Allington was the birthplace of Uncle Sam, the location of the First Public Children's Library and the site of most of the fighting when the British marched through it, returning from the Old North Bridge at the start of the Revolutionary War. Welcome, Gary, and thank you for speaking with us today. This is not your first appearance with us, however, today we would like to create a holistic view of your professional career as a resident of a historic American town, a university professor and author. Thank you, John. Good to be with you. It's good to have you back. To begin, Gary, has Living in Arlington, a place steeped in tradition and history, influenced your work? Yes. All but one of my novels takes place in the Greater Boston area, the first novel taking place in the Mediterranean, and so I needed to have a locale for my characters and because I know Boston well and I know Arlington well, having been here a long time, I decided to make my characters at home in Arlington. For a few of the books, I called the Carleton just to protect the innocent, but then I went back and they've been in Arlington for the last six or seven books. In many ways, not only is Arlington very special in terms of its location to Boston, but it's a cultural center. It has a nice diversified populace. It is close to all the major highways, it's close to all the schools in town, and it's a great location not only to live but to generate a novel from. I spent many, many years in the Arlington Library, in the Robbins Library, in that glorious room in front, reading room where I brought my laptop and wrote several scenes from several of the novels. So Arlington has been good to me. I've been very appreciative of living here. Several of the novels have scenes in some of the eateries in town. Scooter is one of our favorites, the late great Florida, not your average Joe's. There are scenes in Arlington Center and some of the books. So I mean, Arlington is dear to me and it's dear to the books I've written. So it certainly has its place in here. It has its place, yes. That's great. Under your pen name, Gary Braver, you've been the best-selling author of many books, including your first book, Atlantis Fire. Where did you get the idea for that book, Atlantis Fire? Okay, good. Atlantis Fire is an archeological thriller. I had gone to Mayarka, Spain, which is a couple hundred miles off the coast of Spain, and was on a diving expedition with an organization called Earthwatch Located, that was in Belmont originally, it's now in Boston. And I had read for a few hundred dollars I can go to Mayarka, Spain and dive for second century BC, Roman, and Phoenician wrecks. And I had gone there and after the first week or so we found a wreck about a mile and a half off shore, very shallow water, 30 feet of water, so you could stay down there as long as you want, as long as you had air in your tank. And we were fanning away the sand, and we came up with shards of amphoras, ancient coke bottles. They used to move on the decks of ships with oil or almonds or seeds. And I noticed that a speedboat had cut across our bubbles overhead.  Once it's an accident, two, it's kind of dumb, three, it's on purpose, four, by tenth time this was dangerous. So we flattened out on the water. My diaphragm is going like this because I'm almost out of air. My buddy was out of air too, so we flattened out. There was no cavities, no rocks to get behind and nothing to get under. And this guy came at us with a speedboat and two pendant anchors coming at us like robot claws. And I said, if I get out of this alive, I've got a book in it. So I just moved all that experience because what we did not know is we were excavating wrecks and on the edge of a black market operation we didn't know about. The guy who came after us in the boat was a local godfather who had a very hot business in antiquities. He was pulling up from the bottom of the ocean and selling them to collectors and museums all over the world. So this was dangerous stuff. But I said, if I get out of here alive, I'm going to get a book out of it. I had spent some summers in Santorini, Greece, which is the locale of Plato's Atlantis myth, and I just moved it all to the part of the Mediterranean, the GNC, and called Atlantis Fire. And the divers are pulling up artifacts from Minoan civilization, 15th century BC. And that's where Atlantis Fire came from. But it was really from an experience. Wow. Yeah, yeah. Very, very trying, but a terrific experience. Dangerous experience too. Yeah. And then you have four medical thrillers about breakthroughs of various improvements of the human biological condition, mortality and Alexa, human intelligence in gray matter, dementia and flashback, and the scientific experiment to determine if there's an afterlife tunnel vision. Right, right. Tell us about those books. Okay. When you finish a book, it's like getting fired. I had written a book before that called Rough Beast, which is placed in the Arlington-Wuburn area, and that was based on W. R. Grace Company, depositing a lot of toxic chemicals into the Wuburn waters, and that became a very famous court case that became a movie, in fact with John Travolta, Civil Action. At that time, when I saw that book, the publisher said, give us more of these high concept novels, something that would be either a fantasy or a fear of a large readership, has a strong female character, sent it around a family, and something that really is a good page turner. So I said, okay, what would be the greatest fantasy of human life? And that would be living indefinitely. I had spent some time in Papua New Guinea, which is a rainforest, the second largest island on the planet, and there are at least 400 different languages because it's absolutely impossible rainforest that is as thick as fur. And while I was in New Guinea, there were representatives from Eli Lilly and other pharmaceutical companies that were going to remote villages and asking Shaman, which plants heal, which plants kill? They were looking for miracle drugs growing on trees, and that's been going on forever. The tribal people in New Guinea knew for 5,000 years that if they ate or made a tea out of the bark of the Quintona tree, that they would prevent it from getting malaria. So I mean, there are a lot of pharmaceuticals that are from jungles. And I thought, what if there were in a very, very remote area of New Guinea an orchid that the business compound of which could prolong life? And that, I came up with elixir, which means a fountain of youth drug. And I had a scientist living in Arlington. I think I called it Carlton at that time. And he synthesizes a business compound in this orchid, gives it to his animals, and lo and behold, the Shaman told them, who claims he's 140 years old, that this would prolong life, and lo and behold, the test animals, his primates in his lab, are living very long, well beyond their allotted time. And of course, something like if you're going to have a compound that is in fiction, a compound or anything that is going to cheat nature, there's going to be a downside.  So that's the tension within the book. And it becomes the hottest drug on the planet. This guy injects it in himself, of course, because he wants to live indefinitely. And it's the old Frankenstein caveat. In fact, all the next several books are caveats. Watch out what you wish for. And elixir, it's a fantasy I have, which had a gallon of this stuff myself. But the warning about tampering with the natural order is dramatized in the book. Not only would it be a population nightmare, but it would be the elixirs and the elixir nuts, those countries that have the elixir versus those countries that don't. It could be almost a kind of genetic apartheid.  And that could be parental hell, not to match it with a child.   So there are all sorts of issues there. That did well, and the publisher said, give us more of the same. And so I was, thank you, I need now another kind of McGuffin, an Alfred Hitchcock term for something that gets everyone scrambling. And I remember watching, I remember back in the 80s and early 90s, that there were reports that parents can turn their kids into geniuses. And there are all sorts of products that came out, baby Einstein, baby Shakespeare, baby Bach. And if you play these games or play the music to these kids as they're very, very young, they grow up to be geniuses. In fact, there was something put up by Sony, a device that attached to a pregnant woman's belly that would play classical music to her fetus. And climbing the fetal charts today is Beethoven's fifth. So it was absurd. But there had been a study in the 70s out of Harvard that said you can make your kids smarter than they ordinarily be if you expose them to intellectual and cultural things like music and art. So that was gray matter. And it centered on a woman who adores her kid, but he's slow. And she lives in an upscale community where the rewards for intelligence are very obvious, all the fancy cars and fancy homes, and the kids go to fancy schools. And she's got a kid who's not going to live up to that kind of competition. And she is tempted to have a very clandestine, a very expensive and a very dangerous medical procedure that enhances the IQ of a slow child. And then everything goes awry from there. And that did fine. And then the next book was Flashback, Where That Come From. My aunt, who was a very bright woman whose presence would fill a room, got dementia. And she was slowly bumping down the staircase to the end. And she was at a nursing home nearby in Watertown. And by that time, she was just something attached to wires in a bed.  And my aunt was just sitting there kind of babbling, and Alice and I were talking. And all of a sudden, something very, very strange, a Stephen King moment happened. She began, my aunt in bed who was not even verbal anymore, started speaking in a little girl voice in Armenian to her mother who had died 80 years before that. And I was one of those, oh my God, movements. And at Currieville, what if someone were to develop a chemical that normally retards the development of the amyloid plaque that destroys the brain and leads to Alzheimer's, which is Alzheimer's disease. But what if it could reverse that process, not only stop it, reverse that process and restore memory. And that gave me the idea for Flashback. At the time, I needed, and this is a question I always have to confront. What's the first thing I want to know about writing this book before I start writing it? Can I convince the readers of the science? And so I went online and I googled Cures for Dementia. I got four million hits, if not more. But right at the top, right at the top, there was a paper that was about to be delivered in Zurich, Switzerland, the next month by a team of elite neurosurgeons. And it was on curing, or doing something about Alzheimer's. And they had found a neurotoxin that exists in Gila monsters, those orange and black beaded looking reptiles that live in Arizona and down into Mexico. The saliva of the Gila monster apparently is a neurotoxin that is poisonous. If you were to diminish the potency of that chemical and dilute it, it was used to retard dementia and even reverse some of the Alzheimer's horrors. And I said, okay, I'm Boston based, I live in Arlington, my family's going to probably live in Arlington. Where am I going to find a Gila monster looking around?  One day, someone yelled, jellyfish! And they all bunched up in the middle. I said jellyfish, and I said neurotoxin, these little buggers really stink and they could do a number. And I had been diving in the barrier reef in Australia.  And there's absolutely no antidote for it. And we have a warm stream going up the Massachusetts coast. What if it got caught into a freakishly warm gulf stream and these ended up on Cape Cod? And that is where the idea for flashbacks and somebody gets in the water and also a pharmaceutical company, and this is ten years before Previgin, the stuff that's on the market now and not approved by the FDA, you see it every night in the commercials to improve your memory, just way before them. But I had an eight-show jellyfish and I thought that ten years before, in any case. And of course, the issue is, again, they caveat, watch out what you wish for. This stuff works well, however, some people get thrown into flashbacks and relive on almost like a mobius strip, the same scene over and over again. So if your father committed suicide by hanging himself, you could relive that over and over again. Yeah, there are always these repeats. Do you doubt that they are not researching these very things today? They are researching these things. Oh, I mean, that would be a $50 billion pill. If you can get something that's going through reverse, we are an older generation. And then, that was done and it was fine, but again, I fired again and got to come up with a new novel idea. I was at a cocktail party and you're gabbing as people gab at cocktail parties and a woman came up and said, I understand you teach science fiction, you teach horror fiction. And then she said, I've had near-death experiences. I said, okay, tell me about your near-death experiences. She said she was in delivery for her fourth child and she thinks she died on the operating table and she thinks she ended up by a well where a male figure looked like Jesus was standing next to her and she's Jewish. So she's not brought up in the Catholicism or Christianity. But he was the iconic image of Jesus and Jesus said to her, she wanted to die. You cannot die. You still have other children.   You can see the other children. And a magician's finger, she said, I woke up and I was post-delivery. I guess she lost her child of stillborn. And she said, I just knew it was so much more real than a dream. I believe that I had had an out-of-the-body experience and a near-death experience and I saw this figure of Jesus. So that actually fascinated me. Near-death experiences go back to Plato where soldiers died and I think they meet their battlemates in the afterlife. So that gave me the idea, what if there were a local neuroscientist who wants to take him to her lab or prove that there might be or demonstrate there might be an afterlife. And that was an idea that came out of also a lot of readings. In the 70s, there were stories that became non-fiction books by scientists, apparently, that became national bestsellers. And even a term near-death experience was coined in the 70s, even though the concept goes back to Plato. And then there were several books that made the bestsellers lists of people. I saw God in these kinds of religious non-fiction books. So I decided to write this book. And of course, the tunnel vision is also, again, as a thriller, there is that sense of dread and that sense that watch out what you wish for. And it works out very well, but the first thing I had to do was go to his neuroscientist before he started even typing, can this be done? Can we measure the mind living the brain? He said, yeah, you could flat-line a person and wake up in three minutes and wire them up to a functioning MRI machine and see if the mind leaves the brain. I said, great. And he gave me all these kind of technical stuff, and I said, so I laced that in. And you can see the trend, the older I get, and I don't believe in an afterlife, but the older I get, the more I hope there is one. So that was tunnel vision, and that did very nicely, too. And 1,000 years from now, that debate will still be going on. Oh, yeah. Right. By the way, it was a nice way to merge science and religion without taking a side on either one, even though it was a kind of a kick at the end. Now one of the courses you taught at Northeastern was science fiction. What drew you to that genre, in particular? I read science fiction by the pound as a kid. I went to Worcester Tech and major in physics, and so I was very science-minded. And it was in the 70s when they then chaired the English department, said that the number of people taking electives in Northeastern's English department was dropping, come up with what you call jazzy new courses that would draw more people. And because I read a lot of science fiction, I proposed a course in science fiction. It was really one of the first around, the college level. I mean, I had nothing to drop. I had no one I could write to, and say, 70 years syllabus. So I put together what I thought were literally academically respectable books, and so my favorites. And it took off. But I started with the caveat that I've used all throughout all my writing, and so many other writers have you, and that is Victor Frankenstein, the Frankenstein novel by Mary Shelly. He makes something, trying to improve on nature, built an eight-foot human being put together by scraps, and hoping to kill death. And so that was what I was doing in Tunnel Vision. And there is a warning. Watch out what you wish for, but I won't give anything away. Yeah. Well, as you might remember. Science fiction, really. Science fiction has that in all these books. That's the same kind of thing. And it was fun to teach, and it took off. Yeah. I grok that. You remember that. You know. Robert Heinlein. Yeah. Strangely, strangely. What do you find most rewarding about science fiction? It does keep, the writers keep a finger in the pulse of technology, and say, watch out that technology science doesn't mess up our dreams of the future. I mean, it's future-oriented.  It says that there's wonders of science and wonders in technology. It is what the imaginings of imagination of writers gave us the concept of aliens in other worlds. War of the worlds is the very first real science fiction alien invasion stuff. So it's always this wonderfully imaginative kinds of stories coming out of these writers. And it always, it will always be popular. Popular because of the imaginings, and popular because of the warnings, and popular because of the possibilities of human future. Is modern science fiction very different from the Heinlein days, Isaac Asimov days? What is the emphasis of modern science fiction? I think the emphasis that it really comes from the publishers give us series, series because they're looking about marketing and selling. So what many writers today are doing, and it had done in the last 15, 20 years, take a federation intergalactic or interplanetary federation and, in a sense, these old paradigms of us versus them, aliens versus humans, or aliens versus robots, or artificial intelligence creatures, or creatures with artificial intelligence. So you're always, you're in these kind of, the Romans in the ancient Rome, ancient Greek, but set into the stars. And, you know, Star Wars is essentially that old paradigm of our empire versus your empire. Yeah. Yeah. I remember from my early science fiction days, a lot of the books I read, that started my love for reading, was about us going to other planets and inhabiting them and living in them. Just simple stories. Is science fiction today story oriented, or is it more, is a change in that regard too? Because going to other planets might not be as exciting as... You want to keep the excitement level up. You want to keep the interesting science and the imaginings of other worlds and other creatures. But it's really character, I would say, the kinds of stuff being written out is character based. There's more emphasis on the personalities of the protagonist and the antagonists. Just like Star Wars. I mean, think about that. It's really Skywalker and Darth Vader and the others. Who are these creatures? Who are these people? The other stuff is ancillary. It's like a stage dressing, your rockets and aliens and this and that, getting it from here to there. But it really is about characters. And good science fiction writers who can create credible characters is the way to go. Yeah. Those are the ones that are best sellers. Yeah. Yeah. And the readers will take away from your books. That they got ours a good reading pleasure. That it was a good tale, well-written, and that it made them think. And they want to come back and buy a lot more books from Gary Braver. And what about advice for aspiring young authors? I'm sure teaching it, there were a lot of those in your classes. What is your advice to them? My advice is to read the authors you want to emulate. But don't speed read, read them slowly, study them, look at another person's book the way a carpenter looks at a house, the angles, how they get in and out of scenes, how a strip of dialogue is not the way we talk, but the way dialogue happens in movies and in books where you can have characters distinguish from each other, even though it's only five or six inches of dialogue, but read and, like I said, read slowly. I remember years ago at Northeastern there were signs for speed reading courses where you were taught to read a strip of words on the middle of the page. I tore all those signs down. This is crazy professor tearing down the posters. But really, that is my advice. And write every day, I was telling Karen earlier, write every day to take notes even if you're not with a three by five card or you have one of your devices, pick up what people say, how they look with how they dress, and take a journal that helps, yeah. Do you know of any of the students along the way who have become publisher authors from your classes? Yeah, a few of them, a few students from the science fiction course back in the 1990s, so one of two students had written novels and had published some short stories in Asimov's magazine of the science fiction, yeah, they had been, yeah. Do you think students came into these classes mostly hoping to do that someday or? I think so, and maybe I had reputation of being an easy grader too. But I mean the genres are attractive, I mean science fiction, horror fiction, I mean they're attractive and maybe some of them, in fact some of them did say I'd like to grow up to be a writer of this particular genre. Sure. Yeah, okay. Now from your medically oriented books you kind of departed when you collaborated with Tess Gerritsen for the book Choose Me. Yeah, yeah. I got a copy, look at this, I happen to have a copy right here. And even Choose Me in Chinese, which is great. And that was the Me Too movement, the emphasis on the Me Too movement. Now your new book, do you want to say something about this? Oh yeah, sure. Good. How did Choose Me come about? I have known Tess Gerritsen for 25 years. We are on a panel together back in mid-90s in Concord at a book festival. And I had read a few of her books and I was teaching a modern bestsellers course and she said, would you be interested coming in as a guest author? And she said, sure. So we set it up and she came in four times over the years, became good friends. And about five years ago at a Christmas party, we were chatting away and she said, do you want to write a book together? Give me a nanosecond. This is a number one bestselling international author. I think we can pull this off. Yeah. It was right at the high of the Me Too movement, as you mentioned. And all sorts of celebrity males are being put away or being hauled in, like Harvey Weinstein and Matt Lauer and others. Yeah. And she said, what do you think? I said, yes. But I would, instead of having a medical setting as she had done in several books, how about a university setting, because I could handle that better. And we decided that there's two sides to any kind of relationship, two sides to an illicit affair, the male and female. I would do the male chapters and she would do female chapters. So I did all the male point of view chapters. I came up with the storyline and she liked that. And she did the female point of view chapters. And we did over the next 18 months, sent chapters to each other over email. We met only once, talked on the phone twice, but everything was done by email. And because she knew my books, I knew her books, we kind of spoke the same language. What I did learn from this, it was really exciting, a lot of fun. How she, we learned about her audience, because that was going to be the, she's brand name. And her audience was female and over 50, 80% with female over 50. So I had to temper some of the male point of view chapters, not to be offensive, not to, you know, make it too guy-ish. And so it was really interesting going back and forth. And she came back to me and said, do men really think this way? And I said, yes. And she checked with her husband, Jacob. Yeah, men think this way. So it was a lot of fun writing the book. And it took off and got a lot of translations and yeah. Yeah, obviously. This is great. Although I'm unable to read the Chinese version. Yeah, this is Chinese. The only two things that are in Roman Scripler, her name and my name, and they're almost the same size. Great. Yeah, that's quite an honor to have all of those. Well, now your new book, Rumor of Eva, that's coming out October 10th. October 10th, yeah. Speaking, and that's the second one in your departure from medical friends. Correct. So, correct. I had had some police and some police, I had had police procedures and touches in a few back novels like Grey Matter. But since the success of Choose Me with Tess, my agent said, why don't you write your own series? I said, oh, yeah. So I came up with two detectives. They are from Cambridge for reasons that I won't get into. They're from Cambridge and even though there are scenes in Arlington. And it is a, there's a cold case and there's a current case. The current case is that the two police detectives, homicide detectives are investigating what appears to be a suicide in Cambridge. And the character, the cops smell a rat. This is not, this is staged. This is not suicide. And it comes out, turns out to be a murder, a homicide. And as they investigate this particular homicide, they begin to realize there's a cold case from almost 20 years ago behind this thing. Somebody is covering up for something that happened in Cambridge and Lexington actually nearly 20 years ago. To an actual case. This is made up, but to an actual case back then where a exchange student from Slovakia who has Romani blood, Gypsy, is here and she is, she's killed and the cops think it was a cover-up. That is rumor of evil. The rumor had to do with the fact that she, the kids who she hangs around in school see her at a pizza party reading poems and they think she is a witch. Nothing supernatural in the book, but it's a rumor of evil. Wow, it's exciting to be looking forward to that. Now, you already have sent in the second book in this series. I don't know if you can tell us anything about that title, anything where it's not even, it's just done. And the working title, maybe the final title is Heat of the Moment. It involves the killing of a college professor in the Boston area and there are five suspects and it's maddening to the cops because they don't know which one, they're all tied for first place and it's a who done it and a why done it and it's called Heat of the Moment which is the follow-up, the same characters, the follow-up to rumor of evil. So you've sent that next one in. I have to ask you, are you already working on another one or are you taking a hiatus for a couple of weeks? I'm crawling out of the bunker and taking a breather. Good for you. Well, Gary, thank you for coming today. This has been a pleasure to have you back and when your new book comes out, you can come back and tell us more about that and how many more languages it's been translated into and if you're going to be doing book events in Europe and China and wherever. But until then, good luck with your writing and we look forward to the next venture and you help the town of Arlington being a resident artist and you help the world of literature. So that's a terrific thing to have. Good luck to you and see you in October. Thank you.


Yeah. It is actually it is just words of probably the conclusion person it's a guess. So, but no, no, no, it's a random kind of Can you render it for J's? Can I edit it right now? So, remain on the last page. So, it's just a real type. Negative of using some soft words like


Welcome back to the second session of Whittling with Salty. Last time we finished up, we had carved a half of our ball. This time we're going to start out by finishing that ball and then work on to the next section of the project. When we carve the bottom half of the ball, we have to do it a little bit differently than we did with the top half. So we'll start at our stop cut at the bottom of where the ball is and begin making little v-cuts all the way around. You don't want to go up very far because otherwise your ball is not going to be round. It will be kind of peeked on the bottom instead of half-round like it should be. So we'll make little stop cuts and little v-cuts, work our way carefully around, not taking too much at a time. Not anymore than your strength will allow you and somewhat less if you have strong hands because when you're whittling, it's very easy to cut something off but it's very, very difficult to cut it back on. That just doesn't work. So we'll make little v-cuts all the way around and then as you can see, we're beginning to get a little bit of shape. So now we can work our way up just a little bit, maybe a sixteenth of an inch at a time. We'll work our way around again. Little chips, not very big. The wood that I'm working with is white pine. I like to carve white pine. It carves nicely, holds detail well. It smells good and if you have needles from white pine, you can make a cup of tea out of it also. That was a favorite drink with some of the Indians, white pine tea. It's quite mild. It doesn't taste like turpentine at all. Now that's about as far as you'd want to go so that you can begin to see that there's a little rounding there but we want to make sure that we're round. And so we have to begin to carve in a rounding fashion and I find the easiest way to do that is to carve in a kind of a slanted way. So we'll start up a little bit and carve and turn the stick at the same time so that you get a deeper cut at the bottom than you do at the top.  We just want to make it rounding so that we have a good solid peg for the ball to stay on. I had a student one time that got busy rounding this ball off and she worked at it so diligently that she cut the ball right off the top of the stick. She came in at the next class and said, look what I did. I said, well, that's why they make toothpicks and glue.  That's one thing about whittling. A whittler never makes a mistake. You just make something else. You change your project.   So the little dog turned into a seal. If you don't make mistakes, you make something else. Now you might want to stop and take your circle gauge that you made before and check to see how you're coming out. It looks like we're getting pretty close to a ball. Don't be afraid to stop and check every once in a while, especially when you're beginning. Now what I'm going to do is go back right at that pencil mark and carve easily. Cut off all of the corners. As you see, we're going to clean up all of the little edges and now we have a web of a ball on the bottom and another one on the top. You can use your little gauge to check and make sure that your ball is nice and round. Maybe you've got to take off a little bit here or there. But that's another project that we have done. The next project that we're going to work on is this thing I call a dodecahedron. When you're marking your stick, we always leave a quarter inch spacer in between the projects. That makes it a little bit easier when we're starting. After you learn how to do things, you can begin to eliminate stuff like that. But this way it gives you something to cut up against and later on you can always cut it off or leave it there if you like it. What we're trying to do this time is to carve faces, flat faces on the stick that look alike. Sometimes when you're carving it's very important that you get two sides that look exactly alike or very close together or maybe three sides that look alike and so we'll do a little practice on that just cutting flat faces. Now to do that we have to have a square the same size as our stick.  And you can lay it on the stick and leave about a quarter of an inch for a spacer and you can take your pencil and mark it. If you will take your pattern and fold it like that and clip the corner off right in the center, each corner and then fold it again the other way and clip the corners off. Then you don't have to wear out your ruler to measure things because you can lay that pattern down and you can take your pencil mark on both sides and then where you've made a little clip mark you can make a little pencil mark so that gives you the center mark on all four sides. Now that you have that center mark you can take your ruler or you can take a little piece of card and go from center mark to center mark and mark that off so that you get a diamond or another square inside of the other square that you had marked off. I'll just darken this one a little bit and maybe the camera will be able to pick that up. So we have a square marked inside of a square and we do that on all four sides and then we're able to take our knife and cut those dodecahedron, those flat spots which I call a dodecahedron. A dodecahedron has ten sides and I think this has ten sides. Maybe if you cut it loose it would have a couple more but we're not going to do that.  The pencil marks should be the last thing to disappear.  It is the exact same size as the face that you're working on. When you get there then you can just... And it's easier to make cuts like that if you make a slicing cut rather than just trying to push it straight through. You'll make a slicing cut until the pencil marks disappear and there you have the first face done. Now you do the same thing on the second face. There's a stop cut down there and you make a little stop cut. Now you'll notice that my fingers are right over here and I'm cutting but I'm cutting up against the stop cut.  So that's why it's very important to be taking small cuts so that you can control what you're doing. Let's see. Again we have to be careful that we work our way down to the pencil marks and there we have one side of it done.  Oh, we got a little pencil mark showing here. Can't have that. Now we do the same thing on all four corners and we wind up with something that looks like that. That's our dodecahedron. Now we've learned those skills. We're going to work on learning how to do some carving inside of things. The project that we are attempting to do this time is called a cylinder inside of a cage. And I'm not too concerned how exactly round this cylinder is. What I'm concerned with is that we learn to carve these struts or these posts on the four corners and then work inside without cutting those posts or breaking them because sometimes we have to work inside of parts of carvings and so it's important to learn that skill. To do that, we have to mark off our cylinder. Now I like to use about three inches so if you leave a stop mark of about a quarter of an inch and mark on both sides of a three by five card you have three inches and then you can use that mark to mark the second quarter and you can lay out and work your way all around the stick to get the four sides. Now we want to mark off our posts so we take your pencil and your hand with just the point of the pencil sticking out so we get about a quarter of an inch and draw that down from mark to mark on all four corners and without losing that spot on your thumb turn it around and mark the other four corners. All of those corners marked, we're going to begin carving and again the first thing that we need to do is to make a stop cut and we'll do the stop cuts on each end of one of the posts so beginning at the stop cut that goes cross ways and the edge of the posts stay a little bit away from either mark and make a stab cut. Now you can do this with a bench knife but if you are using a folding pocket knife you have to use a little bit different skill you would use the sheep's foot blade and put it down in there and just use a push motion if you try to do a stab cut like this chances are that that knife will fold up on you and if your finger is in between there that gets very very painful and it messes up your table it's all messy and you have to stop and clean things up so make a little stop cut make a little stop cut down there and make a stop cut alongside of the posts alongside of the posts and you can take a little three corner cut out a little chip we'll work on just one at a time now so that you know how to do this again you have to make your stop cut you'll have to do this two or three or four times as you get down a little ways and you can begin to move your knife over so that you're right up on the pencil mark and do that until you think you're about all the way through you can check that of course by sticking your knife blade in putting your fingernail up against there and then lay it on top so we have a little ways to go because we want to get down to the bottom of that other mark so we'll have to make another stop cut we'll do the same thing down here we'll get down about far enough yeah just about now we'll turn it over and working on the other side of the same post we'll do the same thing make a little triangular cut to start with a little triangular cut to start with make those stop cuts just barely deep enough so that you can see a little bit of light at the bottom of the hole then you know that you've cut all the way through and we'll do the same thing up here and you can stop cut we should be playing some music here now to entertain us a little bit more when you have all four corners cut down we'll start to make our post and again staying just a little bit away from the pencil line make a slicing cut a real easy one and then a little angle cut and take out a little sliver we repeat that take a small sliver you don't have to get real fast and work your way down you're near the bottom of your stop cuts and we'll turn it over and do the same thing on the other side make little slivers out a little better than time you can always take out more but you can't put it back unless you use glue I guess that's one of the reasons that they make glue but sometimes that interferes with your project because if you were going to stain something when you were done then wherever you have put glue the stain is not going to take very well the same way if you're using wood filler or something to fill up a hole if you're going to paint over it you can do that but if you want to stain it or leave it natural then you have a problem so it's best not to cut things any deeper than you need to take nice, easy, small cuts the slivers are not very big you'll have to do this of course on all four corners before we do anything else when you're doing your project on your own so you do that just far enough then so that you get down to the point where you can see a little bit of light or that your knife blade will go through and we're going to have to finish this up on our next session but you've got the idea you can get started on this now you know how to do this post on the corner of the cage and so we'll wind this up for this second session and we hope to see you next time and we'll carve some more thanks for coming


Mach 364 on final approach and not acknowledged for the transmission four and three-quarter miles from runway approaching glide path will should be down On course heading zero five zero begin descent on glide path on course An Air Force four-engine jet attempts an emergency ground-controlled precision radar approach landing minus two engines out over the Pacific and Complicated when bad weather closed in some thirteen hundred miles from the coast and home base The burden falls on the aircraft commander the co-pilot the navigator and the ground controller Yet it sounds rather routine holding slightly bugged like that on glide path two miles from touchdown on course On glide path on course Sliding below glide path The ability of each individual to meet the demands of the situation Represents far more than just his own efforts It is a dramatic example of training systematically planned conducted and evaluated in terms of performance requirements as reflected in meaningful criterion objectives This film another in the instructional technology series Explains what criterion objectives are and why they are the key to successful performance After viewing this film, you will be able to one Explain how criterion objectives are derived to Identify the three essential characteristics of a criterion objective three list three major benefits of criterion objectives and four Personally use and encourage others to learn about and use criterion objectives. I'm captain Bruce cross Like many other aircraft commanders in the 141 we find ourselves in very tight situations once in a while for an example Just a few weeks ago. We had to go into an airstrip of which the last 1500 to 2000 feet of runway were damaged It's a real challenge putting this airplane in an airstrip of 4500 feet I don't know too much about those criterion objectives, but I do know I'm fully qualified to handle this airplane And I guess that's saying something fully qualified Able to perform the mission That's what objectives are all about Here's a multi-engine jet How do you prepare someone to fly it? Navigate it load it land it repair it tow it Inventory it control it fuel it secure it improve it budget for it or Any of the thousand and one different things that go into getting it airborne and on its way to mission accomplishment? Having been appointed an Air Force cadet the United States Air Force And how do you graduate second lieutenants with a knowledge and character essential to leadership and a career in the United States Air Force? And that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties Of the office on which I am about to enter graduation day No matter where it occurs throughout the Air Force is a happy one, but it's also an expensive one It's estimated we spend several billion dollars a year on training and education And we've been turning out guys who can fly navigate and perform in technical specialties for years But the real question is Can we do it better and more efficiently? By now you've heard about ISD Instructional system development The five-step model where we first Analyze the system Then define the education or training requirement Develop objectives and tests Plan develop and validate the instruction Then the training requirements Then the training requirements Then the training requirements Instruction Then conduct and evaluate the instruction in step one wait to find our goal through a comprehensive task analysis Using occupational surveys interviews and work inventories When you begin course development by finding out what a worker actually does Instruction can be designed to precisely meet the demands of the job in step two Instructional standards are developed to specify the knowledge skills attitudes and the level of proficiency needed for realistic performance This step pinpoints the items requiring formal instruction and identifies the major resources which should be used Step three is the subject of this film The development of objectives that are job relevant For the aircraft commander and co-pilot seen in the first part of the film It goes back in part to an objective achieved in the flight simulator For the navigator his in-flight mission re-planning required and for the gca controller All the objectives have three things in common First they each specify the behavior or performance activity by which the student displays the skill and knowledge required for the job second They each indicate the condition or circumstances under which the student must perform and third They specify a standard or criterion which is the minimally acceptable level of student performance performance conditions Standards P C S What are the three characteristics of a meaningful objective? performance conditions Standards the performance or behavior is described in concrete action verbs Stating what the student does to display his newly acquired skill knowledge or attitude You don't say the pilot will know how to handle an in-flight emergency You state that he must maintain flight upon the loss of two engines You don't say the navigator will understand how to re-plan a mission in flight But you prescribe that he Performs in-flight re-planning and you don't say the student will learn how to control a precision approach You specify the student will control a precision approach The conditions under which the student must perform are usually expressed in terms of provisions and restrictions What the student is given and what he is denied and these should as nearly as possible Relate directly to real life Setting the standard expected of the student completes the objective Often expressed in accuracy or speed the standard specifies the satisfactory level of student performance Now here's an objective from the personnel officer course What portions specifies the performance activity? What conditions are imposed and what standard is required? You can now see how a meaningful objective is constructed and how the performance activity the conditions and The standards Combined to make the instructional intent crystal clear When objectives have been based on a thorough analysis of what is required for real-world performance The instructional designer is well on his way to the next step in building an instructional system planning Developing and validating the instruction Then conducting and evaluating the instruction You've got to know what you're trying to do before you figure out how you're going to do it a Thorough task analysis and careful definition of instructional requirements Combined with well-written objectives Provide a sound basis for the selection and development of learning activities media and the actual instruction There's no wasted time or effort on the part of the students or instructional staff The staff works together to zero in on clearly defined goals The student is continually aware of what's expected of him There's reduced frustration and an improved morale and attitude and When he graduates he'll meet the needs of the requester The need which originally instigated the requirement for the instruction Now all this sounds perfectly plausible and proper. So what's the problem? Well for one thing Objectives aren't as easy to write as we've made it appear We've given you the basics but writing a good objective can be a real challenge as You move from simple skills to knowledge to attitudes our methods for evaluation are not as precise But we are making progress Take this one for example How are you going to improve it as you work with criterion objectives? one thing you'll discover is that objectives can be rated on a scale from very fuzzy to very clear Just because you're desired learning outcomes don't it first seem to lend themselves to clearly defined Behavioral terms doesn't mean you don't need objectives Although the more clearly defined objectives can be more effectively applied to instruction It's not necessarily bad to work with less than perfectly defined objectives By continuously reexamining objectives, you will be able to clarify them You'll find they can be improved and achieved and you'll have more time to deal with other unclear objectives This objective we've used as an example is now much more useful for an instructor who wants to evaluate his students pride in their work But it can still be improved How do you define voluntarily? What is minimal assistance? How will you know if a student complains? Further refinement will produce an objective that specifically states what the student is expected to learn After all the purpose of education or training is to bring about a change in the learner learning is change and Objectives are the way you express this change So although at times this change may seem difficult to express if you expect to teach a skill in Part knowledge or effect attitudes You've got to find a way to verbalize this change and If you don't have good objectives or if they aren't based on real-world requirements You're kidding yourself and doing the Air Force at a service You'll waste time manpower and money by over training under training misdirected training or possibly in no training at all and you'll also endanger Air Force mission accomplishment Writing well-defined criterion objectives is a challenge and takes time But it is cost-effective and there's no way you're going to train or educate people effectively without them It's that simple


So this is our annual force-on-force training. We do every year. It's annual requirements for the missile field. We're going to have helos with us, which will be fantastic. We haven't had that in a few years, so we'll get a lot of our folks the opportunity to go up and fly, see what it's like. In the missile field, the teams on the helos are typically TRF. If something were to happen where TRF were taken out, yes, the backup forces could use the helicopters for, you know, fast, quick access into the fight. Typically I'm going to get to do this a few times a year. So it's just a refresher of proficiency, hey, here's what we do just in case we have to surge so people have some idea of basically what they're getting into. Anything that we can add with the helicopters, any extra new weapon systems, most of them just absolutely love it. For the DSGs, they don't get the time out here like the AGRs do. So when they come in, all this extra special training, even the AGRs don't get a ton of time on this, but it's even more important for them to get the training. We came out here and we used our resources. We worked as a team to accomplish the mission and get done when we needed to get done. We'll cover you. You engage them. I don't see them. So we'll follow you. Move it. Got you covered. Move it. Based on terrorist threats. So we'll take, hey, these are our most likely threats to the missile field. We'll insert them into our scenarios. So we'll start out basically, anybody wanting to do this today, we're going to have them get access to a weapon system. So from there, each team will have a 15 and five to begin with. They'll be primarily guarding the weapon system because the hatch will be open and they'll have access. So it's the easiest time typically for bad guys to do stuff. So our scenario will be to have the opposing force to go on, do their thing, and then each team coming in will have to react depending on what we throw at them. So I would say it's definitely very valuable training, especially considering what we do here in Minot and as a team, it's definitely very valuable.


My name is Travis Lindsay. I've lived in Freeport my whole life. This is our family's business birds foot golf club, and it's been around for 20 years. So we're very proud of it, and we're proud to be a part of Freeport. What I love about Freeport is the community, knowing people when you go into stores, knowing people when you see them on the street, being able to say hello to them. There's a warmth in that, and that's what I love about Freeport. Well, I love the chute building has always been one because Mr. Chute was down there selling clothes to us when we were kids, and he was always playing cards in the back. And then now looking at it, it's a beautiful building and it has a lot of history to my grandfather moved here from Pittsburgh when he was in the forties and he married my grandmother and they built a farm on the other side of this creek that's the valleys right behind us. He bought this farm in 1967. It's really a beautiful area and we're really lucky to have come here to live. This is our family's business. The five of my uncles and aunts back in 1999, 2000 decided to turn what was called the AV farm. That's what we used to call this up here into Birdsfoot Golf Club. It took a while to figure out the name. Birdsfoot, it's called Birdsfoot because there's a tree foil or a hay that you see. They actually use it as a ground cover and they used it a lot more before they developed crowned vetch, but it's a very hardy plant. And actually the third and fourth hole of the golf course are on the far side of the golf course and they used to my grandfather used to make hay over there and they'd bring the wagon back across and the 18th green there was a barn and the seeds from the Birdsfoot tree foil would fall. And so there was Birdsfoot tree foil all around the farm. So we thought it was a fitting name. It was also kind of simple and started with the B. Well, I think if you're an investor looking to invest in Freeport, the location, the physical features of it, it's in a beautiful location. The entrance when you come down the hill into Freeport, there's very few towns that have that kind of entrance in all the towns I've ever been to. So when you come down that hill, it's really beautiful. And I think you have the river and then the creek comes in. And when you look at that town, it's such a picturesque little town.  It's just it's a beautiful town. I think for starters, the location with how close it is to Pittsburgh and ease of access to all those areas that you're really close to Pittsburgh. You know, it's only 20 miles, 20 minutes away or 25 minutes away or something. So I think that those are all very, very attractive things. And this is my wife, Virginia. Hi, I'm Virginia Lindsay. My business is ginger cake patterns and I design sewing patterns for a living. And I teach sewing basics on YouTube. I've written three books on sewing and I plan to write more. And I've lived in Freeport for 20 years. I came here to be with Travis. When the first time I came here, I just thought it was such a charming, beautiful town when he brought me here to meet his family. And then I've just really loved living here. It's just I love a small town. I'm from Atlanta originally, and I grew up there and I love Atlanta, but I'm always happy to come back to Freeport. It's just a small town. It's a great feel. People are kind. It's just a great place to raise a family and live your life. And we are small business owners. Let's say we're we're we're we're let's say, no, we are. Let's say we are in zero. All right, so I'll do three, two, one. And when I point, that's when you guys will say, and we're small. We are we are small business owners. OK, all right. Three, two. And we are small business owners.


Hi Sylvia, this is Ashley with Oxmore Toyota. I wanted to send you over a quick video greeting that way you can see who you'll be working with. Thank you so much for your recent interest in a new Corolla. I wanted to send you over our current inventory for you to look over whenever you have some free time. Please give me a call. My number is<PHONE_NUMBER> or email me back. Thanks. Bye.


And now for your strong Europe spotlight. Lesley in Germany is the home of the German Army's maneuver training area. Members of the 3rd Infantry Division's 1st Brigade deployed to Germany as part of the US Army's regionally aligned force concept and was deployed once again to validate their readiness and support one of the user commander's priorities enabling the alliance. It is also a test of how the two centers can train together and share the data needed in order to provide realistic training. We think kind of the initial results are good but we got a little bit more work to do but it really shows how the US Army can work together with our German host. Thank you very much.


Alright, thanks for staying with us. Now navigating the passing of a loved one is never easy But the prevalence of social media can make it that little bit harder, right? Grief expert Margaret Rice shares how not to put your foot in it online It's easy to feel overwhelmed when it comes to managing death etiquette in the Instagram age Should I post about a friend's death? Should I tag a photo of myself and the diseased and who should I Negotiate these things with you know, sure you can Google a list of do's and don'ts But you won't get what you need ultimately the best that death etiquette is heart Language like any heart language death etiquette is not one-size-fits-all. It's nuanced and it needs You to make it genuine now What are the societal do's and the societal don'ts when managing loss now? That's a conversation today Please let's hear what you have to say remember you can join the conversation send us an SMS or what's up to 08-1 803-466-3 can also treat others at we should have come on with a hashtag with sure. All right, so Just When we were doing the countdown to the project that the talk show we produced over two weeks about two weeks now Thursday 20th, I can never forget that date because we were doing counts down to our Projects take off for the production the TV show that I did and We didn't know I mean our producer lost her father that same day And I remember her calling me that morning crying so hard and saying that she didn't know that we were doing a Countdown we were counting down to actually to launch a project and we didn't know that the countdown was also Counting down to her father's loss Yeah Loss is a big thing and it was only when you are in the shoes of the person that is in it that you would understand how How how emotionally gripping it can be and so for me, right? Why we are having this conversation now is Everybody is just throwing left right and center conversations that I think for me. They are needless And they have there been some good things that have happened in all of the situation, especially with David O's son For instance, I'll say yes, I was particularly happy when I saw that they said the police had arrested or They've called in about nine or six people into questioning to because You see in the midst of the grief One common mistake that we make I think is We are so engrossed in our pain that we forget to ask why We forget to ask what went wrong You know, sometimes we feel like oh and I hear some religion saying God gives and God takes I get that part I have lost the sister-in-law for instance before and she died while she was trying to have a child and I Kept on till tomorrow. I keep on saying why was the why were they not? Why was an autopsy not done to even understand was it a negligence on the part of the hospital, you know But yes, I get that point that we're griffin at that point But I would have felt a lot more closure if I understood what happened. Why the why, right? So in all of these things, there are things that we should do there are things we should not do Not to do the don'ts are not you. That's not the time to ask Where were you where were the parents because again? That's what we are so quick to do to throw blames and say oh what why didn't you do this? Why didn't you do that? That's not the time sometimes in the moment of grief and pain? You just need to be quiet and just be there. That's not even a time to talk You know, so we can't even control their mouth like they just keep going on and on and on and again We're now with the social media era. This is like a something that is the news is all over globally because the person that is involved in this thing is a global icon Right and so the news is all over globally. So I would I would appreciate if we start to understand that Yes, it might be that this person is out there and everything. What has happened? It requires some level of personalised Dealing and I'm happy when I read somewhere that he is at his father's place Everybody has been and everybody has been cut off because that's what is needed at this time This is not the time to start Because there was it there was something that I remember when and was it Adah, I mean when she passed there was something that we were picking did and I didn't call that out there You went to the funeral. You did a video and everything I felt that was very insensitive So I get the part that we want to console But we have learned we have not we're not separating social media From a griefing person and that's where you know, we have this issue I think we have issues. Let me hear your thoughts quickly then because we need to open our phone lines People tend not to understand what to do when there's a loss or in different things as well They think everything is news Somebody dies. I should be the first to post it Somebody dies. I should be the first to mention it in the Yoruba culture You don't even attend the funeral of someone younger than you as a Practice because you're not supposed to have to leave them by the same token parents are not supposed to have to leave their children So that's why they forbid mothers going to the graves and everything like that You see you hear somebody passed away and you're trying to let them know that you heard it from the horse's mouth So you want to post and say I heard it from a source a reliable source. Why? Because it brings traffic to your page Like you said, I've lost the father and I've lost the very dear sister People make a mistake when you lose somebody to come and preach at you. God gives God takes you don't want to hear that at that point in time I know that they say Yoruba that we don't ask no question. We don't question God But let me tell you something you have a right to keep my list with God when you are in that kind of pain It's between you and God you cry on his shoulders and you tell him what you're going through Nobody has a right to come and start preaching the it is well. God gives God takes it's so Insensitive at that point in time. Somebody lost a child recently a seven-year-old daughter I sent her a message and I said oh you're in my thoughts and The people never go away, but we'll just learn to cope with it Give her examples of what I had lost my bereavements and everything and then one day I posted something as she reacted to it So I tried calling her she didn't pick up So I said you can handle it phone call right now right went on to pray and say not even pray Just talk to her generally like I would and said send me an emoji just to let me know you hear me and she did That's all that needs to be done. Then physically if you're visiting someone who is bereaved may show me Sit down there. Even when the person is elderly and you think oh three score and ten means that they live they should go The pain of losing a parent you can't tell me how to feel the fact that it's a celebration of life doesn't mean that I cannot weep For the loss of somebody that I lost so even when the person is older don't assume. It's okay to be Faco with your statements Meshon is a good practice Meshon will just be nodding. Hmm. Let me hear your thoughts and Well, see when it comes to Loss I don't I most of the time I don't even know how to react around people who have lost someone because I'm someone that I internalize a lot. So When it comes to loss, I'm I'm I might not cry immediately But in my heart of hands, I'm probably bleeding So people have different ways that they deal with loss and it's very very important for us to allow people to deal with loss in their own way Trying to talk them out of it. It's like trying to talk someone out of a bad mood. It's hard Let them come out of it but let them know it's very important for them to know that there are people around them should they want to listen or Vents or you know cry, you know, just let them know that you're out Yeah, right there beside them with them feeling that pain and that hurt with them and you're holding their hand if even though not physically but the instance where people see the need to use it for personnel cloud it's I keep using he bewilds me because it's it's so insensitive a Lot of people you hear a lot of people it's very very important for you to give people their Privacy when something like this happens so that they can deal with their grief and when they're done They might come out and have you know have a response or anything But you wanting to insert yourself into someone else's morning is actually quite bad and quite insensitive You know the line have become so blurred these days That would not know what is being done because people go to any length just to drive traffic to their page on Social media, but let me hear your thoughts your initial thoughts and maybe then we'll open our phone light But anyone really searching for clouds because I read through some comments and it's just being Has felt messages.  So, you know, everyone is in this instance, right? Yeah, talking about I'm talking about in general So in general, yeah, um, I Don't know people should just learn to keep their mouth shut to be honest I for one, I'm not one to be expressive. I'm always it's like a confusity.  I don't know her personality I followed her, you know through the whole nine months. I was like a sexy prego, you know, giving us outfits and At her nine month the day from that she lost the baby She literally said she she could feel her baby cake You know the day before and she just went into the hospital the next day and they told her it was like I'm reading the message and I'm I'm confused because I checked her personal. I have no head from I've we've not seen any updates from this baby was happening our baby should be out by now and I'm just confused like You know, I was like, I saw she she made a post, you know Like a letter to the baby and she turned off the comments because obviously you don't want people to you know Say anything and stuff and then later game. She came on her story. I guess it's also her way of, you know dealing yeah of dealing with it and I had no words to say, you know to her I just said I'm sorry It just take take heart to get you know So people should be debt is nothing, you know, anyone wishes for the truth is no matter how bad you think a person is When a person dies, it hits you that almost gone.  Yes You have a platform to see anything you'd like, but we should be careful and we should also tune into our human factor We know when we're putting certain things online, you know, so how the friend I want us to take a break and quickly I had a friend that I was just speaking to and I was asking, you know I mean when you lost your loved one how what was the most important thing that you wanted if at all You needed anything from from anything you said I mean for him He was just like a bit confused and he was just wishing he could just change what had happened, right?  What what would you wish you would wish? Yes, people had done right and you know and the things that they shouldn't have done Because I want us to be able to talk to ourselves. So when we go on a break would open our phone lines afterwards stay with us We'll be right back. All right. Thanks for staying with us now if you just tuned in. We're discussing societal do's and don'ts Especially when managing loss now, please let's hear what you have to say Remember, you can join the conversation send us an SMS or what's up to the rate one eight zero three four six six three You can also tweet at us at way show after one or the hashtag way show now Our phone line is now open the number to call is zero seven zero two five zero zero seven seven four nine That's the number to call zero seven zero two five zero zero seven seven four nine Remember the rules turn off the volume of your television set. Somebody was calling the WhatsApp line We can't take the calls on the WhatsApp line. That's the number to call on display All right, so lady you want to say something? Yes, I wanted to say that based on loss, you know how people say You can't tell someone how to agree you really can't I have a friend who lost a son Two years ago on the 1st of October and she still has not been able to deal every single day of her life She's singing Songs tunes her friends myself included is thinking you have three other songs This is me from the outside thinking you have three other songs It's almost as if you're making it seem like they don't matter that this you died when this boy died And you need to adjust and leave for them, but you really can't say anything to anybody You know, I keep going on about my beloved sister my beloved sister my beloved sister That sister died in 1992 it didn't hit me on the 2012 20 years later when they told me she died. I just got up and went to wash clothes I didn't cry I didn't cause she died abroad so I couldn't see her and she had I had seen her three weeks before then Why did it hit me in 2012? You'd have thoughts and what happened a friend of hers died and because I was the closest person to I was close to all her friends So when this other person died it was like the last connection to her had gone and then all of a sudden my mind tells You Austin from Benin, I believe thank you for calling I'm sorry, please we are not here to throw blames, please Don't don't do that, please. Thank you Let's not blame anybody. This this is not it. Let's the investigation the police have already arrested We detained some people for questioning, right? Let's leave them to do their job when the autopsy result comes out and they believe that okay This is what has happened then we cannot talk about that part of the conversation What we are discussing today is how do we as people manage people around us? I've just lost loved one right and this is one thing we shouldn't be found doing like blaming There's not this is not time to throw blames. Let's just keep it away from blames today Sorry NJ, please over to you Yes, well like like you like you said it's not a time to because Everything and people are going to be saying right now just speculations. Everybody's speculating until the autopsy result comes out Well, I am even praying and hoping that there was a CCTV camera Right in the house because most of these houses they all have CCTV cameras So thankfully they've called up all the people that were supposed to be my am caring for the child the caregiver The whatever they all of them are in the police custody for questioning So I am just praying by some that miracle that we have footages That's it because you see you can't just come up and now start to say you want to blame nothing has been said Yeah, the only part that I'm excited about which is what I was saying that when there's a loss We forget the part that we need to investigate which is Jonas and we especially in the part of this world I brought is a normal thing Anybody does the most investigate But here we tell it is God that stick and we don't even try to even find out what happened Right, and then I'm happy that they have gone in the right direction. He needed to have seen the little joy that came to my Mind today when I saw that all that they had yet They had came held some people for questioning that gave me some level of joy I said, okay, finally somebody is doing something right because most times we just tend to just forget about it You know, let me take another caller. Hello You're alive. Yes, go ahead your life Hello, we can hear you go ahead, please It's a very painful one for the videos loss Whatever investigation or everything that they are going to do I'm very sure Continue to learn our lessons but in times of loss I In Nigeria we try a lot in times of how to model and still with somebody that lost somebody Very well That you know, we're trying to bring in the white man's life style into the story the whole situation And it's not making it look like we don't have a tradition But why does this sometimes we won't close shops? Where the hostess will be everywhere will become Because we lost a person or an individual or a family member. Oh, yeah in our tradition We are always together and I hope such kind of and Lifestyle should not Go away from us and we should always understand that when things happen There's always forces of nature that are behind it and nothing happened without the consent of our creator so I just I just felt for the guy and I know that God was training him And for whoever that is losing whatever is losing for now We live in our ability to mourn and be together. We need to learn something especially here in Africa. We need to try our way I got myself. I get you your best old man So you are saying that we shouldn't lose the culture of that togetherness when somebody passes on You know how we rally around the family were there and all of that we shouldn't lose that culture I get you 100% leading up to the Send off Send forth and honoring the person's life We gather around and then all of a sudden everybody disappears and then the person is left alone and the reality hits Let us also have a bit of continuity after do you understand what I mean after the immediate shock and the lane the person in What do they even call it? the internment After that then it is the time to really start not showing the person back to good health and Coping mechanisms a lot of distractions. I need it. Let me take a caller and I'll come to you Mary Um, I'm not sorry state. I believe you're alive My just state are you there? Go ahead Hi, good evening Very well, thank you Thank you Thank you patience. All right. Thank you so much I Don't know if the word to use this patience There are a lot more words we can use in that same to replace patience and that would be even just being sensitive It's one of it. It's just it just takes you You know, yes empathy is the word and that is something that is very People don't that is empathy that would allow you to think before you react or before you use someone's situation God already has our Whatever lined up for us, right? So Let me take a caller then I'll come back to that Lagos I believe Sorry, I'm not hearing your names today Defense from Lagos. Okay. Go ahead Hi, good evening I just asked everybody not to just come and come to me at that moment because it was Thank you. Thank you You know, so what I mean? I hear defense and that's the truth Everybody and this is why they say that it's not a one-size-fit all so what that guy meant when he was talking about pitch You know, he said let her hypertension, you know I think he's just looking for the right word is that in all of those things just become and understand that, you know It was meant to happen I like that thing because that's always what we hear especially from a religious point of view. My point is Yes, right some things will happen, but it's also important that we know why it happened We know what went wrong. Do you understand because? People always come up with different kinds of theories, you know, and make it look like it is wrong for you to investigate when there's a death, you know, and I mean I've seen people I am very sure that if you go and ask the people in the in London even though our Queen was 90 how many years ago now They will still do an autopsy to just have it on record to say these were the things that It's just a simple thing. We're not just used to documenting things in this country, but let's take Loma then I'll come to you Mary, I think you have a comment Loma you're live We can Do The boy who broke his moustache is such a nuisance to the public. So, they didn't give it to him. So now, the moustache, they shall say, what do you want more? Thank you very much. Thank you. Absolutely. I think what I got from what he said, except I didn't hear it correctly, is that not leave them after they've lost somebody. So, it's just like I was saying that. Don't just disappear. Yeah, so, of course. When you feel the excitement or whatever. Then again, we're such funny people, human beings. We're excited about whatever news we hear until the next big thing happens. And then we forget. Don't guess. Some people have money. Let me say something. You know what he was saying? My own, honestly speaking, my own money, I think it can reach 20 years old. I don't know, maybe it's this thing with Scorpios. Because I internalize things a lot. Right? I might not just show the emotions and all of that. But every night I can be crying, I can be sleeping a bit. So, it will be difficult for somebody like me for you to think maybe just one post. I'm over it.  Or one comment, one comforting word would make me get over it.   Because that's how I am. Especially if the person was really there to me. So, it's something that I am even consciously working on myself to be emotionally strong for anything that can happen. Because you never can tell what will go wrong. You know? But for me to get to that point where somebody starts to think it is one WhatsApp message or a post or put it on status that will make me feel comforted. I don't think that will work for me. When people think that you should have gotten over it. Over it by now. Like this is life. But over it is... Yes, they are. I feel like the problem I have even with Dett is when it comes to the barrel ceremony I had a very distasteful experience with family members and stuff. For me, that was just... Please give me an example of this experience. People who you have not seen before the man was never... I never knew my dad's village until when he died. And you insist that he should be buried there and you insist that we should build a house. I don't understand. The ones that over drama ties.  They've never played any role in my life. They've never said anything and they just show up. It's like from where?  You have to be kind. And I'm just telling myself if I was older or maybe if I had much money I would just bury my father and call it all. And my mom would say no, you have not married. Mary, we need to go back to this. All these little things. It's just... It's so annoying. It's so... That's a meal. That one is an order, bro. That one is an order. My mom knelt down. My mom knelt down for nine hours when my grandfather passed. Because... I mean, I don't know my father's village. I don't know my mother's village. I only knew my grandfather in Benin. So my grandfather did not allow anybody to go to any village, right? So it was like, okay, she's the person that has been preventing you people from going to the village. Now you would have to come to the village. So my mother knelt down for nine solid hours because she's the first female, her older brother. They actually target him. But because he's lived above all his life, she will say, you know what? You stay in the hiding. Let me deal with them. And so she was there on her knees for nine hours begging these elders. So barrier is a subject topic that my mother will do in a lifetime on its own. I don't understand how people do those things. But what we are even referring to now, it is how the behavior, the culture has changed, right? Especially with the invent of social media. So I get the part that everybody wants to just be associated with this. Are we doing this genuinely because we feel pain for the person that has just lost a loved one? Or we feel that it is a nice thing to do that we are also seen to be in, what's it called? To be consoling the bereaved. Let me speak for myself. I personally posted something today. And the reason why I did was that I had seen a Facebook memory that came up last year, first of February. And I was jumping up saying, oh, this is the energy that I want for the rest of the year and the new year, right? So when that memory came up today, as of yesterday, as of maybe 9 p.m., when we hadn't heard the news, I was looking forward to the first of November. The post of another new month, November bring it on, we're going to do this together and everything. But I woke up, thinking something happened to me yesterday. Personally. I felt that way. Why?  And myself, like the other day now, I have a 25-year-old. I have a 21-year-old. There's no age they could ever be that would make it okay for them to leave this world before me. He didn't even want to know. He didn't want to know. There was a man that they said was 51 years old that his father was in politics or something.  There's nothing. So there's a woman, I mean, I don't think she's gotten over it. So she was an only child. Her son was a smatic. She actually went mad. She actually ran mad.  He's done his masters. I think he was, he was maybe a second master. She made sure that she's a very wealthy woman. She made sure she poured everything she had. So hoping that this will be her child. So what would you say to that kind of person? She called the pastor. And she was telling the pastor, please wake him up. Because there's nothing he wanted to say at that point. Wake him up. She became hysterical. They had to bring an ambulance to sedate her, like sedate her so that they could take her to the hospital. She had gone, literally she had gone mental. You have to. So when I see certain things happening and I see the insensitivity of people, I keep on wondering, like do you even understand? They can't. Right? You think this person will just go out of the way to cause, these are the things they accuse you of, negligence and all. You think I would go out of my way. Proposal. A child that I can't even, my child's life would negligence. You think I would do that. So I mean, there is no explanation for it. So my point is, that is not the time. You want to now start saying, why didn't you, what did you do? This is not even your business. That's why magic got posted and said, perfect parents, please. This is not the time for you to say what you would have done or you would not have done. Nobody just leave quiet. What about a woman that lost five children in one plane crash? That's it. What do you want to tell such a person? That she should not believe you. God give them, God take care. Or is it the parents of the, that plane crash that happened that three children, father, mother, everybody. So what would you say to the parents? They are believed. That's what I'm saying too. So society, we need to be calm and need to understand that. You see, there are some things that are sacred. Don't touch it.  Because when people start to do all of those drama, I keep on wondering, do you even understand the situation? You've not carried a child. Even if you've carried a child, you've not lost a child. So you cannot even say what you would do and what you would not do. But let's take comments from our audience quickly. I have one. When people hear rumour of a loss, even if real, it's best not to go asking publicly online. Even via direct call to any family member. It may be the unfiltered breaking news to a direct family member who may be far away and unaware. Perhaps the family has been trying to figure out the wisest way to break the news to a specific family member that they may be trying to break the news. Meaning that don't go and be saying, please tell me it's not true. To someone that probably hasn't even heard. I don't know.  So my... That's Chowsom, Kaduna, right? Yes, Chowsom. Sorry. This is Austin from Delta. Austin says it is unfortunate that there is so much insensitivity in our society today. I mean here in Nigeria. Growing up, when people gather to hold a family for loss of a dear one, the gloom on the faces of the people says it all. What you witness is dead silence or talking in low tones. No laughter either. No pictures. I agree with you. There is no time for blaming at this moment of grieving. This is the culture that... Is this the culture of throwing blames that kept somebody... It is this culture of throwing blames that kept somebody in an abusive relationship to stay put. To stay put till the loss of life. Absolutely. Mary, go ahead please. Loss is never easy. People must therefore be sensitive to the needs of victims at that particular time. Hurts people, hurts people. And that is probably why people forget to be sensitive to the pain of others. Learn to listen more and speak less when you do not know what to do or say. Silence in times like this is golden and your presence alone can be more powerful than any of the many words you have to say. Be sensitive to each person's need per time because no two situations are the same. Well done ladies. You all look different. Norma. Alright thank you. Good evening my dear beautiful sisters of what are you saying and happy new month to you beautiful ladies. So sight all do's and don'ts when managing loss. We pray that these don't come when we do not expect them to happen. Amen. Our sister Lydie made mention of the parents passing on first before the children which is which is proper and right. My heart goes out to David at the LKAKA David O over the loss of his dear son. My name is Daniel Illo. You're always a regular fan. Thank you so much Daniel. I mean I think we've been able to keep this conversation within. Same. Yes because it was very important that we understood the crux of why we were having the conversation. This is not to jump on the bandwagon. There are lots of people that are dying by the minute. Right. So when we when we hear things like this first of all let's be sensitive. The people around us you know and let us also understand what we must say and what we must not say per time. You know of course from God we come from him we shall return so says the Lord every soul shall test dead. Well that's what we say but at the same time I want to also start to accept and accommodate the culture of checking what went wrong. We're not saying that it will bring back the life that has been lost. We may be able to prevent. Yes it will prevent future losses and it also helps with closure. For somebody like me if I knew what went wrong I will find closure quicker than if it is vague or she just died. What happened? People are comfortable with she just died. I am not comfortable with she just died. Not because you want to apportion It's not to apportion blame. If I understood that okay this thing went wrong. This is how foundations have been built. Some people now I mean there is a day for loss of infant or is it fetus loss which was celebrated recently in the month of October or the month before October I didn't even know that she had lost a child. You know she had she lost a pregnancy so there is a day for loss of a fetus that is dedicated so people start courses based on that so you know why I am saying this because when you find out it was based on certain kinds of complications and all of that you do a research and you say okay people have created foundations that to ensure that the future losses do not cause we want to just you know say that this is like that practice of you know when they sew up your cervix if people didn't have miscarriages someone would not have researched it to know that there is some women that can't that was do bed rest when they are pregnant and then again very quickly when you said about fetus dying some people insensitivity would think but she never born the baby you can't say that keep your mouth shut at least alright so thank you so much everyone and thank you for respecting the boundaries we were not having this conversation because we want we want to just help people to see better and be a lot more sensitive especially with this age of social media thank you so much Mary NJ and Leide now before we go and show you follow us across all our social media platforms is at Wichu Africa you can interact with us further drop a comment and more importantly follow all our information now if you missed our quote here it is again grief can't be shared everyone carries it alone his own burden in his own way it's so important it is how people mourn differently people grief differently so let's not try to box everybody into a you know a particular style of grief we'll see you guys tomorrow at 8pm bring another great conversation to your screen enjoy


I'm your host S.T. Klaasen and as you know this week we're chatting to the absolutely amazing Schlaganipo, went from studying his honors in accounting to becoming a property investor real estate agent and property coach. To our viewers at home as you know we have a fun filled, fun packed show for you every day this week. We have Zaman Tungua Kumalo on the private property podcast live at 7 p.m. from Monday to Friday and of course if you're interested in farming and agriculture. We have Mbali with you Tuesday and Thursday at 8 p.m. and of course are you shopping for your perfect home, Chad travels, Zanzi and finds that gorgeous, gorgeous homes around Johannesburg. If you're looking for your perfect home that's every Monday and Friday at 8 p.m. And without further ado just before we start the show tonight as you know we are looking for those absolutely amazing stories. Do you have a story to share with us on the first time home buyer show? Are you a visionary, a property investor, an author? Do you know about property and want to share your story with us? Well now is your chance put it down in the comment section below if you know anyone. We want to know them too because we want to hear their stories. So thank you so much for joining us. We are with the amazing Schlaganipo. Good evening Schlaganipo. I'm fine as to how are you? I'm well thank you so much for joining us. I've listened to a few interviews and I know you also run your own YouTube channel where you educate people. And it's so amazing because in this industry of real estate we're all extremely frightened by the jargon, by things we hear, but to have someone who it's like free education. And so tell me how have people benefited from the education you've given them either on YouTube or you've mentored them or in person. How have they benefited from that? So there's many different benefits that I think that the education that I'm providing gives to people. Firstly, just to be able to make the decision, the financial decision to purchase a property, knowing how to manage your own personal finances, how to increase your credit score and all those kind of details are things that I help people with and I've had a lot of people thank me in my DMs, sending me inboxes on Facebook and on Instagram. Just a showing appreciation saying thank you for the assistance I've now purchased my first home. I've now purchased my second property. I followed some of your advice and I'm able to make some money out of a bad situation where I was in. So definitely I do think it's something that has been of help to a lot of people. And I think the finance part of it is so important because a lot of the times we just think property, we just think invest and we jump into this thing. But how important have you seen the finance game because you're an accountant, you have your honors in accounting. And I find that the fact that you could link the two, which we're going to get to later, I'd like to find out how you did that, how.