Most everyone will tell you that confidence is the key to attracting a good partner in your life. And yet when you think about it, the vast majority of men and women are suffering from insecurities. They're wearing a mask. They're hiding their deep pain. In fact, I would say that the number one emotional health issue is I'm not good enough. I'm not lovable and I'm not likable. The reality is as many human beings are suffering on the inside to some degree. And again, confidence is being bombarded, the idea of being confidence is being bombarded onto people as if this is going to be the key to relationship success. And yes, it is true. When we feel good about ourselves, we are more likely to attract someone who hopefully also feels good about themselves. And yet men and women are suffering. So what are the key areas people are suffering? Well, that's what I wanna lean into today. Where are the men and women suffering in this way? Because if you think about it, I believe here in the United States, roughly about 120 million of our population is single. I'm gonna repeat that, roughly 120 million of our population over 18 years are single. And I would say less than half of those people are actively in the dating marketplace. I mean, what I mean to say is putting themselves out there so they can be seen by single eligible people. And the reason why they don't do it is for the insecurities I'm about to share today. Now let me just say this, while the title is related to male insecurities, you can literally transpose these into female insecurities as well. And I invite you to look inward to say, am I experiencing any of these insecurities as well? Because maybe doing a deep dive on your own emotional health will help you attract a partner who's also doing the same work. All right, so I wanna lean into this conversation right now. I know many of you say I drag this out. Well, let's just dive into this, okay? Now I wanna different, well, I'm gonna do a rabbit hole real quickly. I wanna differentiate between the 20 and 30 year olds versus those that are in their 40s, 50s, and 60s. And while this applies to all men and women alike, I will say there are some slight differences and I'll deviate from this conversation a little bit to express those differences. And I think partly the reason why I'm doing this is folks, I have a 27 year old son, okay? Just turn 27. And not to suggest he's experiencing this and yet I know many people in this age bracket of 20 and 30 year olds experience this as well as men in their 40s, 50s, and 60s. So the number one, oh, and by the way, this is in no order, okay? I'm just sharing my number one, male insecurity centers around body image, body image. Ladies, you know you've been bombarded with the objectification for women towards body image when we think of magazines like Vogue and Cosmo, certainly now Instagram and the whole shift in body image because of the bombardment of photographs on Instagram as well for you women. We men experience body image issues as well. Now certainly I've listed things like hair. Well, for those men in their 40s, 50s, or 60s that are balding, they feel a sense of insecurity compared to those men who aren't in that same position. And while this isn't true for those men in their 20s and 30s, certainly hair can be one of those body image issues. Waste, waist size, gut size. You know, a lot of coaches are directing their attention to young men focusing on attraction and telling them the importance is to physically work out and get shape so you can attract a great partner. And yet as we age, it's much harder to do that type of work and not to suggest that it can't be done, but at the same time, a lot of men in this over 40, 50, 60 category are feeling a sense of insecurity by their waste. Now here's the thing, we can do something about it. And yet it's hard when we're also suffering on the inside and food sadly is a way to comfort ourselves. And we see here in the United States an obesity problem just as an example.  Okay, teeth can be an insecurity. I know when I was watching the movie, Austin Powers, and they talked about how English people have poor teeth and here in the United States that it was good to in that movie to go get dental implants or whatnot, but certainly teeth can create some fear around whether or not we're going to attract a partner. And then the most important one of all centers around our height, our height is particularly for men. As I said earlier, women have body issues as well. And I'm glad to see some of the comments are saying bald men are sexy. Well, I'm glad to hear that, but coming back to height, you know, the one issue I noticed, well, when I began dating after my divorce is how many women were particular about wanting men over six foot tall. Now, I happened to be lucky. I was blessed by my mommy and daddy to give me height of six, two and a full head of hair. And yes, my hair isn't graying. Take a look. I just want you to know there is no gray hair there. I am lucky to be a baby boomer who doesn't have gray hair yet. Okay, I'm blessed that way. But coming back to height, I know so many women are particular to have men over six feet tall and yet less than 15% of the male population is over six feet tall. The average height of a man is not five, nine, five, nine and a half. And so a lot of men feel an insecurity as to whether or not they're going to measure up to your desires. And just remember, you have your own insecurities of how men objectify women and only desire, whether it's the thin woman, the Kardashian woman, whatever it is, we can all feel a sense of insecurity when it comes to our physical appearance, which includes height as well. Okay, the second, fear of rejection or fear of abandonment. Now let me dive into the fear of rejection. And I can speak from personal experience there. I know in the dating marketplace, it is very scary because men are expected to be the leaders of the process and to initiate the dating process. In fact, it's one of the reasons why apps like Bumble was created, so it takes that initial conversation out of the male's hands and put it in the woman's hands. Well, for men, we can feel a sense of fear of rejection. Someone once told me a man will ask 100 women out, hoping one says yes. I just want you to realize that this is an advantage women have because men are the ones who do the asking and at the same time, it can create a sense of fear within us. I remember shortly after my divorce, it was St. Patrick's Day. I was at a pub with some friends and I was sitting at a table, high-top table, and I saw a group of women like two tables down. There was one that just caught my eye and I'm looking at her, she's looking at me. I'm looking at her, she's looking at me. I'm looking at her, she's looking at me. It took me over an hour to get the courage to walk up and say hello. Isn't that fascinating? I mean, you would think it would just be easy to walk up to a total stranger and say hi. And yet, believe it or not, it's scared the hell out of me to do that, even though she was giving me green lights all the way. And while it didn't work out because there was a big age gap difference between us, I didn't realize that at the time. I was feeling a sense of fear and I said earlier, abandonment. Well, this plays a huge role for those of us particularly in midlife to actually lean into the emotional aspects of a relationship. It's important to recognize that we all have some sort of childhood wounds and traumas and adult traumas that causes to have negative patterns and limiting beliefs in our lives. And one of them includes the fear of abandonment, the fear of rejection. This is one of the reasons why I highly recommend everybody reading the book, the Hoffman process, the Hoffman process. This is a deep dive into healing childhood wounds and traumas to overcome some of those fears centered around rejection, centered around abandonment. It's one of the reasons why folks I wrote my book what the heck is self love anyway? A journey of personal development, self-help and spiritual work. And by the way, I want you to check out the link below to get a copy of my book or all the books I recommend. Why I'm bringing this up right now. I said earlier that the feeling of I'm not good enough, I'm not lovable, I'm not likable. Well, self love is like a vaccination to emotional chaos. It's like giving yourself a booster shot.  See, because believe it or not, yes, men and women alike are suffering from insecurities and yes, I know you can watch content out there by the alpha male and they're telling all the men that you need to be financially successful and you need to be confident. And yet there's a lot of young men as well as men in their 40s, 50s and 60s that feel a sense of insecurity.  Okay, I said fear of rejection, fear of abandonment was number two. Number three, financial comparisons, financial comparisons are financial status, if you will. How much he makes and where he lives. Yes, men are fearful or have insecurities of whether or not they even have the capacity to be a provider protector, let alone take care of themselves. This is true for younger men. And as men age, given that 75% of males over 45 years old are divorced, roughly, and that's anecdotal. You know, there's oftentimes alimony, child support playing a factor here. Given the fact that also here in the United States 80% of the population makes less than $100,000 a year, there isn't enough resources. So this is about financial resources. Do I have the capacity to attract that partner? We can all say, well, work hard, get more money. Yes, that's easy to say.  And financial comparisons represents how much the more attractive those celebrities, those athletes are compared to the average male. See, the problem is a lot of the rhetoric out there in the dating realm is centered out as just such outliers and not the real people out there that just have regular jobs, making a regular kind of living, doing their best to not only survive, but thrive in some sense. And yet we can feel insecurity. I know personally, after I lost my high paying corporate job, I was reduced to feeling like I would never amount to anything compared to women from that financial perspective. Because for women, oftentimes it's represented by looks and for men, it's represented by their ability to give resources.   Let's say you make $90,000 a year and he makes $65,000 a year. Well, the combination of to that is $155,000. Two are better than one. And yet a lot of men feel like they can't measure up. And I know you'll all say, well, if I make more money, he'll be intimidated. You just say this.  Now, a lot of men might have insecurities about that and it might be contentious. But I think most men appreciate the idea that two is better than one. So ladies, why not indoctrinate that into your lexicon as well? That two is better than one. And yes, if you benefit by having a bit more, that's better for the both of us. Now, you might have experienced men who get jealous or whatnot. Yes, that's an insecurity, but they're not intimidated by it. It's because the two of you have not built enough trust in this area of financial resources and economic agreement, as I talk about in my private coaching. By the way, you can see a link right here, johnathanasley.com forward slash coaching. One of my areas of expertise is helping you determine who's really most compatible with you and then asking the questions to determine compatibility. I teach something called radical honesty, pre-qualifying your prospect. Also, I have another part in the program called gauge his emotional maturity because emotional maturity is an important factor in relationship success. I know many of you have been indoctrinated in the belief that chemistry equals relationship success. And while chemistry is an important aspect of attraction, what typically tips the scales for a successful relationship is shared values, blendable lifestyles and emotional maturity. And if you need some support with that, again, check out the link below the schedule of discovery call with me to see if working with a coach is right for you.   Yes, a lot of men can feel a bit insecure as to whether or not they'll actually satisfy you in the bedroom. And for those of us in midlife, there's an equally important problem. And that is maintaining erection. Oh, it's interesting I'm noticing the same problem with younger men. Probably has to do with diet and most importantly has to do with the stress we are all experiencing right now. You know, it used to be the biggest stress issue was just pure survival. Now we have a multitude of stress issues that causes to have weak performance in the bedroom. And yet many men feel a sense of insecurity. And I know you women feel the same insecurity. Will you get wet enough?   Well, guess what? Men experience this as well. And so I think it's important that we start with a sense of compassion. You know, I've just laid out four male insecurities. I'm here to invite more compassion and understanding of the opposite sex instead of this divide we have between the sexes, this fight we have, this rejection, this bitterness, this jadedness, it's time to shift the narrative because here's the reality. And I'm gonna share the fifth one in just a moment. Most men are good guys, they're just bad daters.  And there's no roadmap, there's no role model. There are very few role models giving a roadmap to relationship success. It's one of the reasons why I've invited Marie on the channel. There's a picture of her right now, right there. I've invited her just to be a little sense of a role model that it is possible at mid-life to attract a really good partner. It is possible and it has nothing to do with looks or financial status. It has to do with how much you care about yourself from the inside out. And lastly, and again, this was in no order. Oh, by the way, I've got to deviate for a second. Going back to financial status, financial resources, a lot of this is predicated on our father stuff. Remember I said earlier, childhood wounds and traumas? This definitely relates to how our father represented that provider protector in our household and that can cause us to feel tremendous amount of insecurity. That's our father issue. What I'm about to share now is our mother issue and that is not meeting your expectations. That's the fifth one, not meeting your expectations. See, this relates to our mom issue.  Not everybody gets the benefit of that for one reason or another.  And in many cases, we could be suffering on the inside because we have a mother wound and it causes some men to be over-givers, to be over people, pleasers. Women do the same typically when they have a father issue and we are over-giver or maybe the person had such a disappointing experience with their mother and it caused them to be under-givers. See, we all have issues with our mothers and our fathers or our primary caregivers that were male and female. You know, it's interesting. I once worked with a client who said, by the way, she's in a happy relationship right now. She said, the man said on their first date, she was asking, where did you grow up? And he was in another country. And she said, how was your relationship with your mom? And he said, my mother was a despicable human being. And when I heard that, I felt so sad for this person to have that kind of experience associated with his mother. So just remember, we have wounds inside of us that require some effort to heal.  And lastly, our ability to make you happy. We are all experiencing this on some level. So what's the antidote to all of this? Antidote is compassion. The antidote is love. Do you know love is a powerful force. And what I mean to say is loving yourself and loving others, loving myself and loving others, loving myself and loving others is the antidote to suffering on the inside. And just remember, most men are good guys, just bad at dating. So I hope you found value in what I've shared today about the five male insecurities since this is my live stream and it's time for Q&A. If you have a question for me right now, write the word question then post the question there after or you can purchase a super stick or super chat in the chat box. All the monies from the super sticker super chat goes to a scholarship fund in the name of my son, Connor Asley. That's a picture of him right there. He's my son who passed away almost five years ago and his honor I donate to causes like the Hoffman process which I just shared, Insight Institute and Seeds of Love which is an organization out of Columbia for children who have been abandoned by their parents because they have a terminal disease, terminal illness. All right, so it's time for questions. Let's see who is in the group and what kind of questions you have. Oh, I CC just wrote, fortunately we had a nanny when I was a kid. She was better parent role model than my mom. You know, it's interesting. I have a good friend who also had the same experience growing up. He grew up in Beverly Hills and he said his nanny or their home, their Alice from Brady Bunch, if you will happened to be the person who was the true caretaker in their family. Okay, so thank you for sharing that. One of our group members from Midlife Love Mastery, there's a link below to check out my private group called Midlife Love Mastery. We have a page on Facebook. This is a page where you can have direct access to me on a regular basis. One of our members wrote oversized or above average genitals scare me. Well, thank you for sharing that. I appreciate that. Jennifer goes on to say, I dated a man who had ED years ago.  He was young with this issue. I tried to talk to him about it and he blew up at me. Again, that's, you know, it's a very sore subject. I know it's a sore subject for me. That's one where we, our masculinity is tied to our ability to generate resources and our sexual performance. That's where a lot of men hold their masculinity. And so I'm not surprised. I think, you know, rather than judge, and I'm not suggesting Jennifer, you judged him, but rather than judge that, I would simply say, just recognize that that is a sore subject for him. And I'm not surprised that that happened. All right, let's keep going here. Oh, Catherine says, this is true. They don't shrivel up when a woman makes more money, at least so far as I know. Exactly, it's not like, think about real intimidation. You know, I was intimidated once because I was walking in a dark alley and there were some gentlemen there that didn't look very savory, if you will. And I felt scared. I felt that I could get hurt, partially because I was never trained to take care of myself. I never learned how to fight. I never learned how to defend myself. That's intimidation. And these men didn't do anything to intimidate me, but there was that deep fear that I could die in this moment. That's what intimidation does. It's not that you make more money. There might be jealousy, but it's not intimidation. All right, by the way, if you're watching the replay, please hit that super thanks and donate to the Conor Asley Scholarship Fund. All right, Sunny writes a question. Should I be dating less than a year after cancer? Good question. No, that's something you have to answer for yourself. You know, if you are cancer-free, I think it's great. I think I would definitely put myself out there. You know, here's the thing.  And so let's say you did have cancer. This is after cancer, but let's say you did have cancer. There might be someone that might appreciate who you are that doesn't mind that you have cancer. I know in the case of Marie, one of the first things I was concerned about was that she has something called benign tremors, familiar tremors. And I worried that that might cause an issue in our relationship. So I did some research and I realized that after I got to know her, even if it was an issue in our relationship, I didn't want it to be a stumbling block or a roadblock for us to connect at a deeper level. You know, when you connect with a person at a heart-centered level, you might find that they can accept things that you might not otherwise think you could accept or someone else could accept. So Dee, thank you for that question. We appreciate it. Hey, really quickly, I got a question emailed to me. I want to share this with everyone. Griselia writes, how can I build back trust when I've been fooled through Facebook and LinkedIn as well as through paying dating apps? I'm a widow two years now and I find it hard to trust men that are out there. You know, here's the thing. When I think of trust, the most important person you have to trust is yourself. Trust your judgment. Now, many of you do not know how to vet men. I get that. So it's hard because we are swimming in a sea of dysfunctionality. As I said before, most of us are suffering in some way, shape or form of not being good enough, not being lovable, not being likable. So we have a lot of wounded people. It is dysfunctional out there. And remember I said earlier, the most important aspects of a relationship go beyond attraction. It's shared values, blendable lifestyles and emotional maturity. This is why I created my private coaching program to help women do a better job vetting so you don't find yourself in these situations.  See a real relationship is built through creating deep roots of trust. How do you build trust with someone? Well, let me just say it's through social activities, hobbies, mutual interests, is spending time with family and friends, traveling together, teamwork, building skills, both in your personal and your professional life, intimacy, both physical and emotional intimacy. That's how you build trust with someone. Many of you think you're building trust through your devices and it's no wonder it's a mess out there because this is artificial intimacy, artificial intimacy. See, real intimacy is built through the spending of time with one another. And many of you don't even know the principles to emotional intimacy. So I recommend the book. Read this book by Robert Masters called Emotional Intimacy. Maybe when you've done this, you'll find that you're going to operate completely different in the dating marketplace instead of getting caught up in this loop of artificial intimacy. And most of these conversations go like this. Hey babe, how's your day going?  How's your day going? Did you have a good day? I hope you had a good day. See, that's not the real building of intimacy. Intimacy requires being vulnerable, being authentic, being transparent, diving deeper into the nooks and crannies of who this person is. That's how you build emotional intimacy with someone. Is this thinking and is this resonating? Please let me know. By the way, if it is, please hit that like button. Please share this video. Please subscribe to my channel and hit that notification bell. And check out all the links below if you want to connect with me. All right, one of our Facebook members says, how do we get men to do personal developments, health, health and spiritual work besides leading by example? But first off, just lead by example. Here's the thing. It's not your job to get someone to do anything. They have to want to do that. So maybe leading by example is expressing all the benefits, the features of personal development, the advantages of personal development and the benefits of personal development. Let me repeat that. The features, what's involved in personal development, the advantages of doing it and the benefits to the individual person. That's called FAB. I learned that in sales back in my 20s. So lead by example, express the benefits. Not everyone is capable of doing this. Maybe it's not their time. You have to recognize that. I will tell you that within my circle of friends it was the women who introduced us to personal development, self-help work. Then it was other men. Most men do work in the area of building financial resources and building their body. That's they hire financial coaches, they hire personal trainers. But the emotional effects, including therapy, that's something that we're oftentimes, we don't do anything in that area until we've had a humbling moment, a humbling moment. And that's usually when someone begins to say, do I want to live my life in an emotionally unhealthy way or do I want to lean into something more powerful? So good question there. Thank you so much. Jennifer says, our parents did the best job they could if you have done work to heal, you can eventually understand this. My therapist said this to me years ago and it was profound. You know, as a parent and I have two children and sadly one passed away. And I think of how I did my best to parent and there's just so much more I wished I had done that I didn't have the capacity at that time. And then when I think of my own parents who did the best they could, yet they weren't overly loving people, they weren't overly communicating people, they did the best they could. And they did a lot of things that were painful in my life.  And I sadly, I hit my boys once or twice and I feel so ashamed of doing that. I feel so ashamed.  And my hope is I've passed on some wisdom to my son so he doesn't even come close to, he does a much better job. And yet we are all suffering from something that happened to our childhood. We all are suffering from something that happened in our childhood. Thanks so much for bringing that up. One of our Facebook group members says I've been criticized for being too thin, small breasts, no butt. As for men, size doesn't matter how they treat me and emotional spiritual connection matters. I once did a workshop with a group of people, Insight Seminars. And during this, by the way, Google Insight Seminars, Insight Seminars. And we did this group exercise and there was one woman, her greatest fear around her body centered around her breasts and she literally had no breasts.  And yes, men experienced the same thing. And yet we could have, believe it or not, one of the scariest things for me to do when I was a child was go to, not that my penis size mattered at that point, but just going into the locker room with other men. That's a scary thing for men to do. When I say men, excuse me, boys, okay? It was boys. That's a scary thing for us to do.  We've been so indoctrinated in this superficial way of looking at human beings. It's almost grotesque. And then let's talk about filters out there. And folks, I have a confession. Yes, I do filter some of my photographs because aging sucks, wrinkle sucks, okay?  I don't filter these videos. In fact, I haven't even shaved one today.  And we'd all like to be the best version of ourselves. So occasionally I do glance my photographs that I've posted. All right, there, I said it, I own it. All right, Seahorse writes, my college crush of a year comes in strong, then backs off. He's suffering from eating disorder and anorexia and neurosis. He's got much self-loathing. Any advice? Well, just remember, this is a person most likely doing the best they can. My advice for you is simply have compassion for this person. Doesn't mean you have to enter into a relationship. Just remember, where is your crush coming from? Is it coming from an unhealthy place or a healthy place? You see, if you're not familiar with the word limerence, everybody, I want you to, someone write in the chat box the word limerence, L-I-M-E-R-C-E, no, limerence, I misspelled it. Someone write that in the chat box. Google it. It's extreme infatuation. It's usually a fantasy we built in our head, putting someone up on a pedestal sometimes. See, I would focus on not where he's at, I would focus where you're at. Why do you have this crush? Because you have to recognize that most humans aren't going to grow that much from where they started when you first met them. In fact, sometimes people go the opposite direction after you first meet them. So, have compassion for him, and then have compassion for yourself. What is causing you to have this crush? Is it an over-inflated sense of who this person is? Because again, it's hard to have a crush on someone who has some of these issues for most people. But I give you a lot of hugs, Seahorse. Thank you so much for sharing that. Okay, Kimberly writes, been dating a man, went on a three-day trip and no sex. Haven't heard from him since Friday. How do I approach this? He was kind and sweet and called me honey, acted like a couple otherwise. Well, my question for you, Kimberly, is did you establish what I call, I call it the, did you establish radical honesty, laying your cards on the table in the rules of engagement? And most importantly, are the two of you dating, okay? But have you really dove into the nooks and crannies of what each one of you wants when it comes to a romantic relationship? Have you asked him, what does commitment look like for him? What does a relationship look like for him? What's the protocol for how he views the dating process? Now you might simply reach out to him and check in with him and say, hey, I'm just checking in. How are you doing? Would you like to get together? Why don't you invite him out? Invite him out for a drink. Invite him over. Why don't you just talk to one another? Folks, we are so afraid to talking to people. One of the chapters in my book, the first chapter is Speak Your Truth. Do it from a kind place. And chapter nine says, if it's sincere and from the heart, you can't say the wrong thing to the right person. I invite you to engage in the dialogue with him. Sounds like you've got together, went on a trip, but you had a good time, but you didn't talk about your feelings with for one another. It's time, folks. It's time to talk about your feelings with one another. Stop wasting time. Is this sinking in? Is this resonating? Please let me know. Leaf goes on to say there's 177 watching, but only 14 likes. Yes, please hit that like button. Thank you so much. John Viev, hope I pronounced it properly. Do you have any advice on dating with different political views? You know, this is a great question. So here in the United States, we have primarily Democrats and Republicans. I wanna say that most people lie somewhere in the middle and they lean towards one side or another. I would say 60% of the population, give or take, okay? Somewhere in the middle, close to the middle. And then there's the people on the extremes. And what I mean to say is they're ideologies that are one-sided or the other. If their views or their ideologies are based on political perspectives and they're at the extreme ends of the spectrum, to me, I'm gonna bluntly say this to anyone who's listening, to me those are usually closed-minded people when their ideologies are so skewed on one side or the other of the political spectrum. Closed-minded people are no fun to date, okay? So again, it's okay, one person's a Democrat, one person a Republican, they seem to be close on most issues. It's the extremes that are, those people tend to be in my perspective and I might be offending some people tend to be closed-minded people. And I don't like closed-minded people. I like open-minded people that can talk about something, have a discussion and they're certainly welcome to their point of view but if they're so rigid in their point of view to me, that's a turnoff. But I invite you to decide that for yourself, John. Did that help? Does that sink in? I hope it does. Maria says, I have cerebral palsy and it's been a problem to the right kind of mature person. I don't think, why is it a problem to the right kind of mature person? I think that's a problem to the wrong immature person in my opinion. Maria and I know someone who has some medical issues and yet she has no problem attracting men in her life. If you have a happy disposition, I think the right person and a mature person will appreciate you. Oh, wait, let me read. Oh, I have to reread that. It has never been a problem with the right kind of mature person. I misread that, I apologize, Maria. I get it. She's absolutely right. So thank you for sharing that. Janet says, do men look at women differently if she doesn't earn much or have a professional career? You know, men aren't as focused on resources and status as much as women, except to say that men after divorce oftentimes have a bitter taste in their mouth if they've had to pay alimony child support and they felt like they had to give away a significant portion of their wealth. So yes, resources or career can play a part in this process and yet here's the thing, most men are average. They're doing the best they can financially. And as I said earlier, two incomes is better than one. So my hope is, and even the barista at Starbucks, if you will, and I know I'm picking a minimum wage type of job, if they actually care about this person and they have the resources, they're gonna want to lean into taking care of that person when they've reached that point of trust with one another, when they've reached that point of emotional safety. Thank you so much for that question. I appreciate it. All right, let's keep going. Amy writes, I reconnected with a man I dated nine years ago. We went out on the date and he couldn't make eye contact with me. He also lied about his age on his profile. Are these insecurities? Yes, he might have felt a bit of insecurity when he was with you. Now some people, I once went out with a woman who wouldn't look me in the eye.  I saw her turn to the couple that was next to us and she looked them in the eye, but she couldn't look me in the eye. I'm assuming, Amy, that really bothered you. And then as far as his age on his profile, yeah, a lot of people feel age discrimination. Both men and women alike in their 40s, 50s and 60s begin to discriminate people based on age. Men do it, women do it. It's a sad thing. It's a very sad thing. And yes, a lot of people fudge or lie on their dating profiles. A, to get into the algorithms to be seen by people their own age. You know, a lot of women will lie by 10, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10 years just so they can be seen by men their own age. And men lie as well, because we don't wanna be, you know, a lot of men lie because they wanna date younger women. That's what happens. I personally wanted, my ego wanted someone 10 years younger than me. And believe it or not, my partner is one year older than me. But my ego wanted someone younger. The fact is when I met this person and I got to know who they were, I realized that age had nothing to do with it. It had to do with the person's spirit. You know, so we can all be ruled by our ego. It's not that it doesn't happen. I am guilty of having, listen folks, I am riddled with flaws. I know a lot of you think that I am, you know, this perfect catch out there. I am riddled with flaws. I have lots of insecurities. Many of the insecurities I've laid out today in this topic. And yet, so it's very possible he's felt a sense of rejection if he listed his actual age. Women do it, men do it as well. And that doesn't make them bad people, folks. We have to stop making it out and judging someone because they're feeling fear. Let's have more love and compassion as my invitation for everyone. Maria says, I had a real issue with limerence. Jennifer wrote limerence. Everyone, it's L-I-M-E-R-A-N-C-E. Or I thought it was E-N-C-E, excuse me. All right, SW1 writes, what about people who continue to listen to great relationship advice, such as yours? But they continue to lean on their own understanding and continue to make the same bad choices and decisions. Well, what's the definition of insanity doing the same thing over and over and over and over and over and again and expecting a different result? You know, I realized that the only way I learn is through repetition. Sometimes I had to keep beating my head against the same issue. Human, you know, life is a journey. It's not a destination. Part of that journey is learning to regulate our emotions. It's learning to, it's why I wrote my book, What the Heck Is Self Love Anyway. Folks, I really encourage you to check out the book. By the way, there's a link below. It's really a journey of understanding that the real benefit of relationships is you get to do that final bit of healing with another partner to love oneself. That's one of the many benefits of relationships. Anyway, thanks so much for your question. I really appreciate it. All right, one of our Facebook group members is a man. Do you have any wisdom for a man working long hours and needs sleep due to dangerous job? My daughter lives with me and my boyfriend is uncomfortable sleeping over with my daughter. I've offered a visit to building, I've offered a visiting to build a relationship first. We typically have sleepovers once or twice a month when she's at her dad's trying to solve this problem. You know, when someone has a demanding job and they also have sleep issues, that's where I'd probably go to a professional to seek some help in this area. A lot of humans are suffering because we have over stimulation due to these things right now. I think blue light, there's a lot of factors that are causing many humans to be suffering when it comes to their sleep. I know I suffer partially because I gotta get up 10 times a night to go pee. Makes it hard for me to have a really good night's sleep. Sometimes I use Tylenol or Advol PM to help me get there or melatonin. There are certainly some therapeutic and holistic ways to work on that. So I invite your daughter and her boyfriend to do that kind of investigation on their own part. Why don't you Google sleep disorders? All right, thank you so much for asking that. Let's see. Let's keep going. Maria says, thank you, Jonathan. You're very welcome. Maria says, also with the expectation of any gambling problems, I look into a man's heart and mind way before I look into his wallet. You know, I have several friends that were suffering from gambling issues. It was from a deep wound inside of them that caused that. And it centers around our capacity to provide financial resources. It's usually a father wound in our life, not always, but it can be. See, we all have addictions to some degree.  Last, if you go to my live stream playlist, you'll see that I have a couple of videos with her and we talked about some of the major addictions, including porn addiction, relationship addiction, food addiction, sugar addiction, gambling addiction. See, addiction is usually because we're suffering on the inside some way, shape, or form and we want to feel some sense of comfort. We're self-medicating because many of us haven't done the deep healing from our childhood. So we don't find ourselves needing something else to replace that love within ourselves. So thank you, Maria, for bringing that up. I appreciate that. All right, let's keep swimming. See, all right, Janie, it's more a comment. I've watched you for a while. Notice the positive changes in you since Marie came into your life. I'm happy for both of you and many of the blessings. Well, thank you so much. We appreciate that. You know, I can say I am very blessed to have a person in my life who really demonstrates a secure attachment. I think we both are fine. I think we both have experienced a relationship where we can be vulnerable with one another. We can be authentic with one another. We can be transparent with one another. And most importantly, we feel a sense of trust and safety with one another. We have the capacity to say most anything to one another. I think building trust and feeling safe doesn't feel like butterflies in your stomach. It doesn't feel like, you know, skyrockets in the night. It feels calm. It feels peaceful. And part of how I got there, it's interesting. My coaching program, by the way, there's a link to schedule a discovery call with me to see if working with a coach is right for you, are the principles I use to attract her as a partner. And when I dove into how she operated as a single woman dating, I found that she intuitively did a lot of the things I coach in my private coaching. Many of us don't have that intuitiveness and she had that already built into. Now, I will tell you, she learned a lot of that through trial and error. We both had a marriage and we both had a significant relationship. And it takes trust within yourself. It takes faith within yourself. It takes loving oneself to attract a partner who's hopefully a good fit for you. So, Janie, thank you so much for that question or that post. Linda, hey, Linda's in the house. Thank you so much. I appreciate that. All right, let's keep going. Jennifer says, I admit I lied about my age on my dating app, search purposes only, only three years. Yay, see, ladies do it, women do it. It doesn't make you a bad person if you've done that. It makes you a real person. I feel you got to embrace the path you can change how you act to have a better future. That's all a lot of people mope around because of their past, that's ridiculous. A day wasted is a day you cannot have back. Folks, there was a moment in my life or a period in my life where I went to bed. I wish I didn't wake up. And this wasn't after my son passed away. This was after going through a divorce and losing that high paying corporate job and other things in my life. And I moped. It's hard when you feel like you're all alone. You know, it saddens me today to think that, you know, hundreds of years ago, we lived in villages and tribes and we had a capacity to be supported by so many people. And yet here in the United States, we live oftentimes very isolated lives. We can be separated from our family by distance. And sometimes people live in the same state and they're separated by distance. It's difficult when you feel all alone. We were meant to live in villages and tribes so we don't feel this sense of loneliness that causes us to get into a state of depression or mope. And yes, we have the capacity to do something about it. Tony Robbins talks about this all the time. We have the capacity within us to change our lives in an instant, in a blink, we have that capacity. And at the same time, it is ridiculously hard, including in this dating realm. It's no wonder we have an emotional health crisis going right now, because life is better with company. There's no doubt about it. No, and it's not perfect. It's not perfect. You know, there's no such thing as perfect. I can say that for Marie and I. I know she has some different dreams and me, I have some different dreams in her. It takes also appreciating that life is better with company. Life is better when you're in partnership with someone. Let me repeat that. Life is better when you're in partnership with someone. I invite you all to operate from a different place in the early stages of dating, first and foremost, based on this title, is to recognize that we're all hurting in some way, shape, or form. We all have insecurity, start from a place of first compassion for oneself and have compassion and love for others. And that doesn't mean being a doormat. That doesn't mean having to be an overgiver. It just means to recognize that we are all wanting just some love. Now, it may not seem that way. I know you may have experienced that, you may have been a narcissist, you may have experienced that man you thought used you and all that sort of thing. At the same time, yes, there are a lot of dysfunctional human beings and at the same time, there are a lot of good people out there. And it's hard to meet. Remember I said earlier, roughly 125, 120 million people over 18 years old are single and I bet half of them are not even putting themselves out there. They're just living life day by day. So where do you meet the good people? Go do the things you love. And if you wanna meet people in the personal development realm, self-help and spiritual one, then go to those places that they congregate. And believe it or not, I did an Abraham Hicks event. Does anyone know Abraham Hicks? Write that in the chat box, Abraham Hicks. I went to an event and it was literally, I went four years in a row, half men, half women. Well, you're not men are doing the work as well. So ladies, don't beat yourself up thinking that there aren't any good men out there. I invite you to all begin saying, it's raining good men, it's raining good men, it's raining good men. God, universe, spirit. I invite in a juicy, delicious, healthy, happy relationship where we have mutual chemistry with one another. We share the same passions in life. We can communicate at a level where we can banter for hours and hours at a time and just Netflix and chill and hang with each other, enjoy one another. And our lifestyles are blendable with one another and we share the same values that allow us to build the deep roots of trust so we can sustain a healthy happy relationship with one another. God, universe, spirit, I invite that in. Folks, I invite you all to change the narrative and to recognize that there are good men out there and at the same time, they are suffering on the inside just like you. And it doesn't mean they're bad people. It just makes them human. We are all human. All right, so do you need some support? Hey, check out the link to a free discovery call with me to see if working with the coach is right for you. Check out my group called Midlife Love Mastery. Follow me on Instagram, check out my dating vows, join my mailing list, all in the links below. If you have something to add to this, please post a comment below. Please share this video. Please subscribe to my channel. Please hit that like button. And as Leaf said, it's close to an hour so get your questions in. Actually, we're wrapping up right now, Leafs.  We're gonna sign off this video as I always do.  I'm gonna reach into the camera and give you a hug of love if that's okay. I'm gonna ask you to turn to someone, a pet, a teddy bear or a pillow and give Iter them a hug of love because hugs are a great source of love. And let's face it, we could all use a lot more love in our lives. Hey, I wanna thanks Leafs and our Facebook group member in Desert Debbie and Kimberly and BG and Elena's in the house and Ms. Solvang, Disney Traveler, Didi, Melissa, Jennifer. I think I said Jennifer, Vicki, Linda. So happy you're in the house, Marilyn, Janie. Everyone, thanks so much. Wishing you a fab day. Be well, bye now. Bye-bye, bye.


But if you could choose one body part that you could be on TV, advertising, I'll be famous for. What body part would you go for, Dave? I think if I was to be a model, I've always thought that I'd probably be a good sock model. Sock model, as if for the legs. Yeah, I think I've got quite nice legs. OK, yeah, a bloke. Yeah. So, yeah, I would I would have to agree with Bush. And I think that that's my my best feature. So I'm going to go for ankles, legs, that sort of. And there's a marker there as well. You know what I mean? There's a marking for socks. So it's difficult with other areas of the body. I mean, there's always got to be, well, not always, but you would expect there would always be a marker for socks. Wouldn't you? I believe so. Yeah, I mean, I think as long as people have feet. Yeah, then I think so. That's what they say, isn't it?


Welcome to another show of Celebrate Life. My name is Gary DeCarlas and I'm your host today. Celebrate Life believes firmly that all people have a story to tell and every life is worth celebrating. I'd like to welcome back today our guest Todd Lockwood. We had a wonderful conversation a couple of months ago and we need to continue that today. So welcome back Todd. Thank you Gary. So there's two things I know in particular that we wanted to touch on. One is the Broadigan Library and that story is quite amazing. And then there's a story about a woman named Melissa Fisher. Marcella. Marcella, thank you. Marcella Fisher. So start where you'd like to start. Well you know I wanted to just start by saying you know this look back that we have been doing here you know it's got me realizing what a lucky guy I am you know to have had such a life and it continues. You like that. I feel very lucky. My guardian angel has definitely been looking out for me for a long time. That's great. And you know with the good luck has come you know there's been some tragedy as well as we talked about before my you know I lost my youngest brother in an accident in Burlington and back in 1987 and actually two years later I lost my sister in a United Airlines crash in Sioux City, Iowa. It was a big DC-10 that crash landed out there. And so you know what these events have done to me is energized me. You know it makes me want to do those things that you think of hey there's a cool idea but then you never do it. And these events these losses have really supercharged me in a way and put a fire under me you know and so when I come up with an idea now I immediately try to act on it. Well I would say that's the theme that I picked up from our first interview that you have an idea and you move on it most people don't. They just let them lie and because of that I think your life has been incredible and many people have benefited from it. So when I was in college a friend turned me on to Richard Baratigan. He was a counterculture author sort of of the beat generation lived in California wrote poetry and these short novels that were just great fun to read and they were really about my life I felt, my generation. They were very very I felt very connected to his work. And he wrote ten novels during his life and one of those was provocatively titled The Abortion and in this story he plays a librarian. Many of his novels were written in first person which made them all the more fun to read and so he's this hippie librarian in this weird little library in San Francisco and the interesting thing about this library is that it only accepted unpublished books. Nothing published was allowed in the place and so people would bring in their life stories written in three ring binders or whatever and they'd get to pick any shelf they wanted to put the book on to and they'd sign it into a big ledger and everything. So Baratigan it was clear he had thought about this idea for a while before writing it out in this novel and it was so compelling. I just thought wow that is so great. That's such a cool idea. When is somebody going to do that? Somebody's got to build this library. So I would read that novel once a year. It had a special spot on my shelf in my living room. I would read it once a year. You could read it in a weekend and I read it every year for 15 years. And finally when I got to the 15th year it changed from when is somebody going to do this to when am I going to do this? Wow. And it was actually losing my brother that pushed me. It's one of the things that got me in the state of mind to do it. And then something else happened is that I went to see the movie Field of Dreams just by chance and I'm sitting there in that movie and we're about halfway into it and I'm just in a trance and I'm like oh my God. This magic baseball field that this guy was building on his farm out in Iowa that was the Broadigan Library as far as I was concerned. That was the Magic Library. So the moment my feet hit the sidewalk outside the theater I just knew exactly what I had to do to get this thing rolling and see it. Become a real place. What year was that? That would have been in 1989. 1989. Yeah. And so literally the next day I got on the phone. I started calling up people I know around Burlington to see if they would be interested in serving on a board, a library board for this unique place. All ten people I asked said yes. All of them, boom. Interesting. The first guy I asked, Jack Hurley, he was a restaurateur in the area. He had created the Black Rose Cafe in Winooski, sneakers in Winooski. And then later, this is with a partner, a friend of his that he was doing these with, Ken Russock. They also did the Daily Planet. Right. Yes. Anyway, Jack was classic. As soon as I described the thing and a couple of sentences he said, I'm in. That's all he said, I'm in. And thank you, Jack. And I went on to the next call. So anyway. So you got your board. Your board.  We were taking a fictional idea and making it into a real place. That functioned. That functioned. Right. Now it happened that Broadigan's fictional version of the library didn't actually have any readers. People never came in to read the books. It was really all about just having a, it was the idea of the place that he thought would make it appealing to writers. You know, the having a repository for one copy of your work that's been on your shelf forever.   Well, we thought, oh no, let's take this to the next level. We want to actually have people come in and browse through the collection and see if there's anything interesting in there. And that's ultimately what happened after we opened in April of 1990. It took about six months to get this all figured out and get it all, you know, ready to go. We rented a space. So it was actually used, it had been a used bookstore on lower college street. Right. I remember. And we had, you know, volunteer librarians filling in. The whole operation was volunteer. There was no money changing hands. You know, it was all volunteer thing. Wow. And so we had close to 100 people in Burlington were involved in the place in some capacity, mostly as librarians. Yeah. And so being a librarian there was the coolest thing because you'd be sitting there, there might be nobody walking in for the first couple hours of your shift. And then all of a sudden, you know, a couple would walk in who had just flown to Burlington from Dallas or from L.A. just to spend some time in the LeBrotigan Library. They'd read about it in the news and everything. The media, by the way, went, the media went crazy with this national media.  I mean, it's starting with, I was on all things considered on NPR, almost like the day we opened or the day after we opened. Unbelievable.  I was on the front cover of the Wall Street Journal. Really? It just, you know, it just started snowballing. And so people are hearing about it. In fact, there was a point where I was traveling a bit. Some of the traveling was to do some of these interviews. I did an interview on a CBS News program in their studios in Washington, D.C. I had to fly down there for that. But I realized that, you know, there was about a one in four chance that the person I would be sitting next to on the airplane would have already heard of the Burotigan Library. I would ask him, have you ever heard of something called the Burotigan Library? You know, they'd go, oh yeah, I just read an article about that. Oh my goodness, Todd. That's the place that takes unpublished books, right? Oh my God. Now, how did you get manuscripts in there? With the help of the media. With the help of the media. So part of that was to say bring your... Well, what we did is we had a standard application form that the writer would fill in. Everything was accepted, by the way. And that was one of the important tenets of Burotigan's fictional library was there was no judging going on, no judging at all. It was all about the writer coming up with something they felt was appropriate to put in this public collection. And so the media was helping put the word out. Whenever I'd get interviewed, which was many, many times, I would always ask them to include or let me include at the end of the interview, just send $2 to P.O. Box 512 in Burlington, Vermont, and we'll send you a writer's form because there's certain information we felt we needed. We wanted to be able to easily get in touch with the author if we needed to. No, just to be transparent, I have a manuscript in that library. That's right. That's right. Didn't you also give them a certificate? Oh yes. Yes. Yeah, after we get the... Yeah, we'd usually arrive in manuscript form. Some people had actually gotten their books self-published and it was already bound and everything. So that was great. We took those two, assuming they were not commercially published. And now if someone... Another little rule that we came up with was if a manuscript gets published after we get it, it's allowed to stay in the Brodigan Collection. And that happened a few times. Interesting. But it's important to remember that that wasn't our mission. We weren't trying to create opportunities for writers. We were simply providing this magical place for their manuscript to live forever after. Exactly. Yeah. It wasn't about creating or publishing opportunities. I guess you could have had publishing agents when the library got big enough, maybe you'd have publishing agents coming up to Burlington. I was wondering if that happened. And searching through the collection for something they might be interested in publishing. And that may have happened a few times where we might not have even been aware. They might have been just being a member of the public in there. Now there was one case that was really interesting. We're a guy who... This was on a weekday when we normally weren't open. And this guy was a lawyer in LA, a young lawyer in LA who, I guess in his 40s maybe, who decided to drop out for a while and get back to his roots. And he had been a Baratigan fan. So he, with a backpack and no car or anything, he just was hitchhiking around the country, he visited every place referred to in Baratigan's book Trout Fishing in America, which is sort of a really interesting metaphorical look at the U.S. back in the early 60s. And so this guy was visiting all these places. Well, Vermont is mentioned in the book, so he ended up in Burlington. He's walking down College Street with a backpack and comes upon our sign. We had a sign up on the sidewalk. You know, the Baratigan Library and underneath it says, A Very Public Library. I love it. It was the classic formal looking library sign. We went to lengths to get, let's take this, let's take ourselves seriously here. So anyway, so that guy, he made his way, he built a little path that you would follow off the sidewalk through a garden area and the building was set back a bit from the streets and our door was around the side. So he went back there and of course found the door, he found the place was closed and he's peering through the glass door for the longest time and must have been thinking, wait a minute now, there's something, I'm seeing something here and I've got to figure out what it is and then he realized he had read the abortion and he said, oh my God, somebody has created the library in the abortion. He figured it out. And the way we know this is because the Vanguard Press, which existed back then, a predecessor to Seven Days, they had an office in a building right next door, a brick house right next door and Pamela Poulston worked there and she was on our board by the way and so her office window looked out onto the entrance of the library and she saw the guy standing there and finally she goes out and says, can I help you? And so she unlocked the door for him, said, go on in, help yourself, just when you leave, just be sure the door locks itself and enjoy. You must have felt this was your sauna. Yeah, exactly. There were so many interesting little things like that. So did you fundraise for this to keep it operational? Yeah, we did some fundraising. We even had things were donated to the place like we found some guy in the Boston area donated his whole collection of original first edition copies of all of Brodygan's works. Many of them signed and everything. He donated that whole thing to the library. So it kept going for about six years and then, oh no, let me actually, let me back up a little bit because there's a great little story here that happened after we'd been opened for about a year or year and a half. We got a letter from the Bumbershoot Book Fair which is held every year in Seattle at the time it was the largest book fair in the country and it's held on the world's fairgrounds there. And so in their letter they were asking us would you consider transporting the library, the contents of the library to Seattle for one week and we'll set it up in a similar space here at Bumbershoot and we'd love to have Mr. Lockwood come out as well and be a tour guide and show people around and help tell the story. And we're going to pay for everything by the way. They were paying for all of it and so we said, well yeah, sure, we'll do that. So we put a sign on our door saying, sorry, out of town for the moment. And it went out there. So here I am, first day with the exhibit all set up and everything and this middle-aged guy walks up to me, big handshake, oh you must be Todd Lockwood. And I go, yeah. And he goes, well I'm Bill Concella. I'm my jaw drop. Bill Concella is the guy that wrote the novel that Field of Dreams is based on. Oh come on. Oh my God. And I said to him, you have no idea how incredible it is that you are standing here right now. Oh my God. And he said, oh he says, oh that's nothing. And he said, were it not for Richard Brodigan, I would not have written Shoeless Joe, which was the novel he wrote that Field of Dreams came out of. Whoa. So this guy was a major Brodigan fan himself. And I had no idea that Field of Dreams and Brodigan were connected in any way, but they were absolutely connected. Synchronicity involved in this is phenomenal. So he says, we were like talking and I'm just like thinking this is unbelievable. And this is when I feel like there's a, well maybe Brodigan himself who had died years before this, maybe he was pulling some strings and making this situation happen. It was just this. Did you get a picture of you too? We didn't happen to, but he said, I'm being interviewed on this big Seattle radio station this afternoon.  We'll both be on. I said, sure, great, let's do it. So we got on that radio station and we're telling the city of Seattle about our meeting at the library exhibit. And the story behind it? Yeah, the story behind it. That is wonderful. So there were so many, so many things like this. Just these wonderful little situations. It goes back to that I'm going to do something about this. If you didn't do something about it would have never happened. Now one thing that we had to do, I came up with the idea we've got to call it the Brodigan Library. It's just got to be what it's going to be called. Well we had to get permission to use the Brodigan name and Richard Brodigan only had one surviving relative at that point, his daughter, Ianthe Brodigan who lives out in California. We had to get permission from her. So I wrote her a really nice letter and explained what we're doing and we're recreating the library and the abortion and we're doing it in Burlington, Vermont, blah, blah, blah. And I didn't hear anything. I think about three months went by and I'm like, oh boy, now what are we going to do? We're going to have to... Come up with another name or something. Up with another name or something. And then, boom, there's a letter. A letter arrives. No problem. Yeah, and she said, you know I apologize for taking so long to get back to you but I really needed to think about this because she's had, over the years, she's had lots of offers to do movies based on Brodigan's books and other things and 90% of them are fly by night situations that would have done, if they did anything they would have done a very mediocre job at representing her father's work. So she said, there's no question in my mind that you're the right person to do this. So when we got to April for our opening we actually flew her out from California and she put the first book on the shelf for us here in Burlington. A little ceremony. That's wonderful. And she was a wonderful person.  Now the library has moved. Yeah, so the library, so we were in full active mode at our original location for six years and then we started to, it started getting more difficult to get volunteers to fill in all the time slots we needed and everything and so we eventually made the decision to move it up to the Fletcher and the Fletcher created a mezzanine space up there away from the other books so that it's sort of, we kind of recreated the atmosphere that was in the College Street, lower College Street location. By the way, one of the tenants in our bylaws is that no two chairs in the library are allowed to match. So there's all this different, kind of fun, different furniture in the place so we did the same thing. In fact, I think we moved most of those same chairs were moved up to the Fletcher and set up there. And so it didn't, at that point it wasn't accepting any new works anymore. We were up to about 320 volumes and by the way, this is another little thing that our board had to sort of think tank and come up with was, you know, in Brodigan's fictional library there was no categorization or anything going on. The writer would just get to put the, there were a bunch of different shelves and the writer would get to pick one, you know, and it didn't really matter where it was located because nobody was coming in. We looked at the Dewey Decimal System and realized, well you know what, that's not going to work either the Dewey separates fiction and non-fiction and a lot of the works that we were getting were in the gray area between fiction and non-fiction. So we developed our own classification system that using 13 subject categories, the last of which was all the rest, it was called. So we had a catch all there in case it didn't fit into one of the other ones. And it just gave, we wanted it to be convenient for, you know, these people that are flying in from out of town to peruse the collection, they could quickly zoom in to a category that they knew they'd probably be interested in. And so we ended up naming it the mayonnaise system. That's right, I remember that. Yeah, and that is derived from the fact that in Baratigan's book, Trout Fishing in America, the very last chapter is called the mayonnaise chapter. And in it he mentions always wanting to have ended a book with the word mayonnaise. And indeed he does, because that chapter is the last one and the very last word is mayonnaise. So a friend of my brother Herbs actually designed a wonderful mayonnaise jar logo that became sort of the official logo for the library. And it's with Richards on it instead of Helmins, you know. But we had actual jars of Helmins on the shelves, 32 ounce jars as bookends, separating the different categories of books, you know. And so that turned out to be kind of a genius decision because the books were all eight and a half by 11 inch manuscripts that were hardcover bound. And most of those binders, those bindings were all black, you know. So it just gave the collection kind of a monochromatic look. It looked like a research library or something, you know. Did you bind books? Yeah, we had our own binder. Yeah, we made the investment in some binding equipment. And so we would bind those manuscripts.  They had to be read in the library. And we would print a standard cover sheet. So the first page you would see would be the standardized sheet with information about the author. And the author would also supply us with a synopsis that would be on that cover sheet. So somebody perusing could just open up to that first page, read the synopsis. Well, that's interesting. I think I'm going to take this aside and poke through it a bit, you know. So where is my manuscript today? Well, we were at the Fletcher for 10 years. They kept it there for 10 years. They weren't accepting new works. It wasn't too complicated. But they were, of course, people were coming in and poking through stuff still. And then, you know, the collection went into storage for about two years. And then in my basement. And then, meanwhile, I was trying to find a new home for the place, not locally. We were thinking, okay, let's think big here. And sure enough, we found a group interested in Vancouver, Washington. Quite interested, actually. And the guy that was really sort of the central figure there is a Brodygan scholar. He's probably the most knowledgeable person on Richard Brodygan alive, you know. And, in fact, Brodygan's daughter was telling me it's a little spooky to be around this guy for her because he knows things about their father. That she doesn't even know. My goodness. But that's where it's been ever since. It's still out there. It's interestingly, it's housed in a local historical museum that's in a former Carnegie Library. And the Fletcher here in Burlington is also a Carnegie Library. And the two buildings look very similar. Except, of course, the Burlington one has that nice new addition on it. But the original older part is almost exactly the same as the one in Vancouver. Wow. So they did another opening event and stuff out there. Of course, I went out to that and spoke and everything. They had a lot of, over the years that it's been there since 2010, they have had a lot of students at Washington State University have been involved in it. Interesting. And so they're in various capacities. And they've digitized a lot of the collection too. So you can go on to brodyganlibrary.org now and you can actually poke through the collection online now. We didn't have that capability back in the 90s because the internet was still in its infancy. And we didn't have anybody on our board that had those skills as well to create all that and get it online and so forth. Unbelievable. That is an amazing story. There were so many interesting little things. You know, there are more than we have time to talk about really. But yeah, it was really an interesting period.  Bravo to you, Todd, again, for thought, action. Thank you. And then you never know what's going to happen when you move forward on something. Right, right, right. It's the wonder of life. So, yeah, so a couple of, I think it was, you know, a couple of months after my sister died in a plane crash, I, you know, I was going through the beginning stages of the loss, you know, the beginning stages of dealing with it psychologically.  So I'm listening to NPR. And on comes a story about a woman in Colorado by the name of Marcella Fisher. Lives in a little town in eastern Colorado.   And she, you know, saw one of these listings and said, oh my gosh, you know, she'd already been writing lots and lots of, she wasn't a musician, but she was writing lyrics, country, you know, dozens and dozens of songs, writing lyrics for them. And nothing had gotten published yet. She had none of them had been sent to music yet. And so she jumped at this, you know. And of course they kept, you know, writing her back and saying, we just need another $200 and then we'll be able to take it to the next level, you know. And another $400 and we'll be in great shape, you know. And by the time she realized that this was a scam, she had, you know, put almost $1,000 of her savings into it, you know, and she wasn't somebody that could afford that kind of loss, you know. And so I heard this on all things considered and I'm just going, man, you know, that really, that makes the music business sound like a bunch of creeps, you know, that somebody would take advantage of this woman like that.  It happens that I own a big recording studio here. And we'd like to make good on Marcella Fisher's dream, you know. So if you can, you know, forward my letter onto her, you know, maybe something will come of this, you know. So sure enough, you know, I hear back from Marcella, she's just like, wow, you know, gosh, this is very exciting.  And we've got players that will, some of the best players in Vermont will be playing on this thing, you know. So we, you know, we started, I started asking these musicians, would you like to be part of this project? And they said, absolutely, totally, yeah, totally want to do this, you know. And so we recorded the rhythm section and used Little Joyce Cooper, the vocalist in Vermont, she sang the lead vocal. But the intention was that we were going to give Marcella a crack at actually seeing the lead vocal once we got the rhythm stuff down.  There's no money involved here. You know, this is just a good will thing, you know. And they said, yes. Absolutely, you know, we want to be part of it, you know. So Marcella, it was no problem at all. She would just live an hour away, you know. So she was able to get herself there. And she didn't, you know, she wasn't, she was an OK singer, but a fantastic songwriter. I mean, so the song is called Thank You Jesus for Just That Man. Wow. I mean, you don't get any more real than that, you know. And so I sent a multi-track tape to the studio in Denver that we had already premixed the rhythm section on a couple of tracks on that tape. And we also had on a separate track Little Joyce Cooper's Scratch Vocal. And so they had lots of extra tracks to record Marcella on. And so she took, you know, they did like four or five takes and with each one she got a little bit better at it. You know, I gave, I had sent her a cassette ahead of time so she could practice here the melody. Because the guys back here actually wrote this, wrote the music too. They wrote the melody for this song. So she wrote the lyrics. She wrote the lyrics. Your crew wrote the music. Wrote the music and arranged it. And arranged it. And put the arranging and everything. Did she like it? You know, oh, she was floored.  I mean, it was just a superb assemblage of flares, you know.  They sent the tape back. We did a final mix of it. And then I, you know, to make it even sound better, we put Joanne, little Joyce Cooper was put in there, but doing harmonies. Two different harmony parts behind Marcella, you know, which really made it sound totally professional, you know. So that was great, you know.  Your lyrics coming through in this way for the first time. That's pretty exciting stuff, you know. So, you know, I had a friend, after we got to that point, you know, we started thinking about, okay, how can we get this thing out there, out into the world, you know. And my, when my sister passed away and united a plane crash, united did this thing where they pulled middle management people out of their Chicago headquarters and assigned each one of them to a different family. These were all families who had lost somebody in the plane crash. And there was a woman at their Chicago headquarters who was assigned to our family. And we had a special phone number. If we called that number, before she even answered, we didn't know that it was a member of our family, you know, calling, you know.  And I said, you know, it's Todd Lockwood. I don't know if you remember me, but I explained the project and I said, by any chance do you know anybody at United who works in the on air music area, you know, and she said, oh yeah, there in the office right down the hall from me, you know. So I said, well, I'm going to send you a copy of the final recording on a real, you know, real to real. And maybe you could run it by them and see if they might be able to work it in somehow, you know. Well, sure enough, three months later, it appears in the in-flight magazine, the listing under the country channel, Marcella Fisher, you know, thank you Jesus for just that man, you know. Oh my goodness. And it was on every United aircraft for two months on the country channel. Oh my gosh. So that was pretty cool. What did Marcella think about that? She was floored, just floored, you know.  So she had some friends in the military and she contacted them. We were in, the U.S. was in Iraq at that point in the Iraq war and so she managed to get through to the Armed Forces Radio Network and said I've got this recording I've done of a song that I think the troops might really like, you know. And sure enough, boom, it's playing over all the bases in Iraq, all the U.S. bases. We're hearing thank you Jesus for just that man several times a day, you know. Wow. Really, really cool, really cool. What's happened to her? Have you kept in touch? We did for a few years after that. You know, I've sort of, it's been a long time now. I'm pretty sure that she's still around. I think she would probably be, you know, somewhere around 80 years old now, you know. But a very sweet, sweet person, you know. You made her dreams come true. Yeah, yeah. So, yeah, it was really, really an interesting one that just sort of had legs, you know.  You are. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah, I just feel compelled to do stuff like this, you know. And here I was sitting on this beautiful recording studio and it wasn't, we weren't booked, you know, seven days a week. We had time to, I could invest time in a project like that, and it didn't cost anything for me to do that. Right, right. So why not? Right, that's beautiful. Like a recording like that, does it ever turn into a disc? No, no, no. I actually was digging through my archives the other day and found the master tape to that project. I don't even have a machine to play it right now, but I'm going to get that master copied to a format that I can post online, you know, because it would be fun to hear it again and, you know. It'd be fun to play it on this show. Yeah, yeah, it would be. It would be. Yeah, yeah. I'm going to see. You can do that again. Yeah, I think I may have to go to a, there's a mastering lab that I've used in Portland, or Portland, Maine rather, that I think, I know can do it. You know, they can make that transfer for me. There'd be nobody around here that would have a machine to do it. But yeah, we could make that happen. That's great. It's been a delight having you on the show. Really great to be back, Gary. Thank you. Really great. Thank you.


Ladies and gentlemen, the President of the United States and Mrs. Reagan, accompanied by Mr. Bill Plank and Mr. Norman Sandler.  I don't want you to take offense. I wouldn't push that button for anything in the world, Bill. But I was so fascinated by his high technology abilities that I'm putting him on the Federal Communications Commission. You know, of course, that we're just back from California. We introduced Howard Baker to ranch life. We put him in the saddle and he really took to it. He told me he'd never been so excited by anything that just sitting in that saddle made his heart race. Next time we're going to put the saddle on a horse. But a lot happened while we were gone. Texaco declared bankruptcy. Senator Simon declared for the presidency. Gary Hart did both.  Jim Wright and I agreed that there are three things we must do to balance the trade deficit. We can't remember what they are. Also, last week Amy Carter was in the news. I'd always thought that if she rebelled, it means she'd become a young Republican. And we've still got that spying problem at our embassy in Moscow. You have to use a child's magic slate to communicate. I don't know why everyone thinks that's such a big deal. The Democrats have been doing the budget on one of those for years. But the Soviets have really gone too far. It's no secret that I wear a hearing aid. Well, just the other day, all of a sudden it went haywire. We discovered the KGB had put a listening device in my listening device. And I know that a lot of you have been having some fun with my advancing years. You even tied my recent surgery to my age. Well, I've got to be honest with you, I had that same operation when I was young and it felt so good I wanted to have it done again before I was too old. But I am aware of my age. When I go in for a physical now, they no longer ask me how old I am. They just carbon date me. Incidentally, I've got a news item for you. We have a spin-off from our Star Wars research. It's a helmet for me to wear at press conferences. All I do is push a button and it shoots down incoming questions. You have to admit, though, that my attitude is better than linebacker George Atkinson's when he was with the Oakland Raiders. Someone asked him what the player's reaction would be if the press box blew up. He said we'd have 30 seconds of respectful silence and then continue with enthusiasm. Now, honest, I don't feel that way. Maybe once in a while. I'm sure we get exasperated now and then with each other, but that's just the friction of freedom. You know, when I first got to Washington, I tried to establish a relationship with Tip O'Neill and we were doing pretty well. And then one day I picked up the paper and read something that really prompted me to call him and I said, Tip, I thought we had a good relationship going and I read this news story. And Tip said, well, buddy, that's just politics. After six o'clock, we're friends. I started wearing a watch that was permanently set at 6 p.m. I'll start wearing that watch again if you do the same. You know, in spite of our disagreements, I have a positive opinion of reporters. And I think it all goes back to one of my favorite reporters, Ernie Pyle. During World War II, his columns about your boys, as he called them, were devoured in the home front. His books were bestsellers. His understanding of ordinary soldiers was clear and heartfelt. He himself was a victim of the war, killed by enemy machine-gun fire. He once wrote, there is a good deal of gaiety in wartime. Humor and exuberance still exist. Our soldiers are still as roughly good humaners as they always were.  Well, if we keep the need for humor to be important parts of our jobs as correspondents and politicians, maybe we can get through the daily battles without losing our spirit or tempera perspective. I think this would be good for both the press and the presidency. Nancy, would you like to join me up here, please? I know it's getting late here, but it's not often that we have so many people who've written about us and broadcast about us all together in one room like this, and I thought you might like to say a few nice words to them. They're all from the press and radio and television, maybe just a friendly little greeting would do. How about just a word or two something friendly, even one kind word? I'm thinking, I'm thinking! Seriously, my friends, as always, we've had our share of laughs tonight at one another's expense, which is as it should be in a city where the issues are important and the passions run so deep. Maybe the fun and good nature of evenings like this is a good place to start. So thank you for your hospitality and thank you for inviting us. Thank you. At this point I'd like to extend our thanks to President and Mrs. Reagan for being with us tonight next year to avoid the necessity of cutting short their vacation. We'll just toss this bash out in Santa Barbara. You come down from the ranch. With that, I'd just like to ask the audience to remain in your seats as the President and Mrs. Reagan are...


Everybody for us here ripping two boxes for Corey. Yes, Corey has a 2022 XR football hobby and a 2022 elite football hobby one second Corey do it Sorry the lead my life Jalen waddle Jupiter probably what two and a half three hours or so? Yeah, that's right Carson strong rookie number to 999. Yeah, like three hours from here. I would think this is like two and a half from Orlando The leadest Garrett Wilson Justin Fields on the Spellbound to 349. I don't know Jacob. I'm not sure Donnie's not unless someone takes him in pace or everything pretty much Patrick Mahomes Tickets were cheap. It was like a group thing.  Yeah, you if you come to the shop again Yeah, with us. I don't get a lot free time. Donnie's free time. He's using for streaming pretty much rookie on deck Drake London Kind of CD lamb number to 49 My CD Elidist Aiden Hutchinson Yeah, mostly gaming stuff Not really cards, although I wouldn't mind Trying to do a little bit of Sam Williams on the turn of the century rookie auto to 1.99 Khalil Shakir rookie for the bills 53 to 75. I'll see a big numbered card here. I'd vote the autos already Derek Henry Keyante Ingram rookie number to 999 Elite deck Matthew Stafford rookie Brian Cook to 399 sounds good Jacob Richard Sherman on the elite coverage jersey card player worn as a 49er as well Playmakers Jamar Chase Aaron Jones number to 99 rookie on deck Derek Stingley and Mike Evans to 399. I'll do it for elites. Here's XR.  I know what you mean what? Funny Korean yeah, that's just for repetition and doing this a whole bunch Get good at opening packs 15 Not terrible lose at the buck buck. You're good. But still yeah, not a good way to lose That is a rookie auto Nick cross to 1.99 Not the best auto. It was a big patch out on the next one the next pack rookie Jersey Danny Gray to 75 We got to Sean Watson number to 199 Jeremy Chin number to 249 and rookie Brian Awesomla Awesomla, it's a Just base Awesomla Come on Come on pick it Come on a lobby Garrett Wilson. Come on Taylor and Montgomery patch on us first But it is a Sam Howell triple Jersey auto 22 of 99. That's pretty nice Sam Howell and a rated R Desmond Ritter insert It's R for Ritter is just radar insert. That's right our insert and a printing plate Famous Jamis one-of-one printing plate Jamis Winston. It's a pretty interesting pack Rookie's Don Tarrio Drummond to 99 and a base of Tyler Beatty Thanks for the orders Corey appreciate it man. We'll get these out to you