Now associated with this concept of pair of tangents is director circle. So what is a director circle? Let's understand this concept. Director circle is the concept which says that the locus of all those points from where you can draw two such tangents. So locus of all those points from where you can draw two such tangents which are perpendicular to each other, then the points will trace the director circle, right? It's the locus of such points. So director circle is the locus of such points from where you can draw two tangents to the circle which are perpendicular to each other. So it's locus of the point, you can say locus of the point of intersection of perpendicular tangents to perpendicular tangents to a given circle, okay? How do I find the equation of that? Now guys, very, very simple, let's again use the fact that equation of a pair of tangents is t square equal to ss1, okay? So what will be t in this case? You will say xx1 plus yy1. So I'm taking the standard form of the equation of a circle, x square plus y square is equal to a square. So t square is equal to s. This is going to be s. This is going to be s1, okay? Now if this represents two tangents which are perpendicular to each other, always remember this one important thing, remember that if this represents a pair of straight lines which are made by such lines which are perpendicular to each other, so if this represents two perpendicular lines, if this represents two perpendicular lines, then a plus b will always be 0. So this plus this will always be 0. This plus this will always be 0. Just remember this, very, very important concept. I'll be proving it when I'm doing the straight lines, a pair of straight lines concept with you, but as of now just remember this concept. So now this is the combined equation of the pair of straight lines. So what is the coefficient of x square? Coefficient of x square you will say is nothing but x square on your left side and minus x square plus k square minus a square on the right side. So altogether it will be a square minus k square, okay? Similarly the coefficient of y square term would be what? The coefficient of y square term would be k square minus h square plus k square minus a square, which is going to be a square minus h square. And just now we discussed that coefficient of x square and y square should give you a 0, should give you a 0. It means a square minus k square plus a square minus h square should give you 0. That means h square plus k square should be equal to 2a square and if you generalize this you will get x square plus y square is equal to 2a square as the equation of the director circle. So this is the equation of the director circle, okay? Few pointers that you need to keep in mind. One is that you could have solved this equation very easily had you known the fact that the director circle is concentric with the director circle. So this circle is going to be concentric with the original circle. That means both will have the same center, okay? If that fact is known we can actually find the radius very very easily, okay? So this is going to be your radius of the director circle. This is a, this is going to be 45 degrees because each will be 45, 45. So this will be r will be root of 2a. So if you have to write the equation of any circle whose center is at origin and radius is root of 2a then you can easily write down the equation like this, okay? So that gives me the equation of the director circle as x square plus y square is equal to 2a square that we have already proved, okay? So few pointers guys that I want to discuss with respect to director circle. The first pointer being director circle is concentric with the given circle, with the given circle. That means they have the same center and secondly the radius of the director circle will be root 2 times the radius of the given circle. So remember these two facts you will always be able to write down the equation of a director circle very very easily. Any questions so far guys? Is it clear? Please type CLR on your screen if it is clear, alright. So we will move on to the last concept of the day which is the concept of chord of contact. What is chord of contact? Chord of contact is basically a concept which says that if you draw two tangents from an external point x1, y1, okay? The line joining the point of contact P and Q, this line is called the chord of contact. The line of the chord of contact is given by t equal to 0. That is let's say this circle is x square plus y square is equal to a square, then the chord of contact equation is given as this. It's very much similar to the equation of the, it's exactly the same as the equation of a tangent but note that this chord of contact will not be the tangent because your x1, y1 doesn't lie on the circle, it is outside the circle. So even though the representation of the equation is same, please note that the same representation is now representing something else, okay? How do we prove this? How do we prove this fact? Very simple. Let's say this point is alpha 1 beta 1 and this point is alpha 2 beta 2, okay? So if I ask you, write down the equation of tangent drawn at alpha 1 beta 1, you would say very simple, it will be x alpha 1, y beta 1 equal to a square, correct? Similarly if I ask you equation of tangent drawn at alpha 2 beta 2, you will say x alpha 2, y beta 2 equal to a square. And both these tangents, both 1 and 2 is satisfied by x1, y1 point. So as you can see here, this x1, y1 will pass through the tangent drawn at p also and tangent drawn at q also, isn't it? And if it satisfies both the, if both the tangent is satisfied by this point, I can say substitute x1, y1 in both 1 and 2. So if you substitute it in 1, you get x1 alpha 1, y1 beta 1 equal to, equal to a square and we get x1 alpha 2, y1 beta 2 equal to a square. Now guys, look at it very, very carefully, these two equations suggests that, it implies that alpha 1 beta 1 and alpha 2 beta 2 satisfy x1, x, y1, y equal to a square, isn't it? Because just replace your x with alpha 1 and y with beta 1, you will get the very first equation over here, clear? Similarly, if you replace your x with alpha 2 and y with beta 2, you will get the second equation over here, correct? So it, both of these suggest that alpha 1 beta 1 and alpha 2 beta 2 satisfy this equation and this is clearly the equation of a line. And the only line which is satisfied by both alpha 1 and alpha 1 beta 1 and alpha 2 beta 2 has to be the chord of contact, has to be the chord of contact. So see how dicey can be this proof is the chord of contact. So hence the chord of contact equation is going to be this expression, which is your expression written over here, t equal to 0. Now a very interesting thing, very, very interesting thing that you will observe over here is that if you start moving your x1, y1 closer to the circle, your chord of contact will start moving towards the periphery, right? So basically, as you shift it closer to the circle, you would realize that chord of contact will come closer and closer, okay? So if I put it over here, it will become like this. If I put it over here, it will become like this. So ultimately when this x1, y1 lands up on the circle, so when x1, y1 lands up on the circle, lands up on the circle, you realize that chord of contact will become a tangent at that point, will become the tangent, will become the tangent at that point. So see the beauty of the scene, that's why the same equation is being represented, the same equation is representing both the things, because the same chord of contact will end up becoming the tangent if this point x1, y1 happens to lie on the circle. Is that clear? Okay, so we'll end up this session by a quick problem. So last problem for the day. Question is, I'll draw it better, I'll better draw the question so that you can understand it in a simpler language. Okay, so these are two concentric circles, okay? This circle has a equation of x square plus y square, in fact, there's a third one also. So the outer one has a equation of x square plus y square is equal to a square. The second one has an equation of x square plus y square is equal to b square. And the third one has the equation x square plus y square is equal to c square, okay? Now guys, listen to this question very, very carefully. The question says, if the chord of contact, if the chord of contact drawn from, drawn from a point on the circle x square plus y square is equal to a square to the circle x square plus y square is equal to b square, touches the circle, touches the circle x square plus y square is equal to c square, then show that a, b, c are in GP, a, b, c are in GP. So basically what I want to convey over here is this, this is a scenario right now. So any point you have taken on, let's say the outer circle a, which forms a chord of contact on the second circle and this touches the circle. So it's a tangent at this point. So show that a, b, c are in, are in GP. Can you one minute to do this? Very simple question. Any idea guys? Anybody could do it. So let's discuss this. If I take this point to be a cos theta, a sin theta, okay? Then I'm drawing a chord of contact from a on to the second circle, correct? Okay. So I can write the equation of a chord of contact as t equal to 0. So x, x1 plus yy1 equal to b square. Remember you're drawing the chord of contact to this circle, correct? And the point is actually a cos theta, a sin theta. So instead of x1, you'll use a cos theta instead of y1, you'll use a sin theta, okay? So this will be your chord of contact bc. This is the equation of bc. Now this line is tangent to the inner circle, correct? If it is tangent to the inner circle, we have learned that the distance from the center of the circle to this point should be c, yes or no? So distance of origin, distance of origin from this line which I call it as 1 must be c, correct? So that would be mod b square by under root of a square cos square theta b square sin square theta equal to c, correct? Which is nothing but mod b square. b square is only positive so it doesn't need any mod for it. So b square divided by under root of a square, okay? a is also positive because it's the radius. So it's going to be this. So b square is going to be ac and hence ab and cr in gp. So this is how we can prove that this situation is going to be true, okay? So guys, thank you very much for coming online. So we did a lot of things today. I think I would need just one more class to wrap up circles. And then we can quickly go to parabola, ellipse and hyperbola in a similar way, okay? Thank you so much for coming online over and out from Centrum Academy here. Thank you so much for coming online over and out from Centrum Academy here.


Good morning, John. What really blew me away is the sense of community, the sense of excitement, all of this energy that's surrounding this event. Seeing how YouTube changes. First VidCon I ever went to, I was a viewer, so I watched things like this and I was right in there. Video to me is a way to make people feel like they belong. You are basically the early pioneers of a new and different media. I wasn't seeing people like me represented in television. This is my first VidCon and I feel very old. Who tells me you or others put some money?  June 23rd to the 25th in Anaheim and registration is available now. Because VidCon 2015 went pretty well, we're basically going to be doing the same thing we did last year just with a little more. We'll have more stages, we'll have more space, we'll have more special guests. Our goal with VidCon has always been to reflect the state of online video and thus as online video has grown, so has VidCon. But one thing that we have them in particularly good at reflecting I feel like is the explosion in gaming content and I feel bad about that because streamers and YouTube gamers are huge. It's a huge thing and I feel like we just haven't been good at inviting that in and making it a priority at VidCon so I really wanna do that this year. In order to make sure I do at least an okay job of that, I've just been trying to understand the YouTube gaming world and the Twitch world as well. It's so diverse, it's so huge. A few people watching want to suggest any gamers to me or any interesting things in the gaming world I should check out, please do that in the comments. I'll be looking. Most things that will be pretty much the same. We have the same tracks, the creator track, the community track and the industry track and the signings and photos will be taken at the same way that were last year with the lottery where you rank your favorite creators and then based on your preferences and availability you get some signings and that way you don't have to wait in line for hours and hours and I know some people do want to wait in line for hours and hours but first come first service how we did it in 2014 and that turned out kind of bad. Other completely unrelated to VidCon news, the Project for Awesome is gonna be December 11th and 12th so if you wanna make a Project for Awesome video you gotta start thinking about it. If you don't know what the Project for Awesome is, we will be talking more about it during Pizzamas. If you don't know what Pizzamas is, I'm about to tell you. We celebrate Pizzamas here on the Vlogbrothers channel and last year we celebrated that with two weeks of Brotherhood 2.0 style videos which means a video every weekday from one of us, Hank or John. So starting Monday there will be a video every weekday for two weeks and it will be great. And in addition to that we do a bunch of limited edition pizza John shirts. This is one from last year. You will not be able to get it this year but you will be able to get a number of very cool ones that I will not show you until Pizzamas begins which it will on Monday with my video and then John, I will see you on Tuesday.


I'm Carol Irons. I'm an Abonackie elder. We are now doing the Abonackie Cultural Regeneration Project. We're being hosted here by Northwood Stewardship Center, being able to stay at this lovely facility where we have room and board and we conduct training programs. At this point, training programs for Abonackie adults who are then going back into their communities to provide more cultural training to community members. Now, to the point, we're going to have an excerpt that won't hurt. If somebody's... I'm going to have more room on my mind, too. It's my aging eyes. I said, I want to be back. She's going to sing a lullery. Yeah, she's going to sing a lullery. I heard that Samuel was coming. She said he's a grommet. She said he's a grommet. And what you're going to want to do, and it's easier to not work off the school to get a good, good, long, long piece. That's the thing. It didn't actually punch me. It just wouldn't mean it made slits in it, but... Did they also use turtle shells for rattles? Yes. Yeah, I've got a turtle shell rattle, but it's so heavy now for my grip and I just don't use it. I find these to be the nicest. You do have to remember with raw hide, folks. If you're outside using your rattle and it gets wet and it collapses, it's going to be just what you're working with now. Raw hide. That's a good point. So you don't use it out in the rain. Teaching you has many layers of meaning. I have not been able to confirm in Ebenaki country, or Wabanaki country, that much detail. So I just put it out there because one thing I was taught and one thing that was confirmed is that medicine wheel teaches. The medicine wheel represents a philosophy of life. Yes. So if you carry it out to those other details, they make sense. The things that are spoken of are the symbols that you see at Pow Wow a lot and people will just say, well, it was just what we had at Pow Wow. That's the physical representation, but there's a whole lot of teachings involved with it that are not physical. You see a circle and a circle all over the planet with Indigenous peoples everywhere and also with many cultures that are more urbanized. The circle is a symbol of the forever motion of energy. They'll talk about eternity because no matter where you stop on the circle, you're at a point of another beginning. So the circle is motion, it's movement, but it's also wholeness. And as you keep moving, you return to your source. Now, the spiral is a modification of that where you circle, but you don't come to exactly and precisely the point where you left off. Hopefully as we're growing, we're coming to a little different point each time we come around with experience. So the spiral to me is a very special symbol, but I haven't seen that as much here. You see it out west on the rock carvings quite a bit. So there's the circle and then there's the center and the center is the still point of balance. No matter where you are on the circle, you're equidistant from the center. So when people stand in a circle, no head is higher than the other. We're all on the circle and the circle, of course, is enclosing, enveloping, it's accepting. And the point of balance keeps everything equal and fair. Now, I've seen these colors different, and they're different with different nations. I had to correct it from the Seneca, which I don't know if the Seneca are the same as all the Iroquoian people are not. But this was what John Running here corrected me about for some of the colors. But in the east was the red. This is the east point, and it kind of has a whole quadrant. Can you see it? Yes, it's when the fire comes up in the sky, Father, Son, it's the return of the fire, and they know that there's fire in the belly of the earth, and it's when the new life, the new awakening, that's where spring lives, and sunrise are in the east. You know, so it all kind of fends. The next direction is south. Wabanaki used yellow, as far as I can determine, primarily from John Running here. Because when the sun is directly overhead in the summer, it's more yellow. Yeah, it's paler, it's very hot, but it tends to be paler than at the horizons. So, and of course, summer is the time of the power of growth, but some nations refer to great grandmother growth. I have not heard that in Wabanaki country, but it's a nice statement because there is a real power and energy there, and it's a living energy. In the west is the black because of the nightfall, night coming. It's also the time of autumn, and the time when when the exterior things are going to rest or dying down, but the root is storing the life, so it's underground in the dark. And from the west come the storm clouds. Well, in this part of the country, you know, and in the north is the time of the snow, the time of the white hairs, some of us, the time of the elders, for sure, but it's the winter time. And now you can also see the spirit keepers, again as corrected by John Running here. So it's eagle in the east, and I don't know of any nation on Turtle Island that doesn't have eagle in the east as the spirit keeper. And one of the things about eagle is that it flies the highest and takes our prayers to creator, and it can fly so high you lose sight of it. Now, I've heard two different versions. I've heard, and this is not Seneca. This is this was from Abenaki, as far as I know, raccoon, but I've had one or two people say they thought it was Red Fox. In either case, it's the trickster. This is, and as we go along with this, you'll understand why, but the trickster is the one that kind of tests you, throws a few ringers and you have to work things out. In the west, the spirit keeper is the black bear here in the northeast. And I think in all the eastern seaboard, in the west, it's usually grizzly bear. There are some people that have brown bear. The big one would be surprised if people in the far north had bowler bear, but that I don't know. But it's bear. So it's almost always eagle in the east and bear in the west. The one in the south, the trickster in the west is coyote. But in the southwest, it's a jumping, jumping mouse. So different ones there. In the north, the spirit keeper for Wabanaki, as I've been told, is moose. Moose nurtures the people in their times because that was the safest time to hunt moose. When the deep snows would make it a little harder for them to kick or move as fast. A lot of the plains people, it's buffalo. And I guess in the southwest too. Now we used to have a woods buffalo long, long ago. Oh yeah, yeah. But I haven't heard of anybody saying that. The north is moose as much as I've heard. So those are the spirit keepers of the four directions. You've got the colors, you've got the four directions. You have the circle, you have the center. You have two pads. As if the spring is the new beginning time, the sunrise, the spring. So when people talk about your birth, you're born in your spring. Wherever, you know, I was born in October, but I was born in my spring. That was the beginning of my lifetime. And the black path across is your earth walk. And it's usually shown as a black path. I guess it might be another color of them. That's your earth walk. In other words, you go from your birth to your death.  So from your birth to your death, you walk on your earth walk. But the other thing you're walking at the same time, this is another layer of meaning. It's like transparencies. So you've got the primary circle now, but then you've got these different meanings. And each new transparency talks about the medicine wheel as the kind of context or frame of reference for it. So in your other walk, you are walking from your south to your north. And that's your spiritual walk. You're going from your time of confusion and testing and decision making to your time of wisdom as the elders in the north. Of course, the trick is to stay balanced in the center, theoretically. So that's the most basic understanding of the medicine wheel. And if you want to stop right there, that's fine. The other kind of teachings go on with a child being born in its east. And so it's, it's young childhood is in the east. It's adolescence is in the south. It's testing. It's testing the limits. It's being tested. It's making some choices that are going to bring some consequences without a whole lot of experience. But, you know, so this is the time of testing. And then this is the time of the adult raising their family, doing their jobs, working, providing for the families, learning more. But that's this is, and this is, this is more harvest and consequences. So when you've made choices here, you tend to get into certain skills, certain paths of work, certain family dynamics and community dynamics. And then the last is the time of the elders, the time of the white years. That's when you moved into your time of wisdom, supposedly, hypothetically. And just put that out there. But it's, you've learned a lot. You've experienced a great deal. You've learned a lot. You've digested what you could, made sense of it as you could. And it's the time of turning it back and giving it back to community before you move into it. Now, some people use it and make reference to it in terms of events in their life.  That takes its turn. It may be six months or it may be 60 years, depends on how things go. But it goes through periods of testing and learning and stuff, kind of settles into some patterns and routines.  And so on and on into the older years and in the ending, a car accident. Boom. Then you go through, you know, am I going to live or not? What's happening to me and making decisions? No, don't do that surgery. But yeah, I'll do this. And so on and you live with the consequences or don't and move into, you know, coming to terms with it, the whatever healing can occur, whatever reconciliation can occur and then move on into the next phase of your life. So it's that kind of philosophy which isn't spelled out in books, but and that was from the Seneca Elder was telling me that further way of looking at the medicine wheel as a philosophy of life. But only the basics of it are what I've learned to be Wabanaki or Abenaki. What about that? That's the traditions preserver. Yeah, yeah. And the reason that was important to me is that's what we're about. Yeah. These two symbols. So if you want to put these later on your rattle, you can or on a, if you want to, you don't have the nurturer, the caregiver and the teacher or the teacher. We also did a very brief smudging. There is more to smudging. You're certainly not obligated to memorize a group of prayers because she did it. So I've got to say what she said, please do not do that. But you kind of speak from the heart. And when you're smudging, typically you're honoring creator, kitsumenito, and you're honoring Mother Earth and Turtle Island, if you want. And you honor each of the four directions. You start in this part of the country, you start in the East, and you always move sun wise. Well, when you think of the annual cycle, you go from spring to summer, right? Clockwise, for those of you so oriented to technology. You go from East to South and West and North. Sun wise. Yeah. In the, in the own way of speaking of it. And what you do is honor each of the directions. I tend to speak some of the things like honor the East, home of Eagle, place where sun rises, where the spring lives, where the new beginnings come from. And I'm holding the smudge bowl up to the East as close as I can determine. I've done it backwards before, so don't get too uptight about that. The spirits know we speak with a good heart. I then move to the South or hold the bowl up toward the South. And we're honoring South Wind, home of the trickster whose name I don't like to call. I've had enough of that this past week or two. Okay. So, you know, you're honoring the direction of summer, the power of growth, if you want to, and the trickster whose name we do not call. But you can call it if you want to. You will live with whatever you call in. Then you move to the West, home of Bear, who's the spirit keeper of the West. It's also the home of the Thunder Rush. It's the direction of harvest, the time of sunset. You know, so you can relate it either to the seasons, to the kind of things that happen in a lifetime. It's when we move toward the spiritual world. It's the time of consequences from the choices you made before. And then you move to the North. And the North is time of winter, time of the elders. And it's also considered time of healing and transformation. We transform into the spirit approach. Or transform on into the next new beginning. And that's usually, at least in the teachings I've had, the direction of spiritual wisdom and healing. Now, when I do a full smudging and honoring, I do the six directions, a creator, Mother Earth, East, South, West and North. And then I honor all my relatives. And I kind of may make a little circle. All my relatives, the standing ones, which are the plant people, the four-legged, the winged, the creepy crawlers, the swimmers. I'm honoring all of them because they're with us in the sacred circle. They are our brothers and sisters. We are not superior to them. In many ways, we are inferior to them. Without them, we cannot live. And we need to humble ourselves a little more in this world about that. Because we depend on them. I also honor the grandfathers and the grandmothers. And again, I might circle, sort of a little bit, the smudge bowl. Just in my hand, just thinking of whatever direction they're hanging out in. I'm sorry. The grandfathers and the grandmothers. Thank you. In other words, the ancestors in the spirit worlds. Now, a lot of people do a center point, either yourself.  But you've done the honorings. What you do when you're doing those honorings, you're creating a sacred space. So this is not something to be flip about because you're honoring all that is. And we are just one strand on that web of life. And by honoring all that is, you're putting yourself within that context as one part.  So it's something that you kind of do in a sacred manner with the sense of awe and appreciation, gratitude.  Now, we will do that tonight. When we do it, it may start becoming automatic and you do your own prayer. I'm not telling you what to say. But your thinking of creator, your thinking of Mother Earth, many times smudgings are done without a word. But the person doing it and those who are participating are tuned into that. So you're thinking it, you're feeling it. And you start with creator and Mother Earth and you do each of the four directions. And then if you can remember to keep going, you do the ancestors and the elders or the grandfathers and the grandmothers, however you want to word it, and you do all your relatives. But those prayers, also the effect it has when there's a group of people is it starts bringing everybody into sync. It's amazing how it starts in energy flowing. And as you get more sensitized to energy, this is going to be important in your work because you begin to feel it. You can actually start feeling the energy flowing. And you know that everybody is becoming entrained. In other words, entrainment, where people's mental process and even heartbeat starts coming into sync with each other. So the beginning of a ceremony is really important because that's what you're doing. You're bringing everybody into the same pulse, the same flow of energy, the same resonance. And resonance is like when you hit a tuning fork and all the other things start vibrating at the same vibration. That's what you want in a ceremony. So we're working in the energy field as well as with the help we have from the spirit world. The pipe is an altar. It's not something you do to show off, to impress a lot of people, to disrupt some other function because you're kind of important and you're walking in to do a pipe. That is such an abuse of our sacred, sacred ceremonies. And the pipe is not, we don't have the words in English. It's real problematic because speaking in English, we don't have a word that conveys the sacredness when we say pipe.  So we're going to go over a little bit about pipe. I was told by the clan mother of the Seneca Wolf clan when we had done a ceremony like what we're going to do tonight. And I didn't know what I was doing. I was just brand new with this. This was done many decades ago. So we would go out at winter. It was middle of winter. We got snowed in. It was awful. This was out in western New York state. Kind of a flat-ish area and the wind blowing and the snow packing in like everything. And with the wind it packs it and the snow plows couldn't get through. And in the evening, after dark, we'd go out to the little teaching lodge, which is just a little one-room cabin smaller than this room.  And she had an eagle feather. You'd hear her voice.  There was no fire. There's nothing pitch dark. And her disembodied voice, the other side of this little room, said that she had an eagle feather and she was going to pass it. And she said, you hold it a little bit. She said, don't hold it too long. But if everybody's quiet and you hold it, it may bring you a teaching. The grandparents that we've done the ceremony and stuff, the grandparents circle you and it's totally safe. You're very nurtured. It's nice. And she said, you know, just hold it and see if an image comes to you or a phrase or a word or whatever and then pass it to the next person. Well, you're all sitting there totally silent. Nobody knows what's going on. Times passing. You're kind of shivering. Finally somebody bumps you because you can't see anything. So you can't see the feather. You can't see their hand, but they're, you know, and they pass his feather to you and you hold it and you either you get something or not and then you try to find the next person's hand and pass it. So she did that. Finally, I guess it got back around to her and then she sent it back around a second time for a little bit.  And what I saw was pipe. I had never seen an Indian pipe. This was way back in the seventies or eighties. And what I saw was the profile vision of a pipe. I didn't know what that was about. When I was holding the feather, yes. And then passed it on. And the second time it came, I think if I remember right, I think I saw some things on the stem of the pipe and passed it on. So anyway, we got back to house and we were all supposed to debrief and say what we saw. And some people got a word or a phrase and and she said, well, okay, that's that's they're telling you something and it was okay. I didn't know. I didn't know anything. And so the next day she took me aside and she said, you need to make a pipe. And meanwhile, she had gone and done her own thing trying to understand different people's things. And the next day she'd take each one aside and tell them. And she said, you have to make a pipe. You need to be a pipe holder. It was like, I think that's a lot of responsibility. And I didn't think I want that, you know, because it is a lot of responsibility. It's not a show off thing. It's not just, oh, every Indian has a pipe. I got to have a pipe. A lot of people have this as a cutraman. They got to have a ribbon shirt. They got to have a pipe and they got to have a feather out of their hair or something. And unfortunately, that's a lot of what we're left with. And I was a little resistant. And anyway, she talked to me and said, no, when you go home, you're going to go home pretty soon and you're going to make a pipe. And so anyway, so we did some more work about why in the world. And she said, your people have lost a lot. You need to be teaching. You need to first learn yourself and then you have to teach. So that's kind of where it came from. And it came from Seneca country. And I'm right up front about that. Grandmother Doris did not know medicine, will teachings, but she said, you do have to keep doing what you're doing. I didn't think I was doing much of anything at that point. But she, you know, you sit down with grandmother Doris and she'd do a reading on you if she wanted to get to know you. And I hadn't asked for that. We were just visiting to pay her our respects because we were from the other side of the state. But she very promptly did that. And she said, you have this job and this is what you're here for. You need to keep learning and you need to keep. So that's, that's why I'm here. You will many times have teachings from Lakota. Their limited knowledge is that pretty much pipe teachings are universal. There are variations with different teachers and there are variations with different peoples. But pretty much the pipe is an altar. And every Native American nation that I know of, it's, it's one of the most holy ceremonies we have. Because mine is a teaching fight, I can take it out and do show and tell and things like that, you know, which most of us wouldn't do usually. I was lucky enough to be gifted. This is extremely expensive. This kind of cloth, this is wool, the old timey wool cloth with the selvedge and I was gifted a yard of it. It was at that time like $36 a yard. It's worn out. But and we keep our pipes wrapped in red cloth. This was the pipe I saw that she told me to go make. Now when I made it and I knew it was great. And I knew that Indian pipes were red pipe stones. But what the explanation was is this is the stone of your land. And this is what your people made pipes out of. They also made them of clay. There are clay pipes have been found also. And it's a turtle shape, as you can see. All I knew of was a briar pipe, so it's got a nice big hole. Grandmother, your way know and said, well, that's because you're teaching and you're working with groups. So that's okay. And it's a stone that's not hard to work, actually. Soapstone, right? Soapstone. And so I came home and had to get a piece of soapstone. We do have soapstone quarry in Vermont down around Proctor, Vermont, somewhere. The problem is you cannot go to the quarry. I could not go and gift Mother Earth and get a piece of pipe stone straight from the earth. It's a safety thing. I understand it. They've got it fenced off. You can't even go there. They have a little shed where they cut up pieces of stone to make various items. You know, the long ago they made these flat things so that you could put wrap in your blanket when you were riding horse and buggy. You know, to keep people's feet warm or people put it in the bottom of their bed and those kind of things. And there's some. I had to sleep in a barn with it that night with a piece of soapstone. Yeah. Really. Yeah. Because it'll hold the heat quite a long time. Yeah. So it's as traditional as they get otherwise. It's got the four bands for the four directions. It's got the turtle looking outward because my job is teaching and sharing. I also do some healing work. But so the stone is the bone of Mother Earth. It's one reason this is so sacred. The pipe itself, the bone of Mother Earth with the with the bowl, regardless of which stone, the red pipe stone is not the only one now. They're also that people are making pipes out of a lot of other things. You'll see some commercial pipes where people have made them out of marble or various really hard stones are beautiful. Often when you find them in a gift store, they're already joined the stem and the pipe and they're people who know what they're doing. When they're making these to sell, they make them joined and they glue them. They make them. You can't separate them. When you're dealing with a pipe that's truly a ceremonial pipe, you don't keep it joined. You only join it when you're doing the pipe ceremony. And it is separate otherwise. It's carried separately. And the stem is often they say Schumack, but I was told to make the stem out of cedar, which is a very special wood to me. I have the colors, the red and yellow reverse Seneca colors, but that's all that honors the teacher who brought this from a spirit world to me, what I was supposed to do. And other things that have meaning rabbit to me speaks of gentleness and humility. It's a reminder to me because I can be kind of hard headed and fierce sometimes. Fox does some special work with me. And this is this was a bird called hollow the hawk that good friends of mine were caretaking until it died. So the stem clearly is one of the standing ones. So we're bringing the universe together in the pipe. We have mother earth. We have the standing ones. Some people put no direct no decorations or accompaniments on their stem. Other people in the Dakota country a lot, they take long springs of sage and wrap them on the pipe stem. But there are others that'll hang a feather or two or or a string of feathers or whatever. So that's it's partly different nations, but it's also partly individual. I didn't have Abinaki teachings for this.  Just understand that some of its individual, some of it may be by nation, but we didn't have that available. So that's the stem. Now, when you join them, you do it very ceremonially. And the pipe ceremony itself, you'd be taught that if you were going to be carrying a pipe. But when you join it, you've already been into the ceremony. Everything's been smudged. There have been prayers. You've you've you you ceremonially join it. And then you put in your pinches of tobacco with your honorings of the directions creator and mother earth and the four directions. And I put in the other beings because to me that's part of what my work is, is the web of life, our relationship with all it is. Some people don't put the other ones in. But to me, the grandfathers and the grandmothers are guiding us. And that's terribly important to me. That's an individual thing. But the prayers for creator and mother earth and one touches the earth and puts that engine and the four directions, that's pretty standard. And then you join and well, they're joined before that. And then when they're joined, then you would proceed to light the pipe and pass it. Now, when the pipe is lit, I was taught that you hold it in your left hand with the bowl always in your hand. Now, a lot of pipes, it's hard to fit them just right. And they can break apart fall apart if you don't and you don't want that to happen in ceremony. So when you've got the pipe and the stem joined, if the stem is resting in the crook of your arm and the bowl is in your hand, you're very secure with it. I often, even when it's in the pipe bag, carry it that way, just to be very respectful. But some people are carrying the pipe bag around and I don't tend to do that. But you know, again, that's an individual thing. But this is what I was taught.   The smoke is the prayers going to great mystery. So every pinch you've put in that pipe is a prayer and honoring or a prayer. Because after you do the honorings, you may put in pinches of prayer for people's health or for this project we're starting to work on or for this upcoming conference that I'm hopeful something good will come of it. Let me lift pipe before the conference and you can do that in your home before you would go or you can do it with the participants if they're willing. But you would put a prayer for the good outcome or a good process in this conference or council. You know, you can put the different prayers you need. I don't tend to mix a whole lot of prayers at once. If I have two or three people who have asked for prayers for healing, I can do them all in one pipe. Once you start smoking pipe, it's a timeless time. When you do pipe ceremony, as when you do sweat lodge ceremony, you can't be on a schedule. Well, I got 40 minutes. I'll do a quick pipe. I can't do it that way. And I just don't think that's where you're at because you actually can kind of go into a late trance sort of your shifting. Your brainwaves are shifting and you are more able to get nudges from the spirit world. You're certainly doing some holy work. And so it's part of the respect and all that you're not rushing it or timing it. So that's that's basically what pipe is about. I would urge if anybody feels drawn to pipe that you seek out someone who gives you pipe teachings. But basically that's what pipes about when you participate in a pipe ceremony. You've brought in your breath, you've brought the water and the breath, which helps transform the tobacco that's been lit and smoldering to make smoke. And it's the smoke that carries your prayers to creator. So you've got, you've got the breath, you've got the water, you've got the earth, the stone of mother earth, you've got the all your relatives with the standing ones and whatever else you may have. So it's, it's the universe. And you're an active participant in that. And you can put one prayer, you can put several prayers, you always smoke it till it's finished. You don't get halfway and say, Oh, the phone's ringing. Sorry. Set it aside or put it out. No, you always you sit right there. I've had people walk in when I was doing pipe ceremony. I didn't even look up. And if they were respectful, they either backed out or they just sat off to the side. I would finish the ceremony. And ceremonially, it is finished and you separate it and and set it aside or clean it. I would dump this into the smudge bowl, the ashes. But later, I may take this in, I have one toothbrush that's dedicated to the pipe and the and the smudge bowl. And I will use the toothbrush to get some of the charrots and wash them. But and I have a we use coat hangers now and I have one of copper that I made that to to get because if this gets plugged, you're not going to pipe, you're not going to smoke your pipe where well, so you've got to you've got to keep it clean. Well, that's good. Okay, any questions? So you use cedar for your stem? What was the other word? A lot of people do it with shumak. But I've seen people do it with other. I mean, you know, it's I don't think it's a some kind of hard and fast rule. And you used cedar because cedar is special to me. Gotcha. Okay, yeah. There's a nice smell to it too. Yes, it does. Yeah. So that's that's it. You know, soapstone is not hard to work. I think I had like a utility knife and a screwdriver. A couple of school drivers had a flat blade and I had a Phillips.  And that's it. But it is something shifts in you when you start taking out your pipe and working with it. And if you're if you're interested in doing that, you need to you need to put something of yourself in it. I know people gift a pipe to someone else. Then perhaps they ought to make their own bag at least a pipe bag, because it to me, if you put something of yourself in it, you're joining yourself with it in that way. But a gifted pipe isn't bad or wrong or anything. I don't know. But it certainly is not some I have seen them so misused. I was meeting up with some people. There was a couple of people kind of mad at some of us because we were teaching shamanic stuff. And I was just meeting up with my friends. They were going to be doing the teaching. And a couple other people came confronted us in the parking lot because they just knew we were evil because we were teaching this stuff. And at some point the woman of the couple realized who I was. I didn't know these people that much, but somehow she heard something. There's talk out there. I'm not aware because this was like 25, 30 years ago. She she broke off from there was this little circle of five or six people standing in the parking lot talking, trying to talk peaceably. They were trying to tell us we shouldn't be doing this.  We're going to talk about that later. But she broke off and she ran across the little parking lot to their car, rummaged around in there, came back with a pipe she was putting together and she stuffed tobacco in it. And she stuck it in the circle and lit it and started puffing this pipe. And I thought, I don't know what she thought she was doing, whether she thought she was shielding us or protecting them. But just the way she was, it was very clear she had no pipe teachings. She did not know the sacred way of handling the pipe and the ceremonial way in which it is joined and filled always with prayers. So it wasn't going to hurt me. I knew that. I don't think the pipe had even been awakened. It didn't feel that way. But it was just, it was sad because she thought this pipe was a powerful thing and it was going to do something wonder, either make me drop dead or push us away or protect them. And it really wasn't going to do any of that because it wasn't being handled right. After you, a pipe has come to you, there's, you need the pipe teachings and then there's, you need to have the pipe awakened. And there's different ways of doing it. People have done it in different ways. But it's a ceremonial kind of process where someone who already is a pipe holder, what was done with me was that we, there was three or four of us and we were all lifting pipe and I was to lift my pipe. But it passed and each one that was a pipe holder blew smoke from their pipe onto my pipe and stem. So they were empowering or enlivening it. And, you know, we were doing it all prayerfully and everything. Pipe can do wonderful things and they're subtle. And this is part of what the medicine work is. It's, it is subtle.  It's, it's really subtle, but it's, it can be very powerful. There was a group of us who had all headpipes. We were lifting. There had been a drought all summer. This was right here in Northeastern Vermont. We had gotten together for years, just once a week doing ceremonial stuff. And we had this drug, the churches have been praying for rain for two or three weeks. Is this in the 70s? I don't know if it was the 70s or the 80s, but it was back there. Yeah. And it was, it was so dry and we gathered late one afternoon. People got out of work and stuff and we got to this friend's house and we went, she wanted to go up on the hill up behind her house. Now we didn't dare to light a fire. The grass crackled under our feet. Most of it was just plain brown. And we got up in this little field behind her house. Most of the grass was dead. It was dust. It crackled. The sky was totally empty. There were no predictions or anything. But we thought, you know, the churches are praying for rain. The cornfields are stunted. People's crops are not making it. And this was like early August or early to mid August. And, you know, we just need to do what we can do. And so we walked into that place and walked in a circle and we each stopped off and sat down. So we had a circle of number five or six women anyway. Each one with a pipe, each one knew properly what to do. And so we just stopped chatting and all and each one got out their pipe. We kind of watched and when everyone was ready, we each proceeded to do our own. We'd done our smudging before we walked in the circle. And each one pulled out their materials and their tobacco and their matches and we each lit our pipe in a sacred manner. We filled it and we lit it. And we knew that the only prayers we were putting in it was we were praying for rain, for the land, for the Mother Earth, for all the beings, this plant people as well as all the other beings. So you make your prayers pretty detailed. And we sat there and we were smoking our pipe and the sun was pretty hot, but it was late. It was in the evening and kept smoking. A little drifters cloud came over. And you know, that would do that every now and then. So I didn't think much of it, but bit by bit. And we just sat, it was long pipe and clouds began coming over and clouds clouded over. And then they began to get kind of gray colored and it began to get pretty solid. And I thought, Whoa, we're going to get a shower. But a shower wouldn't have done it. But it was still felt awfully good. And we so we just sat there. We finished our pipes and nobody said a word. Nobody got up to run back down. Nobody. We just sat there. Few drops of rain. Everybody finished their pipe. We emptied our pipes on the ground. We sat there, began to rain. And we just sat there. Nobody moved. And the rain came and the rain came. And it wasn't lashing heavy rain, but it was steady rain. And we sat there. We got sopping wet. Nobody moved. We couldn't believe that. And it rained all night. Did we do it? Everybody was praying for rain. Who knows? This is part of the healing work. You don't know if you did it. And you better not try to claim you did. You have help from the spirit world. You have help from the powers of creation. It was the rain spirits that came. It was just a wind that brought them. It was it was everything. It wasn't just us. We were only just doing our part. But if everybody contributes their part, there's some wonderful things that happen. I remember. That's my pipe bag. Some people bead them. Some people leave them plain. Again, there's not rules. That's an individual thing. But you always have your pipe in a bag. It's always separate when you carry it. The protocols for pipe ceremony are basically that respect. And sometimes they'll pass a pipe and each person puts a pinch or their prayer in it. Sometimes it's just the person that's holding the pipe that does it. Some people, when they smoke the pipe, then they're blowing the smoke back on themselves and on the pipe. Other people don't do that. So, you know, whatever teachers you work with, you can honor that or you'll find your own way. But it is it is such a sacred thing. And you want to be careful. I'm more cautious about who I'm willing to do pipe with. No reflection here, but it's just out there. Even more so with sweat lodge. But this is part of the most sacred practices of our people, our pipe, and now sweat lodge. Whether we had it originally or not, it's a purification lodge. We certainly had some way of doing that. And we had medicine people who did other kinds of ceremonies, as the time called for it. Questions? Oh, I know a guy. In these breathing caves, the air travels steadily in to the earth for six hours. Hour after hour, the air is moving in. And then it pauses. It reverses direction. And for six hours, the air flows out. Mother Earth is breathing. And there are special places at different parts of the planet where this occurs. And the scientists have their explanation and they're happy with that. And that's good. Keep them out of the way. But we know that it's Mother Earth breathing. You know, you can talk about temperature or pressure of differentials and all that stuff. Yeah, we got that in our bodies, too. So, you know, when you look at a stream or a river, it's her veins. And it also is essential for us to live. That's why she's our mother. Her blood is our blood. And the breath is our breath. So it just puts you in a different relationship when you begin to realize that. And when her bony structure has a certain amount of crystalline element in it, as ours does, and crystals, as you know, work with energy. So there's that whole piece of it. And no, I'm not scientific. I can't explain all that to you, but that's part of what that's about. That's one of the things that's a little bit in this booklet. There's fire in the belly of Mother Earth and in Father Sun. And that's part of the reason that they are seen as a couple. So there's fire. There's wind or breath, air. There's water. And there's flesh. Sometime in the 70s or 80s, a scientist named Shuman developed, of course, it's never real to this technology to discover it right. So this is what we're about. Now, he developed some kind of very fine, sensitive, technological instrument, and he made a great discovery. There's a pulse deep in the earth. And it's now called the Shuman Resonance. That's what our ancient drum is, folks. The drum is the heartbeat of Mother Earth. Now, tell us we didn't have medicine people or shamans. Right. Because they knew this Mother Earth had a heartbeat. The drum is used to replicate that heartbeat. And when you're in a gathering and there's a steady drumbeat, people's hearts literally shift into that pattern. They resonate. And it brings the people together. That's another piece of ceremony. You can do that with your rattles. Same way. It's the vibration. It's the rhythm. And it's a replication. And that's why we don't do all the syncopated and different kinds of rhythms. We tend to do a very steady rhythm. The only other rhythm we do is the pa-pa-pa-pa-pa, which is the heartbeat. But otherwise, it's a very steady boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. And this is why it's the physical manifestation of that knowledge and that ancient wisdom.


We are living behind us a year of unprecedented challenges. I highly appreciate the strong support FAO received from members and key partners throughout the past 12 months. We are starting 2021 with a more dynamic, inclusive and efficient FAO that is closer to its members. It involves digital organizations that is ready to deliver more and better in the new normal. Thanks to the discipline of all employees and their families, we have managed to weather the health crisis and keep a low rate of infection at FAO. I salute all FAO colleagues for their dedication and hard work in the past year. And I wish all of you to have a healthy and happy New Year. Happy New Year. Happy New Year. Happy New Year. Happy New Year. Happy New Year. Happy New Year, my best wishes of goodness to you and your families. Happy New Year and a healthy future. Happy New Year. Wishing you all a healthy 2021. Buona Né. Me llervo por la milvantera. Happy New Year to everyone. Here's to a wonderful 2021. Buona Né. Just to wish you a Happy New Year for 2021 and wishing you the best. Feliz año para todos para el 2021 y espero que la pasen de lo mejor. So Happy New Year everybody and wish you all the best. Happy New Year. Feliz ano nuevo.


If I asked you to write a personal statement right now, would you be stressed out? Most of you would probably say yes, because you probably don't think you're a good writer. You don't know what to write about. You don't know how to make a great personal statement. But today, I'm going to give you tips on how to get the admission board, your interviewers, anyone that reads your personal statement to say, that was amazing. That sounds interesting to you. Then stay tuned. We're going to get to those tips after this intro. All right, guys. What is going on? I'm the journey helping you succeed on your medical journey with less stress. In this video, we're going to talk about the personal statements because I know as the making of this video, you are probably applying to medical school, residency, or whatever schooling that you want to do in the future. And I want to make the personal statement process a little bit easier. So in this video, I'm going to break it down step by step on how I write my personal statements quickly, efficiently, and stress-free and have a final product where people are raving about how amazing it was. Are you guys excited? Let's get into it. We're going to get started. Some of these methods are going to be a little bit unconventional, but that is kind of what makes it so effective. So step number one is after you read the prompt, I want you to take five to 10 minutes on answering the question out loud. So it seems a little bit weird, but let's say you're applying for medical school and the question is, why do you want to become a doctor? That's usually a typical prompt that you may have to answer. Spend five to 10 minutes of saying all of your reasons, you know, regardless of how incohesive you may feel, go ahead and speak it out. The reason I say five to 10 minutes is because if I told you just 30 seconds, you're going to do superficial answers. You're going to say, I want to help people. My family was affected by some type of help ailments and I want to provide care. All of those are good reasons, guys, but the way you get into a really good personal statement is you have to get really deep. And to get deep, you have to understand your own thoughts and give yourself some time to process. So five to 10 minutes, I find to be really effective. Just go ahead and speak them out loud. Now step number two is after you're going ahead and speaking out your answers, I want you to use what I like to call my sticky note method.  And as you're talking, you're going to have some ideas where you're going to be like, ah, that wasn't that great, but there's going to be some like, well, that sounded amazing. Whatever I said out loud, like that needs to go in the essay. And so I would literally just use a sticky note and I would write the experience or the thought and then my big takeaway. So I'll give you an example. When I'm applying to residency, they may ask me why I'm going into the field that I chose, which is internal medicine. So often what students do is that they pick different experiences from medical school, maybe a patient experience or something of the sort. And they say, this is a patient experience. This is my big takeaway. So if you're talking about why you want to go to med school or whatever, use your thought and then write your big takeaway in one sticky note. Now, every time you feel like you have an epiphany or like gold mind of a thought, keep creating another sticky note. I'll tell you kind of how we're going to use this in a second, but I love using these sticky notes just because it's easier than just typing out like an outline on a word doc and not really knowing how to organize it later. So we'll get to that. I promise, but use these sticky notes just to keep track of your thoughts, but keep, you know, talking out for the five to 10 minutes. So step number three is coming up with a final conclusion. So for this step, act like you're asked the same question for the prompt, but in an interview. Now, obviously you're not going to have five to 10 minutes to answer why you want to go into medical school or why you want to go into a residency, you're going to have to come up with like a one to four or five sentence answer. And so after you've kind of had this five to 10 second or a 10 minute discussion, go ahead and figure out what your one to two liner would be. So, you know, if your reason like mine was, is because you had family members who were affected by health crises and you learned the power of medicine, that could be your final conclusion. You just want to know what conclusion you're going to get to take your reader to because then we can move on to step number four. So now we're going to come back to the sticky note that it's remember, we had different epiphanies, different experiences with each respective takeaways that we had. And we can add to these. That's the beauty of these sticky notes. So what I want you to do now is create a sticky note just for your final conclusion, the one we just did in the previous step. And then look at your sticky notes and saying, huh, could this sell my final conclusion? Could this one do a better job? Maybe this one doesn't really like talk about it. Maybe I talked about community service, but it doesn't really touch on my like my family element kind of conclusion. So I'm going to take that one out. But these two right here seem to do a pretty good job. So then what you can do is you can just lay them on the table, have your final conclusion at the very end and see a nice cohesive kind of flow from your essay, from experience to experience, and each of them will have a takeaway, ultimately leading you to your final conclusion, your final statement. So you can see how this process, your letter or your essay is already being created without a lot of stress, you're just spending maybe five to 10 minutes talking it out. And now it's starting to look and have a structure. So now that we've done step number four, which is picking the experiences that are going to sell the final conclusion, I want you to go to step number five and you're going to take more sticky notes. I know we're using a lot. I promise they're going to be effective on creating a perfect personal statement. If you're going to use more sticky notes to create what I like to call flow statements or flow or transitions, basically what these are is the essays that are good are the ones that have good experiences and a good conclusion. They seem to balance each other out. The essay has a direction, but the essays that are amazing are the ones that can clearly take you from the first experience to the second one to the third one to the final point. The reader can really follow your argument. They can follow your journey and they understand and feel like they understand who you are. That's what makes a great essay because that's one when the reader, your interviewers will say, you wrote an amazing essay. So to get to that point, I like to call these the flow or the transition notes. And so between each of my experiences, so now I have my sticky notes that I'm going to be talking about the different experiences, I'm just going to be saying how can I get from first experience to the second one. And if I can't do a good job, maybe I have to like kind of jumble around my experiences. But maybe my first experience was something I did in college and then my second experience was something that I discovered in med school and then I kept going on and on. It's kind of like a timeline phase, but you can use experiences that taught you one lesson and then another experience that kind of built upon that lesson. There's many different ways of using these transitions, but using these flows will help you go from, you know, point to point. So hopefully that part makes sense. This will really make you from going to an average above average essay to one that's truly amazing. All right guys, so the personal statement is now starting to have a structure. We have our experiences, we have the final conclusion. And now we also know how we're going to transition between experiences. So really the last part that we need to do is creating a hook. And this hook is obviously how we're going to start our essay, but you want to do it in a very intriguing way. So if you are applying to medical school, you know, what's the common answer you think most people will say on their essays they want to go to med school. They'll say, oh, I want to help people. And there's going to be some type of variation in the introduction. Readers read about this kind of prompt all the time. So for them, it's so boring and you don't want to be boring. You want to be memorable. You want to be great. So to do that, there's a couple of things that you could do. Think about your final conclusion and then think about a story. You know, I love stories because you can really put the reader in your shoes and if you can make them feel like they're going through the experience that you went through then the rest of the essay, they feel like they understand. So pick an experience that you can tell a story about that's going to sell your ultimate conclusion. So I'll give you an example. I, as I mentioned, went into medicine because I had family members who dealt with health issues themselves. And I remember as a kid, kind of observing that. And so I thought about different memories and different stories and the one really stuck.  So I put the reader in my own, you know, shoes and I wanted them to see what I was seeing as what this family member was going through. And I put that as my introduction and then I had a final conclusion and I had that conclusion go to the first experience and then I had the flow, you know, notes that we've already talked about go to the second experience and it went all the way to my final conclusion. So use that hook guys, tell a story. And as a bonus tip guys, try to tell your hook from a very interesting time perspective. So don't try to tell the story from the very beginning because that's very cliche. Instead maybe start from the middle or start with the conclusion and then like rewind and have a flashback as your hook. Think of very interesting ways you could attract your reader. Again, the goal is to put them in your shoes so that way they can feel like they're in your shoes the rest of the essay. And that is going to make it feel from good to great. All right guys, so now we're wrapping up the creation of this personal statement. And right now I would say it's, you know, close to great, but it's not quite there. You know, we want to add this little oomph that is really going to attract the reader. And so what I want you to do is go through your different experiences that, you know, you have maybe one takeaway on and spend two to four minutes talking out loud what your takeaways for that experience were. You know, I've had met students or college students who are applying to medical school who talked about their desires to go into medicine because they like volunteered at a camp and they saw really cool things or maybe they had a health illness themselves and they talked about those experiences. So I want you to kind of be able to elaborate those. So talk those out. And as you're talking them out, add your takeaways. You know, what are your big epiphany moments? Because then you can use those in those paragraphs that talk about that experience and that portion of your essay becomes more filled and not superficial. So continue to do that. Now, after you've spent some time developing your experiences, now it's time to get started on the writing. We've spent a good amount of time creating the structure of our personal statement that looks amazing. And now we just have to get words to paper or digital paper in this regard. And just a bonus tips is wrap up this video when you're writing and after you kind of have your first draft, what I want you to do is look at every single sentence and say, is this pertinent? Is this going to sell my final conclusion? Or is this just fluff? Can any other student say this? And if the answer is yes, more often than not, you're probably writing a superficial essay. You're writing about helping people but so is that other classmate of yours. There's nothing personal in your personal statement. So if the sentence doesn't pertain to your final conclusion, then it could be anyone's essay. So look at each sentence and say, is this and does this belong? And the answer is no, take it out. And you can obviously make your essay shorter. You know, we're not trying to fill space just for the heck of it. You want to have each sentence kind of mean something. And so that's the whole practice of like speaking it out loud because you can have more and more epiphanies, which will sell your final conclusion. Now that you've kind of have your first draft, I want you to use some tools to obviously make sure it looks polished in terms of a grammar standpoint. So use tools and I'll link this down below called Grammarly, which is a free plugin that you can add to Chrome or whatnot. You can also install it from Microsoft Word and it'll give you spelling as well as punctuation, just suggestions, all of this for free. And you can download it so that all your emails and all your essays will look amazing in the future. So go ahead and download Grammarly down below. And then finally send it to several peers and mentors that you trust and value their opinions. So your significant other, your friends, your families, send it to everyone and saying, what are your thoughts? Where could I improve? Obviously, people are gonna focus on the grammars and things of that sort, but you want to ask them, did I sell you?  But look at your friends and your mentors that did I sell you on why I wanted to go to medicine? And if they're hesitating, you probably are more superficial than you thought. So keep working on it. You can add creating more epiphanies, more kind of details to each of your experience. And I promise you guys, if you create this structure, try out the sticky note method, let me know what you guys think you're gonna have an amazing personal statement that's not gonna require a lot of stress. But hopefully this video was helpful. And if it was, if you can just take one second to drop a comment on one thing that you learned in this video, it's gonna help me make sure that I'm actually giving content of value to you guys. So that's my whole goal. So one thing, maybe one method that you plan on using in your future personal statements. But with that being said, if you did enjoy this video, first of all, do give it a like. It helps the channel out a lot. For all of you that have subscribed, thank you. But if you're not part of the channel and you enjoyed this video and you somehow made it to the end, make sure you subscribe to the channel for more tips and videos just like this on a weekly basis. But I will see you guys on the next video.


So, this wonderful Tuesday morning, we're going to talk about sexuality, my favorite topic, women in sexuality, and even better, women in sexuality in Shakespeare. And within that, my favorite, favorite Shakespeare play of all time, A Midsummer Night's Dream. So wow, I can't wait to start this topic with a wonderful, creative, just full of zest-of-life director of HPU Theater. Welcome, my lovely guest, Eden Lee Murray. Thank you so much, Crystal. I'm glad to be here. So, I didn't properly introduce you with the title. It is actually the Paul and V. Lou Theater that you are ahead of, correct? It's actually a two-pronged title. I'm the adjunct professor of theater at HPU, and along with that comes the responsibility of being director of productions at the Paul and V. Lou Theater up there. Ah, okay. But theater people weren't supposed to be responsible. They were supposed to be able to just go out there and... We're just multitask. Oh, well, that's a good thing to know. All right, so wonderful. Given that background, you're going to be doing a production of A Midsummer Night's Dream with your youth ensemble. Now, before we get into all that nice details of the upcoming production, let's dive right into Shakespeare. Let's dive right into A Midsummer Night's Dream and its exploration on women and sexuality. Do you have any opening statement on that one?  Well, it certainly centers around the battle between the sexes. You've got Oberon Titania, who are quarreling over the possession of this little changeling boy. Right. And Oberon Cheetz to win. Yes. Titania doesn't have a chance. She really doesn't.  A beast. The ass-headed bottom. Or that sounds kind of funny. But bottom, who is enchanted by Puck, who's the minion of Oberon. Right.  Right. But the concept of fairy queen making love to a beast is very raw and sexual. It's very raw and sexual, and something that a lot of directors don't touch is the fact that big ears is not the only thing asses have. And there's a moment when you... They don't say that in the play, though, unless there's an underlying... There is an explicit piece in the text where he... Me thought I was... Me thought I had, and then he reaches up to where the ears used to be. Me thought I had, and it totally supports a look in the southern hemisphere, at which point, then he goes, no, man, would be crazy of what I thought I had. But that's explicitly what he's referring to. Shakespeare's so brilliant with the whole underlying messages and everything. Yep, yep, yep. And there's one innuendo after another, right through this play. And the way... When I was teaching, the way to get kids to do a close read of the play is that you find every dirty joke in the play, and they would come back and they would find, there's that, there's that, there's that. Also, give me a few. For people who don't know Mid-Summer Night's Dream, let's talk about the dirty jokes in it. Well, there's one... It's sort of a date joke where Lysander and Hermia have run off into the forest.  Oh, gosh. For people who just don't know this play. I mean, you should really see and read. It opens with a battle between the fairies, Oberyn and Titania. And then there are sort of interchangeable lovers, Hermia, Lysander, Demetrius, and Helena. Hermia and Lysander are in love, they want to marry. But Hermia's father, for some reason which is never explained, will not let her marry Lysander. Okay. He wants her to marry Demetrius. Okay. Demetrius and Helena have been a very happy couple until the play begins. Until they swap. Well, and then all of a sudden, Demetrius is supposed to marry Hermia. So two guys. He wants to marry Hermia because the father says he should. And Lysander wants to marry Hermia because they're in love. Meanwhile, Helena is the one that's out in the cold. So we have Hermia and Lysander who decide they're going to run away. They have to go through the enchanted forest, unbeknownst to them. There's the war of the fairies going on and all kinds of enchantments on the loose. And then Helena decides she's going to tell Demetrius that he's intended his run off with the other guy so that he'll go into the forest and maybe something... Maybe he'll have the same kind of change of heart with Hermia that he had with Helena and he'll come back to her. So that's the basic seven. And then the fairies, while Oberon is trying to figure out how to cheat and enchant Titania to get the boy that he wants away, he sees these lovers squabbling in the forest and tells Puck to take a piece of the magic flower that's going to enchant Titania. Anytime when you put the flower in someone's eyes, the next thing they look on is what you fall in love with. Makes no sense at all. That's a good classic kind of a...  Well, it all messes up. And the wrong lover sees the wrong girl, right? And it's a terrible mess. And then they make it... Life is. And then they make it all come out better in the woods. They all fall asleep. Puck puts them to sleep. The angry father comes through with the Duke Theseus. There's another happy couple getting married. Theseus and Hippolyta. Are they happy? Yeah. Well, Theseus is happy. Hippolyta is the Amazon who kind of got... Yeah. Is she the queen of the Amazon? Queen of the Amazon's who got subjugated. You see? She's not that happy. She's not that happy either, you're quite right. But they come hunting through the forest and they see the four lovers enchanted on the ground. And then the lovers wake up and they've been undone. They've been, the antidote has been squeezed into their eyes. The right person sees the right person. They fall in love.  We're all going to get married. At which point, and then there's the last skein of it, which is the rude mechanicals, this adorable band, Bottom is one of them. The guy named Junior Lea. Yes. You mean the play within the play? The play within the play. The rude mechanicals that have decided, and it's the epitome of a really bad community theater. I love it. Oh, it's so true. It's fabulous. They've been rehearsing in the enchanted wood to do a play that's going to be selected to perform in honor of the Duke's wedding. I love it though. And they get picked. It's so tacky, right? Their whole set up.  I saw it on the London stage, and the rude mechanicals, the play was brilliant up until the end, and then they just knew what they were doing with comedy, and it wasn't funny. That's the key of comedy, though. You don't try too hard. You don't know you're funny, but the funniest, the funniest production of this I ever saw was in a freshman class at Kaimuki High School in the Shakespeare Festival. I ran that for seven years. Brilliant. And this group of kids comes up, and they're terrified, and Thisby, the guy playing, Thisby, balloons, balloons, and the balloons know the life of their own, and the kid was mortified because he couldn't get them to hold still, and his wig fell off, and he tripped, and he was just almost in tears. I said, you kiss the feet of the god of comedy, because that's, and people were weeping, they were laughing so hard, and that's what we're trying to work for. Now that we're on Pyramus and Thisby, this historically is an all-male group, yes? So in the play, within the play, there are men playing, including the one who plays the girl with the fake boobs, but in old Shakespeare, it was always men playing. Yeah, women were not allowed on stage. So how does that reflect on the interpretation of women when it's always been cast by men to play even the women? That's a great question. The ones in Shakespeare's companies that played the women were generally the boys, whose voices hadn't changed yet, and there might've been some men, bivalent sexuality going on there, I'm not sure. I'm not sure. People just take for granted, yeah? They just take for granted, yeah. And in our company, there are more girls than there guys, so some of the girls are flipping over and playing men. In our case, Thisby is being played by a guy, as is Bottom. When you're saying something before we came on air, it's very interesting about the concept of the fairies that they are not gendered in a way. They're not. Well, here's, again, I was telling you at the beginning that I generally evolve the interpretation of a play depending on the company that I inherit from auditions across O'ahu. And in this case, I have a company, a very small company, because I moved it from the Hawaii Theater when I left Hawaii Theater last semester, last summer, to take the job as the adjunct professor up at HPU. And what I did, because the parents of these kids had said wherever you go, we're coming with you, which is really lovely. So I have 20, 25 that were in the company last year, some aged out, some left island, and I wound up with 15, which is a fairly small company.  They come in during the pre-show in real time, they set the stage, they discover this stuff, they create it, what they're gonna work with, they come in, the fairies tend to pilfer. We've done a lot of research on fairies for this, and they steal from mortals, and they don't have a particularly high regard for mortals. So they've come in, well, because we're just fat, dumb, and slow, and they work at a much higher frequency than we do, so they are superior, at least certainly in their minds.  But with the lovers, for example, Lysander and Hermia, when they run off in the wood, Hermia says, I'm so tired, so she falls down and Lysander tries to spoon and just come right up behind her. She goes, no, no, no, no, no, no, we're not married. You go over there. And this goes back to the traditional, right? The old repressed kind of sexuality that's bound. Well, virginity was at a premium, you know?  Well, the fairies think that's ridiculous. So the fairies, if we're gonna interpret that today, are very progressive. They're just freeings. They're just for real. They're sensual. If they want it, they do it. So is there something for us to learn, as dumb mortals from fairies? I don't know. I don't know, because in the course of our story, because right about halfway through the play, one of the fairies just howls, Lord, what fools these mortals be, right? That's like the key about the way. Because that's the crux of the mess up in the forest, right? And then after that, each of the fairies playing the mortals has to go through the crisis of the play for each one of those characters. And one of the beauties of theater is that it teaches empathy and what I'm watching the fairies go through is, as they incarnate these characters, as they tell the story, they all of a sudden begin to get a sense of what it feels like to be mortal. So do you think as the teens in this ensemble, in the process of being so involved in the play as the fairies looking down on the mortals that they learn about human nature and sexuality? Are they picking up those? I think they're doing just fine learning about sexuality on the road. Without the play. Right, yeah. But in terms of what I want, this play for me is a box in a box. One of the reasons I love working with students and children in theater is because when you stand in someone else's shoes, when you have to learn how someone else feels, you can no longer judge them. I mean, when I was working in New York and publishing a long time ago, I was also doing theater at night. And somebody was explaining to me the behavior of somebody that they didn't like and I said, oh, well that's probably because blah, blah, blah. And I was trying to look for the, what's underneath the presenting behavior. And this woman looked at me and said, oh, it was spoken like an actress. And at the time, I thought it was a slam. I thought she was putting me down for that. And I asked her about it years later when we were friends and she said, oh, no, no, no. I was amazed because all I had done was to evaluate what I saw and what was hitting me in the face. And you went underneath to see what was behind what that person was presenting and to try and understand that. And she says, I thought that was remarkable. And that's, I see that happen with children over and over and over again when they play in theater. And that's a really interesting way to channel teen issues. I mean, a lot of people don't know with the social media. In fact, we're gonna talk about that next week is the, you know, all the consequences of all that and how lack of communicative we've become. Oh, and the social media and stuff where you can be anonymous. Yes.  And it turns into a pecking party. And whoever is blooded first, the rest of them jump down and attack. Yeah. Scary human nature in a way. And with social media, it's the anonymity of it. Everybody's disconnected. Yes, yes, no one to blame. Right, and in theater, you're right there. Face to face, you have to deal with it. Yes, yes, and you're touching and feeling so the texture and coming in terms with your body, let's talk about the body and how a youth kind of learns to explore the body through theater and sexuality and sensuality. True, and for our fairies, because each one of the kids in the company has had to create, before they even touched the Shakespeare characters, they had to begin to learn how to move like a fairy. How does a fairy move? Depends on what they're connected with in nature. Like the three fairies have one kind of emotion. We've got one fairy whose name is Zog. Because they all had to come up with their own names. And this is a fairy of mud. And she's just like... A fairy of mud, I love it. So they choose their own connection to whatever aspect of nature. I love it. And then some, for example, the guy who plays, for us in the rude mechanicals, the stupidest, the slowest, well the slowest, the dimmest bulb in the chandelier. And he's just adorable. He's playing, we had to combine two characters. He plays Snaug, who is the lion and the wall. And he's, his fairy is named Helus. And he's a fairy of the sun and he's of superior intelligence. And so his fairy chose to play the dimmest bulb just because he could really laugh at him. And even at the end, as he comes out and he makes his cases the lion for the court, you see the fairy working to make him good. So all of the fairies, again, and one child asked me yesterday at rehearsal, she said, when I win, because I've asked them all to play it a hyper-reality. I said, I don't want soap opera acting. I don't want good, real acting. I wanna see fairies playing and having fun with how they think mortal lovers behave, right? How do mortal lovers behave? On behalf of a perspective of a fairy, well, you know, we're just gonna have to think about this, take a quick breather break, think about your fairy self and how you see your mortal self and how we can improve our sexuality. Come back and talk more about Midsim and its Dream. I'm Kaui Lukas, host of Hawaii is My Mainland every Friday at 3 p.m. on Think Tech Hawaii. We talk about things of interest to those of us who live here and my past blogs can be found at kauilukas.com. Okay, I didn't listen. You can be the greatest, you can be the best. You can be the king, come playin' on your chest. You can be the world, you can be the war. You can touch a cloud, go bangin' on his door. You can throw your hands up, you can breathe a cloud. I'm Crystal here with Lovely Eden Lee, talking about Midsim and its Dream and how sexuality is played out through the fairies and the mortals. Now, let's talk about the forest, you know, because the metaphor of the forest is very sexual if you want to interpret it, if you want to go down there. You know, it's where people go, you see? She already interpreted it the way she wanted to. No, but really even on the psychoanalysis side of things, if you want to talk about repression and the idea of a man's anxiety and the fear of the woman's sexuality, I mean, there's so many layers we can talk about. But again, and the thing is, because it's an enchanted forest, it's the forest where everyone can do what they want. You know what I mean? So there are no rules. There are no rules. All bets are off, right? So, and that which is constraining you in society, for example, Hermie, L.S., Andrew, Demetrius, and Helen have rules they have to obey in Athens.  And that which is up goes down, that which is down goes up, that which you thought you understood is completely overthrown. Is that kind of like the gate to everybody's dream and desire where they kind of want a leash but don't dare to speak of in the conscious world? It's also like Joseph Campbell's on a hero's journey. It sort of pulls the hero's journey inside out. Joseph Campbell believes it. And any one of these characters you can imagine as the hero of their own story. But each one has, you start with a point of stasis where the life is grounded, and then the world tilts, and the hero has to go into the underworld, learn a lesson, go on a journey, meet his helpers, et cetera, and then return to his world changed, bettered, understanding something, learning something. Well, in this case, everybody in the play learns something and they come back. The lovers who belong together are together. Egeus, who was the controlling father who all of a sudden has to, and he has a moment of reconciliation in the forest with his daughter and with Lysander, who he's sent some pretty rotten things about. But in our production, everybody goes through their journey and then reconciles, and then we have the wedding and the play within a play, which is just delicious. But while they're in the forest and all this juicy kind of couple swapping and jealousy and what they do to show the partner what they think they will affect them. I mean, all these interpretations, I think Shakespeare really has this concept of the forest as being this sexual energy that's released somehow. I'm sure that's one way to look at it, you know? I mean, there's so many ways you can interpret. That's the beauty of Shakespeare, it's so broad. What about people saying that Shakespeare is gay? Who cares? Well, because there's a lot of gender issues that are interpreted through Shakespeare plays, or maybe that's just because we try to pick out little stupid weeds out of the garden. No, you can run with that. There's also the whole school of thought that don't believe Shakespeare or Shakespeare or Stratford on Avon was the one who wrote the plays. I did a production of Much Ado About Nothing a couple of years ago from an Oxfordian point of view, which is the idea that the 17th Earl of Oxford is the one who wrote the plays. Do you know, are you familiar with that? Okay, so Oxford was this brilliant child, very precocious, Elizabeth met him when she was on one of her progressions through England. When he was about eight, maybe that, he spoke Latin, he spoke Greek, he could do poetry, he was just brilliant, and so she fastened her eyes on him and kept her eyes on him. And when he was about 13, 14, she brought him to her palace to be her minister of the Eewer, which meant he poured her bathwater. And when he was 15 years old, she took his virginity, and they were lovers for a very, throughout her life and his, right? And he wanted very much to be, he wanted to be acknowledged at least as her lover if not made her partner, right? And she refused to do it, and they would have periodically these knock-down drag-out fights. And in a couple of times, it was argued that he went too far and she was gonna either execute him or take his lands or his title or whatever, so he had to quickly write a play to apologize.  And that she had to come in, and it's about Beatrice and Benedict and the squabbles and the romantic. You see, there's always a backstory to every drama. Right, right, right. And that's the most interesting thing, like a prequel. So what I'm saying is you could go, and we created a whole interpretation of a play around, well, Oxford was actually Shakespeare. So when you say, was Shakespeare actually gay, I'm wondering how that would affect a take on Midsomer because there's nobody, that issue doesn't surface. No, there's not that type of identity. It's very heterosexual play. Right. But anything, I think it's quite patriarchal, if you will, because it's really, they come from this kind of a dominating, the king speaks and, you know. The men win.  Well, I'm sure, that's funny too, because while Oberon is thinking he's humiliating Titania by giving her this monster to be in love with or already be in bed with for a 24 hour period, when in fact she's just had a plenty good time.  And she goes, ah, all right.  Yeah, come back to me, woman, kind of thing.  That's bottom's line. Bottom's line, ah.  To go about to expound your dream, so does that mean that we shouldn't be over interpreting our dreams and just let it, let us enjoy that release? Well, no, because the next thing he does is hop up and run over to Peter Quince's house, his director, he said, I'll have, Peter Quince can write a song about it and it'll be called Bottom's Dream because it has no bottom.  It's like the Scarecrow visitor boss who thinks he doesn't have a brain, but he's brilliant. Yeah, well I wouldn't, I might not go as far as to say the bottom is brilliant, but the boy playing bottom is just deliciously funny. Oh good, so let's talk a little bit about that, your play. Oh well, all right, the play, as I said, the concept is these fairies come into the space, they discover the space, they filter costumes from wherever they fight over who's gonna play, what role, and then what's really beautiful is we borrowed the language that Tony Pisculli, he of the Hawaii Shakespeare Festival last year, did a production of Midsummer with invented languages. The Greeks, the mortals spoke one language, it was called Greek-ish, and the fairies spoke the other. Great. To do to taste you, speciesis man, ta ra ta pona spani, be pachos anisip tire, e muda. I've played a G.S., and I mean, I took me forever to learn it, but it was an Iambic pentameter, and it was so much fun. But the fairies had a different language entirely, and I borrowed, with Tony's permission, the fairies come into the theater speaking that language, and they mess with the audience speaking that language. And how do they fairies speak, please? Oh, I don't speak fairies. Oh, but you work with them, you must know a little bit of that language. I gave them the language, and it sounds like Gershblas, right? It's very urrr, it's very earthy, it's very sensual, very sexual, if you want. And then the fairies, they actually, they get everything set, and there's a, the pre-show, I want people to come as close to a half hour before the curtain is possible, because the pre-show happens in real time. And then the show begins. That's when they're exploring the mortals. That's when they're exploring the mortals in the audience, and setting themselves up, and how am I gonna play this part, et cetera, and then the fairies disappear, the music begins, the lights come up, Theseus and Apology come, and they're speaking fairiesh. I love it. And all the fairies come back onto the stage, and they look at the audience, and they realize, so they have to cast a spell. And they, I won't say what they do, but they do cast a spell, and then they disappear, and we replay at the very beginning of the play, Theseus and Apology come in, and the audience can understand them.  I mean, the play itself is so magical, but you've just shown us a little inkling of it. Tell us more. So this upcoming production is next week. You've been working on this for quite a long time now. We've been working with the play since January. The kids have completely internalized their fairies. That's fabulous. And the fairies are in the process now of last steps of internalizing the characters. So they live and breathe fairy. They live and breathe fairy, and then the fairy brings the character life. Okay, so it's next week. It's this Friday. This Friday, May 12th at 7.30, May 13th, Saturday at 7.30. Please come about a half an hour early. The door's open a half hour before the curtain time of the show, and on Sunday at four, we close with that night. You should have shook them and wrote instead of 7.30 actual time. You say seven o'clock, because then people will come, you know? It's a fairy trick. It's a male no, because then the people who show up, they see people come in just before the curtain, and the ones in the audience are the ones in the no. So they've seen the goodies. What are some tips to, going back to the fairy mortal world for us to leave with? The takeaway of, you know, what we're missing as earthly creatures in terms of just our outlook on love and life. What can we learn from the fairies? What can we learn from the fairies? What can the fairies learn from us? Okay, let's start with that one then. I would say, because the fairies come in with the prejudice, and I think the fairies, through the process of living what mortals live, leave the theater kinder, gentler, and sorts. And I think if the audience takes anything away from that, it's like, you know, you don't make fun until you understand. And I think... I would have thought the mortals were more judgmental. And that's really interesting that you've put it as the fairies having the preconception. Yep, I wanted to flip the box. Okay, okay. And so, would you say that this is a good production for youths, for old ages? Oh, I would have to go with a ride of fun for young and old. And the thing that I love about working like this with us, it makes me think of what George Bernard Shaw said, and he said, if you use theater to try and teach people things, you will drive people from the theater in hordes. If you use the theater to entertain, to amuse, to delight, you can teach people anything you want. What is your favorite quote or scene or moment in a Midsummer Night's Dream? Give me your hands if we'd be friends. And Robin will restore men's. And that line is, that line, actually the audience doesn't hear that line, because two lines before, well, the line before those two lines, the fairies take their spell back, and the whole company speaks that last line in fairy-ish. Fairy-ish. Again, the language that you're not gonna share with us. I can't, I don't speak. I speak Greek-ish, I don't speak fairy-ish.  Again, it is this Friday, Saturday, and Sunday at HPU. There's a huge world of fairs out there that people don't really know exist. But to find that fairy world within your world, does that make sense? Sure, absolutely. And to come with an open mind, with the freedom to explore and to touch with the other side. I love it. It's magic everywhere. Yeah, wow. That's what I leave with. There's magic everywhere. Magic everywhere. Okay, but I still say that people have a weird concept that magic is not, it doesn't touch me. This is something, oh, it's play. How do we get them to feel that? How do we transfer that magic? Well, interestingly enough, when people go to see live theater, they are opening their mind to magic. Okay. You know, I tell my kids when... So they need to go. They need to go. When people come to your door to theater, they are five years old. I don't care how old they are criminologically. They come in going, tell me a story, and we give them that. Boy, do we have a story. So please go and see this magical, magical performance. Thank you, Eden Lee, for such a wonderful interpretation of that world. And don't, don't, don't just go see it. All right? Meet someone on the street this weekend. Thank you.