SCP-1373 Object Class Euclid Special Containment Procedures SCP-1373-A, SCP-1373-B, and SCP-1373-01 through-006 are to be stored in standard refrigerated containment for biological specimens. Request for tissue samples from SCP-1373-01 through-006 must be made in writing to the current head researcher of SCP-1373. All researchers with level 2 clearance or above are allowed access to SCP-1373-A and SCP-1373-B, which are not presently considered anomalous except by association. SCP-1373-07 through-0016 are not currently contained. Mobile Task Force Theta-5, the bigger boat, is assigned to locate and capture these entities before they achieve sexual maturity and begin reproducing. All surface and subsurface vessels in the area are to be tracked and periodically examined for unusual hole damage. Description SCP-1373-01 through-006 are the carcasses of six newborn albino dusky sharks. Cartrahenis Obscurus, recovered from the womb of a pregnant dusky shark, SCP-1373-A, caught off the coast of California on ██-2011. The mother shark was acquired by the Foundation upon reports that its pectoral fin bore a luminous and tattoo-reading property of Dr. Wondertainment. A necropsy revealed the presence of SCP-1373-01 through-006, which were judged to be capable of surviving and were delivered live by cesarean section. SCP-1373-01 through-006 are afflicted with cyclopic holoprocencephaly. Manipulation of each organism's dorsofen caused the eye to emit laser light at a wavelength of ██ nanometers. Experimentation revealed that the intensity of the laser can be adjusted with pressure on the fin, peaking at a maximum output of ██ watts, with ██ newtons of force applied. This is sufficient to burn through metal at close ranges of 50 to 100 cm. In the case of SCP-1373-01, this resulted in the cooking of the organism's rudimentary brain, causing it to media death. SCP-1373-02 burned to death after it ignited the sclera of its own eye. SCP-1373-03 and ██-04 were sliced apart by SCP-1373-05's laser when ██-05 experienced a brainstem seizure, causing it to convulse spasmodically before dying, and ██-06 died a cardiac malformation. The mechanism by which SCP-1373 generates laser light is not fully understood. It is believed to use ██ as a gain medium.  However, whether the cyclopia is an intentional modification or merely incidental is as yet undetermined. This is typical with organisms afflicted with holoprocencephaly, the majority of the brain is absent. However ██ possibly intended as a replacement. SCP-1373-07-16 are the offspring of SCP-1373-B, a pregnant dusky shark captured on ██-2011, approximately 160 km east from the capture point of SCP-1373-A. When SCP-1373-B was brought on deck of the civilian fishing vessel ██, the ship's crew noticed weird lights coming from the shark's thoracic area. The precise sequence of the events that followed is unclear, however three crew members were sliced to death by lasers and another five were blinded. Subsequent examination of the carcass of SCP-1373-B indicated that it had been sliced open by lasers from the inside, and revealed traces of no less than 9 placental yolk sacs. A note was found inside the womb of SCP-1373-B with severe laser damage. Refer to document 1373-HG-41 for details ██. Hours of fun and laughter, these little fellows can ██ even in your school lunches. Warning, changing batteries requires adult ██.


It's crazy. Crazy. All right, wanna take us to Andrew? Yeah, so just listening to your discussion about air tags. Apple said not to put an air tag on pets, bollocks. I've had one of my dogs since they came out and it has come to the rescue several times. I picked up a silicon holder for it from Amazon for five bucks and that attaches easily to the dog's collar. It doesn't bother him. He goes in the surf every day with it. And when he goes off the reservation, he gets caught. He's an Australia, so that's why he said bollocks. And yeah, it's waterproof, so yeah. You know, the thing is, I couldn't find anything specifically prohibiting the use of an air tag to track people or pets on their webpage. I did find this snippet from an interview with Cayenne Grants, Apple's VP of Worldwide iPhone Product Marketing. It's an article at Fast Company. How Apple designed air tags to be privacy first and stalker proof and I found this paragraph. When I asked Grants about parents using air tags to track their small children, such as during an outing at an amusement park or pets, we know you're up to something shady, Fluffy. She was quick to stress that the company designed the air tag to track items, not people or pets. If parents would like to safely track their young children, she suggests an Apple Watch with family setup might be a better choice and makes them more money, right? Right. But from what I've seen, David, the Find My Network is pretty darn good. Yeah. So while for a child, Apple Watch may be a better choice. I don't think Fido would benefit for one versus an air tag. Andrew sent in a couple of pictures of his dog collar air tag holder thing. And so I found something on Amazon that matches that and we'll put a link in the show notes to that for us.


Hello, Han. How are you doing? Gordo the Texard here. Welcome to another thrilling and exciting episode of Hibachi Tuck. I'm here with my good old buddy, Andrew, the security guy. Hey, everybody. It's good to be back. We're going to have a real no guest today and no angus today because you did a pretty incredible 80 mile hike a week or so ago. We're going to talk about the Patagonia Hiking the O. Yeah, Hiking the O. Yeah. So how many people know or even know where Patagonia is? Yeah. I'll tell you what. We signed up for this trip. Sort of a friend of ours wanted to go do it. And my wife says, well, that sounds great. Let's go. So we actually committed to the trip before we figured out where Patagonia is. So grab a libation, pull up the chair. Let's get into this exciting undertaking.  So you are old story. Yeah. So it's bigger than I knew, but the region really spans Chile and Argentina in the very, very southern part of South America. So you're at the tip of South America? All the way down to really the Straits of Magellan. So one of the towns that we linked through sort of the gateway town into the National Park there at Torres del Paine is called Porto Natalis. And that's on the Straits of Magellan. So there are, you know, Tierra del Fuego. There's a little bit of other land and islands and stuff south. But by and large, you're way, way down there. You know, you're definitely in a few hundred miles of the tip. Now, did you take any photos that you're going to be able to show us? So whenever they're ready, they can start to run those. And we'll just walk through the mini of them. Yeah, because you've got a bunch. We flew, I can tell you for us, it was LA, you know, Honolulu, LA, LA to Mexico City, Mexico City to Santiago, Chile, which was, you know, those are six hours and then five hours and then eight hours. And then here we are, we got to Santiago. That looks like Pinchbull. Nice and hot summertime down there. So this was on top of, we climbed up, go to the next picture, we climbed up to the top of this, oh, I forgot the Pope was in town. Oh, really? The Pope was in Chile. There he is. He was cruising by in the Pope mobile. Do you realize that Cardinal Secola had become the Pope? It would have been Pope Secola. Pope Secola? That's a play on words, isn't it? He, but it was interesting that he was there. So that was kind of a thing. Oh, was that you? Did you take this picture of him? Yeah, there you go. Oh, did he know who you were? No, he just, I think he's just cruising back. Okay. But the next pictures were the first one was shot from on the top of this, I think it was a fort in the time. It's really from the early 1800s. Hidalgo, it's up on the town, kind of in the middle of town. So Santiago is huge. I had no idea. Eight million people there. Oh, wow. It was a big city. And so you get there and we had a one night layover there and the next day we had to take off to Porto Metallis, which I mentioned earlier. Is that the night you slept in and missed your bus? And we kind of slept in and missed our flight there. So we were a little late catching up with the crew that we were hiking with, but we made it. Oh, you're kidding me. It wasn't terrible. So go ahead and give us the next shot. And we're in, this is, this is on the drive. So obviously, you know, you're headed and you start to see the park because you, we're kind of going down along the coast in a lot of areas. And there's this a lot of coastal area down there in the, in the southern part of South America. So is this a glacier? Are you heading up to it? Sure. This is a glacier, right? Yeah. And so the park itself is really situated at the southern end of, I believe it's called the San Juan Glacier. And it is the largest ice sheet, the third largest ice sheet in the world. Wow.  And I'll show you the terminus is where we are one of the spots that we hike to, which is really where the melt is occurring. We got hooked up once we got there with our guy, Pablo, a native Chilean guy. He was a biologist by training, spent a lot of years in the lab. We're in a white lab coat and a really intelligent guy and decided he wanted to experience the world out in the world himself. So he became a guide and he was really, really fun to work with. This was actually at the entrance to the park. So you do have to sign in. They know how many people are actually inside the park. So it is a controlled area. Wow. That's a government controls thing? Yeah, the government of Chile. Wow. Yeah. And so, and there's park rangers and things just like we have here. Oh, look at that. Yeah. So this is a view when we started to leave, heading out of the park. You can see some of the campsite down there. Mm-hmm.  We drove in from that end. And the first part of our day, you know, after all that travel, you know, you spend a day and a half, you know, nearly two days of traveling and you get there. And the first day, our hike was not being about 19 miles. The first day. Pretty big, 32K. So we're starting off this morning. That was about 7 a.m. Oh, okay. Hey, Christine, lay down in the field and take some pictures. Summer there. So the flowers are blooming. It was a nice start. You know, you start off on a day like that. You're not sure what to expect. We had great sunshine, which was fun. How does it manage 19 miles after all that travel? Yeah. And so you get, well, you get out of bed and you go. This is a very interesting spot we got to in a few hours. It's called Windy Pass. And you can see me standing over there, holding my arms up on the right-hand side. But the wind was about a steady 100K. Oh, wow. And at 60-something mile an hour, we're sort of laying down. I actually laid on that rock at one point, like an airplane. It just was flowing in. But the videos, which we didn't bring today, but the video show how this actually pressing on the screen, the winds blowing so hard when you're trying to film it, it made the video look kind of crazy. But we are headed back into those mountains. You can see back there and in the back of the screen and down along this lake for a while. So this was a kind of turn in a corner where we'd been hiking north for several hours. And then from this point here, we kind of started to deviate east along the top of the park. So you're not staying at hotels here? No, this is camping. This is camping, right? And so this is interesting when, oh, what was his name? Not the dictator in Chile. I'm just going to blank on his name right now. But when he took power, he protected a lot of different families. And so many of the families that had ranches and estates around this property got protection. And so they still have these. So in some areas where you're in the park and some areas you're crossing outside of the park into boundaries that are actually still private land that they allow you access to and through and for the park. Pinotchet. So Pinotchet, he protected a lot of families. And actually these families own the water. They own the water rights. They own the energy rights, the hydroelectric. So it's kind of interesting. So there's a bit of a give and take there. They are a major employer down there, obviously. And here we are heading down. This is Enchanted Valley after leaving Wendy Pass, headed back along the stream. You can see the Torres del Paene River, which snakes out of there, which really comes from all those glaciers that we're going to be heading into. It must have been Chile. Oh, no pun intended. Chile. These days were in the 50s and 60s. I just made that up. I don't even know where it came from. There were some nights that were in the, I'd say it wasn't even 40. It got cold. That's for sure. You know, it's not at high elevation, but it's surey. It's windy and cold. Oh, that's beautiful. And some of the hikes. So you had beets, really beets forest. Some mature and some immature beets forest. Primarily that's which, and there's also an evergreen beets. There's a lowland highland. We did get educated in that. A lot of stuff to forage along the way, a lot of different berries that we were able to pick and eat, which was really nice. That's nifty. Just a beautiful little hike. This was a spot through the woods. Periodically, you know, they'd have their camps. Dixon was our first night. We were headed. So this is at a point where we had reached one of the police camps at Los Perros. And then this was letting us know we had about another eight and a half K to go to get down to Dixon. To get down to Dixon. And they count K a little differently. And we could, we'd have eight and a half K to go and it seemed like it could take us another 12 K. But anyway, and here's our first glimpse of, this is Cerros. I think the hanging glacier there at Cerros. So that's the glacier right there. Well, that's one of the smaller ones. So that one's just hanging there. It's, you know, it's just some frozen ice that does drift up into the field. But it's not one of the larger ones. But it was our first sighting.  Pretty. And it's the summertime. And there's another view of, so zoom out on that one. You'll see that one is a, that's a picture of that same hanging glacier down over and some of the lake.  All that's been carved out, right? By the glacier. So is the glacier retreating? Yeah. I've got some evidence of that for sure. You'll see all that stuff. But this, this marine, this stuff all happened because of the, they had what's called an, an intrusive volcanic eruption there where it went up to the sedimentary layer and just filled in. And then when the glaciers carved it out, so you get all this sedimentary rock and then metamorphic rock and then sedimentary rock on the sides of the walls. And it's really beautiful. And that's why, where it's like an extrusive volcano like we have here where it blows out the top. Right. So, but, but this one, the magnet was contained between layers of sediment. Yeah. So it's really interesting. And that was finally Camp Dixon. You can see it there. We're finally dropping down. You can see Dixon Glacier. There's a huge one in the background there on the left. That's Dixon Glacier. This is Lake Dixon. And we finally made this camp about, it was about six or seven that night. You know, we started, I think it's six or seven that morning. So it was a nice long day. Is there fish in those waters? No, that's just too much mineral, minerality. They're too close to the glacier. Too close to the glacier so you don't, there's nothing in there. Further, you know, obviously 50 miles downstream. Yeah. But not, not at this point. These are, you're right up near the glacier terminus in most of these. So this was the next morning, headed out of Dixon. It's been a good night. They're beautiful stars at night. I had to get up and use the restroom at like 2 a.m. And it was just, the sky was just lit. You can see the Milky Way, just crystal clear, super beautiful. Cause there's no ambient light. No light at all. Yeah. There's no one up here. I mean, we were out, you're out in the middle of nowhere up here. That's very beautiful. Really beautiful. So this is our way up Gardner Pass, which is the other corner after traversing East, sort of along the top of the park. And you can see this moraine. All this is carved out. This is pretty rough going. You know, it's, it's, it's kind of rock. You just want to roll your foot off of and twist your ankle up there. This is, this is not for the faint of heart. Yeah. And you see, obviously we're out of the woods now. We're very exposed. It's not super high, but again, the glacier just carved everything off and there's nothing there. Plenty of water though. You can take your, your water, you have to carry a small bottle cause there's streams constantly. You just fill your water bottle up right out of the glacier waters. You don't have to worry about any bacteria. Yeah. Nothing moves up there. So it's perfectly clear. And this was, I think I just, I shot this was kind of a last look back at that big valley we had come through and we'd come from, you know, behind us and then back around to the left that morning. It's probably early afternoon by the time we got up here. This is the top of Gardner Pass and we're, this next shot, you're going to see what was before us as we hit it, as we had to look out. Wow. This is, this is actually the top of it. That's pretty incredible. And then so, the next shot's going to show us gray glacier which was our goal for the day was to get to, our next campsite was at gray. So there's all, there's a good shot of our guide. This one zooms in. So Christine's on the right and then Pablo. And then we had another guide, Katie with us. This was her first time doing the O as a guide. So she was sort of a guide's helper. And then behind us there, you start to see all the other glaciers. I think the next shot's a good panorama of them. And this is a, yeah. So there's a, so that's gray, gray glacier in the bottom of the picture and you can see behind it there. There's another one. There's actually five glaciers in this picture total. And I'm pretty sure the one coming up is a, what do you call it, a wide angle view. So was this the first time you'd seen a glacier? No, I got on some in New Zealand. I got on some up in, up in Alaska as well. But how do they compare? So, I'll be looking at it. So there you are. Look at the size of this gray glacier. And you can see off to the right, that disappears up into that huge ice field I was talking about. It goes for hundreds of miles to the north. But to the straight across, you can see there's one glacier there. There's another one above it to the left. And then on the left, there's two more. You can see five glaciers from this view here. It was really beautiful. So here's an interesting question. It's like define a glacier because everybody, yeah, I hear the term used, but what does a glacier mean? Well, a glacier exists where the amount of, of snowfall is greater than the melt. Okay. Right. And so that only occurs at certain elevations. And the thing about global warming is that elevation is continued to fall. Whereas it used to be, or it's, I'm sorry, it started to raise. So it used to be much lower. So glaciers were much bigger and much larger down low. And they're held more. And they keep moving. Oh, they're constantly moving. Yeah. They're constantly flowing towards their terminus. Yeah. That's where all of that rock that you see deposited there comes from. There's no glacier behind us there. Yeah. That's not the, that's not a glacier. And so I think the next shot is, we made our way down gray is, so we, you know, we showed up at John Gardner Pass at that top of that thing. And then you went to head left, right? And so we're going to work on our way from here down towards the left, back down towards, I forget gray actually is gray. That's not, yeah, we made all the way to gray campsite that night. Do you actually hike on the glacier or you go around it? No, it's too dangerous. So it's best to down here. Like this is the crevastis of a very crumbly. So it would be super dangerous. And that's, you know, probably I don't even know on the surface or several hundred meters thick. Yeah. So this, and so there's actually the terminus of gray, gray glacier on the right hand side. Right. And about 40, 50 days ago now this iceberg broke off. Well, it broke off from that other piece. And so this is a kind of a sign of that glacial or global warming you're talking about in the melting that glacier broke off. That's about 200 meters by 200 meters across and it's about a thousand meters tall. So, you know, maybe only 10% of it sticks out of the water. All the rest of it's underneath. It's very, very deep right there. So this will just now float. Yep. And I'll show you where it's going. And then the actual glacier 10 years ago used to disappear off to the left in this picture all the way. It would go all the way down here. You, you would see nothing but glacier all the way around where now that's all the lake. And 10 years is going to track it back to here. Yeah. Yeah, beyond four or five K at this point. Wow. There's an example of some of the, this was interesting. The national, the US National Park Service went down to help these guys erect some of these bridges, which we heard saved us a few hours a day from hiking up and around range out. So these are, these are well done and welcome after the kind of hours of hiking we've been doing. So I was happy to, happy to have some shortcuts. I guess you might call them. You know, we've been yakking here. Do we want to take a break? Are we keeping going? Let's take a break. Yeah, take a break. All right. Okay. This is pretty cool stuff. I didn't want to stop. Anyway, Gordo the Tech star here with Andrew, the security guy. We're talking about, I like that sound. So we back in a minute after we pay some bills. Thanks a lot. This is think tech Hawaii raising public awareness. Match day is no ordinary day. The pitch hallowed ground for players and supporters alike. Excitement builds. Game plans are made with responsibility in mind. Celebrations are underway. Ready for kickoff. MLS clubs and our supporters rise to the challenge. We make responsible decisions while we cheer on our heroes and toast their success. Elevate your match day experience. If you drink, never drive. The host of voice of the veteran seen here live every Thursday afternoon at 1pm on think tech Hawaii as a fellow veteran and veterans advocate with over 23 years experience serving veterans active duty and family members. I hope to educate everyone on benefits and accessibility services by inviting professionals in the field to appear on the show. In addition, I hope to plan on inviting guest veterans to talk about their concerns and possibly offer solutions. As we navigate and work together through issues, we can all benefit. Please join me every Thursday at 1pm for the voice of the veteran. Aloha. Aloha. How are you doing? Gordo the tech star here with my good old buddy Andrew, the security guy who just came back from hiking the old in Patagonia. Yeah, and we've done some some nice interesting shots. And so let's continue on this, this, this journey, this journey, which was a total of about 80 miles. He said, yeah, we hiked about 80 miles and how many days seven total days of hiking, seven total days of hiking. So that's it. Yeah, not too bad. Yeah, so put some work in. I bet you lost a few pounds. I think I did.  Yeah. Anyway, so pick us up where we left off with the Glacier. Yes, we finally made our way around to great Glacier, which was, you know, just one of the, if you don't do the, oh, a lot of people hike the southern part of this particular national park, which is called the W. So if you don't do the, oh, you really don't get up to this view up here at the top, which was really just amazing, which is, I guess, why we subjected ourselves to it. But you can see all the glaciers in the background and this is great glacier coming down Great Lake, obviously. And this is down near the terminus down near where we camped and we finally got this would have been about day three into the hike. Day three of seven and what elevation are you at? The elevation is pretty low. I think a few, I think we stayed between three and five thousand. Okay, so you're not going to get, deal with any of that, that kind of challenge. Yeah, there wasn't any, it was, the hiking was wonderful. And we really, you can see about the sky. We caught great weather. I mean, you can have all four seasons in a day here easily. You get, can get hot coat. Now here's a good, this is a good shot of the terminus at Gray. So you can see some of the icebergs coming down the lake and that, you can see the, the terminus up in the left hand side. That's the, the glacier up in the lake now. But it used to come all the way, it used to be right up against this shore here. So that's about four or five K distance right there. So that's how much it's retracted. And do you know over what years and 10 years? So over 10 years, it's retracted back to that location. Yeah. Interesting, very interesting. Yeah, I was, and this is quite obvious, you know, when you, when you hear him talk about it. So this was like, this was actually a great, great having the campsite is actually down on this is this lake, I had had a lot more filtration for the water guy here. So this was the first time we saw blue water in four days, you know, everything had been really gray and full of mineral content from the glacier water. And this one had, this one's downstream and around, roundabout way that a lot of the filtered filtration had occurred. So you can drink that right out of the. Oh yeah. It's beautiful, but absolutely just beautiful. I bet, I bet it has a fabulous flavor. Yeah. And so Pee Hoay was, was where we stayed. First shot of the Tories. You see the Tories in the back. Yeah. So, wow. This was a hike. We, so we worked our way on around and then we got to Camp Italiano is on the way back up into the Tories there. So this is, you know, so the signage was pretty good along the way. You were, they never came quite soon enough and they always had more on them than you, than you wanted to have left. You know, it was, it was one of those kind of, kind of hikes where every corner, you know, once you made it around one bend or over one rise or, or, or out of one valley, just all of a sudden there was another beautiful and in front of you. The scenery was just really big. Wow. And here's one of the guard spots. Of course we didn't, I didn't have any Spanish in me. So I, I, I typically just had to talk and they were very good about knowing a little bit of English. And they, they were good about letting you know they would, if you got there too late, they wouldn't let you continue for the day to the next guardhouse because they, they kind of knew what it would take and they didn't want you out there in the dark. Okay. That makes total sense. Yeah. So it's kind of interesting. So obviously there was opportunities like this and really rough, rough water. Wow. Very cold water. That water is all below 40 degrees.  Well, that's terrific. All right, keep it going. You've got about seven more pictures, I think. Yeah. So this is headed up. This is down around the other end of the W headed up into the Torres. Our goal is to get up to those peaks you see there. You see the different color. You can see that, how that sedimentary rock was on the top and then the granites in the middle. Right. And this is a really good view of the sort of the, the action between the volcanic action, the glacier action that carved all these mountains out. It's just beautiful. And it was really something. This is a, another tough day. A lot of elevation, you know, a couple thousand feet of elevation, as I recall. And a lot of it hits you all at once. There's a look back at one of the Glacier Lakes, you know, just beautiful. I think this might be a, this looks like horseshoe lake, maybe. It's pretty impressive. Nice hat. Yeah. You had to stay out of the sun, obviously. So, you know, a little sunscreen and a wide brim hat wants to help out. I think Christine was making me, trying to make me lug her gear. Yeah. That was going to be one of my questions. When we, as we got through all the shots, it was like how much gear you had to take and all that stuff. Yeah. It wasn't too bad. So here we're getting up pretty close. So this is Lake Moreno. When we get, finally get here, but you can see these towers approaching. And you can see the difficulty hiking that, that terrain there. I mean, it's just wide open and rock. There were footpaths. Obviously, there's a lot of traffic on the trail for these. These are, this one's one of the epic like little routes there. And there are people who can actually get up there just for the day. They come in by boat and they're able to get close enough that they can do this hike in one day up and out. So there was a lot of foot traffic. Andrew, that's me. I found a spot to take a nap there by the lake. That's nice. Once we got up there. Someone's standing on a rock.  And I did sample that water. It is, I could hold my feet in it for about 40 seconds. It was really, really cold. Wow. But you see that, and there were some hikers. There's some climbers actually up on that middle tower there, kind of on the right hand side while we were there. There's some guys, some of you can actually see a couple of the cracks there. They were working. They were hiking up, they were climbing up. Yeah, they were rock climbing up in there. Yeah, it was really beautiful. That's incredible. And this was, might be the kind of the closing shot. Is that the last shot? Closing shot I've got for the day. But that was a, that was a goal. Once you got all the way around, sort of the goal was to finally get up to the Torres and back. So, seven days, eight days? This was a seven days on the trail. Seven days on the trail camping. So how much did you have, gear did you have to carry? So we carried only our, you had to have several layers for the weather.  I have some, maybe it's like mixed with wool or blend or something, a very light layer. I'll have that. I don't typically hike in it. I did have a pair of board shorts just in case the water was inviting, but it never was. I carried those and didn't get to use them.  You carryin' your lunch. A good thing we didn't have to pack was a lot of water. So again, you could just have a little bottle, which we had, which is enough. You just could fill it quite often when it ran out. You drink a lot of water, but you just fill it as you go. Now, what about food? So you met, we mentioned food. So, did you stop for breakfast, lunch, and dinner? Yeah, so we did have, this was, this wasn't like totally glamorous camping, but we did have, in the morning, we had to cook at the campsite who would cook breakfast. So we went and they made our lunch for, so you got a lunch in a bag, right? A brown bag lunch and packed that up and go.  And then when you got to camp at dinner, again, there would be someone to cook camp at dinner. And we also, the campsites were set. So we didn't have to haul our own camping gear, our sleeping gear, our bags, all that. We had porters. There were three porters that attended our group of eight. These guys had about 35 to 40 kilos on them. Whoa. And ran these hikes that took us, you know, hours. They ran them in a few hours with our packs on their back. With all of you. With all of our gear. Not just mine and Christine's, but with all of our gear. They would, and their own gear.  And they took off, yeah, and they would go. Yeah, yeah, really, really amazing guys. Really strong and young and friendly guys. And we had dinner with them at night. And they were, they were really great. Were they there as, as careers? Or were they there as porters searchers? Yeah, portering's a way to start to break into the guiding business there. Our guide had started as a porter. And so kind of like in the, in the Himalaya, they have the asherpa. Right. So it's a similar, similar path. Wow, that's pretty cool. Yeah, they were great guys, you know, and strong.  You have to get yourself, you have to be in some kind of conditioning.  We kind of do a long day, short day, long day, short day, but the short days were still six hours.  So you need to be able to make sure you can handle that so you can enjoy it. If, if that doesn't appeal to you, then I would definitely look into something that's more of a day hike. The boat and then the hike in and out.  But you know, you have a day arrest in between perhaps or something like that. It's kind of one of those places that's so inviting that once you get there, you just want to go out in it. You know, the, the guanacos, which we might call Lama is the protected version in Chile. And they run wild. There are just thousands of them everywhere. So they're like alpaca. Yeah, they look like one, but they're a little, a little different. But, but they're not, they're not, they're protected too. So they're not hunted. There's puma there that hunt them. We didn't see any puma. We did see a fox. There's condor. The condor were beautiful. We saw a lot of those guys. There's a lot of hawks and eagles.  It was just, just an amazing thing. And they also do some horsebacking down there. So if you're not particularly a hiker and you'd like to do some horseback riding, a lot of these trails, because of those families, I said they kind of ring the park. They have, they bring all supplies in about horse. As a matter of fact, anyway, but they also have guided horseback on some of the trails. Not all that would be for me. Anyway, this is great. Thank you for sharing. That was, it was great. Thanks for, thanks for listening. I mean, I'm glad that when we, when you said you were coming back, I really thought this would be kind of a cool thing to see. Awesome. And you're always doing these neat things. So I'm, I'm off to doing some hiking and another. Yeah. You'll have to, you'll have the next video. So the next 10 days. Photo show. We'll see what it's like, but I'm not doing it near as rough as you are. I'm too old. All right. Anyway, Gordo the Texar, Andrew the security guy. Thanks a lot for watching the show. And like we say at the every show, how are you doing? By the way, I think talk is sponsoring a golf.


My name is Rachel Muse, for those who don't know me, I'm the Libraries Director. I'm so happy you're here to join us for tonight's event, which I'm really looking forward to. Tonight's program is part of a series of events we've been hosting at the library, thanks to the American Library Association's Libraries Transforming Communities grant. This grant is an effort to spark discussions in our community between diverse groups of people to better understand our differences and define some common ground. Our first event last week was a book discussion of the book of other Americans by Leilani, and we'll be capping off the series with a panel discussion next week from the Central Vermont Refugee Network to hear from some new Americans in our community who have come to Vermont as refugees and asylum seekers. But tonight's program is called The Value of Our Stories, and it's brought to us by the Vermont Humanities Council. Our guest tonight is Rajni Eddins. He's originally from Seattle and has been writing and performing poetry for a diverse audience for over 20 years, if I understand correctly, in Vermont for about 10 of those years. He's the author of two books of poetry, and his presentation tonight utilizes spoken word as a tool for engagement in conversations about race, culture, equity, and the richness to be found in each of our stories. Please join me in welcoming Rajni Waterbury. Thank you very much, Rachel. Good evening. Good evening.  Thank you for the introduction, Rachel. As was spoken, I am a poet. I have been writing and sharing my art probably for close to 30 years now. My mother was the founder of the first Black Writers Group in the Northwest in Seattle, Washington, known as the African American Writers Alliance. So I started performing with him as the youngest member at that age. So I've always been immersed in that culture of storytelling and sharing a poetry and artistic expression and creativity. My mother would often have me read her pieces back to her with feeling to make sure that we'd read life to the stories. That gave me a lot of love and appreciation for what you could do with words and how just with the intonation and the nuance of how you speak and engage with people, you can take people on journeys, maybe that they had not even foreseen themselves. So I've been here in Vermont now for about 12 years. It'll be 12 in March. My background is using spoken word as a tool to empower youth and community, dealt with space for conversations on the social construct of race, affirmation of people's identity and shared humanity. So I be about a little over two and a half years ago. I decided to compile about a 22-plus year span of my text to make a transition into full-time employment and sharing my history. Living in Vermont has been a challenging experience in some regards. Dealing with microaggressions and racism and the constant need to teach people, you know, space was pretty homogenous and doesn't have a lot of access to the greater diversity of the human family. So some of these pieces come from these experiences I've experienced here somewhere from when I was back home in Washington where I grew up as a child. So I'll be sharing a number of pieces from this text and just giving you a brief background about each piece. I want to hold space at the end of the sharing for if there's any questions or things that pique your interest that struck a chord with you or you have some interest in learning more about what the background was, definitely feel free to engage because I share for that purpose. I love to engage and share my work and it's more so for the response or the holding of space for people to let it resonate and see what it means to you personally too and how that can be a way for us learning and growing together. So the first poem I want to share with you this evening is called Middle Passage. This is a poem that I wrote probably when I was about 17 years old. For quite some time I wanted to write something to speak to the experiences of my African ancestors who were enslaved here whose labor was the impetus for the industrial revolution of this country and who have still yet to be fully recognized for their humanity and for their vital sacrifice. But it just seemed as a child it was something that was too big. Have you ever felt like that? Even if you want to express, I'm the one to do it. Will I mess it up or will I not do it justice? I was asked by a friend of mine at that time if I wanted to come and perform a piece for this event called the MAFA. MAFA means great tragedy or great calamity. At the time when people of African descent come together to remember and honor the ancestors who went through this great travail and tragedy and still honor their resiliency and our own so I felt like that was permission. Like that was an opportunity to say okay well I'm being asked to do it now so I guess I have to go ahead so that's kind of how this piece comes about. I'm going to ask each of you to rub your hands together like this. So my mother taught me what she learned from an indigenous elder. Rub your hands together like this and you feel that you want to send the energy my way. Someone was sharing with you. Sending that love and that positive energy. So I'll reciprocate. Middle passage. There should be oceans of tears There should be oceans of tears This ink is not my blood. What right have I to speak? What right have I to speak? Think my words the salty oblivion to swallow this globe. Submerging this continent's mother's one perfect tear for her children. There were children in that small cramped space giving birth in fetal position to stillborn cosmos, tiny infidels with mayhem as midwife, below deck, below death below breath was hope hidden in heartbeat rhythm and now sometimes I see our children are below deck into small cramped space but the wooden planks are blocks and stoops and streets but our heart beating hope tells me you don't have to live that metaphor for we are the lineage of stars and suns. Look at the sky and see your reflection forgetfulness would have a stinky oceans drunken but galaxies do live in the sea floor. No one can ever take away our B4. They sunk so that we saw they hung so that we saw they sunk and sung with tears in their lungs so that we saw this is not a metaphor this is not a metaphor. This ain't no metaphor, middle passage I think it's always important to start with that piece in particular because it's vital that we honor those who came before us who were shoulders we stand upon who we would not be here without so I always want to make that gesture in reverence whenever I begin because I see myself as the extension of my ancestors and my mother in particular really envied that and to me her upbringing so don't thank you for listening the next piece I want to share with you is called blackness this is a poem that was written not too long so that middle passage was 17, blackness was 18 and I just graduated from high school and began working at a school called TT Minor Elementary School. The majority of my life I've been engaged working with youth from elementary to academia.  Do you feel that people might not get all of it If they just read your poems? Well I feel like that in general with poetry I think that our voices give words life And deeper meanings and richer nuanced language And understandings and visual imagery That we'd be able to absorb or take in Or visualise and be present with as it's resonating Otherwise because there's so much music and language You know, like you can probably all account for People in your family who have a certain phrase Or a certain way they turn a phrase Or say something colorful You're like, oh I could read it off the page But when I hear it in this person's voice It resonates and it's a part of my story too So I feel like that's a richer way of telling story You can always read it for yourself and hear it in your head But I feel like that's why human beings have kind of had that Real age and memorial The person who gathers the people and preserves the stories And regales people and takes them on journeys Sensitizes the children's imagination and fires up that Brilliant element because there's something so powerful in it You know, that we have to draw from that potency You know, with this particular piece I think It always touches a personal part of me because I was a child who was fortunate enough to always be affirmed And being who I was by a mother who was Intentionally pearl black and in a manner Speaking to our rich history as the foundation of our human civilization And recognizing that that particular piece is glaringly missing in the education we're receiving And there's another slant that we have to protect ourselves from psychically Protect our children from psychically So just seeing that those ones who have not been protected are inoculated And the suffering that arises, you know, that when you convince a child to think ill of themselves That's why I want to use the musicality of my voice towards sensitizing people to that Suffering and how painful it is and to work in tandem as human beings Not as white or black people but as human beings to appreciate the fullness of our stories As human beings from Africa to the present So thank you for that question Yes, sir Paul, with that, on the national news, an 18-year-old writing back Do you envision the way those words are going to come out or are they They're just on pages and later you You work through how they become expressed Well, the way I write my process is I'm I'm writing and I wait to hear the next slide like I think when I turned 11 So when I first started writing pieces, I really firmly believed that I was transcribing Other people's stories like I was listening to ancestors and other spiritual Origins where I could Write it and I'd wait to hear and then what comes next and this comes next. Okay So by the time I read it wrote it asked the question Transcribed I would generally know the piece by heart and I think A combination of seeing so many of my community Elders share in a in various ways and the musicality of their language and The different variants in terms of how they express themselves and have presence in their own unique ways My mother priming me again with feeling to say things say her words back to her and me kind of having that Resistance though. I have to read this again, but also like I wonder what the story is going to be because this is a really good writer um I'd kind of unconsciously developed a palette of my own as far as expression So when I started writing I found out. Oh, I'm good at this Even though if I couldn't really necessarily vocalize what I was doing at first I already had kind of a knack for Question. Yeah, I think I'll share Maybe three or four more pieces come on make sure we have time to ask questions This next piece I want to share with you is called Why We Still Need Black History Month And uh, this is a piece that was written I'd say Maybe five years ago Five or six years ago I was working over at JJ Flynn Elementary School when I first moved here from Washington The first school I worked at was Integrated Arts Academy Then I was promoted to move to JJ Flynn as a as a para educator And I wound up working actually with my nephew. So it was totally kismet and One librarian who knew I was a poet and and was curious about my thoughts on the month Just reached out to me and she said No offense, but and I was like, okay. Where is this going to go? Never know What that's going to be followed by but she said I like I said, okay. She's curious about some message Yeah, what do you what's your question? And she said um Well, how do you feel about black history month? Is it Like too short a month. Do you think it should be all year? Do you think you really shouldn't be a thing?   For the same reason that texas call slavery unpaid internship Because the evil of ignorance and racism must be vigilantly opposed with truth love and sincere inclusion Because it was once negro history weak And for the children who daily see themselves through the lens of stereotypes And those who only know television as relationship to black people And people of the global majority For my daughters who are growing and will not be choked out by the diminishing of our value For the legacy of our people that makes american ideals a sought-for reality Rather than a cliche banality For you For your spirit and your conscience So it doesn't putrify In the delusion of denial and fear made religion Because black people must not become history Our story is a part of your story The beauty wonder triumphs and trials need to be known Some from the hilltops and mountain peaks Resounding in the valleys and grass plains Echoing down the alleyways and boulevards Because black red brown yellow are the colors of my true love's hair and the universe Because beauty and truth will not be contained Because these are our ancestors We owe them a debt of gratitude Because love will not be silenced Because teaching white supremacy is poison We are all still recovering Conditioned to tolerate it in small doses The human family must heal Soon this sickness will be vomited and all that will remain will be you Beautiful healthy free-minded you Think of it as your chance to celebrate the human family In preparation for making every day our celebration I think that's an important piece as well You know when I first learned about black history month I had already had a lot of supplementing of my own education because my mother Knew already what the lay of the land would be as far as how we were being taught about ourselves and kind of this White supremacist by default way of teaching that has kind of predominated in this country So just learning about the history of dr. Carter g woodson first started black history month when it was negro history week and the intention of all these different historical scholars and ancestors who work to Expand the narrative to appreciate the fullness of black people's contributions What's the more I think of it is just a sane approach. You don't learn about trees by just studying one twig or One branch or one leaf and say that's the whole tree. It's like now you have to start with the roots of something the seeds or something.   You have a question about definitely feel free to ask at that period or even in between This next piece is called charlina liles charlina liles was a woman who was killed in seattle washington She was pregnant at the time and with her children. She was known to have a history of mental health Difficulties and she was actually the one who initiated the call to the police and that call Ultimately resulted in her death where she was shot by the police and Not that larger woman maybe about five feet pretty petite But then again, it's not to me when I look at these things I see so much history in present day of the justification of The killing of black people, you know, about a hundred or so years ago You didn't even necessarily have to have an excuse Or you could use whatever excuse at the time was convenient to use now Because we're seemingly more civilized And so-called post-racial These are all supposed to be isolated incidents, but I could speak the litany speaks to how we're socialized collectively To perceive black people no matter the age or identity As monsters to associate blackness with that to be feared and to You know with the birth of a nation this these films that justify the stereotypes held by Many people of European descent to justify the mistreatment of black people It's that cognitive dissonance.    Um This next piece is called cup of joe this is written During a class i was taking back in washington called The african continuum of ritual poetic drama and we used to go through these rituals where we would um go to different places in our minds and our consciousness and then Just kind of write stream of consciousness whatever came out and i wrote this piece at that time i must have been Let's say 19 or 20 And I read it and i said i'm never saying that out loud But then i i had a good bunch of friends My mother and i co-founded a group called the poetry experience that we actually host here as well And so we had a gathering at our home as we tended to do just to hold space for each other And so i said i'm going to share something with you guys now. Okay, i'm kind of sensitive about my stuff like Give me your uh Your opinion. What do you think and they said you should definitely share that i was like, okay Sometimes it takes a little encouragement for people to Give you that that boost to say You can spit it out But i think that's the important thing about writing and expressing yourself and expressing hard truths and things that are Going on in our heads and because with that courageous vulnerability I think that's other people the same permission to be honest about what their experience is and to learn from that vulnerable sharing of humanity in ways that can help to elevate us all and help us grow Hopefully outgrow a lot of troubling aspects This is called cup of joe sweet land of liberty Super sees the natural rights of my people to be free America home of the Land where my people branded labeled to be slaves america Can you spare some change?  I'd pop him with a block for stop We should not have been in cut off his oxygen Now now mrs. Brown Please calm down. Let's not become irrational.     I don't even look at a white gax The suspect is black in his mid-life to early living if you see this man, please not Please do not If you see this man, please do not hesitate to avoid or avert eye contact at all costs Clutch your purse in our pocketbook and cross the street. We repeat this man is armed with consciousness Warning He may appear as a If alerted to the sad existence of racism white privilege, you may experience abrupt discomfort Insidiously interwoven with a sad topic of discussion in a panic. However You know where you want to yell or cry or scream out I say do it yell as loud as you can It doesn't exist I don't see color I see shapes and triangles and parallelograms I watch bt I'm not a racist Then when this vile corporate tries to put you up on game that due to the nature of racism In and of itself being a system of racial subjugation against non-whites in every area human relation Entertainment education labor politics law religion sex war war war and economics culminating in the mass dispossession and genocide of the indigenous natives Using this definition as a basis if you got white skin and whatnot and you profit from the psychosocial construct I ain't got no key. I ain't got no key. I can't Constantly jangle the lock open to feel myself freely Free myself to feel every time I get close to a lock book. I get white wash flutter but guilt Then I stop jangling a lot then the whispers come Be silent quiet rarely seen never heard. You don't want to hurt nobody's feelings Refrain abstain from saying them words words like white like black except when followed by in harmony Like racism genocide Holocaust Therefore remain acceptable and appearance and character and manner and demeanor Everybody knows a well-mannered black man is named by white people was a negro Because I said before I can't find the space to breathe comfortably in my soul I got too many people in my head I got black and white in my head to continue with and every time I sing my pain I feel like i'm dancing but the russian currents and streams running blood and tears got white full shoes tapping like some snappy snazzy Elevated music hip tunes to cruise to huh hip hop tunes to cruise to Music to live by music to die by music to drive by I see them bobbing their heads off beat exchanging pc combo and the cosmos and indigenous peoples at large over lattes Damn shame what happened to them colored folks It's the damn fine cup of joe I think I'll close with the title piece This is a poem that I was co-writing with a friend of mine Maybe about five or six years now it was around the summer that Trayvon Martin's trial was going on Zimmerman's trial was going on for the killing of Trayvon Martin and uh where he was acquitted for shooting this unarmed teenager on his way home because he felt that his hood made him seem threatening and even and I think I had wanted to write this with a friend because we saw the litany and when She learned that news and shared it with me. She was despondent.  We would not be choking on tears When do our lives become valuable in the eyes of the law? When does hate cease to be exonerated behind a badge and lighter skin? And God forbid you wear a hoodie in the rain while having black skin with skittles in your pocket You can taste the rainbow, but you can't taste freedom You can taste your own blood, but you can't taste the rainbow Diversity is white people's cold word for niggers You can taste the rainbow, but not if you're too dark The rainbow may come during the storm If you're too dark on a block in a hoodie and the skittles fall from your pocket You never taste the rainbow your killer has the right to stand his ground He may shoot you in the heart and America may relive it in sordid detail She is only reliving her nightmare. She dreams nightmares often open caskets ashes weighted limbs no coffins too His name is trey von martin say it renee davis khalif broder kory jones elijah mclean freddy gray pamela turner mercy matt tony mcday terence crutcher terence sterling dion k darin seals deandre joshua felando castiel alton sterling corn gains oscar grant the charleston nine mckinsey cochran jordan baker camani gray timothy stanbury sean bell sandra bland natasha mckinna shelly frail giavon mcday benzel hampton erin cambell rinnell lewis tyree woodson victor white jonathan farrell erick garner jon crawford easel ford keith vidal michael brown jordan davis kejean pal tamir rice jason harrison uzman zango kenja mcday chevez carter maria godinez eve smith louis rodriguez matthew palo amru diallo his name he has a name his name is i can't breathe his name is emetil his name his name his name you must remember his name james burr jr james burr jr you may whisper it in the wind you may hear it in your skin his name is guilty in his innocence freedom fighter martyr trouble maker his name macomex martin the king he has a name his name is black boy black listed black bard his name is black power black babies in the black market for green cash stolen life tied to a tree burnt at the stake his name probable cause veneer problem chalk outline white man's fear his name ear for souvenir his name black nigger boy fred hampton huy p newton mega evers his name saves lives mobilizes movements his name is watch for a black messiah bullet to the heart boy in jaws of wolf white girl called rape whistle too free head too high his name looked me in my eye his name must die gangster thug men is stereotype his name is rest like demon his name is taken to the iron bridge on main street his name his name's legs are pulled until the snack cracks stabbed hung shot burned ravaged by relic hunters his name is missing an identity scots girl boys the ski experiments david walker living breathing black manhood healing pagan no salvation his name is you free nigger to get over it kouta kente stolen african strange fruit stranger in a strange land in danger of deranged hands enemy of the state genetic center asphalt art bloody memory collateral damage white man's burden that happened so long ago chain gang wave slave chattel on the rack in the irons on the run wanted his name is arthur the cans that felt more this was than cotton his name is put your hands up spreader stop or i'll shoot his name is bang 41 shots a solid decor angela davis breakfast program black panther party for self defense his name is his name is he has a name his name is beaten severely urinated on chain by the ankles his name is dragged for three miles in the capitated anyone places to have to remain his name is missing an arm his name is crackhead war on drugs war on poverty scapegoat sacrificial lamb his name is kicked carcass convict criminal thief drug dealer victim seal a child's name will never breathe again his name has a mother his name is expendable sundown laws jim crowbars jim crowbars his name is racial profiling in court just call him profiling because this is not about race his name is marcus garvey frederick douglas ought to be wells no rights a white man is bound to respect his name has a title when he dies his name is mr mark wearer of the black hoodie walker of the home path wrong place wrong time wrong skin wrong crime his name is holder of the skittles his name her mother's his mother knows his name her tears fell in big boat letters down her cheeks his name is gone too soon his name is darky spook jigaboo sandbow his name is different too difficult to be pronounced by thin lips and forked tongues his name dies without justice triangle trade of littered bones his name is sunchild star fruit young gifted in black but you can call him nigger his name he has a name his name is the sun is rising his name is wake up because his name is mine the whole space for whatever's resonating with you I know I shared a lot of powerful emotional this room expression with you tonight so there are things that you have questions about or that you something that stuck out to you that you're curious about or it speaks to your story somehow definitely for welcome to engage or reach out I'd like to ask you a little bit about your writing process and it's your writing is extremely powerful and you're reading as we've already discussed I think even more so and you've been writing for your whole life how has it evolved over time how has it changed I think over time I've kind of learned more about the world and and gain more experiences personally to to see to broaden my lens and to and to understand more when I'm learning from different writers of the past what they were talking about kind of how it shows up in this world in different forms to have more of a through line historically so I think that I mean for instance that final piece is the title piece for Trayvon I couldn't have written as a teenager because I had to live a lot of different experiences and learn a lot of history to put together the understanding that oh this is a you can't call this isolated if it's there's never been a stopping point so I think that's more that the piece needs to do so I think yeah having more experiences personally with racism and and navigating this country as a person of African descent in spaces where people aren't necessarily taught to embrace the fullness of each other's humanity and knowing what that feels like up close and and then learning that a part of it was utilizing my craft as a way to alchemize it so I wouldn't internalize them to come sick or despondent or jaded I could still find kind of a way to alquedo that energy and put it to a place of prescient vital expression that can be used as a teaching tool and also as a cathartic assist for myself and to hold up a mirror to people and to society yeah to go along with that like I see how cathartic that can be to get these ideas on paper and to share them when I'm thinking about life in Vermont and you know you're encountering of microaggressions and and flat-out racism and how in that moment you process that how you deal with that I understand writing but writing might not be in the moment so I'm I have a lot of writing questions for you but for some reason here in this content I'm like how do you deal with those those moments where you encounter what we're talking about here and I have to deal with them as racially as I'm able I mean that's why I use my art as a as a way to express my frustration with these experiences and the fact that they still continue and that are there are younger people than me who experience them right now and I think I also do it to light a fire under people to say what are you going to do to transform it because if it's not just about me personally how I process it the the impetus behind it is holding space for encouraging you all to think critically about how you can help transform that dynamic and that consciousness and intentional and forthright ways and the way that speaks more to your agency around it so definitely it's always it's never fun to experience you're like okay I'm sure anybody can identify as a human being is what it feels like to be patronized or undermined or underestimated but yeah it's like that and you learn how to deal with it in the moment and I use my art as the as the way to like kind of take those things that I witness and put them into a place sometimes I choose to educate the person in the moment if it feels like a sincere opportunity I just see somebody who's just trying to get my gold or just pull my chain I kind of have to gauge what's going on so I can protect myself and know what's meaningful but fortunately I've put together my art in a way so that I can hold space intentionally so that's the way that's my agency so I I encourage and challenge you to think about what your way is to yes ma'am it sounds like growing up you obviously became very familiar with your mom's art and I'm curious if there's elements of your art or your process when you really feel you know your mom's influencer or presence definitely I mean I think in the in the spirit of my own song and in the being able to bring playfulness with words to the floor she's a master of that master storyteller like just fountain of wisdom just extremely conscious off the off the fly so I think a lot of those elements that just those kind of fireside chats that mom just like drop wisdom on me into the night I was always listening you know that was one thing about me as a child I was a very intentional listener and kind of set focus to pay attention to what my elders had to share with me so I think drawing that from her I'm able to embody that and carry that legacy for because that's why I always start by honoring her and people who came before because I know that I wouldn't be able to do what I do without that that cultivation and that positive affirmation of recognizing my brains and speaking to me understanding that I'm already intelligent I think the way you speak to people the way you speak to children when you honor their intelligence and you don't patronize them that that says a great deal about how they become the people they're growing into so I was fortunate to have a mother who always saw me as brilliant don't get no big head because it was the foul word the balance is there so can I ask what brought you to Vermont yeah initially I came out of her family my godmother was ill and so we came over to kind of help hold space for her healing and it kind of had to regroup and find our footing here I began working in the schools and learned that there was a great deal here that my art can speak to and then there were a lot of different experiences that I had here I learned that oh this is a necessary chapter here too because I had to learn how to be resilient and practice faith as a principal I think you never know really the principles you hold until you put in tight situations you don't know if you truly hold the principles you hold until it calls upon you to act and I've been called on to act on the lap here and so I feel like that that's something that's a vital part of my growth and development here as an artist and seeing how I can use this art as a way to serve youth and community and engage like here and hold space for touching people's hearts and minds and soul spirits in dynamic ways that challenge people to grow expand their narrative and appreciate a fuller sense of their own of each other's humanity to be courageously vulnerable yourselves and I think all that comes from modeling and being in space where if you're being pushed to be silent and you still remain vocal that exercises a certain muscle especially when it's coming from a place of love and appreciation for humanity and holding a higher standard for all people that can that will benefit you know youth who are here and yet unborn so it comes like a kind of holy aim a holy crusade to humanize and sensitize people and use artists and means so I'm I'm glad I came here Can you talk a little about the work that you've done with children and in particular have you written anything specifically for children? Yes, I've always worked with youth since as I said my mother was a foster parent so probably since age nine I've had a host of different experiences and then 18 on I actually even my in my late late teens I was called on to engage teachers on how to incorporate hip hop and spoken word as a part of their curriculum to make it more engaging for enhancement of literacy purposes and then as I got older people knew me for my gift and my way of engaging youth and being a warm person in community and holding space for positive connection and exploration of creativity and imagination so that's something that I've always done and take where's the number of hats now whether it's writing workshops or school assemblies or lectures or talks on my own experience how I came to art so where's the number of different hats but I always enjoy holding space for youth I actually have a children's book that I'm working on I have a series that I'm kind of co-writing with my daughter but the first release is going to be called A Love So Big that's about children and parents who can't see each other and kind of the fact that that love never goes anywhere as long as you stay appreciative and know that it's not about if it's about when Is your mom still in Washington state? No, we're here I'm actually her essential person so we live in Burlington Vermont I'm thinking of you just having your mom poetry back to her as a young child I teach language arts to students and I'm wondering if there's one bit of information from your mom that you hold onto to this day something that she shared with you about you know reciting and spoken word and something that you still remember from those younger days Definitely I think she kind of gave me the freedom to create and learn my way of delivering and she also encouraged me as I said through even saying her own pieces to say things with feeling so I knew when I was writing that was already a vital component it's like I can't come out here and just the roses are red I have to make sure that I speak language and to give it a certain energy and emotion so that people feel what I'm talking about and they can receive it that way so I think the ways and more than like even asking me to say things a certain way I think just exploration of being playful with language we would do that often so it wasn't even like something she necessarily had to coach it was like oh let's try this out and now you have to say it in this accent so it was just like developing that muscle of exploration making it a creative and fun activity that you don't always have to know you're growing what you're doing it's just enjoyable so I think having that freedom of expression to play with language really opened the doorway to me and by the way is that I'm still living Thank you so much Thank you so much Thank you Thank you in the dark now that it gets dark


So so far this semester, we've looked at a pretty wide variety of moral theories Now at this point, we're gonna ask the question of you know, does morality depend upon religion? One way of thinking about whether morality depends upon religion is whether the truth of some ethical theory depends upon the truth of Some religion. All right, that's one way to try to understand dependence. Another way is does our knowledge of morality Depend upon our knowledge of a particular religion. That's another way to think about dependence Another way to think about it is does the existence of morality depend upon the existence of a religion But the question we're dealing with here is trying to figure out what if any kind of dependence morality has upon a religion So one of the classic arguments and dealing with this kind of dependence or one of what this kind of dependence is Is something called the Euthyphro Dilemma and it's called Euthyphro named after the person with whom Socrates is having a conversation about this so The Euthyphro Dilemma starts off really simple. You know he's asking the question is what is moral moral Because the gods command it or we could just simply say the divine if you don't want to talk about the existence of God You could simply say it this way say is what is moral moral because the divine commands it or Does the divine command it because it's moral So if it's the first one Right, so the two possibilities either it's moral because the divine commands it or the divine commands it because it's moral So let's try the first one. It's moral because the divine commands it. Okay, so what is this supposed to mean? Well, there's a couple of different ways of trying to understand this right one way that is that You know the you know, we have existence all right, we have the world we have what's real We have all these physical properties and then the gods come along the divine comes along and then kind of adds morality on top of that So, you know what the divine commands makes this morality Another way of understanding this is that You know, you have you have you know, what is natural we have what is existence There is just no morality at all and the gods simply just command something or the divine simply command something. Okay So this whole idea is that there is some kind of disconnect between What is real was true and then what the what the divine says Well, not if it's this option it looks looks like a bad situation here If this is the case that if the divine makes true You know independently of what's real makes true. What is moral? Because it looks like there's just absolutely no reason for deciding one thing or another Sure the divine, you know with a lot of faith traditions that the divine commands say something like murder that murder is immoral But if there's no reason for that Then we say well, you know, the divine could have commanded just anything could have committed murder or killing random killing to be moral The divine could have meant could have commanded, you know a variety things regarding life The divine could have commanded that it's absolutely wrong in all situations to take life, right any life whatsoever the divine could have commanded that You know to take every life All right, now you might be thinking like well that that's just kind of nonsensical because there's good reasons To take life or not take life and this is exactly the point Yeah, if there's nothing that existed or is responsible for divine command Then it could have just been completely arbitrary But you are gut instinct is that well, there's really good reasons for what is moral, right? There's really good reasons for why you know This or that is more than more we've seen lots of varieties of how to explain that with these different ethical theories And so this is exactly the point is that we don't think morality is arbitrary. We think that there is good reason But if there's already good reason and depending on what the divine commands Then it can't be that option. There has to be reason for why the demand the divine commands with the divine commands Okay Good But then this is the second option that the divine commands it because it is good But if the divine commands it because it is good, it looks like it's good regardless of what the divine commands So randomly killing strangers really good reason not to do them But that doesn't necessarily mean that some divinity wouldn't command it You know if divinities or anything like people, you know, there are many times when people have commanded Killing others for no good reason, but that doesn't mean it's moral, right? It looks like the standard of what is moral is independent of what the divine command is So either way you go here I mean either you say that what is moral is moral because the divine commands that then you get this weird notion of the morality is Arbitrary and we don't want to accept that the other way that we can go is to say that the divine commands because it is moral It's like, okay We you know we would like to go that way, but then it looks like what is moral is independent of divine command