. So they may move the next application that they'd like to deploy and they'll use the VBlock for it. The existing infrastructure will continue to exist, of course, and it will be depreciated over time and over time, five, six, seven years from now, most of their infrastructure will be based on a VBlock platform. So it will be a transition, usually the first VBlocks going in to support the next critical business application. What that means in terms of management is managing the VBlock in a new way. It's converged infrastructure. Let's manage it in a converged way in the way we've provisioned it and operationally manage it. One of the announcements we made at the show is unified infrastructure manager operations to operationally manage the VBlock differently in its entirety, not in stovepipes, and leveraging provisioned information so we know exactly what's going on in that VBlock. So if there is a problem, we know where the symptoms are and where the root cause is. So manage the VBlock differently, then leverage that information in a broader IT management solution. We do it with IONIX, IT operations intelligence. That information would also feed into other enterprise management platforms that are out there that many of the other companies are offering. So it goes in there in an elegant way. But so there's a lot of homogeneity in your solution, right, I mean that's an advantage that allows you to simplify things. And many people have pointed the fact that a lot of the cloud providers have a great deal of homogeneity. And that's one of the reasons why they've got such simplified and cost effective infrastructure. I like to, not to use a political analogy too far, but I like to think of Republicans and Democrats, both smart constituencies, different philosophies. Your philosophy is homogeneity, keep it simple, single logical block of infrastructure. So if a customer says, well, I want to use a different management system, you say, okay, well, go ahead and use it, but you can't get VBlock, you can't get our package, correct? No, if the customer has a VBlock, rather a different management system. So for example, they may have BMC, just to bring up a name, or they may have CA. That's a good example, BMC, CA, HP, whatever it is. Exactly, HP, IBM, and so forth. More of the common management platforms you may see out there. VCE is doing a terrific job of building partnerships. In fact, earlier this week, I think it was earlier this week or late last week, there was a CA announcement, talking about the CA management capability for a VBlock platform. And of course they leverage unified infrastructure manager because the unified infrastructure manager of the VBlock platform manages the VBlock and then provides that information northward, the alerts, the topology information to be able to provide that to a CA management system. Which then becomes a manager of a manager. Exactly right, so the VBlock UIM information is intended to feed a broader IT management solution and it could be any one of those platforms is a very nice API to be able to do that. Okay, so the diversity could be connecting to other parts of other ecosystems, other products, but the hardware itself certainly is a fixed block. Is that right? The hardware, and that is a significant advantage. The VBlock platform is a fixed set of infrastructure, compute, network, and storage, built to provide a certain level of performance. The fact that it's standardized, and we know exactly what it is, allows unified infrastructure manager to provision it. There's no custom scripts, it knows exactly what's in there, it can make sure it's fully compliant. So that standardization of that VBlock using best of breed technology, Cisco, VMware, and EMC is a key advantage that allows us to do what we do on the management side. So you talk about the booth traffic being pretty substantial, right? What are you guys showing over there, and get a little bit more specific around that? Yeah, great question because I've been talking about unified infrastructure manager provisioning to provision the VBlock. If you think about it, what ends up happening is that provisions the infrastructure, compute, network, storage, right up through the ESXi cluster. Then we have an integration into vCenter. So that configured ESXi cluster, those resources, are then synchronized with vCenter so the vCenter administrator can now provision VMs. Further, we leverage vCloud director, vCenter request manager, vCloud chargeback, VMware service manager. So there's a number of components that we put together to provide the broader provisioning and operations management solution around the VBlock. So what we're showing in the booth is a lot of those broader stacks of management capability that enhance what you can do with the VBlock. So where do you see all this going, Tom? If you had to look out three to five years, where do you see this whole logical block of infrastructure, UIM? Where's it going? Long term, it's interesting if you look at IBM, HP, EMC, Cisco, VMware, VCE, Oracle, it's hard to pick a company that isn't driving customers towards converged infrastructure, excuse me, which is a better answer over time for customers, for service providers to provide services, much more efficient, much faster in delivering services. So over time, I would fully expect that the world or data centers, the next generation data centers will be based on converged infrastructure, VCE because of best of breed, the management capability, some of the things that VCE has done already, I would say gives them a leg up, of course I would be saying that.  A little biased, but great answer with the VBlock. Actually, we have said on this program and others that we see it right now as a two horse race in our view, it's VCE and HP really going after it hard with this logical block in IBM and Oracle, you mentioned the others, they're playing, but not nearly as aggressively, and so it's going to be really interesting to watch. I think it's a big market, it's potentially billions, maybe even tens of billions, so it's definitely room for two, and we wish you luck, Tom, great, great having you here. I love the energy, the passion, great on camera. We're having a great time. Thanks for coming on to theCUBE. Dave, thanks very much. John, thank you. Okay.


I see a lot of people out there giving really bad advice in the Linux communities, so today I wanted to talk about one of the more common pieces of bad advice I see people give, especially newer Linux users, is, hey, you should be running Arch Linux because Arch Linux will help you learn Linux. It will teach you about Linux. You'll never learn Linux by running Ubuntu or Linux Mint or Manjaro, whatever it happens to be, right? You need to be running Arch, and when people go to these forms, these subreddits and say, hey, I'm running Ubuntu and I'm having this problem, I get this error, you know, I need to try to fix this particular situation on my machine, well, if you'd have just run Arch Linux, you'd actually know about Linux and you'd be able to fix your machine. And that's just stupid, that's just bad advice. For one thing, who says that that person even wants to learn more about Linux? Well, sometimes just want to use an operating system, they just want to use their computer. And honestly, that's just ridiculous advice anyway, telling somebody they should use a distribution like Arch, or sometimes you'll see people say the same thing about Gen2. Gen2, you'll learn so much about Linux. Well, if you really wanted to learn as much about Linux as possible through installing a distribution, then everyone would recommend Linux from scratch, right? Which is literally building Linux, a complete Linux operating system from the ground up, and I'm talking about from the very base up is practically like a stage one Gen2 installation, except even worse than that, right? It takes sometimes several days, sometimes a couple of weeks to install Linux from scratch, depending on what kind of machine you're installing it on. If it's not a very powerful machine, because it has to do so much compilation. And it teaches you a lot of the nuts and bolts about what makes a Linux operating system, but not everybody wants to do that. I'm a Linux geek. I don't want to do that, right? But you could say, well, I don't really know enough about Linux, unless I actually install Linux from scratch. Guys, that's not what most people want to do. Most people just want to actually use an operating system. They want to install something and go stop with trying to make people use distributions because it's going to somehow magically make them some kind of power user or really super smart. That's not the way this works. And it's not just with Linux that you see these kinds of snobs out there, right? These distro snobs. You also see it with other pieces of software, such as Emacs. Emacs, of course, there's many distributions, many different frameworks that can be built around Emacs, such as Doom Emacs. I've done so many videos about Doom Emacs, and a lot of you guys are trying out Doom Emacs because of my videos.  And you're having an issue with Doom Emacs, with your config file or you're getting errors or whatever it happens to be. And you're asking these questions to the Emacs community and that's occasionally you get these Emacs snobs that say, well, you should just be using standard GNU Emacs. And if you would have used that, you would have had to build GNU Emacs from the ground up to make it into a proper text editor. And then you'd actually know more about Emacs and then you'd really know what those error messages and you know how to fix your problems because it was so much harder for you to get to where you were going. If you had to start with GNU Emacs, it made you a better Emacs user.  Telling these people that their journey was too easy. They needed to take a rougher journey, a tougher journey to get to where they are, and that would have made them a better Emacs user. Maybe they just want to write some text. Maybe this person is a novelist. They installed Doom Emacs because they didn't want to fool with GNU Emacs and they just want to open up their text editor and actually write something, right, because they actually have work to do, right, just like not everybody wants to install Linux from scratch. Not everybody wants to write Emacs from scratch either. Not everybody wants to install GNU Emacs and then have to install all the plugins and write this massive config file that does all the things out of the box that something like Doom Emacs already comes with. So don't look down on those people that use Doom Emacs. Don't view them as noobs because they use Doom Emacs rather than GNU Emacs like you do. And don't look down on those Ubuntu peasants because they use Ubuntu and you use Arch, by the way, right. Don't have that kind of snob mentality. We don't need that just because they made different software choices than you did that doesn't make you better than them. It doesn't make them better than you. It just makes us different. And our differences, that's what makes this community special. Peace, guys.


This is the third video in a series of videos about Latin and this is about this video is about introductory materials for Latin learners and What we have in front of us is my grandmother's high school Latin textbook from the 1930s Just to let you know things haven't changed all that much On the left hand page. There's a word list and then there's an explanation in English of some of the words and drill and review however at the beginning of the lesson you'll see that there's a Quite a bit of Latin reading Involved but also quite a bit of English explanation and again word lists Drill and review the exercises where they ask you to decline various words and give definitions Translate these sentences into Latin translate these sentences into English um, and this is going to be suspiciously like A lot of other books um It's an older book so it has Color plates added in but that's not what you're interested in But I wanted to show this to you first so you could see that um, well The more things change the less things change This first book is i'm getting started with latin Uh by william linney. Um, it's a beginning textbook. It's very very simple I would not describe it as A serious textbook. However, if you're just interested in A little bit of latin He breaks it down into very very small pieces And you have very simple exercises and the exercise The exercises all have answers in the back of the book. So that's something you're going to want, but it's very gentle. It's not very serious unlike the, um Peter jones book that I showed you for greek. This one doesn't have That english humor in it nor does it have nice adapted passages for you, but It'll get your toes wet Breaks it down keeps it simple For younger children who are homeschooled. We have latin for children by larson and parin Um, and it also is Pretty typical up here at the beginning of the chapter. You've got your paradigms. You have a word list Grammar explanation in english with a couple of latin examples And some exercises And a quiz This is very typical of One end of a spectrum of materials and we call that one end Or at least what I've heard it called is grammar translation And this is very very typical of a grammar translation textbook. There's a paradigm. There's a word list There are exercises and again, this is aimed at younger children 6789 It is not aimed at adults. So it's very simple and bite sized as as it should be um But it's very much on the grammar translation and Here's another book for kids called minimus starting out in latin it is By the people who put out the cambridge latin course. Oh, that's right cambridge press Um, and you'll see that it looks rather different from latin for children over here We have a comic strip Mostly written in latin as as you can see there's not a whole lot. This is all english But these short bits here are in latin and the pictures carry the meaning and it's more of a reading Um, and you're gonna hear me refer to the other end of the spectrum as reading um grammar translation on one end reading on the other and again It's a spectrum. You're neither purely one or purely the other As you can see there's still a grammar explanation And then more pictures showing off How to use the things you have just learned Um, the word lists are shorter, but there's still word lists Right here. Um, this also introduces the culture of roman britain It's very colorful. It's also aimed at younger children And I think it's a really nice intro To latin. It's gentle teaches the kids some useful things But as I said, it's the other end of the spectrum It's more of a reading textbook as opposed to a grammar translation textbook, but like I said It's a spectrum. It's not strictly one or the other This is henley latin Zoom in a little bit here. This is henley latin. It is A reprint from the 50s um It is very traditional. It is very catholic And if you are not traditional or catholic, this might be too traditional or too catholic for you um And again, here's the unit. Here's an explanation of the grammar Here's your vocabulary list more grammar and of course because it's for high school students. There's more Work and here are some exercises where you translate From latin into english and then from english into latin and more grammar explanation Um, the author of this book is very proud of the fact that there are no pictures in it Um Or rather very few pictures. There are some and this is more on the grammar translation end Another book aimed at high school students is this one It's ecce romani and this is more of a reading textbook ecce romani and the Cambridge latin course are more Representative of this style Let's see And each chapter will start off with a reading in latin Some comprehension questions. Um, since this is a newer textbook. There's go-on lines with it There are notes explaining the reading more readings in latin And then some grammar explanation And one of the things i've noticed with the reading textbooks it tends to be reading first then grammar explanation You never really get all the way away from heavy amounts of english in latin textbooks and there's just There doesn't seem to be much way around it except for one This is not it, but i'd like to point it out Since i did a little work On this book not much, but a little little tiny tiny bit. Um, this is latin for the new millennium from bolchezi carducci it is written by tunberg and minkeva and What i like about this book it's kind of a hybrid between a strict reading method and a strict grammar translation It's it really tries to split the difference Um, but what's really nice is that the latin readings that they have in this book are adapted from Real latin literature. So if you go through the latin for the new millennium course You will not only have Learned latin, but you'll have learned who the major figures within the latin literary History are this one happens to be a rasmus, but again over here. There's the reading Here's the vocabulary that goes with it Grammar explanations grammar explanations more exercises More exercises another grammar explanation more exercises Um, this is aimed at i would say high school level though. I hear some colleges are using it quite happily um I've taught from this book and i think it's i think it's good I think it's good. I think it might be a little bit difficult for a self-learner to use but nevertheless, i think the The adapted readings from literary works Make this so strong that it's worth Worth using as you can see it's got a lot of pictures in it And here we have an adapted reading from utopia I think this is a really wonderful textbook. I wish it were more in the reading direction because Nothing like reading latin to teach you how to read latin. Um, I wish there were more but You know, I didn't write it. This is looking at latin What it is is not a textbook. It is a reference book And for those of you who get serious into latin at some point You're going to want to get a reference book of some sort or another and what this one is going to do is Explain various features of latin like this one happens to explain on this page ablative of manner and this one ablative of description and it's going to show you how those work I like this like here special place constructions also known as the locative and this page is a positives I like it because the explanations are kept nice and simple Clear to the point visually well organized Very friendly for younger students Now for two last textbooks. This is Wilox latin and it doesn't really look like the Wilox latin that you're going to find Either at amazon.com or Barnes and Noble because it's really old I bought this I don't know 22-23 years ago and as you can see the pages are nice and yellow and Wilox latin is a college textbook. It is meant for adults I understand that the new editions of it have Have answer keys so for those of you learning on your own you can do that And again, it's very much grammar translation Here is the grammar explanation. Here's a bit more Here by now is the vocabulary list that should be familiar to you and translate that out of latin A nice thing they have is um sententiae on tequi which are actual bits of unadapted latin to get you excited about what the latin is and This looks like a short reading passage And again, this is this is an old edition. It is not the current edition out there So the new edition may look substantially different, but at the heart of it. It's the same It's a grammar translation textbook. It moves at a serious pace. It is for adults Um, it is strangely popular in the homeschool community But this is really a textbook for college age students this last one Is lingua latina per se illustrata And I really like it Because there's not a word of english in it outside of the copyright page This entire book is written in latin The title page is in latin everything is in latin except for the copyright page And unfortunately you've kind of got a look at mine with my notes in it. There's a map of europe There's a picture and it's labeled with opidum Fluvius and insula so you can See what those three things are and he starts off very very simply roma in italia est italia in europa est grechia in europa est And this is really nice because he's relying on the fact that Latin uses the same alphabet that we do A lot of the place names are going to be familiar and If you don't know what in means As a speaker of english or any other modern european language You should be able to figure it out really easily based on The word for in and whatever your native language is And it moves along he's got pictures he has notes in the sides Explaining the differences between various Between new words He'll tell you that this one means the opposite of that one this word is Means about the same thing as he takes it bit by bit by bit And in theory It it is possible to teach yourself latin without ever resorting to english What's really cool about this is that even the grammar explanations are in latin Um, he uses the latin terminology like this one happens to be, um, Masculinum femeninum neutrum this happens to be gender And then he introduces genetivus, which is the genitive case And he has exercises pensum ah This one you just fill in the endings Pensum be you fill in the word Pensum k you answer in complete sentences There's a Ever familiar vocabulary list there, but the difference is in this textbook There is no definition. You've got to figure out what the definition is all on your own Um, I've used this book with students as well Um, I can't recommend it highly enough It may be a little tricky to use with self-study, but if you apply yourself to it, it'll be okay um I can't say enough about this textbook. It's all it is all latin if you want to learn how to read latin Read latin I'm not a huge fan of grammar translation textbooks as you may have guessed um And you know sometimes you do need an explanation In english as they here's what this is. Here's how it works But I'd try to shy away from it as much as I could Some people learn that way where they get an explanation and okay, and they understand and they apply the rule and they're good to go I'm unfortunately a little bit stupider than that and I need to be beat over the head With about a hundred examples of here's how it works before I understand. Oh, so that's how that works And that's why I like I prefer that method um Anyway, that's a short introduction to some of the things available But by no means is this all of what is available um up next books for reading unadapted latin


If you watched the national champions last season, then you couldn't have missed running back Clyde Edwards-Alair. He's smaller in size at 5'7", 207 pounds, but he's got the tools to be effective in today's NFL. On an elite LSU team last year, CEH was still able to capture a reception share of 12.9%. That was a top 5 number in this year's class. He also ranked 7th within the class in total yards for team play, showing that he not only was productive, but he was productive within the context of his own team and that team was the best team in college football. The easy comparison to make for Edwards-Alair is another shorter running back with a hyphenated name, and that's Maurice Jones-Drew. MJD was more athletic, so we shouldn't assume that type of career trajectory, but they had really similar final season numbers in two key metrics, reception share, and yards per team play.