So, we're here at Nowcast SA Studios in the sixth floor of Central Library in San Antonio talking to David Hinojosa and Al Coffman about the Texas Supreme Court ruling on school finance that came down recently. Al Coffman, who is now a law professor at St. Mary's University, filed the first school finance case in 1984 when he was an attorney for MALDEF, the Mexican American Legal Defense Fund, and David, who is now the director, national director of policy at IDRA. IDRA is an equity-based research and technical assistance non-profit in San Antonio. David filed the case that was just decided by the Supreme Court back in 2011 after the legislature cut $5 billion from school funding. So, David, talk to us about what the court did. Well, what the court did was essentially gut the constitutional rights of school children in the state of Texas to a quality education. It did this by holding that the system was sufficiently funded, holding that the gaps and the differences between funding for property poor versus property rich district, although substantial, were good enough for the Texas Constitution, and unfortunately it reversed the lower court ruling that held that the system otherwise wasn't meeting the constitutional standards. In the end, this means that the Supreme Court lowered the constitutional floor of a basic adequate education into the basement and passed the responsibility nearly wholly to the legislature to fix if it cares to at all. If it cares to at all, because essentially what the court said was it should be fixed, but they didn't make anybody required to do anything. Exactly. Right? So, let's go back to the beginning of this, back to 1984, and tell me what this case is about and why it matters? Well, it's a history of Texas that the low-wealth districts and minority children were badly treated in public education, and there have been struggles for many years. There was a U.S. Supreme Court case back in 1973 about school finance, but there was no real progress made. So in 1983, 84, a group of low-wealth districts and advocacy organizations got together and said we have to go to court to force the legislature to do something, because the legislature basically won't move because they were controlled by wealthy districts and by high taxpayers, and so they weren't going to take the action necessary. So at the time, the poor districts had about half as much as the wealthy districts in terms of providing for their students. They had no funding for facilities. They were terribly understaffed. They had uncertified teachers. They had buildings falling apart, and the people in those districts, as well as the community's own, knew they had to deal with the situation. So that's why we brought the lawsuit. And it starts with Edgewood right here in San Antonio. Edgewood was the poster child for this case. Well, and Edgewood had been the leader. I mean, Edgewood was the leader in the federal court lawsuit back in 1973, and then Edgewood was I think the leader of the poor school districts and the emotional leader, as well, of the efforts we did in 1984. The whole premise, the underlying premise, is that when you fund schools through property taxes, if the area that is funding the schools is comprised of not affluent people and not really rich property, then it's very difficult to raise enough money. Well, that's right. And in Texas, there is a tremendous disparity between the poorest districts and the richest districts. A district like Edgewood had $20,000 of property for every student, and there were some very wealthy oil and gas districts that had $7 million of property for districts. So it was a tremendous variety. That wouldn't be so bad, except the state relied so much on that money to support the schools, and then didn't supplement enough to make up for the differences. So if Edgewood could raise 100th as much as the surrounding district for a certain tax rate, the state didn't do nearly enough to compensate for that to bring them up to the same levels. So huge disparities in what districts were able to spend per student, what they were able to spend on buildings, what they were able to spend on teachers, huge disparities that the state was not willing to level out. Yeah, the state and ultimately all of us, the taxpayers and the people who vote or not vote, all of us together were the ones who created this situation, too. So you filed the suit back in 1984, and some things improved? I think they did in 1989, and we won a major opinion, unanimous opinion of the Texas Supreme Court saying the system was unconstitutional. And in 1991, we won another one, and both of those were very strong decisions. They forced the legislature both to increase the funding and increase the equity of the system. They didn't solve it, and they didn't go far enough, but they did make some improvements. And then comes 2011, and the legislature cut $5 billion in school funding? Yeah, it was funding from the overall funding that school districts were getting, as well as for specialized programs like pre-K programs, extended day programs, tutoring programs that really reach the child every day, especially underserved children like economically disadvantaged and poor children. And there was no other resort. The legislature had pulled all of that money out, had raised the standards too, had expected all students to graduate college and career ready, which was a good thing, a good move for the legislature. They had expanded testing, high-stakes testing, graduation requirements from four to 15, and what else are school districts and school children supposed to do, except WALO and FELLY, but to use the courts again? Because it has been that leverage point of the only real significant reforms that we've known in Texas dating back the last four decades. So when the legislature pulls $5 billion from public education funding, that shows up close and personal everywhere, right? Absolutely. And it wasn't just the property poor districts that were suing on this. Of course, because they were receiving significantly less money from the system already, it's certainly meant a lot more to them. But class size is increasing across the state. School districts having to curtail extended day programs, summer school programs, cutting back on their pre-kindergarten programs. A lot of these programs that really help target the needs of English language learners and really help them meet the increasing state standards, those were having to be cut back. So it wasn't just the Edgewoods, it was the Dallas, it was the Houstons, it was the Austin ISDs, the El Paso ISDs, several districts, 600 plus across the state, property rich mid-wealth districts and high-wealth districts were all suing because they were all hurting. Wow, wow. And we go back to the pre-k once again. I mean, we know for children who, for whom English is their first language, what pre-k coming to kindergarten, kinder ready means and that means a much more higher likelihood of them reading the grade level in third grade, a much lower likelihood of them dropping out in junior high school, a much higher likelihood of them graduating from high school. And for kids who need extra help, it's the same kind of thing. Yeah, and we have an increasing number of English language learner students. They now make up nearly one out of every five students in the state of Texas. English language learner means for whom English is not their first language. Exactly, and they're not yet proficient in the English language itself. But for economically disadvantaged students, those are now three out of every five students across the state of Texas. I mean, there were districts like Richardson ISD, who are now majority low-income districts. And Richardson ISD in the Dallas area in the past has always been known as a very wealthy upper-class, majority Anglo, majority high-income school district.  And this is a great opportunity for the state of Texas.  And instead, when you starve school districts, they starve the education that students are receiving because they have no other recourse. They can't meet the needs of those students. And they start fearing these students, unfortunately. They don't see these students and their families largely as assets, unfortunately. They see them through more of a deficit mindset. But this is an incredible diversity. We have a lot of, you know, 60% of our kids are low-income, but that shows you how much, how resilient students can be also when they face those challenges of putting food on the table and getting ready, you know, for school and then coming home. So again, you know, this is incredible opportunities that the state has, but unfortunately there's this huge disconnect between expectations, standards from the state and the funding and resources and opportunities that they provide to school districts so those children can access and education to succeed. Those changes have really added to the chance to do something about this because when we filed this lawsuit back in the 80s, the low-wealth districts had a variety of disadvantages. They had less money, less ability to raise money, they had more poor kids, they had more kids who were English language learners, higher cost in general, and they just suffered in every possible way. Now, because the populations, poor population English learners are larger and more distributed, other districts also have a dog in this fight and they have a real interest in it. That's one reason why we started, we started with nine school districts and now there's 600 districts involved in the lawsuits because I think they and their boards and their communities know that all of them need to get involved in this. Now, the next step is to try to get all of that interest and focus into changing the legislature and changing the leadership in the state. But there is a much broader need and a much broader understanding of the issues now. And that's where we go. I mean, where do we go from here? I mean, you've been talking to school districts, you talk to school districts all the time and the folks who were part of this lawsuit, now what? Well, it's going to be absolutely necessary that one children and their families speak up, that they have a voice in this because they can hold their own individual legislator accountable, they can hold their own individual school district accountable as well. And we're going to need a significant uptick in family and parents and community engagement to try and tackle this problem. Because, you know, what the Supreme Court did say after reinventing this record and pretending that class size doesn't matter, pretending that money doesn't matter, despite a robust record showing otherwise, what they did say was that things aren't good in Texas. We're saying this is constitutional, but constitutional is not good enough for the state of Texas. And legislature, it's your responsibility to fix this and provide quality education for all students. So the first thing is, of course, you know, trying to engage parents and students on this issue. But secondly, it also is going to require incredible effort to have property wealthy and property poor and mid-wealth districts all come together and get in the same boat. For years, property wealthy districts have refused to invite other districts onto their ocean liner and said, your tugboat is well enough. Well, they haven't made, you know, the kind of inroads they need on Texas policy through that approach. And we have, you know, these pro-equity and anti-equity groups. They need to realize that if we need to build a robust system, especially with this legislature, who is not always kind to opportunity for all to take any action in the upcoming session, they're going to have to come on the same boat. They're going to have to come together, put aside their differences, quit trying to extend the equity gap between the wealthy and the poor. And if they all come together again, you're not talking about just 600 districts. You're talking about all 1,024 school districts and their 5.5 million school children and families. That's how many there are. And it's going to take some leadership on that. I mean, some leadership from somewhere. Well, it's going to take some leadership. And I mean, that has to start with the governor, the lieutenant governor, and the speaker of the House have to be committed to this and have to say not just that, well, we can't afford to do everything. We have to lower taxes. But say the future of this state is educating these kids. And the only way that Texas is going to be able to compete nationally and internationally is to have a better educated workforce. And we're very low in expenditures for the compared to the rest of the country. We have greater needs than most other states. And the leadership is going to have to bite the bullet and do that. And of course, all of us need to talk to the legislators and the leadership and persuade them. Persuade, that's a very nice word. But I mean, I think we need to persuade them to do this. And we need to make sure that they understand that the political consequences of inaction will be very negative for them. And the tech supreme court, they did, essentially, they changed the law in this case. They changed the standard. We knew what the target was going in. And we tried and proved those claims against standards that the Supreme Court has set before. But while they can change the law, they can't change the facts. And the fact is that we have 68% of Latino students in the state of Texas who are not achieving the state's own low standard for college readiness. We have more than 50% of the kids across the state who are graduating not college and career ready. 72% of African-American students graduating are not college ready. According to the lower standard, the state itself has set. And the Supreme Court did say that we need to bring the school finance system into the 21st century. Apparently, that's not necessarily what the Constitution somehow requires. It's frozen back in time. But they did say that we need to do that. So there are some real critical elements that need to be updated in our school finance system. Parts that haven't been updated since the 1980s. How antiquated is that given our changing times, needs, and expectations? And it's going to be critical that all of this effort be to hold the legislature accountable for its actions. So you just spoke to a school district. And what did you tell them that their next steps are? For teachers, for administrators, parents, what are their next steps? Sure. And it's to continue to try and provide the best opportunities that they are doing. Because there's a lot. There's thousands of schools across Texas that are trying to make do with what they have. And they're not going to stop trying to make do with that. But they're going to have to get their parents organized. They're going to have to reach out and educate their communities and their legislators on this issue and let them know how parents are impacted. I mean, in the case we had a parent who was in a property poor district in Pasadena, and then she did a little bit better income-wise. And they moved to Clear Creek, which was just basically across the side of the tracks in the Houston area. And she saw the differences between no science experiments, between having to take paper to her school for her kids to use for copying paper, not having access to textbooks, not having access to tutoring, to having all of those things plus so much more enrichment across the tracks just because they were in Clear Creek and no longer in Pasadena. I mean, those kind of injustices we should not be talking about, especially because we hold all children to the same standards. Their record in this case, by the way, as a lawyer and professor, I did the first case. But in this case, they developed the most complete and impressive record ever in Texas School of Finance. I mean, they showed the disparities. They showed how they met all of the legal standards as never has been done before. But this long-term goal of improving the education in the state, I just can't stress it too much how important it is. I mean, the only way the state will improve is to put in that extra funding or to use the funds that they have more effectively. One of the things that bothered me most about the decision are many things that did. But one of them bothered me was they talked about how the disparities we rich and poor are about the same as they were before and they're not so much worse. But they've always been bad. And there have always been disparities. And the low-wealth districts have always had less and always needed more. And they've never had solved that. And they talked about the different districts here in Texas. In my own experience, we educated our kids in public schools here in Texas. And then we moved to a Boston suburb. And then we moved to a San Francisco suburb. And there's simply no comparison between what Texas could offer and what those other districts could offer. They just were richer. They had a smaller classes. They had better qualified teachers. They had more robust programs. They had better special ed programs. The fact is, for that additional funding, which they spend, they got a lot. And it was a much better education for our children. So there are some easy, not easy, but there are models out there to look to for how this can be done. I mean, there are solutions. School finance is an incredibly complex. I mean, I've always said that we need to find some other word other than school finance. But if we want to focus on fair funding for all school children and bring the system into the 21st century, there's two really basic things that the legislature could do. Not necessarily the only things they should do, but what they can do. And one is to increase the basic allotment that's the basic funding that school districts receive and raise that up and also increase the weights or the cost adjustments, the extra cost that the state gives for economically disadvantaged and English learner students. Because they do need access to additional programs often to help them meet the same standards and help them meet their own potential. And so just by updating the basic allotment by updating the weights for bilingual education and compensatory education for the low-income students, we can go a long way just by those two core pieces. And as you were saying, that's not just in Edgewood. Now it will have an effect in wealthy school districts like Austin? Like Austin ISD, like Houston ISD, like Northside here in San Antonio, like Northeast in San Antonio, even school districts like Bernie in this area. And Richardson in the Dallas area. Virtually every district across the state of Texas would benefit one way or another from those two core reform measures. And so what stands between now and making that happen is for members of the Texas legislature and the Texas leadership to believe that the constituency, their voters care about this. Absolutely, that's what's needed. It's not just the legislature like what Al said. You know, it's the governor, it's the lieutenant governor. They seem to have other ideas. They're actually happy that the Supreme Court ruling held that the system was minimally constitutional. What they don't understand that there's a huge gap between what a quality education is in Texas and what a constitutionally adequate education is in Texas. And what that means for the future of the state? Well, are we gonna invest in the children who are going to be our future, so that we can cut down on certain costs, which would include crime, which would include welfare potentially in those areas. And just at its basic core, just provide what the district, what the schools and the state should be providing to children to help them achieve their full potential. That shouldn't be too much to ask for it. Because if we don't, again, we're talking about 60% of this children and that rate is growing. We're talking about one out of every five students who's an English learner nearly in our state. And the consequences are gonna be innumerable. To some extent, the Supreme Court opinion called the bluff of the leadership and the legislature. They've often said the court should stay out of this. We the legislature know what's best for Texas, we can handle it. And the leadership has said the court should stay out of it. We're the leadership, we can do, we're elected statewide, we know what we need for Texas. Well, now the court's out of it. So now they're gonna have to do it. Let's see, they blamed a lot of it on, well, we can't do it because we never know what the court's gonna do. We can't do this because we never know what the court's gonna do. Well, now the court has basically said, we're not gonna deal with it anymore. You, the leadership, have to deal with it and we'll see what happens now. Yeah, and a band-aid's not gonna suffice this time. I mean, the schools are in crisis mode. They're hemorrhaging and a band-aid is not going to fix this kind of wound. It's gonna take significant work on behalf of the legislature to make sure that opportunity is provided to all. I think the line from the decision was a band-aid on top of a band-aid. That's right, that's right. But there was a lot of nice language in there. They're just no good opinion there. Well, thank you so very much for taking the time. I really appreciate it. And we can come back and revisit in the future. Yes, we can. Thank you very much. Thank you.


So now we're going to start looking at how we can convert between bases. In the previous video we saw a couple of bases that are of special interest to us. Binary, decimal, octal, and hexadecimal. But first we're going to look at four different ways to convert between any two arbitrary bases. So this will allow us to convert between, say, decimal and binary, or decimal and base 13, any two bases that we're interested in. And then we'll also look at a special purpose way that will allow us to convert between specific bases. In this case things like binary and octal or binary and hexadecimal. Now we're going to be looking at four different ways to convert between arbitrary bases and I generally recommend that students learn at least a pair of them. The reason is that each of these methods requires you to do your arithmetic in either the source base or the destination base. If you pick a pair of them, where one of them allows you to do your arithmetic in the source base and the other in the destination base, then you'll be able to choose which one you want to do your arithmetic in based on the problem that you've got. All four of these methods have the same basic logic behind them. And we'll look at how each of these is derived from basic concepts. But they're fundamentally looking at what is a number. What does this thing mean for us? So given a number like, we'll be able to say what is this number precisely? What does this number actually mean? So first of all, we typically write a subscript with the base at the end. This allows the reader to easily see what base we're working in so that we don't get this confused with say hexadecimal or even octal here. The one exception is hexadecimal where we'll occasionally write a 0x at the beginning to indicate that it's a hexadecimal number followed by whatever digits I've got. So looking at this number, I can actually expand this to tell you really what this number signifies. And the way I'm going to do that is by adding in all of the information about the places. So with Arabic numerals, all of these places have some implicit meaning. And for the moment, we're going to make those explicit. So I'm going to expand this number using scientific notation, allowing me to explicitly represent all the information about each of the places. So I'll start by working from left to right. I have a 1 in my first position. And this is times 10 to the 0, 1, 2, 3, 4. And then I'll look at my second position. So I've got 3 times 10 to the 0, 1, 2, 3rd position. And then I have 6 times 10 squared plus 2 times 10 to the first. Plus 5 times 10 to the 0. This expression is exactly the same thing as this. But now I've made everything very explicit. And it's going to be a whole lot easier to convert between this expression and a corresponding expression in a different base. I can, of course, repeat the same process for, say, beef over here. Where I have b times 16 to the third. Plus e times 16 squared plus e times 16 to the first. Plus f times 16 to the 0. This time the big change is that I've got a different base here. Before I was working in base 10, now I'm working in hexadecimal. So I have 16s for all of the bases. Each of these places represents 16 possible values. So moving over each place, we have 16. We have 16 options in each of these cases. So we're working in base 16. And accordingly, each of these is being multiplied by 16. Over here we have 10 possible options. So we're multiplying by 10 each time we're moving over one place. When we convert between two different bases, the basic idea is that we want to find the coefficients in the new base that correspond to the expression that we had before. And that's going to be what underlies all of the different methods that we used to convert between two arbitrary bases.


Well, I never thought I'd be saying this in a million years, but I can really relate to Tanimojo And I'm sure a lot of you can too if you came from a screwed up child What's up everybody, this is Chris from the rewired soul where we talk about the problem But focus on the solution and if you're new to my channel my channel is all about mental health And sometimes what I do is I take what's going on in the YouTube community Try to see what we can learn to improve our own mental and emotional well-being So if you're into that stuff make sure you subscribe and ring that notification bell and yeah, Tanimojo She she mentioned that she was gonna be making a video and wow she made an hour long video Okay, so yeah, I just I just checked it out And she made this on the tail of a bunch of stuff going on people are upset with her recent MTV unfiltered or no filtered episodes and she wanted to clear some things up But yeah, she actually opened up got really vulnerable. It's probably my favorite video I've seen of Tanimojo's like ever Alright, but yeah, like I said, I know I could relate to a lot and I'm sure a lot of you can too So I want to discuss here some of my experience as well some things that have helped me out Over the years, but before I get started like you saw in the disclaimer at the beginning of this video I am not a licensed professional. I'm just a dude trying to work on my own mental health And I'm always trying to learn from other people's experiences see where I can relate and Maybe some things that I'm not addressing that I need to keep working on right So I try to come on here and discuss it with all of you beautiful people out there. All right, so Anyways Just be warned to I might make a few videos on this there's so much to break down and discuss So just just be warned about that. But anyways, Tanimojo opens up about, you know, struggling with depression and Going through 2019, but also she goes back into her childhood and she discusses, you know, how difficult Her childhood was and how that affected her growing up and turning into a young woman into adulthood It's not something that I like talk about or open up about a lot online But like I don't even know how to say it but like my childhood was just the worst thing on earth And I'm very lucky to have gotten out of that But obviously I spent like 15 years of my life being so incredibly emotionally abused and physically abused and like mentally abused And just like tormented and like I was raising myself all of those years and like I built up so much Hatred for my parents and like so much anger for like the entire life that they'd given me And it was like instantly I got thrown into this way out and obviously when you have a way out of a life like that You're going to take it, especially when it's the thing you're most passionate about And like I can I can relate there like those of you who don't know like not only am I a drug addict now alcoholic and recovery I've been sober for seven and a half years, but my mom was an alcoholic until I was 20 and I started hating the world and I had all these built-up emotions and feelings and Everything that I I didn't I didn't it wasn't even that I didn't want to deal with them I didn't know how to deal with them like one of the reasons I do this channel is because Nobody ever talked to me about my mental health when I was younger and I became very not only angry but depressed and anxious There were so many things that affected me from having an alcoholic mom And I had a dad who was raising me, but he worked all the time. He was gone all the time. That's very difficult For a child when they're growing up All right but something Something that I realized later on much later on in life is That I needed and I had a choice. Okay, I had a choice to either accept What my parents are or forgive them and move forward like it was just one of those two things Like we get so caught up in trying to like I think about it Like fighting the waves of the universe. All right, like we're just going against these waves And we're just don't understand why it's not working. We have so much resistance And we're constantly wishing and hoping that things were different than the way they are and that makes us absolutely Miserable, okay So if you're somebody like me who struggled with this type of childhood growing up just realize that you have a choice Okay, like I understand like for me personally and this is just what helps me so Take with it what you will but like for me like I know it's it's your family I know it's your parents and things like that but Something I had to do something.  I Absolutely had to do that for my mental health like Trying to force this like square peg into a round hole It just wasn't working for me and it was driving me absolutely nuts like Tanimojo discusses in this these ongoing problems You know that she's had with her parents since she was a child like the emotional abuse and everything like that And she talks about how that spiraled into relationships And we need to understand too that the relationships that we get into a lot of that is based on our childhood If we had a toxic childhood if we grew up in toxic relationships It sets the stage for the relationships that we get in later in lives. It has this whole Ripple effect, right? Tanimojo talks about you know, like her mom coming down for Christmas and this massive fight that they got into So the first thing let's talk about real quick is forgiveness like forgiveness of our past forgiveness of our childhood So for me, I think Like I think one of the things that helped me out But I know you can benefit from this too. One of the things that helped me out was when I became a father All right, so look at Tanimojo Tanimojo like if she if she takes a look at her life, you know What's presented on the internet and you know everything from you know Her her scandals or controversies or drama Tanacon all those things like a lot like she has a song called f up right like I'm an f up Right. So when you look at that and you look at yourself, you're just like, oh, well I'm not I'm not doing all that great in life and a major part of forgiveness and forgiving the past is empathy Empathy empathy empathy empathy empathy, right? So someone in Tanimojo situation or even my situation, right when I got older I had to look at how screwed up I was I was so screwed up I was so screwed up and you know what it was so easy to blame my parents and trust me trust me They they had a lot of fault in this thing, right? But it was so easy for me to point the finger and blame them for why I was so screwed up But here's where empathy comes in Why are they screwed up? See, we don't get past that point of thinking how they affected us But once we take one step further and say what affected them Did they have a screwed up childhood? Did their parents screw them up? So then when they became parents, they screwed me up and this This is just this huge epiphany, right and then we take it on to decide whether or not We're gonna break the cycle and I'm happy to say with my son I think I've broken that cycle. He has you know an amazing amazing mother, right? And we co-parent like you know, we split custody and everything like that But I I got sober when he was three years old, you know And I do my best to be an amazing father to him today But if not that cycle just continues like if I didn't get sober if I just stayed screwed up and didn't work on my mental health He grow up probably treat his kids like crap, right? So anyways when it comes to forgiveness empathize empathize why are people the way they are it's easy to just think oh Well, they suck. They're evil. They're terrible. They were just born with this like you know, this demon You know, and they're just an awful person But we have to realize it's something probably screwed them up once we realize that When we think about how screwed up we are and what happened to us and we empathize with them things get a lot easier All right, but the next thing we'll talk about Is this clip right here? I look back now and I realize I just like wanted to be sad not necessarily wanted But it's like all I could do and I was just getting more and more and more and more depressed and when I get really depressed I like shut down completely. There's nothing anyone can say to me that is going to get me out of it I like stopped getting out of bed for days. I literally stopped going to the bathroom I hold my pee and will like literally lay there in bed for days until I'm like struggling like that's how Depressive I get it's like everything my body just like can't do it and this like level of depression was so Different than anything I'd ever felt in my life. Like I thought I'd wanted to die in the past I thought I'd been depressed in the past, but it was like like sometimes we just got to let go We just got to let go man. I just finished Rereading this book one of my favorite books. It's called good reasons for bad feelings It's the evolutionary psychology behind a lot of different mental health issues like depression anxiety, you know Eating disorders addiction everything like that But anyways, I don't have time to go all the way into it But one of the reasons that we experience low mood which can turn into depression is Because we evolved that way because saying to give up to let go right like if you were out there picking berries Right and the berries like ran out on that bush and you just kept spending time there You might die because you spent too much time on this empty bush that has no berries So we evolved in a way for our mind to say like it's time to let go of this thing, right? So think about that for a second How much of your depression is because you're not letting go right because you're not letting go of a relationship? Because you're not letting go of a job because you're not letting go of things whatever it is, right?  I love you, but I can't talk to you for a while I need to distance myself from you for a few months Like that's what I did and I do even say a few months Actually, I just said for a while until I figure this stuff out and during that time it was a lot of soul surging It was a lot of like hey, can I accept her the way she is because here's the thing Like I want you to think about this real quick when you are 20 something years old. How old are your parents, right?  Are they going to change now? Don't get me wrong like some families go to family therapy and things like that, but We can't set our expectation that they're going to go to therapy that they're gonna work on their issues from childhood, right? So we either accept it or we eliminate it So during my break and my soul searching I realized that I just had to accept it my expectations just Went out the window and I'm like, this is how you are I'm just gonna deal with it and it's my choice of whether or not I'm gonna let it affect me anymore Okay, but the last thing I want to talk about is Tana discusses her her substance abuse problem It's just so sad as time goes on and seeing how much they like don't understand me and never will and obviously just like Feeling alone in that. I feel like that night was the night that I like really picked again And that is another video I've actually already filmed for this series talking about like drugs and their effect on me and how it's you know How I've kind of struggled with that like my entire life And yeah, like listen guys like this is how my addiction started I was just trying to numb all the pain all the sadness everything and I'm so free I'm so free today And it's something that I just hope for everybody out there that I don't have to run for my feelings and emotions anymore I don't need to numb myself Anymore and it's come from a lot of hard work like when I first got sober it was 12-step programs I now do a million different things for my mental health the journaling meditating but most importantly like I do therapy man like I do therapy and Again, I'm so proud of 10 mojo opening up and being very vulnerable about this and there's so much more to talk about in her video But like although I'm proud of her for opening up like listen Here here's my one thing and this is just my opinion my opinion if You have the resources if you have the money for therapy Like what are you doing? What are you doing? Why are you not in therapy? Why are you not giving it a try, right? And if you have tried it and your therapist sucked find a new one man, like what's worse? What's worse this total self-destructive behavior because we don't want to address our emotions or Doing some therapy Figuring out how to work with them figuring out different strategies and tools like there's plenty of therapies that are rooted In science, you know what I'm saying, so it bumps me out when I see millionaire youtubers who are just You know Self-sabotaging self-destructive behavior all these things and they're not getting help and trust me I get it It's scary to get help. It's scary to walk into a situation saying alright here. I am I'm about to address all the things that I've been running away from for years. I get that but like Which type of life do we want to live? Right, which road do we want to go down? You know what I'm saying? So if you have the resources give it a try give it a try and if you don't have the resources There are so many other things that you can do. I've done videos I've done blog posts about things you could do if you can't afford therapy There are so many things that you can do on your own and I realize this when I went to 12-step meetings You don't got to do it because there's a good chance that you're not an addict or an alcoholic But 12-step meetings were free and that built the strongest foundation like if I didn't do that I wouldn't be working on my mental health today, but it was free. Okay, there are plenty of support groups There are plenty books that you could buy with cognitive behavioral therapy dialectical behavioral therapy every form of therapy You can think of there is a book on it. There are worksheets. There are workbooks There are so many different things. There are free support groups online. You know what I'm saying but anyways like I Hope I don't know like I hope people can empathize with Tana a little bit more I know I definitely can after hearing a little bit more of her story and The last thing I'll say is Like our childhood is not an excuse for our behavior But it gives it gives us a reason that we can look at and start working on saying oh, that's why I'm so screwed up It's time to work on that recently in therapy. It was just brought to light some old behaviors I have coming back up that are rooted in my childhood. So it's like oh, okay those those just started growing again time to address those right and there was a triggering event that Happened that my therapist helped me realize. All right, but anyways Again, like I said, I might do a few videos on Tana's video because it was an hour long and there's multiple things To discuss it so just be prepared But that's all I got for this video if you like this video Please give it a thumbs up if you're new make sure you subscribe and ring that notification bell and a huge huge Thank you to everybody who supports the channel around patreon as well as everybody who supports the channel by buying my mental health Books at the reward soul calm as well as everybody who supports the channel by getting merch from the merch store All right. Thanks again for watching. I'll see you next time


Hello and welcome to In the World of Winooski. This month I'm joined by staff from the Champlain Valley Office of Economic Opportunity. We're gonna learn about programs and resources available to residents in our area around housing economic supports and other things. So why don't I have my guests introduce themselves? Karin. Hello, I'm Karin from the Champlain Valley of Economic Opportunity. I do education and outreach for the Fair Housing Project. Thank you. And Karin. Karin Ames, Housing Education Coordinator for the Vermont Tenants Program. Awesome, I'm really excited to have you here so that Winooski residents can learn more about programs and resources available to them. Karin, would you start with giving us a brief overview about CVOEO as we would call it? Yeah, sure, sure. So CVOEO is one of the five offices of Economic Opportunity in the state. You know, they're organized by region. So our typical coverage area for programs like weatherization, community action, head start, those sorts of programs is Addison County, Chittenden County, Franklin, and Grand Isle Counties. We offer three main services. I think that was three main buckets. One is our tenant hotline, which is<PHONE_NUMBER>.  And a couple of us monitor the hotline, but our main tenant advocate has been doing this job for like nine or 10 years, and it's been with CVOEO even longer. Wealth of information. That's awesome, yeah. So anyone who's renting or moving into a renting situation can reach this hotline to answer their questions. Absolutely. And one of the services that we provide is a lease review. So we'll read the lease, make sure you understand the terms of your lease, point out anything that you might want to try renegotiating with the landlord, things like that. So that's one main service that we provide. The second part is housing education. So our two main workshops are tenant skills, which covers rights and responsibilities for a tenant, as well as fair housing basics. And then finding housing. And finding housing covers what is affordable housing? How do you approach your story? How do you address barriers like I've never rented before, so I don't have a landlord reference, which can be a big barrier. I've got poor credit or I don't have any credit. What to do about that? I have a criminal background. How do I address that? And then just the nuts and bolts of where to look, how to pull together application materials, how to be organized, what to look for when you go out to a viewing, that kind of thing. So that's area, service area number two. And then number three would be advocacy. And that's at the local level as well as statewide, in the legislature. Oh, okay. So just general advocacy around housing issues or? Mm-hmm, around, particularly focused on tenants or fair housing or mobile home program. We forgot to mention that we are representing two of three programs in the housing advocacy program. We also, the third statewide program is the mobile home program. Okay, less relevant in Winooski, but a good program to have still. Absolutely, yeah. Corinne, do you want to talk a little bit about the Fair Housing Project in your work? Yeah, so I work very closely with Vermont tenants doing education and outreach for fair housing. And fair housing, what does fair housing really mean? It's the right to rent, buy, or finance a home free from discrimination. So when I'm speaking to renters, often times, if they have a question about their tenancy, I would actually first direct them to Vermont tenants just to see, talking over with a hotline advocate and better understand whether what they're talking about is maybe a landlord-tenant law issue. And then if it's a discrimination issue, they refer folks right over to me. And then it's important when we talk about fair housing to talk about who's protecting under fair housing. So fair housing is a federal law, which means that all across the country there are seven protected classes. That includes sex, religion. This is where I'm like, I want to make sure I don't get them wrong. Check your list. Seven federal protected classes. Country of national origin. Let's see, family status, that's a really important one. So often times when we're talking about family status, we're talking about having families with children. There's lots of discrimination that folks face when they have children, which are actually against the Fair Housing Act. And disabilities are really important federal protected class. In Vermont, we have expanded the Fair Housing Act to include seven additional protected classes. And that includes, one of the big ones is receipt of public assistance. So here in Vermont, it is legal to discriminate against vouchers, housing vouchers such as section eight, but also, you know, we had the CARES voucher program, which was a limited program. And there's lots of other public assistance that people receive like SSI and, you know, food assistance. All of these kind of subsidies are protected under the Fair Housing Act, which means in Vermont, it would be illegal for a landlord to say, actually, I don't accept section eight or I don't rent to folks on food stamps. And then, you know, this is a really short kind of segment. We do a whole workshop on Fair Housing alone. We also, as Karyn mentioned, have regular tenants workshops. So really focused on tenants rights and responsibilities. And that includes Fair Housing. And it has kind of a targeted lend for tenants to kind of understand what is actually a complex concept. Well, the concept is not complex. Everyone should get equal opportunity to housing and housing choice. But what that actually means when it comes into practice can be really complicated to understand. The important thing to know is that when we talk about Vermont tenants, we're talking about tenants. That's a resource that's for tenants. And when we're talking about Fair Housing, the Fair Housing Project, which is my organization, that is for anyone involved in housing. So we do work with tenants. We also work with housing providers and municipalities. And really any kind of group or organization that's working towards housing inclusion and understanding their housing rights. That's great. And you mentioned tenants rights. Some people may not be aware, like there are certain things that a landlord must provide to give you quality housing. There's something called the warrant of habitability, which in order to rent to someone, the property has to meet a certain minimum rental housing health codes. Yep. So common questions that we get on the hotline include habitability a lot because Vermont's housing stock is so old. When you skis is particularly old. I was about to say, yep, yep, it's true. And habitability is a concern. So things like mold, pests, infestations, heat issues, structural issues like any damage to roofing or holes in the, you know, a porch, railing not being secure, just any number of things we get calls on. And that landlord access is another area we get a lot of calls on because when someone rents and they move in, they have a right to privacy in their home. And the landlord can only enter for specific reasons, you know, inspect, to do repairs, to provide a service. And with notice. And with notice, only between 9 a.m. and 9 p.m., with 48 hours notice. Unless the tenant agrees they have a repair, they want something done at 7 a.m. when the worker's, you know, ready to do it, then great. But otherwise you have a right to privacy in your home for sure. And then what are the, getting a security deposit back? Security deposit is always refundable. And often tenants can struggle getting that back from a landlord. It's happened to me in the past, yeah. There can be disputes over, oh, well, I caused this damage, no, I didn't, or what's wear and tear? And security deposits, you know, can only be used for significant damage, not normal wear and tear. And what we recommend tenants do is take pictures and do a walkthrough and note down any damages when they move in and then repeat that at the end. And that way in Winooski, they would go to small claims court and if they've got that evidence, it would really help. For all of these things, our general approach is problem solving. First, try talking to your landlord. Very often we get calls and I say, did you try talking to your landlord? Oh no, I'm too, I'm too anxious about that. Or, you know, I'm unsure how to have that conversation and so feel free to call to like work through how to have that conversation on the hot, call the hotline for that. But that's always the first step because sometimes things can be resolved just with a conversation. And then if it needs something more, we have sample letters on our website which I probably should show you. Yeah, let's take a look. So let's say this is our main CVOE website and if you go to get help, oops, I keep thinking it's a touch screen, sorry about that. If you go to get help and then down here at Tenants Resources, you come to the main Vermont Tenants webpage and let's see, scrolling down. The hotline number is right here and then what you'll find in multiple ways but over here on the sidebar, there's a section called sample letters and those are super handy pre-formatted letters for you to use in communication with your landlord. Say for example, we touched on landlord access, this is a letter that you can download, print off or pick up at our office or call the hotline, we'll mail it to you, whatever technology, whatever you need and just fill it in and this just reminds the landlord, hey, we've had a conversation, I've notified you that you're not respecting my privacy, here's the law. And very often that'll be like, oh, okay, just done it serious and I'm gonna respect that. And it just lays the groundwork if you have to go even another step further. You know, so that can be really helpful and then other things on our website, probably this is a great first landing page, the Tenants Resources page under the get help section but if you wanna jump right to signing up for a workshop, you can go over here to learn and then there's another program around financial classes so that you'll see those but the renters workshops are where you can access our various workshops and we offer workshops, we're just getting back into doing some in person work for sure but for the past few years, we've been doing workshops over Zoom and also this past year, we provided our two main tenant skills and finding housing fully online self-paced on demand. I saw some videos on there so someone could go and check that information out. Yeah and it's all free. So this is like a free and easy way as long as you have access to technology in the language, which brings up another point. Not everybody in our state speaks English, we recommend that and we've always offered interpreted either Zoom or in person tenant skills classes or finding housing classes when folks need that but happily the past six months, good chunk of my job has been to make translated videos into so far five different languages, both our main workshops. So they'll be the same visuals that an English speaking person will see and then narrated more additional material than the visuals. So those videos, five of them are like, just on the verge of being public and then we have another five languages to go in the next few months. In addition to that, I should mention maybe our definitive guide, which looks like this, that's the cover and that's the, ooh, there we go, there we go. That's the graphic to look for and you can also access it digitally. Yeah, the handshake and you can access that digitally on our website as well but this is sort of, it was originally done as a collaboration between Vermont Tenants and the Vermont Landlord's Association. Oh, that's excellent. So it's written so that you have tips for renters on one side and tips for owners and that can be really helpful to understand both sides. Sometimes a tenant doesn't understand what the landlord's perspective is. So having both present right there about an issue is sometimes really helpful and this piece we're also translating into those same 10 languages, it will be available. Is this distributed somewhere? How does one get a copy of this? Digitally, you can access it any time. We initially had these nice published pieces, yeah, but these are actually fairly expensive. So if folks really can't access it online, that's not a problem, they can come and we can make printout copies. Okay, that's good to know. With a copy or it's cheaper for us. Yeah, for sure. Most people do access it online that we're aware of anyway. Yeah, and usually I make copies for folks. Yeah, I mean, definitely we're always happy if there's a place where people are getting resources or dropping by a lot. We love getting our tenants rights or a fair housing material out. So in addition to this comprehensive tenants guide, which is both, oh, and this is the illustrated guide, which looks very nice, but it's also nice because the illustrations help us understand kind of what's happening. It just makes the wording and the law a little bit more clear. And this is another guide that is also offered translated. So if translated material, we're always happy to help get it out into the community, help people access it. If they need it printed, we can do that. I have it at our office. We can drop off material if there's a community center that you think would really benefit. And we have lots of one-pager resources like this that just kind of outline the quick and dirty for easy access. You know, one other thing we should mention because we have done these workshops in Winooski and different venues or in different partnerships is we really enjoy partnering with community organizations to offer sort of a dedicated know-your-right session, which is a combination of some basic tenant skills and some fair housing and a lot of Q&A. So for example, we might partner with a housing authority and offer that to a particular residential building for those residents to talk about the issues that are particular to them. We've done them for just particular groups and it can be, especially if there's translation involved there or it's our interpretation involved with those sessions, that can be a real great way for people to access it. If people call the hotline, there is a way for them to have interpretation but it's sort of a process. It is a bit of a barrier there. And so these tenant, these know-your-right sessions can be a way with interpretation to have more individual discussion and more time for Q&A. How long does a workshop last roughly? The know-your-rights can be typically an hour but they tend to go a little longer. I always say budget an hour and a half just to be safe. If people are really asking questions, we usually take that full hour and a half. And but if you're watching it on demand online, you could self-pace and spread it out. Oh yes, and take it at your leisure. And you can walk away and get back into it. You can go back and rewatch things. So that's a really handy tool. But of course with folks that need interpretation, that it's gonna be, you know, that's not an accessible resource but we do lots of videos will be and they're about an hour in length. Okay. And we do lots of live interpretive workshops that have been really successful. Yeah. And what about the other, I saw on the website when you were showing it some other housing resources. Okay. So let's see what, oops. Shhh. Let's see if we go back up. Maybe we can just get an overview. If you're looking for help. Yeah, just so folks know kind of what is out there. Yeah. So the housing resources and weatherization. So if you have an older home or you're living in an older home, even as a tenant, I think that you could, you know, work with your landlord. And there's, and you're paying for heat and it's super expensive and you know there's not great insulation. You could apply for a weatherization program and they come and help insulate your home. They do an audit depending on what's needed and all that. So that's one resource under there. The one other thing that we should probably highlight right now is heating, fuel and utilities assistance because that's, you know, we're in that season. Yeah. And so there's three main heating programs and one is a statewide program that you apply for up and, I think the application is up until February. Don't quote me on that. And then the other one is crisis fuel which each office of economic opportunity administers. And so for Winooski folks, they would call CVOO for help with that and then there's a warmth program. So if you're struggling to pay for heat and please call our community action office. And so that number is<PHONE_NUMBER>. You can also find it just by coming here, get help, say, you know, you want heating fuels and overview and that number should pop up right over here on the right as well. And I should mention we also at WinooskiVT.gov we have a link, we have a page with housing resources and there's a link over to your space. And thinking earlier about the housing quality, you know, we do local code enforcement. We do. And if there's, you know, if somebody has a problem in their house, they can contact the city as well for help with the, you know, if the landlord isn't cooperating. Yeah, I should have followed through on the further steps. You talk to your landlord, you send a letter. If there's a repair issue, especially if it's what's called a major code violation which is something that is a violation of that rental housing health code that I mentioned. The serious major health code violations affect your safety and health. The next step would be to not only alert your landlord but call your town health officer or in the larger communities like Winooski, your code enforcement office. And they come out and do a full inspection and they give a report to make sure that as a tenant you ask for that report. And then they give a report to the landlord and they kind of say, well, this is serious. You have X amount of time to finish this. This is not so serious. You have a different amount of time to complete that. And so they should be there to facilitate the repairs being done for both the tenant and the landlord. What about the, I saw there were some financial programs as well. Yes, and those are so helpful for people. So I'm glad you pointed that out. I'm just gonna skip to learn because that probably will be the place. Personal finance classes, including keys to credit and spend smart are the two that I'm super familiar with and the Financial Futures Group has made, has transferred their programs online as well, although they do do some Zoom-based classes. One of the things that we've been doing for a number of years is pairing the financial classes, some financial classes, including credit budgeting with the housing classes in a program that results in a preferred renter certificate. Oh, interesting. So that is a way for tenants who either they're brand new or they've got a barrier, they're struggling, they have poor credit, so they're getting turned away. It's a way for them to take the classes, understand the basics, and then one of the key components of that program that is really helpful is Financial Futures does financial coaching. So that's a meeting half hour to an hour with someone that they pull your individual credit, your credit, not just talk about credit, but your credit and make a plan for either repairing or establishing credit and then they will work with you on a budget as well. And that can be really helpful when you're going to a landlord. It's one thing to say I've got some income, it's another thing to say here's my income and my expenses and here's how I plan to meet my rent payment. That's really interesting because you might have a landlord, oftentimes they do a credit check and if they're being dicey about wanting to rent to you, you can proactively say, I know my score is not great, but here's what I'm doing about that. Exactly, and especially in those cases where the landlord is like, well, how are you gonna afford this? Which I think we all know rents are high right now. It's lots of people are severely cost burdened by the rent and so having that budget that CBOO helps you put together really shows that you're thinking proactively around your housing stability. And then they have other programs as well in financial futures, micro-business. Which I actually can't really wanna plug the micro-business program, especially for anyone that has a self-employment income, it's been a, I've gone through that program, it's been really helpful resource, especially getting in touch with grant programs for micro-businesses. And around COVID they've gotten access to some funding that they've been able to help people connect with and they help you put together your business plan and connect with financing. So that's a really great program. And then there's of course, if we do free taxes in the spring, that's a great program for folks that need that support doing their taxes. And I've certainly relied on that a lot in the past. And yeah, are we missing anything? There's 11, I think, programs, so I'm sure we are, but Head Start, Head Start, that comes to mind. I mean, there's just a lot of resources and support out there once you know about it. And so I'm really grateful to have you come on today so that we can help spread the word and continue to get you connected and when you ski, so folks know what's available to them. Do you wanna remind us the website, the hotline, all that good stuff? Yes, so the website is www.cvoeo.org. The hotline is<PHONE_NUMBER>. And I think I'll leave it at that. I mean, it could give you more contact information, but if you call the hotline, Mattle is just gonna refer you over to wherever you need to go. And I think just like the no I'd love to end on is if you're struggling financially, you should reach out to CBOEO, see if there's a resource for you. And if you have any questions about your housing, anything that doesn't feel quite right or just wanna go over your lease with someone, anything like that, you should just call the hotline to be err on the side of safety. It's better to call before there's an emergency and know what's out there than to wait until that real emergency moment, which you can also call us for. That's great. It sounds really flexible and like there's a lot of support options. I really appreciate the work you do, the work of Champlain Valley Office of Economic Opportunity. And thank you for coming in tonight. Hope we can get more Winooski residents connected to this great work that you're doing. Yeah, thank you so much for having us. Thank you.


The new ARQ course of fire, it promotes a combat mindset and instills the mission of the Marine Corps Rifle Squad, which is to locate close with and destroy the enemy by fire and maneuver. The philosophy is pretty much written in the course of fire itself, with Marines starting at the 500 yard lines, engaging targets, and ultimately concluding at the 25 yard line with different engagement techniques. You start out from far and go near, so you're going to start at the 500. You are going to shoot eight iterations of five rounds, so that's going to total out to 40 rounds.  You can use support via a pack, your mag, a bipod, whatever you want as long as it's issued to you. And then from there, you'll move up to the 300 yard line. You can also again go in the prone and use support as well. This time you're going to be shooting control pairs, and you're also going to do this eight times for a total of 16 rounds. After that, you move up to the 200 yard line. It's a pretty similar concept, except the only things that change are you're going to be shooting off of barricades, so there's no more prone. And then you'll also be shooting moving targets, which are moving much quicker than the moving targets we currently know. The 100 is the same thing, movers, and you're shooting off the barricades. Now, when you move up to the 25, things kind of change a little bit. You start out with six destroy headshots, so each headshot is its own destroy. And then once you finish with that, you're going to move to your drills portion, which is going to be four failure to stops, four box drills, and then two failure to stops on the move. I actually look forward to the whole entire course of fire. It's a lot more exciting. It's a lot more fun, and I think Marines are leaving here a lot better trained and ready for those deployments that they're going to be going on. This is definitely going to push Marines to get more comfortable with their gear and find out what positions work for them and how it will actually translate to a real life situation.


I'm Crystal. I know a lot of you out there are mothers or maybe you have everybody has a mother so if you have been a mother you have a mother you want to be a mother well today we're going to talk about motherhood but in what way I know there's vast amounts of areas and it's just like oh god yeah what's what's so interesting about talking about moms well maybe and maybe not today we are going to come here and talk about that in fact we have my mom here and we're going to join by another mom later to talk about what it means to be a mom today and why it seems to be a little bit harder than it used to be before I mean ironically with the technology and the conveniences of today's society why why is it harder now let's hear it from the moms so welcome to our show so I'm going to introduce our first guest today David Key did I pronounce that right yes okay David Key uh Goodman is that your full name Robinson Robinson good my full name stream on t david kiosk you may flower Goodman Robinson but david keys just fine I love it that's great it says a lot about you already and your little one let's make it this is jenny's tomb this is camuel camuel what an interesting name camuel skywise jay freeman we like a lot of names uh-huh right okay well that's great because there's a lot to talk about today and there are lots of hats we wear as women today yes yeah so let's refer back to your involvement with the fringe festival a few weeks ago um there was a piece that I unfortunately missed about motherhood which I heard was outrageously amazingly stimulating let's hear a little bit about it and your involvement with it so my part in the show was doing a co monologue about giving birth and the point of the the particular co monologue the other mom was talking about her birth story in the hospital versus my birth story in the um in the home I had a home birth oh wow yes not in a bathtub or anything just like a okay yeah um just a regular birth you had somebody come in and you did that on the bed did you have it on or on the did you squat like yeah really yeah that type of breath cool it was very awesome and I would hope to well I'd like to have another and I would do it the same way why I just like being a funny really comfortable you know what you're doing out there don't you yeah is he like that at home all the time it's the is it the I don't want to say terrible too but it's it that rebellious too that that just defies everything and knows how to get the attention yes yes he just turned to excellent oh okay so um but this is brilliant because this is exactly what we moms have to deal with and a lot of people don't who don't have kids or don't have the patients or forget what it's like to be a mom or to have kids around they go just take them away you know and it's it's that multitasking it's the fact that we don't know what's going to happen next and how we have to deal with that yes it is one of the biggest challenges is is having what we're going to do with that yeah having him in places that aren't designed to have small children yeah is a really big challenge even if it's just a friend's home who doesn't have kids right uh oh you're going to do that are you going to pour it over that go on and how do you deal with it when you're doing rehearsing rehearsing for the play how did you deal with it would you have your baby with you well it was all mom so we all brought babies oh that's right okay beautiful in fact I saw one show it was a dance piece where they brought a baby into the dance performance which was beautiful yes yeah it was really really nice yeah um so do you think do you agree with my opening premise that um moms today do have it harder than before I do agree why because the lifestyle and culture of our modern society yeah is more focused on nuclear families and I think perhaps that's different for a lot of people in Hawaii but not for me and so I don't have much family that's close and I think they would step in and help out in ways that people who aren't actually related to me don't I think that's a very good point I mean it's kind of it's just so crazy that the more modern and contemporary are the more we're just consumed with our own small little lives and the old concept of a village and and having relatives and sisters and brothers and everyone around to help out is kind of a lost art if I had a nickel for every time I wished for a village where is your family now most of them are well they're kind of spread out yeah right yeah big island california Ohio yeah but even if they were together you know there's not that whole family unity as it used to be without them actually living on the same property right it's they'd be caught up in their lives and absolutely they would still be more available for you know like my mom was here just to have a sitter once in a while more often than you know otherwise do you have a good relationship with your mom I think so it's it's it's somewhere in the middle do you think that having had your child it affected your relationship with your mom like did you see her in a different light and you gained a new respect for her absolutely okay and also for her love for me right because thinking about how I love him and thinking oh my god my mom feels that way about me as she said she still does and so it's like wow she loves me a lot and you cannot feel that way until you actually have your own and it never goes away this motherhood concept I think I mean it's hard for you to foreshadow 20 years from now because you like can't even get out of today's you know mess um but you know when he becomes an adult and he has a child and your relationship with him at that time you know can you even fathom that nope are you so muddled in today's mess or chaos in his world that you cannot even think of other things that you want to do right now most of the time I I mean thinking about what I need a priority because no one else will you know you sound like you really don't have any help or support why oh let's oh no his dad is really really helpful okay okay all right but I work three days a week and he works the other four and we trade yeah wow so this lucky guy gets to be with one of us every day yeah well I mean that there's a trade-off right I mean the people who do work and and want to have put their little kitties in daycare and what does that do with the relationship because you mentioned in your email how it affects you said that even you're the stress you have sometimes affects how you feed him or how he senses your yes he can absolutely feel if I'm rushed and impatient come here honey put your car up here yeah do you want to sit on the other leg where do you want to have some water look look look see see you always have to have that um yeah so how do you feel about these distractions in your life sometimes it's really really frustrating yeah almost not a daily basis yeah yeah but it really it just really challenges me to have you ever lost it in a way that you feel like it's just oh my god why why be a mother a couple times yeah yes yeah and what do you usually do to kind of regain yourself you do have a little bit do you have an outlet do you have something that you can do where any moms out there are looking at you and looking at your beautiful child going oh my god i'm so glad i'm not there you know he's so cute yeah nothing pops to mind she's kind of in the moment well you seem pretty chilled yeah so you must have ways to channel like if there are tips for moms out there who really lose it all the time because they don't have the patience to deal with a toddler who's going to defy every single thing what do you do i make an attempt to meditate daily ah see okay yes that's it that is why you are so zen you do you have a very calm energy even if it's as i'm lying in bed falling asleep whoa it was bound to happen as the water spilled all over your lap okay here you go so you're saying you do meditation before you go to sleep not when you wake up i'm challenged with waking up earlier oh that's another thing so sleep deprived moms all right that's a huge topic there how do you deal with that i mean just interrupt does he sleep with you does he wake up with me he still wakes up um he's still nursing oh wow okay what's the you know breast milk how does stress affect breast milk do you think there's a correlation i i'm i probably looked it up but if i remember correctly though some of those stress hormones do you get into the milk they do don't think yes wow so it's not good no no so that's why the meditation and you need the rest i mean there's just so many things like i never had enough breast milk and my mom would blame me because for for running around too much and being too active because you're supposed to sit and be still and let your body do what it's supposed to do yes but there's no way you can do that no i really what i wonder about is moms who have more than one child uh huh like how do they do it yeah or like twins how do you breastfeed both of them or you maybe that's more convenient i don't know my sister has twins it doesn't sound more convenient yeah it sounds less convenient well okay so maybe i can vouch for myself is that once you have more than one you start juggling things and by the time you have number three we don't care you're just like whatever i don't want to know so that's the trick just don't care about anything that's right cereal on the floor let it be yeah so first one you go oh you're not allowed to do that you can't have candy blah blah blah second one the older one's going to give it to the second one anyway so it's like okay third one screw it just let them do just don't tell me just let me sleep you know it's kind of funny so it's a default plan like you just kind of forget just don't want to deal with it i don't know i mean right now you're you're consumed by this one because it's your only child yes but then when you have to juggle a little bit more you might be putting your efforts in different ways right and what about your life i mean how do you feel like that's taken away from your work or what you want to do as a woman oh all i had to do was give up my you know my personal freedom and my personal desires that's all oh yeah so you just as a mom just expect us to be prepared to have no life then you're fine for a while what's a while two years in county okay it's not a hundred percent no giving up everything but it's a lot and i think you divided into different phases so we're talking toddler phase or the first five six years of a child's life you really need to be there for them and then when they're in school you don't have to do as much but again for me as being a mother of teenage kids now it's almost worse now psychologically okay i feel like okay i don't have to clean about to their mess but there's more mess in here and i'm just warning you i'm glad you're warning yeah yeah it's a different kind of mess yeah and that's why i'm saying motherhood is just an ending okay but there's a beauty of it right and so but ultimately i find that all of those sacrifices are worth it because the fulfillment i get from motherhood yes far outweighs it absolutely and so that continues throughout the different stages yes what it sounds like absolutely no no doubt i mean we're gonna end on that high note because it is i mean why are we talking about it because there's so much to be blessed by but we will need to kind of break it down into a why it's like that and look see you've got to deal with stuff like that all right so quick quick break go pee go go pee and we'll be back and we'll talk okay we're gonna chill out and talk again about motherhood it's me angus mctec wishing you to welcome and join us to see us on hibachi talk on think tech hawaii join my co-hosts go to the techs app and enter the security guy every friday from 1300 to 1345 we look forward to see it we'll talk tech and we'll have some weeb and a fun and remember let your wing gang free wherever you be aloha aloha i'm carl campania host of think tech hawaii's movers shakers and reformers i hope you join us over the next several weeks as we take a deep dive into biofuels in hawaii and explore the alternative fuels supply chain necessary for the local and global transition towards transportation fuel sustainability join us as we have good conversations with our farmers our producers our conversion technologies our investors and our legislators as we try to achieve our transportation sustainability goals see you soon thank you for watching think tech i'm grace chang the new host for global connections you can find me here live every thursday at one p.m where we'll be talking to people around the islands or visiting the islands who are connected in various aspects of global affairs so please tune in and aloha and thanks for watching welcome back to kwak right i'm just gonna focus now and leave something to kind of wander because as mothers you don't you never put anything down 100 percent you're always constantly juggling things that around you and and when shit hit the fan you just got to deal with it right you can't just say i'm gonna go to work now i'm gonna go to sleep no shutting off right davaki hear me with me um continuing our talk about motherhood and and the crazy stuff we have to deal with i want to just talk a little bit about a social issue um i just read a disturbing news article uh this morning that in arkansas they passed a new law that husbands can sue their wives for abortions it's just kind of a little bit crazy but i don't know what your stance is on abortion to begin with they're specifically talking about this i can't even say it without cringing it's called dismemberment abortion which means an abortion in the second trimester i think so yeah i know so that's pretty gruesome but the fact that they have these laws and then going back to how we women believe that we own our bodies and we should have our own choices and how we deal with it what do you feel about that and where things are going now in terms of women empowerment and whether this is a step forward or backwards to it i disagree with that law yes um i mean details it might not have been a mutual choice to attempt to have a pregnancy right right and it's definitely not going to help the marital relationship to have a lot of sake yeah and i also think that being mentally wanting to have a child makes it way way better because of all of those sacrifices right and i can i mean i'm not going to mention anyone in particular but i know a person who had a kid and didn't want and they did it because of family pressure to do so and giving an abortion no no they had they had the baby and it was their second child and the woman didn't want to have the baby and it's like oh right until teenage hood oh yeah there was still like a i don't know poor kid yeah yeah and people don't think about we'll talk about these things because they just assume all right you got into yourself in that mess and so you just deal with it um there's another kind of more absurd news article i mean this was i don't know second trimester i know it's kind of but unless there are some physical reasons some some right obviously there wouldn't be just just because she decided then to end it i don't agree either but um there's another um suing case which was uh in china this was a few years ago but it hit world news because this husband sued his wife because get this after she had her baby um her the the wife is gorgeous and the baby came out ugly did you hear about this no her because the baby didn't look like her and apparently it's because she had all this plastic surgery it was not real her face so i don't know does he have a right to sue her for deceiving him i want to say no oh god zerry what do you think you've heard of this case right i feel so bad for the kid i really do because now the kid knows that the dad is like oh you're so ugly please she should have let the dad know i think he was right i'm sorry wait so you're saying oh so you're saying that when you have a partner yes you have to kind of disclose everything about you i think so you know i think it's really important to be honest about who you are especially if it will directly affect the life of another yes or if it's going to affect the life of another but that's what i don't know i'm horrible suing somebody for that i don't know it yeah it's just kind of like so you don't love her for her true self it's the opposite of beauty and the beast right it's like she really was she wasn't expecting true love oh that's another thing though people marry for the wrong reasons right or have babies for the wrong reasons yes let's do it that way well thanks zerry for that i just think it's kind of like today our concept of marriage and babies is a little different from the old days it was much more simple than and you had the village right you had people to support you and it was everything yes i'm not sure when that was but at some point going back yeah yeah and you can afford to have a dozen kids because you have the village to help so now you only have like one or two because it's already overwhelming and it's too expensive right yep yeah so um what would you say you know did you see that movie the bad mom uh it was recent uh what's bad mom yes i did okay so did you i mean in a in a nutshell it's about these moms who decided to throw it up and say screw this we're gonna not to care about kids you guys take yourselves i'm not gonna be making breakfast for you blah blah blah do you see that did you identify with those feelings even though their kids were a little bit older i could understand where they were coming from yeah yeah and yes do you feel there's any need to do that sometimes yes have you just said take him i'm not gonna um yep absolutely ah it's like i can't deal with him right now uh i yeah it's happened a few times yeah but that's normal right yeah and that's good i think so and it's just so good for your partner to know that you don't need to have him 24 seven yeah oh i'm in a lucky unique position where my partner does have him yeah um three days a week for most of the day right so i feel like there is a lot more understanding on his end about what it's actually like to have him for hours and hours on end yeah yeah that it's just it's fun it's great it's amazing but it's also very tiring amazing that's amazing oh that just like the little touches we're talking about the blessings right yeah just those little little things they all they come all the time and that's what is amazing i mean we're talking about all the the pain that we have to deal with and trying to get them to not spill all over the table but at the same time it's amazing this birthing so what are some things that you would suggest or what do you see as the best things of motherhood that bring to you not just joy and fulfillment but bigger things like your perspective on life and all that having camille has definitely been the biggest catalyst to my own personal growth and development because i want the best for him and i know i need to be my best self to provide that and i'm i mean i'm not trying to stress myself out and become this perfect person but to just be to more focus on balance in my life and and um i think it's been really good for me to have to focus on someone else more ah good point well and then i was going to bring up your relationship with your partner how has a child affected your relationship obviously i did a topic recently about how you know sex when you have young kids is going to basically be thrown out the door i was really amazed how many new parents don't sleep in the same bed and i didn't find out until we had one but it's like most so you don't know and and like most of my friends who have young children don't sleep in the same bed so very interesting yeah but is it the guy's choice or your choice it's a mutual choice okay yeah i sleep with him he sleeps with a dog okay well all right so how do you how long do you think that's going to last for whether that's going to how that's going to change things don't know know but does that until we hit a bigger bed okay okay or until he gets his own bed yes but how does that put that relationship on on you too if you don't have that intimacy at night or whenever how does it affect your communication or the level of communication do you feel like something yes because that would normally be the time when i would chat his ear off about my day right right um it's definitely been challenging yeah there's more times than i feel comfortable with feeling distant um and it's and there's ups and downs with it there's times when it's better more combination like if he's feeling stressed about work and then there's these other things going on too and then it just amplifies yes yes that sense and do you feel like conversations end up always kind of reducing down to the baby and you can't talk about anything like life issues or anything outside yeah yeah yeah i mean that's just another sacrifice i guess in that time too right honey yeah it's like freaking the technician now like wow but that's again this is it a little baby running away doing things that you don't want them to do how do you deal with that in life how do you how do you sometimes people get mad yeah but i understand that too because and it's i really challenged that as well yeah um when to pull him back or rain him in isn't always apparent to me right until the situation has already happened and then it's like oh well i guess i shouldn't let that happen again well see then it's a learning curve for you to every day those new challenges are something that we are growing from right yes and i still want to go back to that whole concept of the play that was created for during the french festival i think it's brilliant that moms like you um got together to do something creative with the concept and physically with the baby i mean how cool is that to do art and and have them yes don't you think more people should do that yeah maybe so it like it would be fun to have something like the mommy monologues and have a whole lot of monologues oh yeah highlight the challenges in the the um wasn't there a scene when somebody was breastfeeding or it was basically sporting breast milk to the audience that's what i heard uh something like that there was there was a whole dance that was about pumping breast milk and right but then that might have been the one about breastfeeding in public and and having people oh my goodness how do you feel about that well i know it's legal to breastfeed anywhere that's public there are times when i feel more comfortable and less comfortable yeah for sure yeah so somebody's getting a little antsy here so maybe it's time to wrap up um well so uh with this again you know intention spans for everybody is very challenged when you have kids and they appreciate your brain it's good thing you didn't have any hands well don't throw that car okay um do you have any words of wisdom based on your challenge situation and respect to moms like you who have to juggle um a child and have a thought for yourself and being involved with things that are that bring you enjoyment what are some thoughts on how you can still find room to do things like that schedule it like it's actually important and like you anything that is truly important to you you schedule it and then you do it and you have to make yourself important enough to do that for yourself because you don't want to get down to empty because other people depend on you i mean that's a really cool little big thing you just said because if you don't feel important in yourself that reflects yes and the babies will feel that good point yeah absolutely yeah or for him he's a boy and if i don't feel important in myself he'll end up i don't know probably dating girls who don't feel important great point yes treating them like wow very good point and that's a perpetual thing it's a vibe sometimes you can't translate those feelings it's just like wow so i'm glad we had these conversations as distracted as he was you're a good kid high five no no no no all right so don't take no for an answer but be great mother enjoy your mothers and thank you so much for sharing your thoughts on this thank you thank you