what's going on guys welcome back to another video so today is a very very special day for my fiance and i baby won't let them know what it is today is our anniversary specifically eight years eight years man we've been almost it's a deck oh my god almost a decade it's crazy to say yeah i know a decade is crazy to say literally 10 years and we're almost there yeah and then people are just like oh my gosh i've been with my husband for 50 years like and we think that that's a long time like 50 years is crazy that's gonna be us though i know we're gonna be mad old and just telling people like yeah we've been married for like 60 years and they're gonna be like so yeah it's gonna it's gonna be a long journey it's gonna be crazy i love it though yeah same well today we're gonna be basically vlogging out our day um right now i'm in the parking lot to my hair appointment i'm getting my hair blow dried maybe a little trim no no trim i have to my ends like he cut my hair and like my ends were like this she made me cut it guys i don't want her to cut her hair ever like i just love the long hair yeah but my hair hasn't been long and like bad long because you keep cutting it no it's because my hair is damaged and i'm trying to cut off the damage so that it's healthy so that i can let it go just leave it oh my goodness anyway i'm gonna blow dry my hair and then we're gonna go get some breakfast afterwards right if you want if that's what you want to do i don't know but um yeah we're just gonna vlog our little day and we have dinner later we do have a nice reservation i've been looking forward to it's gonna be fire is it gonna be our second time going there oh my god they're so wait till you guys see the strawberry cake oh my gosh that's all he's been talking about was a strawberry cake it's the best thing nothing else the food is bomb it is but all he cares about is a strawberry cake because the cake takes it all oh my goodness anyway i'll see you guys when i get out of my appointment because i am six minutes late so i gotta go so yeah i'll see you guys later all right guys pulling up to the spot she says she's ready let's see how she looks regardless she's gonna look beautiful no matter what but i'm about to text her right now and tell her that we are here she's walking out ah she looks good yes oh she looks so good huh you look so good she said she had to cut a lot i'm sorry babe my hair was like super damaged it looks good though it's shorter though it is shorter it looks good though i like it thank you you look great i have the hair all over my face you look like you're ready to be a mom yet not yet not yet wedding first wedding first then i'd be a mommy now that you got your hair all did um breakfast yes i'm starving oxford exchange yes that's the name of the place of you guys i don't know we've been there before i'm not sure i think we did show you guys but all right so oxford exchange and then we have dinner later tonight but i already know what i'm ordering at oxford exchange me too what are you getting i'm not gonna say i won't i won't be surprised but all right guys we'll see when we get there you see what i see so that was a complete fail this place is super packed today and it was like almost an hour wait and jenice is starving so that's not gonna happen yeah and it sucks because we pay for parking here so it's like i wish that we would have known because like kind of wasted our money with parking but yeah i literally paid ten dollars for two minutes of parking it's crazy i don't know what's going on though from monday it's like nobody works so yeah on a monday i'm not sure like it's monday it's almost one o'clock how are you guys not working but um so as we were walking out the security guard noticed us shout out to him and he told us about this other spot that we can go to he tried getting us a table but it just wasn't happening because they're just super booked yeah like you can't even walk in there like i was as soon as we walked in i was like oh my god we're not gonna be seated like this place is way too packed and i get like really overwhelmed with places like that like when they're packed so i'm like okay yeah shout out to him though for trying yeah i really appreciated him trying at least yeah when we come back here i'm gonna look for him on the day that it's not packed but yeah we're gonna go to this spot that he recommended it's called the Prita Lena um it's not too far from here but he said it's a beautiful place to go to eat so we're gonna go check that out and see what's gonna go on there wish us luck update y'all so we're going french yeah we found a front well i found a french restaurant and i feel like it's authentic and i've never been there isaac has never been there so we're just gonna give it a shot i'm about to get a baguette a french baguette you could get baguettes anywhere they have baguettes at Panera i'm about to eat something i'm about to be like oh my gosh what you guys say oh i don't know i'm so disappointed because like i'd be craving the oxford exchange like it's kind of out the way so i really wanted to go there but it is what it is so hopefully god has other and better plans for us because this french place is gonna taste better right french i'm about to get french i'm about to say but get all the friends people are gonna be like oh this is why we hate americans probably sorry guys all right just finished up so what would you say rated all right first of all my hair is all over the place this is why i'm not used to having straight hair i'm like it's a breezy day it's a little on the chili side so for florida it's like 65 or something like that feels nice though so verdict is the spot looked better than it was presentation wise like it looked like it was like a nice little bougie restaurant but it was not bougie it was a diner like really old the food was really good 10 out of 10 but they gave me like a juice and it wasn't a juice they blended a whole bunch of stuff right she said it was she said it was like cold soup yes it was like carrots ginger apples turmeric but it was like blended and not drained so it was like so far hold on guys let me get in the car real quick and then we'll finish up our french review food was great the scenery however could have been better it looked a little old wasn't really that clean right but food was great service was great service was okay she really didn't do nothing she just took our order i mean but she didn't have like she was good you know i have no complaints with her yeah she didn't do much but she did her job yeah she did it fine yeah so service was great all right food was great but yeah uh the scenery was just a little it looks a little like i'm not gonna lie it was a little disappointing at first but when the food came out and we actually ate it was like okay this place is actually not that bad it is usually the little hole in the wall places though that i have the bomb is food that's why i was like alright i'm gonna give this the bit to fit at the doubt the food was good overall though the whole experience i give it a seven out of ten it'd be a ten out of ten if the scenery was on point but it's not and you know why we had such high expectations because you know like we're not bougie people so like we'll eat at like regular spots don't get me wrong but this isn't a bougie area yeah this is a bougie area and it's the way that they presented themselves online like online it looks like you're gonna be like at a nice ass fancy like rooftop type of shit and then you walk in and it's like a diner i told you nice i told you nice like after we ate this place has potential to be like a rooftop type of place it's just literally their scenery that that just sucks but other than that everything was great but right now we're about to head back home says we got about 31 minute drive so that's normal and then we have dinner later in a few hours but right now we got to go home and figure out what we're gonna wear because it's a little chilly today so we had to switch up our outfits yeah i thought it'd be hot a whole outfit really nice one hopefully i can take pictures in it eventually but we're gonna make it work we won't make it work babe let's figure it out i can't wait to see my dog at home i know my baby i miss him but let's see him yeah blue blue blue blue blue blue you did anything productive while we were gone say no wait just let me look at it like you're looking at the car jack like what's the matter hey hey blue blue you want to go to the bush you want to go to the bush come on go to the bush go peace come on let's go to the bush made it back home we are now gonna figure out what we're gonna wear as far as outfits because like we said it's a little chilly today and yeah we got to switch up our outfits now because we were on like some summer type fall vibes like something warm and summer type fall vibes like something warm and it's just not happening today it's a little too chilly for that so i don't know i might throw on some like black jeans and then like a nice button up not really sure though i don't know what i'm wearing honestly yeah we're gonna figure it out but our dinner is about three hours from now then that's when we got to like leave the house so we have enough time but i don't know what are you gonna do in the meantime play with the baby yeah same oh he just kicked my stomach you saw that you over there jumping with him yeah well he wants to play look look being crazy give me a friend give me a friend i saw that you almost fell ready so yeah guys we're probably just gonna just like chill for a little bit figure out where we're gonna wear and then we'll pick up the camera when we're ready to go to dinner and we'll show you guys our outfits then yeah maybe i'll do my makeup early i don't know yeah do it early so we're not late we're never late when we go out to eat i always have my makeup done in that quick and i'll take a long to do my makeup i don't do much all right enough of the lies we'll see you guys in a bit we are done getting ready finally finally i know it's a perfect we're actually on time we're gonna be making it there with 10 minutes to spare yes that is just like very rare honestly very we're gonna do a fit check as soon as we park and we get to you know park a lot or whatever because you look like a snack thanks babe i'm not gonna lie you look like you want to become pregnant you've been saying that so much like you look like you want to be pregnant i feel like you said that like 10 times in this video so far so i'm just saying you want to get pregnant or not not right now we gotta wait till after the wedding after the dinner all right guys so we're about to head over to the dinner and then we'll see you guys when we get there for the fit check damn fit check babe fit check okay all black okay tell us what's going on so i did the little vampire look you know a little uh evil kind of looking makeup because it's a spooky season and then black dress all black with some little booties because it's cold outside i have some other boots but it didn't work out um got my basic jewelry that i wear every day did you just call the ring i got you basic not base and not a basic ring i'm just saying we're going home you have real busy up the check they hold on they can't see they can okay it's poking it's poking okay that's it yours all right go ahead though sure he proposed to me in yeah we're man i don't know this something about the sure i don't know it's for good luck it's for good occasions but yeah i got the dress button i'm sure white t green green gray gray jeans with the product sneakers um yeah all right let's go inside it's cool i took the shades off um only because the shades were just for the ride all right there's no need to be a douche bag inside the restaurant they literally just told me our table's ready well we about to get grew up we'll see you guys in there i had to take out my phone because it is like really dark in here for the camera but um yeah so everything's looking great right now jenice already has a drink so do i i'm trying this new huh yeah what are you talking about jenice you have a drink too yeah i know but look at her drink it's filled to the brim yeah that's filled to the top ten out of ten ten out of ten the only time i would ever drink liquor is this here let's do i'm about to try mine i'm about to try my watermelon one all right babe let's see what's the verdict i'm gonna try the watermelon first oh it's frozen that's fire is it yes i think i smell it from here this is gonna be a problem oh gosh their drinks here are amazing huh yeah i know but as far as food we're gonna get the column already start um then we're gonna get some filet mignon you're getting a filet mignon yeah so we're both gonna get filet mignon and then on top of that we're gonna get something as a side either potatoes or mashed potatoes and then dessert oh your favorite part it's gonna be crazy all right guys so update we just destroyed a Caesar salad and some cheesy bread this is the cheesy bread well what's left of it what was your opinion on the cheesy bread and the Caesar salad Caesar salad ten out of ten i've been craving the Caesar salad here and of course the cheese is okay um i just like the one that's really really hot the Caesar salad was great and you guys know i don't like eating greens but that Caesar salad is fire yeah so so so good so now we're just oh wait we also had calamari but they saw that they saw that though um the calamari i'd like it really crispy it was like you like it burn yes that's my problem so right now we're waiting on the steaks and potatoes all right babe dessert menu is here what are you getting okay so like i'm not a big brownie girl but i love caramel and they have a bourbon caramel sauce but they also have creme brulee me personally you already know plant city strawberry cake it's so easy for you because it's so fire yeah but i i'm like the butter cake isn't easy i want to try something new and i love creme brulee so i'm like oh so hard i would say stick to what you know so if you got the butter cake last time i would just get the butter cake it was so huge though take it home you can't take that home i'll take you home i live with you got the dessert it's looking crazy are you ready i'm very ready i'm so ready i'm gonna dog this freaking strawberry cake i wanted this only i should have got i didn't know they were gonna bring this it was like complimentary you literally just want the whipped cream i do you don't want anything else but with the whipped cream i could have got you a can of that at home no it's different what's so different it's different okay my fault get your spoon each dessert and shut up all right guys so we finally finished up with dinner dessert everything we had like i said we had to record on the phone because the camera lighting just it just wasn't good and it was like super dark on the camera but shout out to iphone yeah guys we are like shook it right now i don't know if you could tell yeah it's really cold freezing outside and like freezing to us because you know florida's hot but right now it's like 60s right now it says it's 64 but it's really breezy yeah so it feels like it's in the 50s so yeah and we're out here with no jacket or anything like he's wearing a t-shirt so it's quite nippy we just like ran through the car word we took some instagram pictures though so well she did i took some of her so if you guys don't follow her on instagram make sure you guys follow us right now um but that was the end of our anniversary vlog so what how would you say it was a 10 out of 10 for me yeah even though the whole thing in the morning that doesn't even exist right now in my brain because charlie's was that good yeah now this dinner this spy is just the best second time being here it's the best they were so nice too they took our my dessert off the bill and they gave us a free dessert on top of that like our anniversary and they don't even like know what we do or anything like that they're just like that this restaurant is just dope it's just a really dope restaurant if you guys are in the Tampa area definitely check out charlie's steakhouse so freaking fire but what do i mean to say guys that is it for today's vlog we hope you guys enjoyed it um eight years it's crazy another 80 plus to go however to go yeah i knew there was a bug in here where is it where is it where is it i killed it oh my god i killed it that was crazy oh my god wait wait i just swung i didn't even see it i literally just swung but whatever that's it for today that's how you end that's how you end the day over the bank right oh my god i can't believe we got that we that's how you end it over the bank but we'll see you guys in the next video


So thrilled to see so many people here to support the arts and to support Susan. I am particularly thrilled that we are showing Susan's work here and the circle has truly come full round. Susan worked here for many years, not in this new part of the building, but in the farmhouse, when we were back in North Branch, this part of Bins. Susan lives in South Woodbury and she works for another Bins offspring, the Four Winds Nature Institute, which is how I first met Susan. And many of you know that she has a long career in art. She holds a BA in printmaking and botany from the new college in Sarasota, Florida. An MFA from Vermont College and a diploma in botanical art from the Society of Botanical Artists in London. But I want to tell you why she is one of my favorite teachers. Maybe some of you have studied with her and now some of us have stories, I'd love to hear them. Susan's going to give a few remarks and then we'll return to socializing and enjoying the work. And like I said, if you have any stories, this is an I'd love to hear them. One of, I feel like Susan's particular skill is in marrying the science and the art. So she does that in her representations of what she studies and she also does that in the teaching. When my child started kindergarten five years ago, I immediately signed up to be a four-wins volunteer teacher in his classroom because I had heard that it was a great way to, you know, get in your child's classroom and build the hours that, for them, for me, I have been at home with my son for his early childhood. I had these incredibly long days yawning in front of me from 8.30 to three. So it gave me a chance to get into the classroom and see what public school teaching was all about, which I had really not experienced since I had been a student myself. And it was all that, four-wins was all that, but what I hadn't realized was how much I myself would learn. And so basically every month, Susan works with parent volunteers all around Vermont. I live in Montpelier, so we were at Union. But she takes this melange of adults who do or do not have time to do this in their workweek, but are figuring out how. And most of them have absolutely no natural history background. And she gives these fabulous, rich trainings that are basically detailed climbers on everything from leaf miners to the science of snowflakes and all of these tons of fun activities to do with the students. So you turn around after you've spent a morning with Susan learning it in the next month, you turn around and teach to your child and 21 other children. So clearly her skill as an artist, she was able to marry with her skill as a teacher. So you can see for yourself that she, her close observations of nature, puzzling out what she sees and be able to translate it into two dimensions is a passion. And yeah, I just wanted to share that her artistic skills are evenly matched by her ability to gather people of any age and teach to them what she sees and find to their process. So with that, I'll just put in a little plot. I highly recommend if you too would like this opportunity to learn who's, she's teaching two classes, two weekend day classes. Coming up in the fall, you're an earthquake, Nature Journaling is in September. I think that was on this Sunday. One of them's on a Saturday, one of them's on a Sunday. Three Sundays. Oh, okay. So I have Nature Journaling and Nature Illustration and you can go to NorthFrenchNatureCenter.org to learn all the details. You can hit it right here. And you can hit it right there. And I really encourage you to do that. And yeah, without any further ado, I will turn it over to Susan. Thank you. And I'd like to thank the Nature Center for inviting me to show here because this beautiful new building is a place for art. And I don't show very much. I draw a lot and I don't show a lot. I draw things that get published more than I can take. All right, and I draw and paint things that get good. Flat files. You see, just know a lot of her. I'll try. Try. Oh. So, making pictures is a way of communicating without talking. Some of us prefer to speak in languages that don't require talking. So here I am talking about making pictures. It's a little weird, but I won't talk for very long. But there's some things I wanted to tell you. In this work, because I really like plants, love plants, we're working at them forever. Since I was a very small child, I've been looking at plants very closely. My great Aunt Frances, who was a naturalist, used to show up in the summer time. And at the time when I was sure that I was going to grow up to be a mammologist so that I could hug furry things, I think that's what I thought I was going to do. I thought I was going to grow up to be a mammologist. Aunt Frances said, well, you know, you might not see them very often. They're out at night. And the plants are here all the time. And she was right. The plants are there all the time. You can go see them. They're, they have roots. They don't go anywhere. They don't run around. They don't fly away. They don't look at you with eyes. They don't make a lot of noise except when the wind's coming up and the wind hits the ridge and then they're noisy. But mostly they're very quiet. So I think people don't think about them as much as I wish they did. I think they're, I think they're some of the most interesting things on earth and they're everywhere. Sometimes, I don't know why I have this recurring thought. I'm driving down the road and I think, how many leaves am I flinging out? It's a big number. Can we get Dave in here? Is he coming? There's a chair up here for you. He's gonna sit up in there. I don't, I don't know if we could use that door. We could do whichever's easier that door this way. Okay, that's my husband. So I try to make pictures. I try to make pictures I haven't seen before. There's a lot of art. There's a lot of pictures of plants out there.   I actually love flowers. I just have not chosen to give them, they get all the attention already. So I've chosen not to make very many pictures of flowers but instead they're pictures of a lot of woody plants and small parts of them and up close, because up close is really interesting. Where there are pictures of trees out in the lobby and in here, there's the pictures of the, there's a rock at Tumbridge School up to the edge of the playground. Some of you have seen it. It's kind of up the hill that it's at the base of one of those round Tumbridge Hills. And it's right at the edge where it turns to woods. And there's basswood and ash growing together. And actually so close to each other that it's hard to tell it's not kind of all one tree. And the bark is similar enough that you have to kind of stand there and then look at the leaves and go, oh, right, that's the ash, that's the basswood. And the little children play under that rock in those trees every day.  Little trucks, the roots have some real net place. So when I do that, it's about the place that I'm in. It's about the big fallen down maple there. When I drew it, I've been fallen for 30 years. And with its roots still in the creek, it's a Jerry's house. And is it still alive, Jerry? No. It's there. It's there. So it was still alive. And some of the side branches had become part of the canopy. They were trying to be trees on their own right, but with a very small one. I don't know, it wasn't. So I didn't think it would last too much longer. So place is really important. And it's a pattern. So a lot of the time when you look at something, okay, what is interesting about this picture? And it's often that there was some kind of repeating and varied pattern. And I think that's something that I see here. It's nice to see it out. I'm not sure I knew that, but that's how it was to be. So most of these images, in fact, all of them really, except for one, are what you could call botanical art. And that's art that depicts a plant with as much accuracy as possible. But it's done for the picture except, it's done for the sake of making a picture to look at. The one piece in here I would say is a botanical illustration is the ink drawing of the Indian plant over there. What a fun plant. I was just trying to figure it out. It's this ghost thing. And when somebody tells you it's a flower, it's a flower. But it's a really interesting flower with a relationship with fungus and with fig root.  And when you cut and look in the cells, I don't know what I'm looking at really when I splice those cells and looked inside them. But it looks like, I'm speculating here, that the fungus is inside the cells from the root. And I'm sure somebody can correct me. I'll borrow something though, because. But when I was looking, I was opening the seed pod and dust came out. Here's Dave, come on in if you want to. So I thought there were no seeds. I thought, oh well, this one didn't make seeds. Jerry said, look again. So I looked again and I put them under the microscope and they're like, this is where I need color. They're like a little butterscotch wrapped in cell honey. They're fancy, they're so small, but they're beautiful and sparkly. And that's all the baking site needs for seeds. That was remarkable. So sometimes here I'm discovering things while I'm drawing and I think that's true.  There's many things you don't see until you sit down and draw it. So about drawing. It's simple, but it's hard. But it's simple. So pencil, paper, that's all you need. I like that about drawing. That you don't need anything expensive to do it. You can do it wherever you are, whenever. And it's one reason to keep doing that. You can carry a sketchbook anywhere. And I draw so that I can see things. And when you look at a drawing, because there's a chair for you here. When you draw and when you look at somebody's drawing, this is another reason why I love drawing. You can see somebody's brain working and what their hand does. It's so immediate. When the painting happens, there's all this stuff that happens. There's planning, there's a drawing first and it's very complete. And then you trace it and you transfer the drawing to the paper and erase almost all of it. But you've got your original drawing for reference and then you have the photographs you took because everything wilts and then you paint it. And that's a painting that's got this long, all those steps, but a drawing is just there. It's just immediate. And I love looking at them. It's like looking at somebody's hand writing. Only better. And you can see what, you can look at what, what was that person paying attention to? Why was that worth drawing? I recommend it. The mediums here are primarily just graphite pencil on paper. But they're hard pencils. So I use often times a two-h pencil which is relatively hard sharpened. And I use a very sharp pencil because you can get detail and keep it when you're using a pencil and erase it, which is really great. At Silver Point, you can't erase. And there's a couple of Silver Points here and I do more of them, but they're not in the showers. They have their own problems. But I'm gonna hand around a few of them so you can look at what they're like. Silver Point is drawing with a piece of silver. And the way we do it now is we get a biopiece of soft silver wire and put it in a mechanical pencil holder. It's very, you know, and draw with it. But you can't draw on paper with it because you would just make a hole in the paper. So you have to prepare the paper or the piece of wood with a crown that has enough mineral in it that it'll scratch, the silver will scratch off on it. Just enough abrasion so that you can get a line with the silver. You can also draw with gold. And I have a gold point back there where you can try it out. But it's interesting, you know how we use a streak plate? Two of my colleagues are here. So we use a streak plate to test a rock to see what it would be because you can take a gray stone and the streak may be rusty-colored. The streak of silver is silver, but it tarnishes. That's the great thing about it. It gets that warm, dark color eventually. After time and people breathing and stuff. It's sulfur that turns it, it's sulfur that turns it. That color, you can't erase it with, well, with great difficulty and it rests the surface. And it doesn't get very dark, but it has a quality that I think is not like anything else. And then it has this problem, which is when you put glass on it, it doesn't look much different from a pencil drawing and it's very difficult to photograph. But I'm gonna pass a few of these around. These are from another project and these are done on panels of a basswood, which Dave made for me. He cut them and cleaned them by hand. And I jessoed them with real jesso which is a mix of rat skin glue, cooked up and powdered, basically powdered marble, some stuff called whiting. And there's six coats and it's wet sanded in between. It's nice, it's a very nice surface. This odd object that's coming around are the bones of the snapping turtle in the back of the shell. And you fell lost to touch the surface. I would prefer it than to touch the surface. Well, no, I'm gonna do it again and ruin that. It's okay. I want you to see it. I want you to see it, because it's pretty cool. In other words, this is the other side of the same two bones. This bones in the back of the turtle shell. So that you can see the scoots, right? And they're made of tortoise shell, right? It's like fingernails, but when the turtle is dead and decaying, and I got in trouble with my family because I was dead and decaying in August, got stuck in the house. I heard about it, I was gone. Anyway, so when the scoots, the outer tortoise shell part comes off, then the bones are underneath and their joints are in completely different places. And the bones have these long projections on them and they're knit together. And this is silver. That's silver point, and that's that warm, brownish color that you can't get with anything else. And then this one isn't quite so delicate than you might think, but it's just... The bones in the turtle, the bones in the turtle. This one is, that one is... Under the skirt. Well, long story about that. I can't tell all the stories. And that's a microscopic view of slant cells, so that's where you start with that one. So that's silver point. And I set it up back there so that you can try it out. So silver point. And then there's penning. And penning is easily reproducible, very visible. And you're fine because it's ink, you know? You got the white paper and then suddenly you put the ink on it and you can't do anything about it. It's just in the wrong place. Well, there's the... And thank goodness for photos often, this whole security service. And there's watercolors here. And watercolors, the silver color that I deserve is its reputation for being difficult. It doesn't deserve its reputation for being out of control unless that's how you paint. But this kind of painting is not loose. Versus, you know, it's not very zuberant either. So it means, you know, there's a lot to say. One little thing on another. But I really like working in watercolors. I can't say, I haven't not been doing it for very long. I've really only been painting with watercolors for maybe 20 years. Any of this under a magnified black? I wear this thing on my cat. Now, I could, when I was younger, I could see perfectly well, very close up. And I can't now, and I borrowed this magnifier that he used for doing all railroad work. And when? Oh! It fits over your glasses and you can flip it up. The one I have is called a magnifocuser. And you can look at the specimen and you're drawing at the same time. It's a great thing for us getting older. So, did I say plants are important? I hope that when you look at these, it makes you want to go make friends with a plant. Because they're out there. They're such good, such good characters. Yes. And we need to take care of, you know, as much as we can, it would be nice if we could avoid cutting them. That's really what I'm hoping for. It's what I'm looking for. I would like to meet as many plants as I can. And I'd like them to still keep on living. Because they're important in ways that are just innumerable in the ways that they, not to mention that they're just alive and things are good when they're alive. But their interconnections with the rest of their ecosystems is something that's pretty much beyond us. We just get little glimpses. Oh, this heats that! Look at that. And their structures are also really good. So thank you. Thanks for coming. And I'll take questions. But if anybody wants to just get up and look at our tips, that's fine too. Oh, yeah, I was going to pass that around because it arrived and isn't up in the show yet. And it isn't like anything else here because it's so bright. It's a walk. It's a pocket painting. It's walked around in the fall in a year when the cedars had combs. And they do this year too, again. And so everything was shedding seeds all over. The ground was covered with seeds and needles and bits of things. And ash seeds, black ash and white ash are in here. Several kinds of maple. And it just had a pocket. And I put everything in it. And I brought it home. It's a pot, I know. What came home in my walk? It was just two mornings because it was really fun. So I brought in all the objects and put a square of canvas and I drew a grid on it and I drew a very light grid on a piece of paper. And I just did one thing after another and kept putting them back. Arranged it the way I wanted it. That's how that happened. So that's that. And the other works. And sell the picture of the woman that sells. How did you get the color right now? It looked like it had color. It looked like it had green and maybe I had an imagination. Yeah, the room is green. Yeah. It's just that way around. It's a color. You've liked it. You talked about silver paint. The gold, what will happen when you draw it? Oh, nothing. It's platinum gray. It's lighter than silver. It does not turn. Gold is gold. Yeah, but it's not gold. It's silver gray. Yeah, like platinum would be about the same. But harder. Gold on a streak plate is black. But it doesn't do that for the gold. It's just not gritty enough. Yeah. When you're using a wire of gold or silver in a mechanical pencil, how do you keep the, especially the silver, how do you keep the tip sharp? Silver. So do you do the silver point just because it's something different or is there an advantage? It sounds more like a disadvantage. It's really nerdy. I don't know. It's just, I like doing it. Especially on a ground that's as smooth as those panels I cast around. It has a feel to it. That's just different than rubbing off graphite. It just, it just has a good feel to it. And I like the way it looks. And it's, you know, and there are silver points, artists out there. So both botanical art and silver point are both in the middle of a big renaissance at the moment. Well, silver point is a little small renaissance. And botanical art, there's a lot of it. There's a lot of people practicing botanical art right now that didn't used to be. Silver point and metal point can be so different from anything else depending on the music. I feel like a beginner with it still, but it's just, it's nice to do. And I like that challenge of not being able to erase. I think carrying those lines be as fine as they can. Thanks. Thanks for coming. Appreciate it.


The COVID-19 vaccine and flu vaccine are different, and it's safe to get both vaccines at the same time. So don't hesitate, vaccinate. The Pike County Health Department reminds you that the strongest defense is vaccination against flu and COVID. Floyd County is preparing for their annual spring cleanup week, which will begin April 11th and run through the 16th. We actually, what we do is you can take your trash, garbage, old tires, whatever's laying around your house to the Floyd County landfill and dump it for free. All you have to have is a driver's license or something that has a Floyd County address on it once you get to the landfill. This year's cleanup week is imperative as Floyd County was not able to host a cleanup week in 2021 due to COVID restrictions. With COVID, the last 12 to 18 months, it just seems like we have produced an excessive amount of garbage and trash. And it's, I hope that folks really take notice in what's going on and try to participate and let's get this stuff cleaned up because with the flooding and the excess trash right now, we need people to get out and help as much as possible. As the amount of trash produced and dumped continues to rise, Floyd County Fiscal Corps is in the process of creating an ordinance to crack down on illegal dumping. What we're going to try to do is kick off an initiative, hopefully June the 1st. We're passing some ordinances now that we're not all bark anymore. We got a little bite. We'll be able to do some, you know, actually go out and write citations and there'll be fines for folks that don't clean their yards up and have illegal dumps. So that'll be something we will have the ability to do on the spot, hopefully here in just a couple months. These connections in Martin, Kentucky will be accepting trash from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. April 11th through the 15th and 8 a.m. to 12 p.m. April 16th. For more information, contact Floyd County Judge Executive Robbie Williams at<PHONE_NUMBER>. For Mountain Top News, I'm Brianna Robinson.


Life is not always easy, and we as Christians will sometimes suffer, but with God, he will lead you through your journey from pain to praise. Known for their unique style that blends tight family harmony with their acoustic instruments, grand old opera members, the Isaacs, Lily, Ben, Sonia, and Becky, have encouraged millions through their own trials, faith, and music. For Becky, the past year has been a whirlwind, surviving an automobile accident that took her off the stage after starting her solo project. Those songs pulled her through the tough times that hit number four on the Billboard Bluegrass chart. This is her story. This is today's Nashville. This is faith. Becky, it is so good to see you again.  What's been happening? A lot. I've been following. It's been a crazy year. It has been a crazy year.  You're part of the famous Isaacs. What was it like growing up Isaacs? Well, you know, I'm the baby of the three siblings that sing. It's interesting because my siblings from birth knew they wanted to be in music, but I was the oddball. I was the one that really wanted to be in the medical field, and I ran from music. It did not come as natural to me, or the desire did not come as natural to me as it did to them. So I always compared myself to them because it came easier for them, and I always struggled deep down inside, did God call me or did my dad call me? Because from the moment we were born, we could sing three-part harmony. As soon as he discovered I could play the guitar, he put one in my hand. And so ... How old were you then? I started singing, honestly, about three, our first recordings. I was about three, and we did our first trio record when I was about seven. But we sang on records when I was five and six, and I started playing guitar at eleven. Yeah. Guitar at eleven. Did you just do it when it's a family thing? Did you take lessons, or did you just pick it up and start? A little bit of both. The harmony came very natural, but the guitar, although I could feel it and understand it, my dad would show us the chords and help us through it, and fellow musicians that were in the Isaacs would pass the baton and show us things. When it was our time to step up, they were very supportive. Our guitar player quit when I was about eleven, and my dad had seen me play about two or three chords, and he put the guitar in my hand, and he said the next weekend, it's all me. And so I'd been playing a few chords behind the stage and off the side of the stage with a mic, and there was a lot of pressure. But that's the way my dad rolled back then, and it kind of put us in a place where we are today, where it takes a lot to catch us off guard, because when you grow up doing it in all kinds of situations and scenarios, you just find a way to make it work. Were you in Nashville at the time, or where did you grow up? We grew up in Ohio, a little town called Maro, Ohio. It was about thirty minutes from Cincinnati, Ohio. And in nineteen and ninety-two, we moved to Tennessee because our music had started to take off so much that we needed to be closer, but we were in the Knoxville area, and then slowly we moved to Nashville. So did you spend your teenage years in Knoxville or? Yes, I was seventeen when we moved to East Tennessee. My senior year, I had to move. So it was a tough year, it was a tough year, but so part of my teenage years was in Ohio, and then the rest of them were in East Tennessee. So from there, seventeen, were you still thinking about medical school, or the medical field, or did you know that maybe this was the path that God was leading you down? It was always in my mind. I wanted to go to nursing school, and about nineteen and ninety-two, we had our first number one song, and at that time, you know, it was about sixteen. And by that time, our music started to take off, and it just wasn't possible for me to do both. And so I went to cosmetology school, so I would have something to fall back on should music not be friendly to us, and we couldn't make a living at it. By the time I was sixteen, my family was very dependent upon me and what I did in the group, so it wasn't easy to not, I wasn't the one to be rebellious and kick against it, but eventually in time, I realized that God called me and it's working all for good. How did you get to Nashville? I went through Crohn's Disease, a severe case of Crohn's Disease for about ten years when I was in my twenties up until 2011. And I was on about twenty different medications to stay alive. I had a very rare form of Crohn's Disease because it wasn't just my colon, my small bowel, my large bowel, but I had started to develop ulcers in the colon and I had a severe skin and eye condition where I could not take a shower for two or three days at a time because my skin burnt so badly.  So I was on twenty medications spiraling downward, chemotherapy, humera injections. I was on a hundred milligrams steroids for years. Did they even, did they know what it was causing it? They actually were treating the symptoms and not able to give me a diagnosis until I went to the Mayo Clinic and then they then diagnosed me as Crohn's Disease, but I had such a rare case of it. It was really even then questionable if that was the proper diagnosis, but in 2011, February 22nd, I walked into a holistic clinic in Nashville, Tennessee called Internal Balance and it began to change my life because we began to detox bacteria and parasitic exposure and as all of those toxins came out of my body, I began to heal and quickly the Crohn's just completely got better and then eventually the skin and the eyes got better and so I was coming to Nashville once a week on top of our three and four day schedule in East Tennessee so it was getting really hard to come once a week to do the detox process. So in 2012, we decided it was time to come here to Nashville where my brother and my sister already were living here and recording made it easier and being here for the holistic treatments and so it's been almost eleven years now and I'm 100% free of all those medications that used to keep me alive. I'm no longer considered a Crohn's patient, so God has done miraculous things in my life this far. Now, were you married at this time? Yes, ma'am. I was married and I had two children. At diagnosis with the Crohn's Disease, my daughter was newborn and my son was four. So about those ten years, I was very, very sick. There were days I couldn't get out of bed and take care of my children and we were traveling that time probably 230 days a year and I would be the first on the bus to bed and the last to get out of bed and I just was very, very sick. But the public did not know about it. I didn't make it known until God began to heal me unorthodox way in an unorthodox way at internal balance and then I began to share with people and it made a lot of sense to them because I was always so shy and usually kept my distance because I was so unhealthy. You know, I remember talking to you previously and you were talking about your anxiety and being the youngest and having your family when you went on stage. Tell me a little bit about that. Well, being on all those medicines, especially steroids, you know, I was on 60 milligram steroids every day for three years and you talk to somebody that has taken just a pack and how anxious they were. So a lot of that just made me so jittery and anxious that when I would walk on stage, I thought I was gonna crawl out of my skin. I was so nervous and I was always looking for the exit signs like how can I get out of here because I'm scared and you know, I'd be up at two or three in the morning scrubbing the floor because I can't sleep. So it became a battle of the mind, the process of overcoming the fear and anxiety that comes along with being sick and also struggling with your calling. Well, you know what? God has taken you down a completely different path with your anxiety. I love what he is doing now and we're gonna talk about it when we come back. Becky, as you think back of where you started from and the growth and the path that God has led you down and your family, the Isaacs, from your perspective, can you share just that path and when the doors and everything that you've been through with your music, with the Isaacs? Well, I think somewhere along the way you grow up a lot.  Not trying and not succeeding is, I'd rather try and not succeed than to allow my anxiety and fear to keep me from trying at all. I remember one specific time we were going to the Ryman to perform and for some reason that day I was so anxious about everything. The whole way, the whole drive to the Ryman, I kept saying, I'm trying and that is the greatest accomplishment is the victory comes with trying, not with failing. I'm not sure I'm saying that correctly. The victory comes with trying but it's bigger failure just to stay at home and not do it at all. Am I making sense? Yes, yes you are. And so I remember thinking if I fall flat on my face, there's still victory in trying. And it was a mindset that I started building into and I remember hearing Joyce Myers speak and she was talking about how that she had a friend that was terrified of flying and terrified of this and that and she lived in fear and she said to her, so what's the worst thing that can happen? And she said, just do it afraid but don't not do it at all. So I found myself, you know what? I'm just gonna do it afraid. If I'm afraid, I'm still gonna do it. And so you plow through those life changing situations and next thing you know, you've raised the bar of what you're afraid of next and then so the worst thing you can do is stay at home and not do anything. Tell me about your relationship with Jesus. It's grown and grown and grown and through every tragedy God has shown me through triumph, he speaks my love language. I think people underestimate God and they compare themselves to other people. Well, God didn't do that for me so I'm not as close to the Lord as they are. But that's not true. The Lord speaks your love language. You have to seek him and you will find him and the Lord speaks to me in threes. He always has. The first time my mind will be like, oh, cool. And then the second time I'm like, hmm. And then the third time I no longer can say it was a coincidence. I know it was the Lord trying to show me and then I find peace in it. During the pandemic, there was this little red bird that would sit on my front deck under the pillar. And I remember coming home the night that the Isaac's dates were all canceled and I thought, God, what are we gonna do and how are we gonna survive and how are we gonna pay our bills when we've been canceled for the year? And this sweet little bird would be there every morning, red bird, and every night. But through the day, it would go about its business. And I'd look out my window and he was there and I said, okay, I can go to sleep now. And I'd wake up in the morning and sure enough, it was there until I saw it. And then it would fly away and do its business and come back. And it was there for 30 days. And the day that the bird flew away, I was devastated. It was kind of just like my sign from God. And I remember walking away from the door crying and I said, Lord, you sent that bird for me. You knew that was my love language. And I said, would you please send me another sign? And that night I went to bed and I just randomly opened my Bible. And when I randomly opened my Bible, $40 just flew out of it. And I panicked and I said, oh my goodness, where did this come from? And my husband was sound asleep and I said, John. And he said, what? And I said, did you put $40 in my Bible? And he said, what are you talking about? He said, I'm asleep. And I was like, wake up. Did you put $40 in my Bible? He said, why would I do that? Have you touched my Bible? No. Go back to sleep, okay? And so I'm like, I can't go to sleep. There's $40 in my Bible. And when I began to read it was where the widow woman had a son and the prophet said for her to take all of the vases and go out and fill them with oil and the tax collectors would not come for her or her son. And she was able to sell all of the oil and take care of her family during her need. And God began to just deal in my spirit and say, the tax collectors aren't gonna come for you. Don't worry, I sent you a bird and if I love the birds, how much more do I love you if I take care of them? And during that pandemic, 40 kept popping up. There were $400 worth of groceries on my deck. Just random things, $40 worth of groceries were paid for.  You will, 40 days in the wilderness. 40 is a powerful number in the Bible. It sure is. You know, you talked about your anxiety and always wanting to be with the group, but God took your anxiety and you did a solo album. Tell me about it. I did, I've had no desire in my life to be a soloist. I've always told my family that. But we were in the studio, I believe it was 2018 and I had done background vocals on another session and the guitar player there said, oh, you would sound so great singing that song. And I'm like, oh, I would never do that. He said, you should do it on your next solo record. And I said, I've never made a solo record and I'm not interested in it. And I said, but if I ever did, I wanna feature my guitar heroes because I play guitar with the Isaacs. And so he heard me but didn't say a word and the session goes late that night, we all go to eat. And as soon as we were eating, finished, he pulls up his tab and he looks over the tab and he'd been texting and he said, I'm gonna be at your brother's studio April such and such date at 11 o'clock, don't stand me up. And I said, for what? He said, we're starting your solo record. And I was like, oh my goodness, I have two weeks. And so I thought, I don't have time to write the material and the Isaacs have sang songs that I have been part of writing our whole career. It's very easy to see the transparency of our writing because we write about our experiences. But immediately I started realizing the part that people do not know about me are songs I go to when I need encouraging. And so over the three years, it was a process of getting my guitar heroes in and then my friends coming in and singing along with me. And that record was released October of 2022. Songs that get you through the storms. Songs that pulled me through the tough times. And little did I know he was getting ready to pull me through the toughest times in my life. The toughest times in your life. I followed that and we're gonna talk about that when we get back. Becky, this past year has been one of your toughest years, tell me about it. So in October of 2022, I finally released this record that took three years to make and featuring my friends like Dolly Parton, Vince Gill, Alison Kraus. My friends and guitar player and heroes. And it was out about five weeks when we go into the Christmas season of the Isaacs. And on December 15th, we were in the middle of our Christmas tour and was home. And I decided before bus call that night at 10 o'clock that I was going to go to the store and get a couple of Christmas presents for some fellow bandmates. And on my way to the store, a gentleman, an 81-year-old man crosses the traffic and hits me head on. And he passed away. But the wreck was, it was very scary. I was cognitive the whole time and I knew what was gonna happen. I had a choice to make, did I want to go into the ditch and him T-bone mean flip me and I probably would not have made it or just stay the course and be hit head on. And that's what I chose to do and the police said it saved my life. He was going over 55 and I was able to slow down to 40. So there was about a 90-mile impact, a 90-mile an hour impact. And unfortunately the dashboard hits me at the knees and pins my legs in and breaks both of my legs. Both of my tibia bones were broken and three ribs. And I come to in the car and first of all the first reaction is, oh my goodness, I'm alive. And the second reaction is I look over into the passenger seat and remember at the last minute my daughter had decided to meet me. She was gonna drive separate and meet me there. And I just began to weep and cry and thank Jesus. And then the shock comes in and I'm trying to get out of the car. And I was able to get the door open about six inches but all of the smoke and everything was happening and I thought the car was gonna catch on fire so I started to hyperventilate. And these two ladies are able to come to the car in a gentleman and at the point of them opening the door I start to get out and I realize I'm severely injured. And so I just said to them, I'm injured but do what you have to do and get me out of this car. And they were able to set me down on the road and move me to the side but immediately the EMT workers went to the other gentleman trying to save his life. And at that point I was able to get the left like a little bit straightened without severe pain but I had to inch this right leg which was completely just dislocated and severed. And long story short I have a plate and nine screws in the right leg and I have a meniscus tear which we're working through right now but I was eight weeks in a wheelchair absolutely no weight bearing all of the- It was touch and go. I remember following you and the updates that everybody was posting on social media. It was a scary time. I mean you really don't know what each day holds and you know when the doctors come in he originally had said that it was eight to 12 weeks with no walking at all. And I was devastated because this is over Christmas the holidays and then March 9th was our first day on tour with Reba McIntyre and I was so determined to be on that tour. And so he said to me, he said if you can do this without pain medication he said you'll heal a lot quicker and so from the day I was in the hospital until the day I've not taken any pain medication and I began rehabbing I went seven and a half weeks with no walking I would pivot with my wrists and my body to get from side to side. And in and out of bed they would lift me and those kind of things and then February 1st I began to stand for the first time which was almost eight weeks and then February 2nd I began to walk February 3rd I put the walker away by the end of that weekend I put the wheelchair away and on day eight I told my husband get rid of all the medical equipment I don't want it in the house and I began to walk and it's been physical therapy they prepared me I'm in for a year of physical therapy and before I can completely heal And you're still in physical therapy now? Yeah I'm doing different forms of physical therapy until the end of the year I'm not on campus now but the tibia bones are your weight bearing bones and so I need those bones to heal really well for me to be able to stand and perform for two hours and so it's a process I'm not quite able to do that yet but we're working on it. I remember seeing on the internet the night you went back to the grand old opry was it and you performed for the first time? That's right. Amazing. February 19th I invited all of the hospital the workers the PT everybody to come and watch me walk out on stage for the first time of course I had to sit and perform but I was able to walk on that stage and it was such a surreal moment a victory moment of what seemed impossible but you know God began to deal with me in the day I was in the hospital for 18 days trauma and rehab and I come home from the hospital and I'm like okay this is emotional this is physical this is mental and it's equally as much spiritual and I had never broke a bone in my body and so I thought okay I've got to when you can't walk and you go from being independent to where you're never alone you can't even go to the bathroom by yourself. Boy it's humbling and I begin to Google how many times I've never broken a bone but how many times are bones mentioned in the Bible and it's mentioned 45 times and I said okay Lord what are you saying about bones and it led me to a merry heart I do with good like a medicine but a sorrowful spirit drives the bones and the more you study about bones every time bones are mentioned in the Bible it is talking about the spirit man and when your bones become so fragile you become a skeleton and when you become the skeleton of a person you no longer have that spirit man alive in you and so God was clearly saying you've got to nurture your spirit man a merry heart how do I find a merry heart when my world's upside down and the more that I would read the word of God the more that he would pour that into me and I began to write Ezekiel 37 on my leg braces we began to prophesy hear the word of the Lord bones come to life and I wasn't only prophesying over these legs to live and these bones but my spirit man God how can I, how can I I'm gonna come out of this wheelchair but how do I help somebody who'll never come out of a wheelchair how do I tell them to live hear the word of the Lord and God just began to download so many things about your spirit man and if you nurture that spirit man then everything else comes into alignment the Bible says that you know seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness and all these other things will be added into you and if we could just get busy in our state of crisis in our state of need seeking the kingdom of God and his righteousness then he will provide everything we need to get through it and I never understood when someone would say I had the grace to go through it until I went through the lowest point in my life and then I realized he gave me grace to endure it my family was like how are you doing this you're not crying you're not sad and all I can say is when you God allows you to go through something he will give you the grace to bear that cross he won't give someone else that grace he gives it to you where is God taking you now oh I don't know I don't know cause I'm still in the process I'm scared to write a book about it cause I don't know how it's gonna end it just seems like God keeps evolving in my life and I don't wanna prematurely tell people where God is landing me because I don't wanna miss the journey and put myself in a place that I'm not supposed to be I'm just living life at its fullest right now and so thankful that he has given me the opportunity to live to see what God has in store I don't know I have no goals but to just be fulfilling in what he's calling me to do and I will say this before I go in the hospital so many of my artist friends came to see me and I'm in the hospital over Christmas and all this and they would walk in with Christmas bells on and singing and I would cry and cry and cry and up until this wreck I kinda cursed music I remember I said I didn't know if my dad called me or if God called me I've always been on the giving end of music if someone was in need the Isaacs went and sang we've stood by bedside's funerals we've given our lives to help people but it wasn't until this wreck that I was on the receiving end of music and it was the music that healed my soul and I realized that God called me because of the importance of what it did for me it healed me and God allowed the very thing that I cursed to be the thing now you know you're true calling right Becky thank you we love your family we just thank you thank you for being on the show my friend like Becky says Jeremiah 29 13 says you will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart seek the Lord today this is today's Nashville this is faith cornerstone television wishes to thank all our faithful viewers whose consistent prayers and financial support have made this program possible


The date, 9-11, has become engraved in our collective memory as one marked by tragedy and loss. We remember the victims of the attacks in the United States, pay tribute to the first responders who showed such courage and renew our resolve to combat terrorism in all its forms and in all parts of the world. It is a moment to reflect but also reassess today's global terrorism threats. Addressing these evolving threats remains a priority for Interpol. Over the years we have implemented numerous initiatives to help strengthen the global security architecture, drawing on Interpol's unique capacity to share data where it is needed most. We will continue this vital work of uniting efforts to combat the terrorist threat wherever it is and whatever form it takes.