Good evening, everyone. Thank you so much for joining us this evening. I'm Betsy Peck-Learned, Dean of University Library Services at Roger Williams University, and I'd like to welcome you all to our Talking in the Library event. This program is our second library collaboration with the Scholars at Risk Network, and we're so grateful for their partnership. The Libraries Talking in the Library series is supported by an endowment to the library by an alumna of the university, Mary Teft-White. This timely program tonight is entitled Ukraine, Reflections from Home and Abroad, and will feature a panel of two scholars, Liz Shepantilnikova and Olena Tanchik, along with our moderator, Professor Adam Braver. Adam is the Library Program Director at RWU, a professor of creative writing, and also coordinator of student advocacy seminars with scholars at risk. I would be remiss if I didn't recognize Adam's great work with scholars at risk that has fostered student advocacy programs across the world, as well as programs such as this one tonight. Professor Braver will now introduce our speakers. Thank you, and please enjoy the program. All right. Thank you, everybody. Thank you, Betsy, and thank you all for coming. Let me just get our speakers up here as well. So I really want to just get started at this point, because we have a lot to talk about. I really want to thank Liz and Olena for being here. For most of us in the West, this is a horrifying story that we're trying to follow and understand. But of course, this is your life, and I'm incredibly grateful that you're willing to share your thoughts and perspectives and experiences and in particular, how you believe the higher education community can and perhaps should respond. For those of you who are attending, Liz and Olena will talk a little bit about themselves, present some of their experiences and their background and perspectives, talk a little bit about, again, what the higher education community can respond, and then we'll reserve at least a half an hour for questions from all of you for the second part of the program. We do ask that you put questions in the Q&A, and my colleague from Claire Robinson, the Director of Advocacy at Scholars at Risk, and I will monitor the questions and make sure that they get to Olena and Liz. With that in mind, Liz, would you like to start, again, some of your background and your perspectives on what's happening as well? Absolutely. Thank you very much, Adam and Betsy and Claire, for this opportunity to speak today on the topic that is, of course, particularly close to our hearts. We come from Ukraine and have been affected by war in a variety of different ways. I'm currently an early career researcher doing my PhD at the University of Hong Kong, where my research area is really focused on academic profession in post-Soviet states. So a lot of issues that we will be discussing today for me are not only personal, but also professional in a sense. I have been working with the academic community for over 10 years as I started basically as a student activist in 2008. And now since 2014, I have been fortunate to have an opportunity to engage with the Scholars at Risk Network because in 2014, after the Euro-Mind Unrevolution, when Russia first attacked Ukraine by annexing Crimea and attacking institutions in the eastern region of Ukraine, we have started working on gathering information about the tax on higher education and violations of academic freedom. This work now obviously continues as the conflict has moved into the direct confrontation that nobody has seen on the European continent for quite a long time. So these days, I'm also grateful to the Scholars at Risk because they are the ones who helped me to evacuate from the Ukraine when the war has started. As I've mentioned, post-Soviet academic profession is my area of research, so I was physically in Ukraine when the war broke out doing data collection. Unfortunately, we had to leave under these circumstances to find a safe place. I think what is important to understand about my background in addition to my professional experience is also my personal connection to what has been going on because I was originally born and raised in eastern Ukraine, a town which is now unfortunately under the Russian occupation. My parents had to flee it and it took them quite a while, of course, because of the shelling that has been continuously going on. So you could say that I guess, you know, in the general Russian narrative, I'm probably one of those that they came to rescue from Ukrainian government, although nobody has asked them to do this. And for over 15 years as I've lived in Kiev in the capital of Ukraine, my involvement with both Ukrainian academia and Ukrainian government at a variety of different levels has shown that there is a lot of courage and a lot of interest among Ukrainian people to develop, to engage with the West and to build our own democratic state. I think that one of the things that this war has now shown us is really that a lot of people will have to sacrifice themselves for their values. But we want to make sure that we're heard and that our voices are not silenced by force. Liz, can you talk a moment about your work that you did in 2014 as a student activist and maybe the line to where things are right now? Or did we lose you for a second, Liz? I think Liz is frozen for a second. Olena, do you want to jump in? Yeah, absolutely. So I hope that Liz will come back to us in a second. So yeah, so hi everyone. My name is Olena Tanchik. Thank you very much for inviting me today to be a panelist and to have an opportunity to voice my message and to share my experience, my thoughts, some of my ideas, how we can proceed with the war and what we can do as an academia and as a world scientific community. I have prepared a short presentation. Kind of a slide is not going to be a lecture, but I want to give a little bit of a background for everything that was going on and has been going on for the last eight years in Ukraine with universities. Yeah, we are not going to specifically speak about only conflict and military military things, but our goal for today is to focus on academia, to focus on universities, and for those of you who probably have not had a lot of experience with Ukrainian community scholars and scientists, I hope that you will have a bigger picture of everything what is going on and while we are waiting for this to join. So probably I will fill this gap while we are waiting on here. So once again, my name is Olena Tanchik. And first of all, I would say that I am Ukrainian. Yeah, so that's for me now an important identity. I hold my PhD in economics, but I use my minor as my source of income. My minor is in English. I can also add that's my identity now is an IDP. And before February 24, this stood for an internal displaced person. So this is such a category of people in Ukraine. But after February 24, I would consider myself internationally displaced person, because now I'm in Arizona, and they have been here since August, doing my research as a Fulbright scholar on special education. So that's why now IDP can be not only internally, but international displaced person. Literally, like I am homeless nowadays, settlers, but definitely not hopeless. And what I know for sure is that I am a Ukrainian educator, and they didn't call on anyone to liberate me, my land, neither in 2014, nor in 2022. So today, I'm working, or currently, I'm working as an English language teacher for about 10 years. And most people in my field get used to writing lesson plans, right? So probably educators will now understand me. So today, I would like to build a little bit my conversation, my presentation, if you wanted to call it as a lesson plan discussion, okay? And usually, a teacher starts your class with objectives. So today, during our conversation, yes, we will formulate some important historical questions for displaced universities in 2014. I would like to articulate for you some events of displaced universities in 2014 and employ multiple forms of evidence and historical argument in a more than setting. And usually, as I have already mentioned, yeah, we start with objectives and we transit to warm up activities. So you can see the map and just for you to understand that back in 2014, Lugansk and the Nets, so these are two regions. Peacefully, we're working. We educators, we're doing our activities. And then, in one day, everything changed. And 18 universities started thinking how to allocate their activities and how to continue their activities being under Ukrainian umbrella. So the map demonstrated the location of displaced universities. However, no single map can give us a sense of the risk taken and the drama involved in this accident from Eastern Europe. So as probably most of you know, that our armed conflict broke out in 2013-2014 academic year when students were preparing to their final exams. And we had lots of issues how to organize all those activities in the Nets and Lugansk regions. So you can see that after that events in 2014, local millies turned into full-scale hostilities. And because of the referendum that was held in the areas controlled by separatist forces and independence for the two self-proclaimed republics, the so-called the Nets People Republic and Lugansk People Republic were formed. And we may see that even nowadays and back in the day, so there was a lot of like Russian propaganda for Washington. I happened to be in this situation and this happened to be in this situation. So because we are both from Eastern part, this is from Sarabilsk and I'm from Donetsk. Yes, we experienced all these atrocities and we heard how propaganda worked. And we spoke to students and colleagues from both sides on the divide and many of them talked about increasing mutual intolerance and delineation among people living in the conflict zone. And most of them were poverty looting and the systematic degradation of the social and humanitarian institutions and propaganda from both sides, as I have mentioned. Moving on, a teacher usually from warming up activities goes to instruct and model. So I'm not going to speak a lot. Yeah, I'm not going to now give you the lecture about that. So and I'm not going to instruct you. But just for you to understand that during the unrest, sometimes referred to as the Russian Spring, supporters of independence of the so-called DPR and the LPR sees the administrative buildings and offices of not only the Ukrainian special services, but also civil establishments and universities. So that is why the universities have had to relocate their activities and they kind of split. Yeah, so some of them stayed in the Niesk and Lugansk, but other people were not supporting the new proclaimed regime. Ukrainian government arranged for university teachers to transfer to different places in Ukraine. But as we understand, some prefer to stay in the Niesk and Lugansk. And in November 2014, Ukraine's National Security Council decided to evacuate all the government bodies and banks out of Donbass. And by that point, the breakup of the universities was more or less complete. And the key positions were occupied by people loyal to the separatists and teaching staff who were divided along ideological lines, those who supported and didn't support the regime. And speaking about relocations, we are not going to cover like all these things. But just for you to understand, there are burdens, obstacles and problems that this place universities had to face. Yes, and these are only some of them, right? So like these are safety policies and people had to advocate for their rights. We had some problems with how to arrange our activities, whether it is online or hybrid or in person, funding and salaries were the big issues. And we still have some cases, I would say that separate professors and academic staff and administration haven't received their salaries for August, November 2014 for this month. Yes, so there are still open cases. We had to take care about our students, about our infrastructure because we definitely couldn't bring our laptops, most of our books, resources, not to mention laboratories and gym equipment. So this stayed in those territories. We had to think about our accreditation, so how we are going to accreditate now our certificates and diplomas. I will also put here, are we not in the same boat? Because yeah, we were not in the same boat with local universities and high educational establishments because we were kind of competitors for them. So there were now more and more burdened to the cities, yes, because we had to kind of spread the students and try to move them a little bit and also squeeze into that academy environment in some local places. And of course, emotional and physical conditions of many people were not very stable. So we understand that back in that days, in those days, many of us had poor housing conditions, lack of financial resources to satisfy basic needs, which influence, of course, our productivity and academic success for some certain period of time. So again, as a teacher, we always move our classes and our participants to, so to say, guided or individual instructions, right? So again, if you're interested more about how the processes were taking on, if you're interested in their Ministry of Education, I mean, DPR and LPR or their accreditation committee qualifications, so you can explore, yes, so you can search online or you can ask us during a session, okay, I can lead and help, but we will not go into detail right now. So yeah, you may see that propaganda worked a lot and we had to take care first of all of our diplomas because we understand that if we have my case, then it's State University of Management, like Split and part of it stayed in the Niesk and part moved to Mariupol. So we can't have like two universities, right? So we need to re-register our activities. We need to think about different uses, how we are going to issue our diplomas so that it will be eligible for our students. And of course, we had to always think about our next step, what are we going to do. And just for you to visualize how we relocated first to Mariupol and this is how our classrooms, yes, so our premises look like. And if you see in this picture, and you might think that these are the focus groups working on some issue, no, that's not focus groups. So these are students with their professors working on different classes, like a history class at the back and the math class. And this is like, you may see some of educators having their discussion because we literally, we didn't have rooms to work. That's why this is how the situation looked for us. However, with the time we submitted grants, we received support and sponsorship. And this is also a successful case for us now in 2022 about that we will speak later. But this is how we managed to end up by February 24. Yeah, so that was like a better thing for us. So again, coming back to our kind of a lesson plan, we educators very often give homework to our students, right? However, now, I even don't know how to call this, because in Ukraine, I will explain in Ukraine when we mean homework, right? So we literally mean home. So students used to do their assignments at home. And not many of them have now their apartments. So many of them have lost everything. And this is a teacher I'm confused. So I would probably call it like an independent practice. And as an independent practice for all of us, I want to think about how you can help displace universities, students, staff, and professors in 2022. So during today's short conversation from my side, yeah, we have touched upon some basics and the brief description from the events in 2014. But what are our lessons learned? And how can we apply this eight year experience now? We're sure that we need to act, we need to support each other, we need to support researchers and students from Ukraine and who are now in Ukraine. It is clear that this war will be over one day, very soon we hope. And the Ukrainian science, along with the whole country will require fresh start. So that's why we need to keep in mind our short, mid and long term programs of different scales. And we believe that Ukrainian science will be successfully preserved, reloaded and updated. Oh, and I almost forgot about assessment. Of course, as a good teacher, we need to assess it, right? So we need to do the assessment. And that is assessment is how we grade our students and check how they accomplish their materials. Probably not today. And not with this topic, it's difficult to assess who had more grief and who had more losses. But I believe it is like really hard to put grades in this case. So I assume it is better to leave it as a self reflection part. As a self reflection, I want everybody today during our conversation during this hour to think for a moment about what we all have done to support Ukrainian and Ukrainian, what each of us has done to support students from Ukraine with those you have had for the past months and with emotions we all have experienced. For our international audience, I want you to remember that we Ukrainians win and when we win, we will celebrate with the whole world. So at least everybody should learn today the phrase that is so important for us. And please remember it, drill this phrase, Slava Ukraini, repeated several times. So we will remember it well during our victory together. So Slava Ukraini. And I hope that now we will have broader perspectives and now we will have broader conversations about how we can support each other. Deku. Thank you, Elena and Liz. We have Liz back. That was really interesting, Elena, very helpful. Liz, before we move into questions, I want to ask you two things. I want to ask you about your brief, you know, the experience you had when the war broke out and how you left and perhaps why you left so, why you needed to leave because I know you had a specific reason you needed to leave. And then perhaps moving into this idea of what you think the international university community can be doing. Thank you, Adam. My apologies for the technological issues on my end. I hope that, you know, the audience that we're engaging with today can understand that when the world has been discussing, you know, for months, Russian troops at the Ukrainian border for many people, including myself, these conversations meant not only analyzing it, but also having an understanding of what is at stake for you. And because of my background, as a student activist, and because of my parents' location in eastern Ukraine, I did realize quite clearly that it is not safe to stay unless you have a very clear way of helping on the ground. And as a scholar, I don't know how to hold a gun, so I do not really think that I would be helpful to people on the ground. I don't want to be a burden, and because we all know that any civilian who is not fighting, who is a potential target, will obviously be a burden to the military and to the various services that are trying to help the soldiers to win their fights. So for those of us who are not able to help in any way on the ground, a decision to leave was the only choice that made sense at that point. And of course, for those of us who've been very active in pro-democracy movements, we have been always aware that we do have targets on our backs, because to say that we're not the most favorite people for Russian government is not to say anything. And we know from, well, also, you know, the media reports and the information that has been shared by the U.S. government that there were intentions by Russian military early on to make sure that people who are particularly active are killed. And we've seen, unfortunately, from the reports of the atrocities that have been happening in key of regions that those kill lists are real, and people were murdered for their pro-Ukrainian position. So I think that rationally balancing things out, leaving has made more sense and not being in the middle of the fight was a way for me personally to be helpful and not to be a burden. And I also think that it's very important to remember that this war is really not only about the military action that is happening on the ground. Elena has mentioned several times that Russian propaganda and Russian disinformation campaigns are very powerful and they're attempting to influence opinions around the world, not only in Ukraine or Russia. So we have to make sure that Ukrainians are not silenced and the world sees the truth. And one of the ways of doing exactly that is through helping Ukrainian students and scholars. And I will focus a little bit more on helping Ukrainian scholars because this is what the scholar's at risk has been involved with and this is what we've been working with several other scholarly groups around the world really. We have been very grateful because we saw an enormous support internationally for Ukrainian students and scholars. But there are some peculiarities of the war that is happening right now in Ukraine that we haven't really seen in other conflicts and we need to be aware of those. So I hope you can see my screen now. And just to give you a little bit of the sense of the current opportunities that are both out there and those opportunities that we really need. These are of course some of the traditional fellowships and positions that have been already open. As I've mentioned, some of the Ukrainian scholars have been able to relocate to leave the country to settle safely outside in European universities. However, what is different about this war compared to many other conflicts that we have seen is that most of the Ukrainian scholars will not leave Ukraine. This is not a classical people running away from the war zone situation. There are a number of reasons for it. Some of the most important reasons are of course the fact that there are a lot of scholars who are involved in activities that are ensuring security of the country. This is research related to defense, research that ensures that nuclear plants in Ukraine are secure because you have seen in the news reports that Russian troops have attacked nuclear plants. And of course, you cannot expect physicists or radiologists, scientists to leave because this is their job. There are a lot of scholars who are supporting other critical infrastructure objects and many who cannot leave because they're in the specific age range for men who are between 18 to 60, leaving is not mostly an option. So what Ukrainian scholars really need are more remote work opportunities. And we have seen some successful examples that I will share on the next slide. But we have to remember that over 80% of Ukrainian scholars are staying in Ukraine and a lot of them are people whose universities have been shelled who don't have labs or don't have classrooms to come back to. So they will really need this remote opportunities. Of course, there are also scholars like Olana herself who are in the United States who also will need hosting. And we should remember about this people as well. They're already in the US. Not all of their programs will be able to sustain them if the conflict continues for several more months. So this is another area that needs further engagement. And just like we're doing today, hosting webinars about Ukraine or lecture series would also help quite significantly because, as I've mentioned, there are a lot of stereotypes about Ukraine. There's a lot of disinformation. We know that for many people it's not that well known what is going on in the country and in the region more specifically. So these are of course incredibly important information events that need to take place in order for people to be able to learn about the work and what they can do to contribute to stopping it. Here are some examples of the resources that can help you to learn a little bit more. And we can answer questions as we go. But of course, scholars at risk has good resources to help guide you through creation of the opportunities for Ukrainian scholars. One of the example or non-residential fellowship that is already running was actually established by the Harvard Ukrainian Studies Institute and IWM which is a non-profit in Vienna. And they have created 17 non-residential fellowships which exactly will support scholars inside Ukraine with those remote opportunities that they so desperately need. Similarly, the Open Society University Network has both residential and non-residential fellowships. And you can also refer to the UA Science Reload Initiative which is a group of Ukrainian scholars that are working specifically to help establish remote opportunities, help mentor Ukrainian scholars about getting access to these opportunities and taking the most advantage of them. I think to wrap it up, I just want to highlight that I hope that we all learn today that we can do, we can bring a change by helping the scientists who unfortunately have been affected by war not to be silenced. That's the most important contribution and that's the most important request that they have right now. Thank you. Thank you, Liz. I think I've, do you know the numbers and how many academics currently are there? I think I've read upwards of 100,000 or in the higher education community. Yeah, the total number of academics in Ukraine is roughly 100,000 people and again, you know, we're talking about I can share a little bit later with you. We are working on a large study with the Ukrainian National Academy of Sciences and from the current data, it looks like it's going to be roughly between 13 to 15 percent of scholars who will leave or who have left the country and we're talking about about 85 percent of scholars who will remain inside Ukraine. And before we get, we have some questions starting to come in, but can you give us a sense of the Ukrainian education, like the, you know, the system in terms of the where it placed, the history of it, the pride that goes in there as well? Well, the Ukrainian higher education system in particularly is very well integrated with the European higher education area. So it would look exactly what you would expect from a classic, as we like to call it, Bologna country. It's a three cycle system, which has a short cycle similar to associates degree in the United States. And then of course, when we're talking about scholars, scholars would have a research degree and equivalent to a PhD or a doctor of sciences, which is a degree that has been inherited by Ukraine from the Soviet Union. Actually, I think what is important to acknowledge is that Ukraine is the second largest higher education system in the post-Soviet space. So Russia would be the largest higher education system, but Ukraine is the second largest. So we're talking about a million and a half students, again, over a hundred thousand scholars and about 350 institutions of higher education, meaning universities. Traditionally, of course, similarly to many other Soviet states, Ukrainian researchers in STEM and natural sciences would be the most integrated into the global research community. And that's one of the things that we saw manifest itself, because many of the positions that have been already open are positioned in STEM, since those scholars have a lot of also connections globally. For the social sciences and humanities, the situation is more challenging because as many in the audience are probably well aware, the social sciences did not start developing in the Soviet Union until its very late years. And of course, there's a much smaller level of integration. However, I think one of the important aspects to highlight is that with the Ukraine's integration with the European Union more generally from 2015 through the association agreement, Ukrainian scholars also became increasingly integrated. And many of them have everything starting with sufficient language skill all the way to the previous experience working with Western academia, either through the North American projects or large European projects such as Erasmus class and Horizon 2020, which are the flagship European Union programs. I hope that answers your questions if it does not feel free to follow up at any point. Not very helpful. We have a question that asks if you know, are there any special forms of relationships between Ukrainian and Russian scientists at this point, both in exile and not? So I would say some generally and maybe Liz will adapt to my answer. So I would say that before the first wave of the world, like before the 2014, I would say that we had common projects. We worked together. I would speak for myself personally. So we had lots of collaborations and even exchange programs. So we had common publishing materials and we could submit an article together with the colleagues from universities in Moscow or St. Petersburg. So we had communication with them and we were open for like both sides were open for collaboration. Again, I would speak from my experience and what I saw around me. Again, I would review the time from Donetsk and we are like very close to the border to Russia. So that's why communication and the time zones and physically we were closer to each other. So we had this partnership. However, we understand for some certain reasons our common projects, our exchange programs and all kinds of collaborations after 2014, of course stopped. And I can't even imagine now organizing a conference together or submitting an article. So that would be hard because not always we have the same settings, not always we have the same perspectives and world views. So I think after 2014, the situation has changed radically. And now nowadays, yes, after February, of course, we understand that all kinds of partnerships would be for me personally, even morally. Yes, so from my beliefs, from my values, impossible. So far, I don't see any common grounds for us. And what we now advocating for is that Russian programs, Russian cooperation, cooperation with European universities, world universities with Russian professors would be terminated unless we finish the war and unless we understand their position. And if someone puts us in the same line and says that we have the same problems or we have the same world views, so I would probably ask those people not to do that for lots of people, especially Ukrainians now. It is something that we do not expect. Let me ask you, there's a follow question, which I think is right on track with what you're talking about, Elena, for both of you, from somebody in the audience that says, why do you think a lot of international, including US institutions, tend to put Ukrainian and Russian scholars under one umbrella, and she cites as an example, help to Ukrainian and Russian students, scholarships to Ukrainian and Russian students, etc. Do you think it somehow is connected to the fact of international communities not being able to accept the differences? I think I can probably start answering and then Elena would add what she feels is missing from my answer, but I would probably refer here to one of the recent discussions that has very timely happened in Lviv, in Western Ukraine, and this discussion involved a professor of Oxford, Federico Veresa, who I think has very clearly put it that, unfortunately, after the fall of the Soviet Union, Moscow has not stopped being a center of the region to many scholars in the West. Unfortunately, despite the fact that Soviet Union has broke apart and there were 15 independent states, in many cases, the legacy or the narratives of the Soviet era persisted, and Moscow remained, in a sense, a metropolis that a lot of scholars were looking to hear about the post-Soviet space. Because of this increasingly developed ties between, I think, Western and Russian scholars, and, of course, much smaller ties between Ukrainian and Western scholars, because, first of all, Ukrainian higher education system is smaller, and secondly, it's important to understand that Ukraine has a periphery inside of the semi-periphery, because the post-Soviet space after 1991, which has been written by many scholars, has become sort of semi-periphery. Much less attention has been focused to it because the Cold War was over and it was no longer a significant threat. And inside of that semi-periphery, Ukraine is another peripheral area, which was not really in the focus of much research. So Russian scholars have much more engagement with the West, and, of course, a lot of Western colleagues, I think, have seen that academic freedom has been diminishing in Russia, and everybody have heard from the news about the extreme punishment that Russians will carry on if they call things for what they are, if they call out the war in Ukraine. And it has created, to me, a sense that, in academia at least, it has created a sense that Russian scholars are also under a threat, which I do not necessarily disagree with. I know there are Russian scholars who have been consistently critical of their government who are in threat, but I think that what has escaped the attention of many Western researchers and institutions is that the threat to Ukrainian scholars is not comparable to the threat that Russian scholars are facing at this point. And I think that because of this Soviet legacy and because of the narratives that are putting Moscow in the center of the region, a lot of institutions miss out on the fact that it is, unfortunately, quite discriminative, I think, to compare the challenging faced by Ukrainian people with those faced by Russians. So I guess that's a very complicated and maybe not quite straightforward answer to the question that we have received. But I do hope it gives a little bit of a sense of the background of the relationship that have been built for decades, that we have to be aware of when we are discussing situations that are happening right now. And for either of you, do you worry that when you hear that grouping that it is inadvertently playing into the propaganda of the Ukrainian and Russian people being the same and being part of the same system, so to speak? I think you're right that it definitely does play into the propaganda that is being spread by Russian government. But I think what is also important to acknowledge is that when that grouping happens, Ukrainians are automatically put in a disadvantaged position because for a Ukrainian scholar to take advantage of an opportunity abroad, if they're not already in abroad, they need to be applying for scholarships, fellowships, positions from bomb shelters. And this is not the same that what many Russian scholars do, and even those who are at threat, they are in a danger, but they're in their own apartment with their laptop, which essentially I think we have to admit the danger in this programs that put Ukrainians and Russian together is that there is a much higher chance that Russian scholars will take advantage of these opportunities. And unfortunately, we have been hearing of let's just, well, let's say people who are interested in speaking out against war for once so that they can move somewhere into the West, because there is a narrative inside the Russian federations that West is kind of foolish and you can just pretend to be against the war and take advantage of all of those opportunities that are being proposed to Russian dissidents. So I think everybody has to be also very careful with the fact that there are people who want to take advantage of the positive intentions of Western academia to support Russian scholars who are actually at risk. We should understand that education is what so when some people sometimes say that culture and education have nothing to do with politics and the regime of the government. So I think that people do not share with us all their ideas and they are not honest, because education is influenced by politics. While Ukrainian scholars, Ukrainian students somewhere in the bombshells trying to continue their activities, still trying to work, trying to support each other. So some Russian people from academia can benefit and can take advantage of these government-sponsored opportunities for the purpose of promoting Russian disinformation and enabling the Russian government to fuel the war, which is something that we definitely don't want with Ukrainians. And I hope that people around the world will support that. So that's why all these indifferences that we have and situations in which we are now, of course, only creates disbalance. And that's why not to probably give people more opportunities and for one people, for Russians, take more opportunities and take our opportunities for Ukrainian students and scholars participating in programs and even not to mention participation in the programs, just continue their everyday activities, working in labs, doing the research. So I think it's very unfair to provide now funding or support or any other kind of exchange programs to those who started the war and can spread the disinformation outside Russia to the world community, right, so around the world. So that's why for this purpose, I think those programs have to be terminated. We have a question from somebody who's saying that a university is considering starting a Ukrainian language program for the first time. However, they are concerned about garnering enough interest from students. What would you say to a university administrator about why a Ukrainian language program is worth their time, energy, and resources? And she says that some might argue, for example, that Russian language will get you far enough in Ukraine. How can you help this argument? What would you say? I think there are a couple of things that you could really argue in this situation because first of all, from an academic perspective, I think supporting the idea that Russian language, which has been weaponized by Russian government to inflict war on other countries, and this is not only Ukraine, right? Because in addition to the war that has been going on in Ukraine since 2014, where the narrative was about protecting some Russian speakers, very similar arguments have been used when Russian armies have invaded Georgia in 2008. Russian government is using the same narrative when they're keeping their military in Transnistria in Moldova, right? So we have to understand that promoting the idea that Russian is a regional language that will get you enough understanding is also supporting weaponization of the language. And it is really an imperial narrative that Russia has systematically invested into promoting, I think at this point for centuries probably, right? Because forceful Russification, as we call it, has been happening in the region since 1700s, basically. So people were forcefully deprived the opportunities to speak their local languages by Russian Empire and continuing to support this narrative is really a support for an imperial narrative. The second argument I think that you could make is that there are Ukrainian language programs in North American universities and they're quite successful. So for a university administration that wants to start a language program like that, I would suggest learning from the great experiences that there are. University of Kansas and Lawrence has a great Ukrainian language program. University of Washington is another example. I believe University of Pennsylvania is also has a language program. So look out to those fantastic examples that already exist in the United States and learn from their experiences because they have been obviously able to prove that there is enough sustainable interest to maintain programs like this. Thank you. Yeah, I just wanted to add very quick. So probably it's now high time to change the conditions and to have new reality. Yes, and to have new opportunities and to have new norms. So Ukrainian language, Ukrainian culture and values can be the attribute to a good change and a good start for something new. We all know that after conflicts, after the wars, we have new humor, we have new culture, we have new music, we have new everything. Yes, it will affect all spheres and it already has been affecting. We already have new new intentions, new initiatives and Ukraine now is kind of a brand. I really like this, but we may understand. Yes, so like it's now something new wave and why not to change something that has been stable for a long time. So that's a good opportunity to turn it like a flipping point and I think that it's for a global perspective a good chance to update the context and agenda. Well said. Being mindful of the time, I want to just ask both of you one closing question. And when the three of us spoke before, you know, Elena, for example, you were telling me that your apartment doesn't really exist anymore in Mara Paul, your university doesn't exist. You've been through this Liz, I'm sure you're watching television or being in touch with people and seeing places that were once so familiar to you, having no resemblance to how you understand them or remember them. But my question is what I mean, Elena, you got to it a little bit in the last question, but what is giving you hope through this? Because it would seem so hopeless and so devastating. What when you do look at this and know all these, where is your hope and what inspire maybe us as well? So I would say that I may, yes, because I'm more like for emotional part today and this for more for academia, right, today, and she can probably give some more facts. But for me, the situation that is happening now and losing my apartment and my university is now relocating my second, university is now relocating again. It's not a new situation because of this scenario I remember from 2014, we already experienced that eight years ago when I lost my apartment where they had to move to another place that everything from scratch, it was completely new chapter in my life book and university was relocated and we start again from nothing. Almost, I mean, we only had our people resources, yes, so we only had our skills and then you saw the pictures, yes, so we moved from where to where. So that's why for me it's like kind of the review and familiar again past now. Of course, the scale of adversity is much bigger now and we can compare probably, but still we kind of understand that even in a desperate time, so education will be a key for us, education is something that will support us and will give us directions on how to act and to rebuild, restore, reunite people and if we as a team, as Ukrainians managed to do that, so we will be really a close-knit community which is happening now. So again, we managed to start the university, submit grants, invite speakers, raise the people's awareness around the world back in 2014, so what we are doing now is just we are adapting and working probably in a bigger scale, but we understand that it's not the end and we will never surrender, we will never give up. We know that when we win, we will continue our activities, yeah, that's a lot to do, a lot of things that we need to collect and start from again, start developing. So now for academia, it's a kind of a step back, we understand that we as scientists terminate sometimes our activities, we can't work fully immersed and dive into our projects and to our research, but we on another hand understand that in the nearest future, we will come back and we will have even more desire, more power, because we want the whole world community to understand that Ukraine is not part of Russia, Ukraine is not part of anything, Ukraine is an independent country with its mentality, with its values, with its academic spice, you know, like we have our activities and we available resource and the world community can benefit from collaboration with us and it's a mutual process of course, so we know that we can give the world lots of good ideas, projects and opportunities for cooperation and collaboration and of course our smart students who have experienced the war in their lives, so they will become a new breed of smart, intelligent, resilient and sustainable people. I don't want to take up too much time, but I think one thing that is worth mentioning is that as we've discussed throughout this hour, the war in Ukraine today is on a scale that hasn't been seen in Europe for so many decades, but what is happening in Ukraine today, I think we have to admit is a logical continuation of Russian policy towards the former Soviet states that has emerged in early 90s and continued throughout the last 30 years. What makes me hopeful about the situation in Ukraine is that when Russia attacked and didn't just face the Ukrainian army, what we see in Ukraine is a 40 million people resistance because every single person has started their own fight. There are soldiers who are fighting in front lines, there are volunteers who are fighting to help them to get the necessary resources. There are people who are protesting in Russian occupied cities every single day despite the very high risk of just being shot on the spot. I know that in the west we hear quite a bit about often very brave people protesting in Russia, but we might hear much less about people of Kherson who go out every single day on their squares and who literally stop Russian tanks with their bare hands. I think what we see right now is really a renaissance of Ukrainian nation because Ukrainians have been attempting to gain independence from Russia for several centuries and we finally got it 30 years ago, so we're not giving it back. Of course there is a danger that this is going to be another executed renaissance which is what happened during the Soviet Union when many of the Ukrainian scholars and artists have been murdered because of their opposition to the Soviet government. But I hope that the opposition of 40 million people is so much stronger than any army that Russian government could potentially put together. And I know that as long as we ensure that there is support, that there is platforms like the one that we're fortunate to have today where Ukrainian people can speak up and can be heard, I think that will ensure that we succeed. Thank you. Before I hand it to Claire to close out, I want to read it. There was a comment that came through the Q&A, it really is a reflection more than a question, it says an appeal. And she writes, I am from the Academy of Fine Arts in Krakow, Poland. We have 70 students and 12 scholars from many cities to Ukraine and every day is more and more people in need. We help in continuation of study, pay the scholarships, care about dinners and accommodation. We need solidarity of international universities and schools to provide further long-term help for Ukrainian students and scholars. It is a huge problem. Maybe you can think, ask in your institutions for special scholarships funds directly for Ukrainian students, scholars, refugees at universities in Poland. It is very important. We need solidarity of international university environment. We need solidarity of the international university environment. We look from 50 days at the immensity of human tragedy. Thank you all the best for panelists and everyone. I'm certain you would both agree with that in all its points. So Claire, I will hand it to you. Thank you, Adam. And thank you, Liz and Elena. I just have to say that hearing your personal experiences, even those that I had heard previously just underlines for me the importance of our helping our higher education colleagues who are impacted by the war. So thank you for your powerful words. Thank you to Roger Williams as well for hosting this conversation and to all of you for joining us. My apologies as it seems we weren't able to make it through all of the questions in the Q&A, but we will pass those along to the panelists for a response and hopefully we'll get back to you. Scholars at risk has been mentioned throughout this conversation and I am advocacy director at Scholars at Risk. As many of you may know, Scholars at Risk is an international network of higher education institutions committed to protecting the freedom to think, question and share ideas. We do this in part through arranging temporary positions of academic refuge for scholars facing threats to their lives. And since the war in Ukraine began, we have seen a surge in applications from scholars impacted by the war. So to close, I would like to invite higher education community members who have joined us today to join Scholars at Risk in creating positions for scholars impacted by the war in Ukraine. I think Liz, you said it best earlier this evening when you said we can bring about change by helping scientists impacted by the war to not be silenced. Thank you all.


Well, good afternoon everyone and greetings from ISRO. Well, at the outset, I take this opportunity to congratulate all the participants who are joining this hallmark event. Mapathon using Indian remote sensing data sets and open source solutions. I thank KICT and in particular IIT Bombay, Professor Kanan for giving us this opportunity and also collaborating with ISRO for this mammoth event. Well, as you may know that Indian Earth observation capability basically comprises of fleet of satellites providing valuable services for resource monitoring, infrastructure planning, cartography, large scale mapping, disaster monitoring, meteorology, oceanography and so on. And these satellites contribute immensely to the big geospatial data sphere by providing rich voluminous data. And these data sets are utilized to unearth valuable insights, information extraction and planning and decision making. Over the years, of course, ISRO has operationalized many national level, state level and region specific level operational applications basically to address the national imperatives as well as the fundamental priorities of the government. There are many examples like food security in terms of agricultural crop inventory. We provide the advanced forecast before the harvest, how much production will be there in the country in terms of food grains and also in terms of horticultural crops. Then we contribute to water security through water resource information system and providing the groundwater prospect information for the country. Similarly, forest working plants, inventory and monitoring of glacial lakes, contributing to climate. And there are many more applications including of course the energy sector which is very vibrant now. And also ISRO has deployed several geoportals, many of which you may be aware about the Bhuvan, Mozdak, Vedas and any SDR specifically dedicated to the northeastern region of India. These portals are basically delivering the remote sensing products, application and services and they reach out to user community. And these portals also provide wealth of data including the time series, satellite information, various thematic layers which ISRO has been generating over the years with the help of user community. ISRO places very great importance basically to partner with the academia and to work closely with the academia and the student community for developing innovative solutions and ensuring the best of the solutions for the problem. And I think in this regard, this mapathon which is a joint effort of IIT Bombay, ISRO and AICT, it will provide a platform to join hands in leveraging the potential of the Earth observation data from the fleet of Indian satellites, couple them with advanced technology open source solutions and provide a lot of tools which requires now the automation basically to address the timely delivery of many of the services. So you will come to know in the later part of today's talks that we have identified the 10 problem statements for the user community and particularly the students wherein we expect that they really utilize the potential of your data and also use their innovative skills and their technological skills to provide the problems, whatever you are given, they provide the best solutions for them. Some of them, of course, you know, we have selected the problem statements like you have the land use, land cover change. As you know, the land use is the basic planning unit for any planning, any developmental planning in the country, basically you need a land use map. So how you really automate them, how you really find out the change, how it has happened in the land use over the years. Similarly, how you automatically generate the flood maps because where are the disaster strikes. Our idea is basically deliver the information maybe within an hour. So how automatically you derive the flood layer from the satellite imagery. Similarly, how you address the locus problem which you have seen quite recently. We have the problem of air quality, particularly the residue burning in the northern area and the pollution in Delhi. There are many challenging tasks, but the idea overall idea is that you have a lot of information available from the satellites. We do also have the operational techniques, but how really we automate these techniques so that, you know, you run a particular algorithm or run a particular model and you get the output at the fastest time so that, you know, the information reaches the needy at the earliest. So I urge all the participants to make best use of these data sets which are available. You will come to know how these data sets will be provided to you from the ISRO Geoportals and couple them with your innovative skills and bring out the solutions. Of course, keeping the sustainable development goals in the view. So I will not take much time because you have many interesting, you know, talks to be covered. And particularly, Professor Penan will be talking about the QGIS and the Bepathon and also the FOSI, which you will be really utilizing those tools for developing the solutions. So I sincerely thank all the participants and wish that they really come out with good skills It is quite possible that once these skills are demonstrated, it is quite possible that many of those skills we would like to utilize and automate on our Geoportals in ISRO. So thank you very much. Thanks, sir, for the wonderful speech.


Hey guys! Happy Saturday to you! Hope you're all doing really well. I'm going to try to do a little bit of a vlog here. We've had a couple of things that happen this last couple of weeks that I really haven't even talked about. And sometimes it's like no matter what the plans are, no matter what you think you're going to do or what's going to happen or you know all of that, sometimes things just happen that derail it and accidents happen and things go wrong and things just happen. So I'm going to try to vlog a little bit of this week and I'm going to try to be a little bit better with it. But one of the things that I wanted to tell you is that many of you know that we have a motorhome and we we normally go camping. We normally would be away this weekend.  So far we've only been camping once so far this season and I say that with you know it's like amazing to me that it's almost July and we've only been camping once. Well what happened was that we had a slight accident in the motorhome. Everyone's okay and that's the most important thing. Everyone is okay. The motorhome can be fixed so it's out of commission for a little bit. But we're hoping that we get to use it at least by the end of August maybe September. It'd be nice if we could use it earlier than that but I'm not going to hold my breath. Those motorhomes are like a can of sardines you know. I mean it's like just you hit something. It just opens it all up.  So anyways the repair is going to take a while but we're hoping that it gets taken care of and will be back on the road before you know when I'm open. But we did have Father's Day here. We worked really hard on getting our porch cleaned out taken care of. It's just a screened-in porch. It's rough. It's not like a fancy-dancy porch like you would think. So it's very very rough but we had that all taken care of as far as cleaning it out and getting rid of the stuff that was in there.  Father's Day my mom and dad came up and inserts some photos here so you can see my dad. He he he's he's he actually looked really good but he's not doing really good but he actually looked really good. So I was really really happy that we were able to spend the time as a family together doing that on Father's Day. Okay now what are you saying mom? I went to Walmart yesterday and I bought myself a corn while I picked up Opus medication. You just bought one corn? No I bought five. I bought one up here. She didn't bring any to share. She just bought one for herself. I'm important. There's a chef tell over there in the kitchen. Say hi Jerry. Hi. Hi you made a salad. Jay's doing steamers, lobbies. I thought I'd share a few pictures from Father's Day 2019. This is a small crowd. It was Jay and I, my sister and her husband and my mom and dad. We took a couple of pictures and did a little video clip as you saw around the table. It was just really nice. I just treasure every moment that we can spend together. Moments like this are priceless. Why do we have to be bold to realize that? I don't get it.  Are we finally off? We are off and running I believe. Finally. Finally. Yeah I discovered that I left my SD card at home in my vlogging camera so that I had to set up this camera and which is fine. I'll just use this one for the day. We are off to Chi Chi Vermont. Did I say it right this time? No. How do you say it? How did I tell you to pronounce it? Oh Chi Chi. No. Uchi. Uchi. How do you say it? Cui Chi. Oh. Cui Chi Vermont. You know I mean that's just a tough word for me to pronounce.  We're going to take in a head air balloon festival and it's been going on. It's a three-day festival so we're driving two hours to spend about maybe five hours there. Just gonna be head air balloon, music festival, craft fair, whatever else strikes our fancy. Yeah where are we going? Uchi. No. Q as in you Chi. Cui. Oh. Cui. Cui. Cui. Oh well. We're off. When we were 12 years old in middle school and it's the same members I went to free school with that handsome young man. I went to middle school with that handsome young man. We all got together and we never said hey let's just stop playing. We made our way to the hill to sit in the grass and wait for the balloons to start taking off. We kind of noticed that nobody was setting up and we didn't realize right away that the reason they were said not setting up is that there was a wind delay and once we realized there was a wind delay it kind of made sense but everyone said oh 30 minutes, 30 minutes, 30 minutes and now it never happened. We walked around. We had we actually had a fun time.  It's been like sunny cloudy windy and when the wind kicked up the balloons just did not take off at all so we sat and we waited right honey? Yeah we're here. We're here. They just made an announcement and they said it looks like it's going to be 7 or 7 30 if the weather please. If the weather please. Guess who just to get up like at 4 30 to go golfing tomorrow. Now me. Jay got up.  I did get some PR for camping. I'm camping PR which I'm going to have Jay show you what they are. I'm going to have him do it so that he can actually talk to you about that and you get to see them. Hey all Jay here Monica's husband. Just wanted to let you know we got two packages of these LED lights from a company called Vaunt and I'm going to put a link below so that if you're interested in them you're more than happy to share the link and get a nice little discount. These are lanterns for camping. They've got 30 LED lights in here. The batteries are three AA batteries that last for over 30 hours. Wow. A lifetime guarantee. They are waterproof and very sturdy. I think they're just really cool. I like how they open up and get a storm that's going to knock out your power. These are great to use or if you're dry camping. Which is what we would probably be using them for unless I can convince you to get in a tent again. Yeah I don't think I'm going to get into a tent right away. I'm getting a little too old for that but now these are awesome. Like I said they're waterproof. I love the size of them Jay. Lifetime warranty. Nice you know. And pretty sturdy. Clothes open. Did you say there were like 30 LED? 30 LED lamps in there. Wow. 360 degrees as you can see. Wow that's amazing. That's pretty cool. So even if you're not a camper, if you're you know someplace where you get a lot of storms like we do. You know we get a lot of like nor'easters and you know we have issues when the snow comes and sometimes we lose power for a long time. So they would be perfect. So whether you're camping or you're not. I'm going to take a look at Monica's cell phone. Her cell phone is an iPhone and these are smaller than her iPhone. That's wild. Not that you can fit them in your pocket but at least they're easily storeable. That's wild. I like that. I have to worry about a lot of space. Thank you for that demo Jay. Yeah we've got the link in below that you can purchase them if you want. They're only probably each one of these. I think a four pack was $29.95 something like that. That's not bad at all. Yeah. And did it come with the batteries or did you have to get? No it actually did. It came with three batteries. They take three AA batteries and the AA batteries are right here on the bottom. Looks like that was pretty easy to put together too. Oh wow. Yeah. Very simple. Very nice. Even I could do it. That's amazing. Thank you Jay. Hey if you liked this video give it a thumbs up. If you haven't subscribed to the channel please do. Hey catch you on the next one guys. Thank you. He says that on his channel all the time. I love it. Thank you honey. All righty. Bye bye. This one I thought was adorable. Oops. Oh I can't wait till it meet him. And I got a new iPad. I'm so happy with it so far. Jay's sanding the door down out there just while we have the vacuum cleaner out there. And I am trying to back up video files from my laptop because I am like out of space a big time. Figures right? But I love these outfits. Oh I love these. I love these. They are amazing. Your whole shop is amazing. Very different. I went to TJ Maxx and I always look at the jewelry and I saw these little camera earrings and oh my gosh I thought they would just be perfect for Gail from Random Life Productions. I don't think she'd wear earrings but I was looking. I just love looking at the different earrings, the different styles they have. Sometimes my TJ Maxx have like freedom near me. They all have different jewelry. They all have different styles and they usually have stuff you don't see everywhere else. Well these you see almost everywhere right now but they usually have some pretty unique pieces which I like. I bought some sweet basil and some salante. So I put the salante in a bigger pot because it didn't look all that good but my sweet basil looks like it's gonna be really good. I ate a lot sweet basil. So yeah I'll show you what it looks like. Whoops. Well let's see if you can see it outside the window. I just kind of like stuck it in a little pot there. But this looked really good. That's my little plant. So Jay ended up bringing my beach chair home from the shop where the motorhome is being taken care of because he figured I would want to sit out in the yard and I did tell him to bring all the stuff out of the bays and the basement home because I don't know how long the motorhome is going to be in the shop. You know it could be tied up with thinking Jay and I are thinking conservatively with thinking it's going to be history for two months. So I don't want you know I don't want all my stuff in the in the basement of that motorhome. So he brought the beach chairs home and the lounge chairs and the rest of the camping gear and all that stuff and so he set it up in the backyard for me and he said Jay in case I wanted to sit and I didn't go out there. I was under the back porch. I went you know groceries. I did a bunch of different things but I never went out into into the backyard to sit you know where the where the basically where the beach chair was set up. And I think it's one thing like I said to him you know if I was at the beach I'd be under my umbrella. I'd be looking at the water. I'd be doing whatever but here what am I gonna look at my apple trees. They'll look at you know stuff like that. I said there's really not much to see here. So he meant well I just didn't utilize the the beach chairs. So as we get older I think we definitely think about sun tanning differently and he said that to me. He said so now that you're older you don't really think about sun tanning in the same way as you used to when you were younger and I said yeah absolutely. I said absolutely I don't feel the same way. I want to protect my skin.  So yeah I want to I want to protect it. And one of the things that I want to mention to you is the I'll show it to you when I go inside because getting the sunblock off and I think I talk about it in one of my upcoming videos that you might see before this. But getting the sunscreen and protection off my face at the end of the day has always been a real dilemma. So this zero stuff works like a charm. And also I got that radiance tool.  I've been using that all week. I actually really like it a lot. So between that the zero and that tool I mean I like I like get all the sunblock off my face. It doesn't hang on there anymore like it used to. So these glasses are sliding off my face. These have always been big for me. I had them adjusted a couple of times but it seems like whenever I put them back on my face they just go right back. It's like the metal has a memory and they go right back wide. So I'm really upset because they're my prescription lenses and they cost a lot of money because they're bifocals. Progressives or whatever you call them.  I don't know. I don't know what to do about it. I mean I got to do something because I don't wear these as often as I should because of that reason. Oh well. So this is the stuff I was talking about outside. This is the Clean It Zero and depending on when that video that I shot goes public you'll see this. Love this stuff. You know it makes me feel really comfortable when I put on a whole lot of sunblock especially the Shiseido. That stuff does not move. I put it on my face early this morning. Actually my whole face is complimentary of Sheila aka life with Lily. I have on my eyes the Huda palette that I got from her for my birthday. And she's the one that turned me on to the Shiseido. So that is the Sports BB Cream. I absolutely love it. It goes on so much easier on my skin than like say the IT Cosmetics one that I used to use. But the only thing is and I've said this before that is like almost impossible to get off. So this has been a lifesaver. This stuff takes all of it right off. It takes my mascara off. It takes everything off. And when and then this I show this in my other video too. But this is the Radiance The Spinner that I got. I mean between the two of them that sunblock comes right off my face. As does my mascara. As does everything else that I have on my skin. So I'm really loving it. So we decided, Jay and I decided not to go to the beach today Sunday. We heard there was a four mile backup getting out to the beach. So we've decided to stay home and you probably saw some of the previous clips and just stay home and do you know do different things. And so we're gonna go Thursday night. So depending on how long this vlog gets I will add Thursday night's event to the vlog and then I'll probably premiere this next Sunday. That's that's I think the plan at this point in time. So we'll see how I do. I'm gonna sign off in now. And who knows what else I'll add to these clips. Hey guys happy Wednesday. I just got home and those darn squirrels out in the yard ate all my bird seed. I mean I'm like so angry at those things. So anyways it's been a crazy week. So I haven't done a whole lot of vlogging this week. We never went to the beach on Sunday. But we are going tomorrow night Thursday night. So Jay and I decided we're gonna take a ride. I'm gonna probably leave work a little bit early. I'm gonna work in our Exeter office and then I'm gonna meet up with Jay and then we're gonna head to the beach and probably do dinner there somewhere and and then we will walk around and look at all the sandcastles and I'll film some of it and I'll add all that all those clips in. But before I do that oh and when I came home today I had all these packages on the stoop the porch the deck whatever. And when I opened them all up I was so happy especially to see my isogenics. I love that stuff. I'm gonna insert that clip here. This I'm like really excited to try. Holy moly. Then vitamin B6, biotin, zinc, two capsule once per day with the meal. Oh my gosh. I'm really excited to try that. And then I bought this and these. I bought these. Thanks to my lean fat and glam. I'm gonna get a rest on my fleet tonight I'm sure. And try those. And then my isogenic order came in. So I really like this stuff a lot. You know and then this I would be lost with office at night. I take two of these every single night. And my favorite flavor peach mango. And I have two of them. Peach mango. Yes baby. And my good morning. My good morning drink. So I'm like super excited to try the hair vitamins. Really really super excited to try those hair vitamins. I will let you know how it goes. You know that hair thinning and loss is an ongoing dilemma with me. So I'm really super excited. And the vitamins for the sleep and the woman's vitamins that I showed. Thanks to my lean fat and glam. I hope I get a good night's sleep because I have not been sleeping good. Can't you tell by these horrific bags? It's just like really awful. So I have not been sleeping good. So tonight I'm gonna try those. And I hope they work. I'll let you guys know. The in the leg stuff. It was a Jackie Blue. She talked about it in Instagram. And then I also noticed that she talked about it in her most recent video on YouTube. So I'm gonna link her channel. But she talked about Sally Hansen leg spray. So I'm trying that. I'll let you know how I like that. Self-tanas don't work on me usually. So I have... I don't have high hopes but I'm gonna give it a try. But the other day I wish I had filmed this. I really did. I got bit by something and I have no idea what I got bit by. But I was like I was like scratching like a mad woman. And then I got a welt. And it was like all icky. And just itchy itchy itchy painful itchy. You know when you can't stop scratching. So I thought well you know why not the oh so nice. Oh yes oh so nice the CBD cream that we have. I've talked about this before. Share it with you. Get a link below in my description. And it is a CBD cream. And Jay loves it. I mean he you know when he has like a really bad back. He gets some aches and stuff like that. I put it on the lower part of his back. And it gives him some relief. It's really good on his joints. So he really loves it for that kind of a thing. And so I said I'm gonna use it on the bite. And you know son of a gun. I put this on the bite. And almost I don't know maybe within a moment the itch went away. It stopped that I just got it. It just stopped it. So I was like I was like so super psyched about that. Now the welt stayed a while. But then the welt disappeared. And now you can't even tell I had anything there at all. So this is really good good stuff. CBD cream. Oh so nice. I was surprised. I was surprised how it took care of the awful itch of that bite. I have no idea what bit me. None whatsoever.  I'll show you the little clip. The bird feeder is totally empty. And that is just a temporary place to put it. I don't know. I don't know. I'm gonna chase some squirrels. So tomorrow night like I don't know if I said this enough. But Jay and I we're gonna meet up and we're gonna have dinner at the beach. And we'll go do the sand castles. And I'll share that. And that'll probably be the the tail the end of the clip. The end of my vlog because I'm sure it's gonna be super long with the beach clips added on to it. But I just wanted to share all that with you. That and the CBD cream and the vitamins and the leg bronzer and everything else I'm doing. Talk to you later. So these I'm not gonna fill these up anymore. I mean this is just hanging here temporarily. But yeah that was all the darn squirrel and chipmunks. Jeez. Frustrating. So Jay and I there he is. He's driving. Is he driving? Oops. He's heading to a gas station. Because I'm almost out of gas. Yeah.  Oh sure they do. I I never do. Yeah you've probably done it two or three times since we've been married. Which has been since 1990. We've been married that long? Yeah. Lucky you. Yeah.   I bet you you will. It's a white shirt. Yeah. You said stains on your red shirt. I said white shirt. You said red shirt. I'm gonna play it back. I will play it back and see who's right. But anyways do you think he'll get stains on his shirt? Most likely. Especially ice cream. Are we going for ice cream? We have cash. Now he's thinking. Oh well so we are off to the beach. We're gonna go check out the sand castles. We'll have dinner somewhere along the way. It's a beautiful beautiful day. Late afternoon. What is the temperature out? 83. 83 degrees. So it's gonna be a nice night and I'll share some of it with you guys. We're reaching the beach and the bridge is off. Of course there's someone riding a bike in the middle of the road too. Bridge is up. Which boat it's waiting for is it? This one out there.  I wonder if we're going to... I didn't bring a sweater or anything. I did. I meant to. I had it in my hand. And we had dinner at the SeaCatch restaurant in one of the upper decks. They had brought the windows down so that it was closed off a little bit so it wasn't too cold. As you can see there's a little foggy out there. In about a half hour later you can see the fog really started to roll in. Couldn't even see the water anymore. It was like money and it got kind of chilly. So fog and all we had a great time. After we finished our dinner we walked out to the beach and walked across the street and just enjoyed it. Watching people watching. Checking out the sand sculptures. I really like this one. This guy. Content-flating. I thought it was cute. Anyways there was a lot of cute sculptures and even though it was fogged in it was still a really nice evening. So thanks so much for watching guys. Appreciate all your support. Please be sure to thumbs up the video and leave me a comment. Thanks again and have a great day.


Yes, because no one's hand is up, so you can ask. I just saw a hand coming up, so I'll take his question and another one and then I'll come back to you. Okay? We have time. How much time do we have? Half an hour. My daughter is about 20 years old and there is always a conflict between me and my daughter. There's an understanding problem between me and her. And every time she's always against me, rather than I have another two children, they are always towards my side, but this daughter doesn't understand what I try to say and always against me. So I am looking for a solution what should I do to handle her. Generally when a child of that age is against the parents is because they feel misunderstood by the parent. She's against me, not my wife. So she feels misunderstood by you, otherwise she won't be against you fundamentally. The way that one generally handles a situation like that is to try and actually in the presence of that child feel one's own soul because very often what happens is that the ego comes in the way and there is this preconceived idea this child doesn't love me.  When you are sitting with her, you have to be in humility. Even when you are sitting over here, it's a tough guy.  You have to bend down. You have to bend down. She's making you bend down. Y'all should come here and see his face from this angle. Are you ready to do that? No, I can do it. That is not a issue I think. But what do I do? I'm not getting exactly. How do I bend down in front of her?  No, never. Of course not. Of course not.  Yes, but the God is inside her. Why don't you do that? Say, I went to see Mayaji in Tiruvannamalai and she said, your daughter is a goddess and you are a devil. Now bend down in front of her and ask her forgiveness. Sure, I will definitely do it tomorrow morning. That's the first step. And then we'll take it with the next step after that. Tell her, Mayaji said to do it every morning for one week. Bend down, Ajay, bend down, bend down. After bending down, I couldn't do anything. By bending my head, what have I not received? Mola, my Mola. My daughter, my daughter. Seven days. Every morning. I can do one month, I have no issues. But with what attitude are you doing it? Suddenly he has no issues. In his back, he had lots of issues. I am very flexible. One week is more than enough. Your flexibility will improve in that one week. Do it for one week. Tell her, Mayaji said to do it, is it okay with you if I do it? She might get angry with you and say, what is this you're doing and all. If she walks away, let her walk away, still do it. This has been asked of me. I really want to do it and ask you for forgiveness because things I have done to hurt you in this life, will you forgive me? Sure. So what will you say? I will do the shashtang. And what will you say? And I will say verbally? Yes. You can say it in the language you speak with her normally. Do you speak Hindi or English with her? Hindi. So can you say it in Hindi? If I make any mistake, forgive me.  Daughter, if I make any mistake, forgive me. Will you do it? Okay. Then let's see what happens after one week. Keep us posted. I will send you the pictures also. As proof. Definitely I will do it. Seven pictures. With the timestamp and the date. I will send the video, who better. Right. Thank you. Yes. First her and then you. You have run away Ajay. You are practicing. Namaskar. Hi. What's your name? Sarah. Sarah? Yes.


Practicing the voiced TH sound in English. This video deals with the voiced TH sound, the. This free English lesson is sponsored by the following English learning sites. There are actually two TH sounds in English. This video deals with the voiced TH sound, which is sometimes written like this. My other video deals with the voiceless TH sound or the. Ready to start? This video will give you many types of practice with the TH sound. You'll get to practice the sound in words, phrases, dialogues, and oral paragraphs. How to make the sound? If you're having trouble making this sound, check out the video at rachelsenglish.com. Rachel and her friends explain in detail how to make the sound. Now you will have lots of chances to practice this sound with me. Let's start with simple words. They, this, brother, breathe. Some people have trouble distinguishing between the and the. Try saying these words. They, day, thee, dee, this, dis, there, dare, though, doe, breathe, breed, bathe, bade, loathe, load, other, utter, father, father. Other words in contrast. Some people have trouble distinguishing between the and the, or maybe the and the. Try saying these words. They, lay, thee, lee, that, lat, there, layer, though, low, then, zen, thee, ze, breathe, breeze, teave, tease, withered, wizard. Let's move on to some more challenging words with this sound. You can repeat these words for practice. The, these, theirs, they, other, rather, lather, either, rhythm, rhythmic, algorithm, withering, therefore, tetherball, loathsome, smithereens. Now let's try this sound in phrases, expressions and idioms. For meanings of these phrases, check out the glossary at the end of the video. Father, mother, sister, brother, under the weather, breathing room, that was then, this is now, lather, rinse, repeat, something or another, one or the other, those were the days, either this one or that one, this, that and the other thing, bathing beauties, that's what they all say, a feather in her cap, smooth move, teething ring, that'll be the day. Now let's put the sound in context. Try out this dialogue with a partner or teacher. Is your father coming to the gathering this Saturday? No, neither is my mother. That's too bad. My brother was looking forward to seeing them. Well, they're both a little under the weather. Oh, sorry to hear that. Can I send something or other to cheer them up? Please don't bother, they'll be fine. Try it again, saying just one part. Your part doesn't have to be the exact words. Is your father coming to the gathering this Saturday? That's too bad. My brother was looking forward to seeing them. Oh, sorry to hear that. Can I send something or other to cheer them up? Now switch roles. You start and ask the questions. No, neither is my mother. Well, they're both a little under the weather. Please don't bother, they'll be fine. Other sounds in context. Practice this oral reading paragraph. Even though my father is a weatherman, he can't predict with absolute certainty whether it will rain or not. Neither can the other people who work with him. They say there's only a 30% chance of rain, and the next thing you know, it's pouring. They predict snow, and there's nothing for another five days. And there's a blizzard. So rather than trust my father's weather forecasts, I use a more reasonable approach. I ask my mother. Practice reading this paragraph with a partner or tutor. Feel free to pause the video and take as much time as you need. Try saying it with only a few key words. You don't have to say it perfectly. Just remember and say the general ideas. You can also improvise with your own sentences. Pause the video and take as much time as you need. Meanings of various idioms and expressions with the under the weather. Not feeling well, ill or a little sick, something or another. Anything that you may need. That was then, this is now. Things have changed since the past. A feather in his or her cap. An individual accomplishment. Breathing room. Some space. Physical or emotional. Bathing beauties. Pretty girls in swimming suits. Smooth move. Done coolly. Without awkwardness. Lather rinse repeat. Pattern for washing one's hair. Teething ring. A device to help babies getting teeth. That'll be the day. I'll be surprised if it ever happens. Those were the days. We remember those times with fondness. Sample sentences with these phrases and idioms. Under the weather. I'm feeling under the weather today. Something or another. Can I get you something or another? That was then, this is now. Sorry, hon. That was then, this is now. A feather in his or her cap. The victory was a feather in his cap. Breathing room.  I need some breathing room. Bathing beauties. We saw bathing beauties at the beach. Smooth move. That was a smooth move. Pretty cool. Lather rinse repeat. The shampoo says, Lather rinse repeat. Teething ring. Baby is crying. She needs a teething ring. That'll be the day. Joe, a winner. That'll be the day. Those were the days. We had so much fun. Those were the days. For more information and practice with this sound, click on the link below. Hope that was helpful. For more videos like these, please subscribe to our channel or visit www.eslgold.com.