Profile; Interview with Bill McKibben; Interview with Troy Peters; Interview with George and Sonia Cullinen

Bill McKibben is a rabble rouser. His seven books and hundreds of articles have given a powerful voice to matters of environmental ethics. Meet the author of The End of Nature. Next on profile. As captain of his high school debate team the seeds of vocation were sown early for Bill McKibben. Not many years later he began making a living formulating arguments upon graduation from Harvard he was snapped up by the New Yorker magazine as an editor and writer. After five years he quit and moved to the boonies of the Adirondack Mountains where he researched and wrote his seminal work. The End of Nature McKibben is an environmentalist a title that encompasses most of his concerns global warming population control restoration and protection of wilderness and the wild. But his work also takes us into realms of the spirit of sport the media and the human condition. He has received Guggenheim in Lyndhurst fellowships the Lennon prize for nonfiction writing and honorary degrees from several colleges. Last

year he was a fellow at the Harvard Center for the Study of values in public life and he is currently a visiting scholar at Middlebury College. Thanks for being here today. It's my pleasure. Great. You were quite successful at The New Yorker. What made you quit and moved to the Adirondacks. Well The New Yorker was a this was the old New Yorker in the olden days. And I wrote the TALK OF THE TOWN column which was great fun and anonymous in those days which I liked very much. At some point a New Yorker was sold and they decided they would get rid of the man who'd been editor for 40 years and this was a. Good pretext for me to. Resign and move to the woods and start writing much longer things to begin to think about books begin to think about things in deeper ways. So it was clear to you that you were going to go out there and write a book as clear as anything is when you're 26 or 27 Yeah. Well you wrote The End of Nature which has

now been translated into at least 20 languages. But it seems that the word the information that you offered is still not really getting out. The US has still not signed the global warming treaty. Climate change and its dangers seem to have gotten more play a decade ago when it came out then than now. Why isn't there more urgency around global warming. The word's gotten out better in some places than in others. The rest of the world is now fully convinced of the dangers that we're facing and beginning to do things about it. Hundred and Sixty eight nations signed on to the Kyoto Accords on global warming we were the only dissenter this year. It's very difficult in this country because our economy has been built on cheap fossil fuel. We're going to have to make the transition to other sources of energy. That transition is going to be painful in parts. In the end it will be fine. We'll all get the power we need from more

benign sources. But there are vested interests coal and oil and gas interests that want to delay that transition as long as they can. And at the moment they have a great deal of political power. And did your the book subsequent to the End of Nature hope human and wild seems to encourage environmental perspective through inspirational stories rather than these alarming statistics. Actually in that you're right I no longer think fear is a sufficient motivation for humankind to make the necessary changes of. Behavior. Did the inspirational and or even spiritual model does that work in a different way. You know I've written the End of Nature and David Brower who was the great environmentalist of our age the man who built the modern Sierra Club friends of the earth and we were friends and he said you know it's a great book. So. Now you've got to do. How we start nature up again. You know you've got to the

next part and that was sort of what got me going. I wanted to find places where people were living dignified lives that took less of a bite out of the planet. There weren't as many as one would hope. Our model is you know has spread around the world a lot of places but. There were enough examples to make it clear that if we made up our minds it would be more than possible to figure out how to transition to a more sustainable future. These places are great fun. They're there. It's not like it's not like the alternative to our. Way of life is to go freeze in a cave someplace. The alternative is just to think more creatively about how it is that we're going to live and not take the absolute easiest route all the time. The most obvious route is a very recent article you actually look to a different kind of fear this new fear of terrorism as a

possible vehicle to promote more activism and you argue that clean power is actually more secure power. Explain that the ecological intuition that. Systems are more stable when they're decentralized and smaller in scale. Clearly applies to energy. I mean four or five days after the attacks on the World Trade Centers a drunken hunter in Alaska with a deer rifle put a hole in the Trans-Alaska Pipeline shutting it down for three days and spilling 300000 gallons of oil out of most of the tundra. This is a pipeline that is completely indefensible and we want to run more oil through it if we go and make the mistake of drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Meanwhile in Vermont you know we have Air Force jets scrambling to protect Yankee nuclear power station we've got you know endless all of our energy system beginning in Saudi Arabia and stretching into our

homes is extremely vulnerable to disruption. It's the patriotic thing to do at the moment is to begin to jumpstart that transition to other forms of power because there's nobody up on their roof you know with their rifle standing guard over their solar panel. You know if you build a wind farm and someone comes and blows up one of the windmills it doesn't say Brady you know deadly wind particles into the atmosphere around you and it doesn't even shut down the wind farm I mean takes out one windmill and all the others keep it happily spinning along. The only thing that can be said for our energy system is that it is that it's extremely cheap that the oil and gas and coal are extremely cheap. And you know gasoline cost way less than bottled water cost you know. But that cheapness disappears when you start taking into account the environmental effects. When you start

adding up how much money we spend to have to defend those supply lines all the way to the Persian Gulf. There's a lot of reasons to begin making this transition including the environmental one. But there are other things that make that clear to you. Clearly in this transition you seem to have little hope for governments corporations or even universities to really push this change ahead but you do have a lot of hope for communities or for individuals putting those up or even religious communities. In a recent article maybe that's where the impulse can come from. Government in this country hasn't responded as well as it should have. Corporate You know players are beginning to understand the economic benefits of doing this kind of thing. But you're right there are other communities that need to be called on. Religious communities are interesting. They're the one institution left in this society that really can think of some goal other than material

accumulation as their reason for being. You know who can say it's not just the economy stupid. You know there's a lot of other things too out there. And for example we did this in Boston last year we were doing this big series of trying to educate people about SUV and their impact on the world around us and the ease with which one can instead drive something responsible and whatever else. And these were all very good we'd be out out of dealerships handing out information as people came in things. But the way the one thing that really got people's attention that was on the front page of every newspaper I know of was one day when a one of a minister friend of mine showed up in his collar with a big sign and just said what would Jesus drive. And you know I was a pretty good question if you were to end and I think that it you know made people think about those sort of things in a new light. The ethical. And moral considerations in some of these issues are very important. I mean if

you're concerned about. People in the rest of the world living close to the margin if you're concerned about poor people then you darn well better be concerned about global warming because we've never figured out anything it's going to do as an effective job of undermining people's lives. The Christmas season is almost upon us and the president says it's our patriotic duty just to spend it's kind of what we do but certainly you advocate simplicity and discourage consumption you even wrote a book that came out of an idea for a Sunday school where you were superintendent and a lay leader called hundred dollar holidays. It's wondering do you do you stick to that promise of only spending $100 per family. This is a this is a program we started through the Methodist churches in the Northeast years ago. And we you know we chose $100 holiday because it was a little bit of not because it was there's anything absolutely magical about $100. But pastors say while trying to keep your family spending around there which is like one tenth of the American average and instead give gifts of service

gifts of time do things in the community. We started out doing this for all these you know environmental reasons and reasons of social justice what a waste of laws wrapping paper batteries. But we quickly discovered was that for us and for everyone else the real reason for doing it was because it was making Christmas. More fun. In fact it turns out that when pollsters and things were discovered this that far more Americans dread the approach of the holidays than look to them with eager anticipation. They've turned into something of a nightmare. A lot of the time. And what a shame. I mean it should be this incredibly joyful almost beginning a holiday. Here's a little baby being born here. This explosion of white in the dark time of the year. And so we really worked on on trying to on the one hand to commercialize it. And on the other hand pump it full of real joy and with great success. Yes so. So we don't I don't sit there and

you know carefully tally up every cash register receipt but it's but i do we do spend a lot of time making presents and having fun. I love the concepts for your book much less that one. Also in the age of missing information you taped all the channels on a Virginia cable station for 24 hours and you compared the information you got from that thousand hours of television to 24 hours alone in the Adirondack where you gained what you call fundamental information. What is the fundamental information. What is that fundamental information that we're missing. Well this was the I mean this was the conceit that underlay the slightly bizarre. Project we tell ourselves that we live in the Information Age. You know we're proud of it. That's amount of access to data that we have bought and an enormous number of ways there are things that we've forgotten are that people used to know or you know that we were only dimly sense anymore.

That sense of how time works and how it passes in this sort of cyclical nature of time as opposed to the incredibly Winokur world in which we live a sense of of sufficiency. You know one of the things that one people always say about TV is that it's busy creating unnecessary desires and things which is true but you really only realize that when you're able to slow down enough which for me means being in the woods often. You sit up there on that you know edge of the mountain looking down and it never occurs to you to think whoa they need some more trees in that grove even hours while the world takes on a different aspect. And that cuts across an awful lot of things but it was a fun it was an interesting experiment and it's been extremely interesting book to have written because it's used extensively with high school and college kids

who who are immersed in that world and understand all the references and things and. And I find it sort of that I mean I think that it's intended to be a little subversive you know to kind of remind people that there are it's and there are other worlds out there too. And to remind them they can reflect on things I mean have kids lost that capability. I think in some measure they have formed the group some years ago that sponsors this. Every spring there is TV Turnoff Week where kids don't watch TV for a week. And last year there were five million kids who last night and one of the reasons was that we you know most of them are going to go back to watching TV and that's for right on Earth but the just to have a week when you're done you know when you have some time just to remind yourself that it's not a it's not. And I'm so rude it's not like water or food or something. It's it's just one more thing that's

out there that's good for people. We have a very hard time. We're so bombarded by information and stimulus and it's enormously hard to hear whatever messages may be coming from inside you know they're pretty well with him an awful lot of the time. That's why you know that's I think what people really find wonderful about time spent in the outdoors just sort of a ranch down a little bit and I think about your work you're a very reflective guy and you have lots of opinions and you really work through them and you present them. Your last book about you had a completely different long distance a year of living living strenuously seems to have started out kind of as another concept book you decided you were going to train to become a competitive athlete a cross-country skiers specifically a tough sport. It was about the body about endorphins about VO to Max's and. But even at the beginning you seem to know that it was about body mind and spirit. And then it became much more

when you learned of your father's devastating terminal illness that so became an even deeper investigation in durance and spirit. What was your original concept and when did that. This was supposed to be my vacation you know from from 10 years of failing to save the world you know. I was going to just spend a year and your approach to you know early midlife crisis of some kind. Being an athlete and. And it began the whole process began to unravel when I met my right of beginning when I met my coach Robson a maker from this from Burlington area wonderful guy who quickly made it clear to me that this would be as much about the mind and spirit as it would about body that and it turned out he's absolutely right. You know that's what enduring sports really are about the the the physical parts you know fairly easy if you have time consuming to accomplish but then after that

when you're in a race or whatever else it has a lot more to do with. Your heart in the metaphorical sense than your heart in the pumping blood sense. And then as you say as time went on halfway through this year your father was diagnosed with a brain tumor. And. And my life in the book and with it became something very different a reflection on a very different kind of insurance a very different set of of the understandings of the limits of insurance. Talk to me about supreme effort. Well we had said. Right right. Robert asked me at the beginning of this thing what what's your goal for this do you know when such and such an I knew I'm going to win anything and I also I didn't know enough about sports I want to come in the top 10 percent here or whatever I said at some point in

this year I want to make a. Supreme effort. I want to win some race or another of it. And. And so I did eventually. I mean part of the book is about that and about the couple of the long challenging races where that happened. But part of it also was about realizing watching my father who was a wonderful man and whose death and to watch a good death is a very great privilege. To begin to understand. Where effort turned into grace and ease and some of the differences. It was it was good. Paying for a great number of ways and ruminating in a great number of ways. Did did this difficult year make you a better more graceful human being as part of your search or probably not. You know if you know what one would hope and certainly that's what should happen and good.

That's the work of a lifetime. But my fear to max improved yet so there you are. Your dad who was a journalist and clearly very influential in your life. This book is a wonderful tribute to him as well as your mother. You you talk about his influence on you as as a as a man. But I'm curious about what your childhood was like that you came out as such a good writer and debater and thinker. How did how did he contribute to that piece. Well he was a very I mean you know journalism is a very interesting profession he was a newspaper man and that's what I had always assumed that he was going to be started doing when I was in junior high school because it's neither. It's it's a craft. You know in the same way that woodworking is a craft. And on the other hand it's very engaged with ideas and things in some of the same ways that academia or something else but it's someplace in between these two things. And it's a very good

you know watching him was to understand that to be. Concerned with the world and involved in it's that was it was an interesting useful way to live. But as a book writer you said you have to be committed journalism in a way is easy because you just write what's happening. But to write a book in journalism of different kinds I mean I've I've gone on to do different kinds of things and yes it's right I'm increasingly right as a writer because of long essays and meditations but they all draw from the basic set of skills of the journalist the ability to take information and figure out what's right and what's wrong. You know sift the wheat from the chaff and then begin to sort of reflect on it. I've been very lucky and very it was very good for me to get to go to the New Yorker at the time that I did and be challenged to do more. Thinking and I've done before and I've been you know arrogant enough to continue thinking

since you know in a way without a license without the sort of I'm not an academic and not a scholar in that sense I'm self-taught but I've had the great good fortune to be able to keep doing it. Now some critics do slam you they say that you are arrogant and you don't have all the facts right's and Rush Limbaugh. Actually you know I said He's an environmental wacko and use that as a badge of honor actually I can take from Rush Limbaugh I can take criticism Yeah. How how do you take the other criticism how you want to deal with that when you're when you're I think one begins when one deals with controversial issues. And. Certainly these are. You begin with the premise that you're unlikely to make everyone happy. These are difficult topics and and I'm very grateful for the sort of give and take back and forth

and I'm very grateful that you know over time along with the journalism I've I've been able to do a certain bin there's an activist side to my life as well. I mean as I was saying about things like an SUV these are things that we worked on. I think that's helped my writing in the end to be able to cross certain lines that is a newspaper man I couldn't. You certainly stirred things up just to get back to the paperback edition of Longus it just came out and you added in afterward. What I know some critics actually wanted more of the book was the afterword reaction to that or something internally that you needed to say. Oh I just I just wanted to brace mostly just bringing things up to date. And they you know this was the it was the only book I've ever written that I mean heard where people weren't sure that usually when I write a book the critical reaction is. Historically negative or hysterically positive and probably has more to do with the

beginning position of rivers reacting to this when I was over everyone kept saying nice things I almost didn't know what to do what to do what to do how to deal with it you know there was no you know angry. Well it isn't. It is a pretty wonderful book. Another book that they get a lot of controversy was was maybe one which is an argument for smaller family size. And you were recently on actually a population growth panel at Middlebury. How does population connect with with the other things that you're doing and how is the world doing with population some say it's not a problem. Well it's a good news bad news story. Populations are clearly important to any of these environmental issues. You know you multiply all our impacts by the number of us that there are. In some ways the story is very good and it's one of the things we want to cross. Thirty years ago the average woman in this world had six children. Now the average woman is having three children. That's an enormous change in a short period of time. And it's testimony to a lot of good work and especially to the spread of

education around the world I mean for women around the world it was you know intensely wonderful. It was last month to watch schools reopening in Afghanistan for the girls you know as a father of a daughter that was important and that's very important ecologically too. So that's the good news. The bad news is that we're going to go from six billion people now to about 10 billion people by the middle of the century before the demographic momentum. Tops out and in this country we're going to go from about 280 million now to about 450 million in the middle of the century. That's a lot our population is still growing rapidly here and that makes a big difference if you're worried about things like climate change because we're Americans. You know my daughter though we live a relatively simple buy for me my daughter is going to use more stuff in her life than small Indian villages will use. You know if you're worried about carbon dioxide accumulating in the atmosphere you don't need to worry

about Moroccans and Canadians and Sudanese. You need to worry about Vermonters and New Yorkers and Californians right. And and so the point of my writing was to say let's think about it here at home and think about whether maybe we couldn't whether people people should feel all right having one child as opposed to two. And I don't think it's a need for the government to tell them that. But I do think that there are a lot of myths about only children. And that was one of the points of this book was to try to overcome some of that so you felt better about your child that only children are going to be OK. OK. McKibben thank you so much for coming. His books and articles are Triffitt creating long distance a year of living strenuously is just come out and in paperback which which is great so you can pick it up sounds wonderful to have you talk with her and have you when our state thank you so much. You bet. And thank you for being with us.

Things are hopping at the Vermont Youth Orchestra under the direction of their dynamic music director Troy

Peters the man who brought Trey Anastasio a fish to play with our young musicians has inspired tremendous growth and innovation in his organization. Stay tuned for a conversation about music and what it means to our youth ourselves. And Detroit Peters himself next on profile. Reuters has made remarkable strides at the Vermont youth orchestra since he took over as music director and conductor six years ago during his tenure the organization has grown from two orchestras to four doubling its student population and receiving two consecutive ass cap awards for adventurous programming of contemporary music. Just a few weeks ago the doors opened on the orchestra Association spectacular new space funded by a multimillion dollar capital campaign. In this time off. Peters is a popular guest conductor for other orchestras and the composer of choral chamber and

orchestral music. He's won numerous grants and awards for his compositional work. Born in Scotland American parents Peters grew up moving often with his military family who eventually settled in the north west. He went on to graduate from the Curtis Institute of Music and get a master's degree from the University of Pennsylvania before coming to Vermont in 1995. Peters was assistant conductor of youth orchestras in Philadelphia and Tacoma and the artistic director of a professional Chamber Orchestra and the new music ensemble. We're pleased to have this busy young man with us on profile. That is a lot for a first decade professional decade of professional life. But back to the youth orchestra just to. Ground ourselves and in what it's all about the from my youth orchestra has been around for nearly 40 years and then you came along with the idea that any young musician who really wanted to should get involved should be able to get involved in 97. You brought in the Vermont youth Sinfonia which is another group and then in 99 another

group was born the youth Philharmonia. What is the difference between these these different orchestras. Well the orchestras are sort of steps on the continuum. We want to have a system where any student who shows up has a place and has their skill advances and as they get older they move through the different levels of the program. So it gives us a chance to give the students the training and the experience earlier so that when they reach the youth orchestra the top group that they have that experience and they start out with a leg up. Great. And how many students are involved now with about three hundred thirty students we see every week in our different orchestras and programs. Wow terrific. Well let's get back to your upbringing first. You were born in Scotland but you moved around a lot of eventually settled where. Where did you grow up. Well my dad was in the U.S. Navy so I did grow up sort of all over the place when I was younger. We settled in Tacoma Washington when I was about eight years old. And where did you get your your musical inspirations during childhood.

Well you know my family is I guess I might say profoundly unmusical my father hearing my father saying this is a remarkable experience. And my mom is is a great listener and enjoys music and has a lovely voice but. But I didn't grow up really surrounded by music. I was a public school program. That's one of the reasons why I'm really committed to public school music because I got started in a public school starting a program in fourth grade. Then I got involved in the youth orchestra and my enthusiasm built over time. I didn't really make the decision to try and become a professional musician until the very end of high school. Well and you certainly did because then you chose to go to the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia which I hear is one of the best music schools in the country but it's not known like Juilliard is. Why is that. Well you know people would say used to be that that Curtis preferred not to be known that it was sort of an exclusive enough place that they really wanted to sort of be secret. It was founded by the daughter of the publisher of The Saturday Evening Post in the 1900s. And that's where Leonard Bernstein went to school

John Carlo Menotti Samuel Barber and a whole generation of wonderful performers composers conductors. But it's very small. It's only a hundred fifty students every student on a full scholarship. And it kind of has an old money tradition that you don't you don't talk about this sort of thing in public. That's changed in the last 10 years and the school has tried to market itself and become a greater presence in the public consciousness. And I think that's meant that that even more wonderful students have been attracted there. Did you go there to study conducting. No I actually went there as a composer which was when I was 17. I that was my main musical interest although I always thought I wanted to be a conductor but composition was the area where I had the greatest skill the greatest tools. So I took a shot in the dark. You know I applied to Curtis because two of my other good friends a violinist a cellist were applying and they told me it was free if you got in. So I said well OK that

sounds good. And I found out Bernstein had gone there and I thought all right this is worth a try. So I sent some scores and I did the application and and. Getting in was sort of the luckiest break I ever got was really a wonderful wonderful opportunity. Now I heard you played something rather unusual for your placement in your theory placement audition. Yes when I first arrived at Curtis you know you get to music school and any Almost anywhere you go to school they have the sort of placement day we took theory test you play the piano and that kind of thing. So I had to do an audition for secondary piano. And the problem was I wasn't a pianist I'm still not a very good pianist and so I really only knew one thing that I had already really learned kind of as a joke. And it's this lovely little piece I played it in and the judges thought that was nice. What was that was it one of those Rachmaninoff children's pieces or perhaps you know they were sort of speculating there was this silence and I said no actually that was the theme from The Incredible Hulk.

It was the TV series thing that is really it's a very nice little piece and they didn't throw me out right. That was my second big lucky break I guess. Well back to public education. How has Act 60 affected school music programs and how has it affected the way. You know that's a question you get very different answers from depending on who you talk to. You talk to people who live in South Burlington Vermont. They'll tell you it's been devastating the South Bronx strings program doesn't exist anymore. And that's primarily because of the budgetary changes that were made necessary under 60. But if you talk to people in other districts like Northfield or Winooski you'll find that for the first time in their history they have a string's program. And so in talking about this with colleagues what I've found is that it really depends on where they're from. Most music teachers seem to think that the net difference in the state isn't big. It's just that things are in different places

and there are statistically I think a few more instrumental music students in Vermont. Years ago and some of that could be attributed back 60. None of which makes it any more pleasant or easy for places like South Burlington to lose their program because South Burlington have a vital thriving program and the fact that it's gone now is I think absolutely criminal. What do you say to people who don't think music should be part of general education. Well I think it's it's very shortsighted and naive. The the sort of reading writing arithmetic approach to education doesn't produce great thinkers great thinkers tend to be students who are engaged in learning lots of different things. And it's you know when I look at my students in the Vermont Youth Orchestra they are consistently at the top of their class. They get great grades. Their valedictorian often they are wonderful students. And I think there is a causal relationship. There's plenty of research that shows that beyond that yeah make sure math

S.A.T. scores higher and I think that's nice. But beyond that I think what it really does is it makes life worth living. You know there's a wonderful quote from what I think is an OK movie Mr. Holland's Opus but there's a wonderful quote where the principal says oh if we don't cut this we're not going to be able to teach them how to read and write. And Richard Dreyfus says yes but if we cut this what are they going to read and write about. What about there's this major push for a assessment in schools today and which means standards which means testing. What is your position on standards and arts assessment. Well I think that the National Music Educators associations have done a great job of providing standards based tools for teaching music. And there are in fact some wonderful teachers in Vermont who are very focused on sharing that information. Tony Patrick Hall is an especially fine middle school band teacher who does a lot of great work with sharing standards with the rest of his colleagues and a lot of them have adopted them and had

great results in getting kids to have documentable achievements. I have to admit that. As someone who's outside of education and is more of a performing musician I find that every once in a while I wish people would focus more on the ineffable on the thing about music that you can't put your finger on. That can't be turned as easily into numbers. But at the same time I think it's really valuable to be able to point to hard data and say look we're doing well. The Vermont Youth Orchestra is performing in a few weeks that first night in Burlington. What do you have planned for for a buddy there. Well first it's always a lot of fun you the last few years we've been at St. Paul's and had great sort of intimate chamber orchestra concerts that have been packed full of people. And so first night took a leap this year and is moving us to Memorial on a tour in the bigger venues and we're going to use a bigger orchestra. And we had a kind of a British New Year's Eve celebration with some music from The Pirates of Penzance and we'll do an English folk songs arranged by riff on Williams and a

wonderful lyrical clarinet concerto by Finzi. It's got me this nice kind of British New Year's Eve there's no reason for that except that it just kind of came together as I was putting the music together and that's what I love about this is the program's lead you sometimes where you want to go. Well speaking of programs in your tenure as artistic director you've had a real priority focus on supporting from Art composers and making sure that many of the pieces or at least one per concert it seems is a piece by a Vermont composer Why is that important. Well I think I mean I'm biased because I'm a composer of course but I think it's important for any orchestra to be involved with new music. It keeps us aware of. The questions that composers face. And it informs the way we then play Beethoven or Tchaikovsky because we've gotten to see a composer wrestling with decisions and then you turn to Beethoven and all the sudden you can gain some insight into how that works into maybe some of the questions he

faced in making the decisions he did with students I think it's even more important because it just gives them that that sense that this isn't just dead white guys this is all kinds of people who've written music in the past who are writing music today for the orchestra. So and you know there are lots of neat ways to open the audience's ears to new things. I'm not a real guard programmer even though I do a lot of new music. I don't. I and I do a wide range of music but I don't think what I do is necessarily consistently stuff that challenges or scares people I think a lot of times people are surprised to find that the new piece is one of the more approachable accessible pieces on the concert and that certainly happened with with some of our recent concerts that the most popular pieces have been some of the new pieces. Great. Well your most public initiative of course is to bring Trey Anastasio a fish and his work into a performance with the youth

orchestra. And what did that I mean this you achieved much more than a marketing clue but what did the concert mean to you. Will primarily for me it was about. Musical connections and crossing over borders you know I grew up playing in a rock band and I grew up with my dad listening to country music and I grew up surrounded by other styles of music I didn't grow up surrounded by classical music and I came into the European classical tradition through music Ed so what I discovered was that for me my experience is typical. I think most people in our culture grow up surrounded by all kinds of music and don't necessarily assume that these barriers exist but everything about the way we work as musicians reinforces these barriers and it's true you know and all fields in jazz there's disdain for rock and roll and rock and roll there's a disdain for a lot of other kinds of music. Not everybody but certainly some people and so I think it's

really healthy to look at how great musicians are great musicians and try to stay show who's a great musician and wonderful player wonderful composer. Can work in a new arena and still do really really fine work and that was part of what was exciting about it was for me for my kids to see that for him to sit down and be scared. He sat down in front of the orchestra you know in their 16 year old oboe players there who've been practicing their instrument all their lives and he sits down with the electric guitar that he's played all his life and he really realized he's nervous. You know it's different from playing in front of thousands and thousands of people because he's playing in front of musicians. And it was really exciting. It also I read an article that talked about how the connection was much about mentor ship right there. You played his mentors music he and you are mentoring these other students. What does mentoring mean to you. What what are what are these these kids getting from you as a mentor.

Well I got into this because I had a great youth orchestra program with a phenomenal youth orchestra conductor who is now one of my closest friends in the world. And you know but at the time he was a teacher he was someone who opened my eyes to what was out there. Trey had a mentor like that in Ernie Stiers a composer from Cornwall who. Has been great sort of. Boundary across all his life between jazz and classical music and he open trays ears to some new possibilities so I think both of us have this sense of a tradition in forming what we do working with kids I just I constantly see the way their eyes are opened by these new experiences and so when when this idea came up and I immediately latched on to that sense that that this this is about passing the torch in a way. And we took it one step further we Ernie's one of our mentors is the great American composer Samuel Barber who is also his cousin. And so we played some music of Barber who had a direct influence on Stiers. So it's been a

nice sort of circle of influences that's kept going try and I've kept working together. One of the students from the Youth Orchestra is actually playing in Trey's band now. So we've had this this chance for things to kind of keep rolling. Well certainly stars Anastasia and you you're all composers so I'd like to talk about that for a minute do you just have is music just going on in your head all the time. How do you come up with say a symphony. Where do you start you might hundred twenty musicians you have different sections you have all of these voices. Where do you even begin to compose a symphony. Well you know it's it's funny it's really. Different for different composers for me. I write music not because I have music in my head all the time or I wake up but I feel compelled to put things down or music because it's fun and I enjoy it. I started when I was 14 or 15 because I was playing in a rock band and I wanted to write songs for the band. And then since I was also playing classical music I thought I'd experiment with that and the more I wrote the

more I did sort of hear sounds that I wasn't hearing anywhere else. I wanted to kind of put forth these sounds that that were in my head but I don't have that same compulsion to compose that some people do. I can go for years. I just had a stretch of about three years where I didn't write a note. And then I got going again about two years ago and I've been writing a lot lately. Not because of anything except just opportunities of arisen and I've kind of gotten the juices flowing again. But because it's fun it's like the world's biggest crossword puzzle. And when you talk about orchestral music that's definitely true. It's like this gigantic puzzle that you're trying to write. And I think the key is that the music has to be there first before you start thinking about whether the suspended symbol is going to be hit with a snare drum stick or a hard mallet to a wire brush. You have to have ideas. You have to have two. You have to have sonorities that you want to express. And then you start going to the details of the orchestration later. For me at least.

Do you have do you find that that's more exciting than doing chamber music or choral music. You have a favorite now or is it just. It depends on what's happening in your life at that particular time. It's sort of the pencil who's writing the checks to be honest with you which I think a lot of composers would say if somebody offers you commission and there's a check involved you you develop an enthusiasm. But that said I mean I've written more vocal music than anything else and written more music for voice both choral music and solo voice voice piano things like that because. I don't know why just because the opportunities of a reason and I think I'm pretty good at it I think I'm sort of a miniature Istana better at crafting a piece that makes sense for two minutes than I am the piece that makes sense for 20 minutes and so vocal music lends itself to those kind of small forms. But are you writing the lyrics or. No usually I'm studying poetry of preexisting poetry and usually sort of well-known poets rather than a lyricist which is kind of a classical thing we tend to use Shakespeare or Walt Whitman or contemporary poets rather than

lyrics. Does being a conductor influence you as a composer. Yes although not as much as you might think you know I've I've found as a come conductor when I conduct my own music that there are times where I am studying the score and I think what was this guy thinking what was he and then I realized it was me. But you know there are different processes and sometimes the conductor is concerned with practicality and with what's going to work well for the orchestra and sometimes the composers concerned with stretching with making making the players go someplace they haven't gone before. I think though that because I have experience as a conductor that that my scores tend to be pretty practical. I tend to write things that that are. Playable and a lot of composers struggle with that. You know they end up discovering that the bassoon part is too high or that the trumpet part is just a little bit awkward or something and that happens to me too but probably not as frequently as some composers.

And your position where you can actually hear your work maybe more often than I suppose. Yeah although you know the funny thing is I haven't programmed any of my music with the Vermont Youth Orchestra I've been here almost seven years and we haven't played any of my music myself. You know I think I've got so much music I want to get to. Every year I pencil in one of my pieces and then as I'm building programs it gets squeezed out because there are other things I want to do more you know. Not only are we doing new music but I've got all the standard repertoire I want to get to and and there are only so many slots in the concerts so I always end up sort of losing out the year of viola player. Are you still playing much anymore. Not a lot. I play I teach a little bit and I play chamber music every once a while with friends. I've been known to play the occasional wedding gig or things like that but I don't do a lot of professional level planning primarily because my focus on conducting and on composing means that. There are enough hours in the day to practice as much

as I feel like I would need to to be able to maintain a professional level of playing. So it was really has never been my main focus as a musician you know since I was 15. Where would you like to go professionally. What what what might happen after this. Well you know this is pretty good. I love it here. I I would be happy doing this for a long time. At the same time I'm always interested as a conductor in trying to have the greatest impact I can have on a community. And I think I'd like to be in continue to be in places where the orchestra can can work to shape the way a community lives its life. I think we've done that with the Vermont youth orchestra and we've had a profound effect. But a part of me relishes the potential challenge of doing that in a new place. Maybe not right away but at some point and then I'm also because I'm just a veracious consumer of repertoire I love this music. There's a lot of music I want to play that is really difficult and while the youth orchestra

is getting better and better the chance to work with professional musicians which I do fairly frequently is something I'd like to do more of so that I have a chance to expand into some other kinds of repertoire. Sure. So. It may or may not fit into those goals but tell us about Vermont and how it might have influenced anything about what you do and how you like your time here. Well you know like a lot of people who come here from other places I fall in love with it. When I got this job in 1905 my then girlfriend was really reluctant to make the move and we were in a place where we were just about to start really seriously talking about getting married and things like that and then I got this job and I said it's a great thing for me and I really would love it if we could stay together and she took the plunge but she said well you know we should try to get out of there as soon as we can. Well we stopped saying that after about two years we both did and if anything I think she's even happier than I am now that and we're married now and we've really settled and bought a house and and

it's a wonderful place. I love it here and certainly the kids here. There were Youth Orchestra Kids have. A slightly different quality than the students I worked with in Philadelphia for instance who were a little bit harder edged a little bit more aggressive a little bit more worldly. Sometimes a little bit more cynical sometimes a little bit less naive. And so it's been fun to see these kids who have a little bit higher level of innocence. Yes. Interesting. Tell me about this gorgeous new space that you have. How might a facility impact music for youth in the state. Well we've been so fortunate to be able to create this space where two large orchestras can rehearse simultaneously where we have classrooms in our offices. And I think the impact. We're just beginning to get a sense of how powerful it can be. You know two weeks ago we had for the first time about one hundred and sixty kids in that building at the same time. Two orchestras going simultaneously plus a bunch of

chamber music going and it was just the most incredible energy to walk around in that building and feel how much music and how much learning was going on. I think that's something that could be going on regularly for high school students we have a great relationship with son Michael's College already hosts and certainly they'll be saying Michael's activities going on and professional ensembles will be in there to the Vermont Symphony has already rehearsed their Vermont Mozart festival We're talking with about it and I think there are other groups who will be very interested in rehearsing in this and perhaps performing in the space so I think it's going to create this sense of a center of activity that will be phenomenal. Great. We're going to finish up our credits with a piece of yours it's called Cascade before we get to that one. What are some of your influences. What other composers influence that piece or other pieces that you do. I hear a lot of people in there. Yeah. Yeah. Well I'm sort of connected to the American orchestral tradition of people like Barbara Copeland Bernstein and certainly going to school at Curtis. You know I can I

wrote in Samuel Barber's studio a lot I would sit at his piano and with a picture of Barbara Menotti on the wall and compose at that piano so I'm very informed by that tradition and Ned roarin my teacher Curtis is another person is very connected to that tradition. So that's probably the greatest influence I think I started with a lot of other composers who I regret respect for. But I think ultimately my own voice especially in orchestral music is really linked to the Bernstein Copeland Barber tradition. What about some of the very contemporary work that you've had some that in this tape you gave me sounded very contemporary as well where what is it. Is that just coming from inside of you know experimentation with other forms. I think so I mean I think one of the reasons I'm not a composer with a capital C is I don't think I have my own voice. I think I love music and I love making new sounds but I've never struggled with. Does this sound like Troy Peters. So you know there's there's all kinds of influences.

Well let's listen to try Peter's this is Kaskade an orchestral composition performed by this is actually the symphony orchestra of the Curtis Institute of Music. OK here it is thank you so much for being with us today. My pleasure. And thank you for joining us. Well thank you. Yeah.

He was a dashing merchant mariner and the Spanish Civil War veteran. She a stunning ballerina when they met. Join me in a conversation with George and Sonia Kahn. Sonia and George Cohen are an inspiration to us all as they approach 90. They were as different as can be at the beginning. Sonia grew up in New York's Upper West Side the only sibling of the great choreographer Jerome Robbins and was a professional dancer herself. George rode the rails as a teen in the Depression. Joined the Merchant Marine and fought in the Spanish Civil War. Sparks flew between them 60 years ago when the couple met. They married had a family and founded and together ran a progressive school. Retirement eventually brought them to a 200 year old farmhouse in Wilmington Vermont where Sonia dove into artistic endeavors. And George continued an earlier interest in filmmaking leading to prizes and the

founding of the Vermont International Film Festival now held in Burlington in October. Thank you so much for being here today. You're welcome. Plenty to talk about. I like to go back before we come forward. You were both in those impressionable coming of age years during the Great Depression which seem to have made quite an impression on many people. How did each of you and your families experience the depression. Well. I had really no family all except my father and my mother died when I was five and a half when my brother was born so he never knew his mother and I we were brought up by our grandmother my mother's mother. And she died and then our father took us from Red Bluff California down to the San Francisco Bay Area and put me in a Jesuit high school.

And. Because to him that was the most important thing that I could should get a Catholic education. And so. One thing led to another and he couldn't afford to pay the tuition anymore so I had to drop out. And go to a public high school and eventually to part time high school and I had to get a job go to work. Shall I tell you the whole story I also heard you say you rolled the rails for a little while to yeah it's tough. Oh really. Well let's see when I dropped out of high school I guess I was about. 16 going on 16. Well and. So. Anyway so rough start. Yeah yeah yeah. Very rough. And and Sonia your upbringing was was quite different. Tell us a little very different I'm I'm a New Yorker. And I went to the.

Dance School after all I knew was that sense of three year old I was performing and the depression got a hold of us too in my family they lived on about 15 gallons a week and I joined the I was on WPA by then in the library thinkin projection and did a lot of semiprofessional jobs the young kids the depression. I worked in Macy's with the depression. I also organize a strike. And I was injured during the Depression. So you were already political. The very night of the crime and I started to work I became political because it was oppression and people organizing just left and right to saying themselves and when the nice things about sell BPH people always helped each other out and talk about WPA because there are some people that might not even like that in the sense of the word works projects side by Roosevelt right. And they just put everybody to work

everybody and found interesting categories when I was first hired by WPA. They put me in the. Library Project census writing census had the world's worst writing and of course I was very ambitious and I thought the thing to do it is get the job done. I found out very quickly as soon as you get the job done you don't have a job so I was really pressured by everybody to slow down don't be so smart you know keep trying to get that job working. And then they found out I was not a very good writer Les switched me to and the part that library project which is how to fit a section to it of young teenage is that way downtown on the west side there's a library of account in the name of it. That's where I worked. Now I would say between that end and my nose is running. I debts debts when I was three years old four years old and I was sponsored

by a newspaper The Herald Tribune and a guy named Charles the Iskcon Thank you. And he did concerts free concerts pull the people and they were all over. I mean and very good musicians and singers and I was only only to dance or child dance. So you were you were dancing on stages at the age of three five and I was I remember going to Sing Sing prisons and sing. I remember being taken to insane asylums and watching the people the big kids following me with very these things I remember which were very strange that the very odd pieces my teacher was a singing teacher and I was in studio 61 and Carnegie Hall and by his studio 61 and I was the theater knows that that studio and then I started to dance with shelves with books on the who ran the first THEN sense of theater I think was 56 of 54 street

and all the greats were there. Jose love mama something Marsh the painter. That. Guy name angles and existence and he did all the classic ballets and modern style and that's why I brought Gerry into that company. We're going to get back to you and you getting Gerry into and into dance and in a minute. But to Ben George you found a love for the sea somehow and went off and joined the Merchant Marine. But then you also went on to join the International Brigade in the Spanish Civil War. How did that come about and what was that experience. OK well I'll tell you it's a long story but I can tell you part of it all right. OK. And San Francisco I had a job as an errand boy for a Drury store on Market Street and the cashier was the wife of a sea captain. So they

invited me to dinner when the captain was in port and they took a liking to me and the captain recommended me for a deck cadets job with the United Fruit Company with Captain Lars Peter Hansen as the scripture of the ship. OK so one thing led to another. I had strict orders not to fraternise with the crew because I was being trained to become an officer and a gentleman. And. What happened. They put me on deck to work with the Bo's'n and the crew to do day work and eight hours a day. And then I had to change put on my uniform and eat in the passenger dining saloon. You know and all that. But while I was working with these guys they were all Scandinavians. They became my best friends. And I was not supposed to fraternize with the crew. I think it's the only friends.

But when we went ashore you're going to imagine what happened. I learned what sailors do when they go ashore. We don't have to go there yeah yeah. So drank a long story short. I was finally lost the job and then I had to ship out as an ordinary seaman. He lost the job. Because I was drinking and I was standing at the ship's Telegraph going through the Panama Canal. And taking orders from the pilot and I hadn't slept for 72 hours. Carousing and so forth and found him on both sides of the canal and I was. My knees were buckling and the captain and the pilot was yelling at me and kept finally said Go below and get some sleep. And when we got into San Francisco the gangway was greased for me to lie down. And so that was shipped out on many ships after that. Oh how did you get into the International Brigade.

Well I was went to sea for a number of years and of course became a union man and I joined the union and I helped organize the National Maritime Union in New York. And. What happened. Was. When I. Was in San Francisco there was another strike and during the strike a delegation came from Spain to collect ambulances and food and so forth. And. Harry Burgess was the chairman of the meeting at the Civic Auditorium in San Francisco. And I was very impressed by the whole thing. A number of my friends and I began to talk about the whole idea of going to volunteer because we heard about that. Lincoln Battalion at that time there was fighting in Spain. I was just a newly organized group of Americans. And so.

We finally volunteered. We decided to go and what was that experience how did. Leave you. Oh. Well I'll tell you it's such a long story really. I was in Spain only about seven or eight months I think. I was in the battle of Brunet day. And a battle brewing that day. There was so many casualties. That I was finally assigned to become a stretcher bearer. I was an entry infantry man carrying a rifle and we had been in action for several days and finally. They said we need stretcher bearers and so they put me as a volunteer to carry stretchers OK. And during the time I was carrying one of their that the battalion adjutant who weighed about a two hundred eighty pounds took four of us on each corner of the stretcher to the area and we had to run and

drop for about 20 yards because we were under fire. And finally we got to the first place where the run of some doctors there treating the wounded. And when we got there I discovered that our. RIDO the battalion adjutant. Had been hit by loggers on the stretcher. And he was dead. When we got into the first aid station somehow or other just I just cracked up. You know I cracked up. I really I broke down. I was and who who who wouldn't. I was ranting and raving in front of one of the French doctors said Comrade you must because you must. And then the boy talked to me the worst I got. So that was so they sent me to yeah. Albert said he used to work in the rear guard and finally. I decided it was time for me to go home. Traumatic experience so he sent me home and I went back again as a

sailor on the Erica Reed in 1938. ERIKA REED was an American freighter that was carrying food and supplies all kinds of supplies to Spain is a relief ship relief American relief ship for Spain that's what it was called. Yeah and. So it's your term and that was my second time and and get back I was on. Yeah and we went to Odessa from Barcelona. We went to Malta and then through the Straits through or into the Black Sea to Odessa and we laid out alongside the dock in Odessa for about fifty two days and we were supposed to be picking up a cargo there. But I remember the Russian officials came down and they yelled up to the captain Captain Vye are you in Odessa. And finally we found out that it was sabotaged by the fifth columnists who had infiltrated this the

shipping commission of the Spanish Republic and we were given being given the wrong orders all the time. So then we had to go immediately from Odessa to a bar say we picked up a cargo of flour that have been waiting on the dock for us and took it to Spain and. Finally got the cargo to Valencia. And. That was the end of that truck. We were I think incredible Advent you know we could spend the rest this time on this and I don't want to interrupt you but I want to continue to move on I mean incredible adventures for I've written about all this in my autobiography. There you go so. There you know here's where you can look it up I'd like to now get back to where Sonia was during the moment just like my head. That's the most written about war is the Spanish War. Yeah that's the case and well you know it just it's affected it affected everyone who was involved so deeply emotionally I was emotionally Yeah sometimes and a lot of

emotion feeling about what was going on and and the Spanish people over became related to them. We went back to Spain many times in the celebrations. Yeah. I mean she was down the street and it was like your sister brother hugged you and carried on and gave you flowers I gave you something it was just you wept. So you continue to have an incredible connection we have as well you know we were I think it was 1960 and I don't remember numbers and 90 you know in. 1996 there was a celebration over the International Brigade and we were all invited to come back and we were given Spanish citizenship at the Courtauld now the veterans of the International Brigades from all different countries 43 countries or all. I have a hard to imagine that my Spanish citizenship but I don't know what I'll ever do with it well it's a no no talking about it.

So back to the Sonia during this time. You're your little brother Jerome Robbins who is of course became the giant of musical theater and ballet with West Side Story New York City ballet etc.. You were the one that started as a dancer I was the dancer in the family and and he followed in your footsteps has nothing else to do well take him to class and he would. I was fine you know as long as nothing happened. But when he's joining us want to dance. And that upset my father. People bully and my mother. But and I fall especially just for so much. So he didn't want he didn't want to dance around to dance at all. Nobody heard of a Jewish boy dancing in a. And I'm sure you know my father used to say it but he should be a shoemaker you know. Anyway. He was very talented and he was very young and I kept saying stopped dancing like a flower. Go to a bar go to the book get technique get technique I had never been trained I never have been allowed these

kinds of trainings at all. Skip barefooted and dancing once in the music. So what's the difference between a barefoot dancer and say a ballerina. That's the whole technique of ballet was a lot of history behind it is very important. And to be a dancer you must have that technique. If you're tap dance and I walk out of that all the dances that I have ballet Teri it's very interesting. That's why that's so wonderful. So you encouraged him to go ahead and yank that went to my teacher. I had studied but it was you know as an author you have to really go and work at it. Jerry took two classes of the day when he started dancing. Now were you ever jealous of his success I mean you were not the answer you know I just American folk looked I'm you know he's my little ball that he was so talent he was so wonderful. He was incredible and you know he was so inventive. And these answers have been every Some of it many some moves with my memory is so poor and getting Coco and Danny Kaye and his wife and just they did two or three

performances a week. And it was just incredible. Now but you certainly had successes of your own you continued to do some professional dance and I just some professional work I dance with Jerry for a year and brothers Oscar nods Eva Marie Schwartz and we've met very many very important important people. Einstein came in. I can see the broadest instead of standing for the plate and I also organize. With a boyfriend. The strike there where you help the curtain and get ourselves two dollars more from $16 to $18. We got them we got the pay. Well it's not surprising that when you two met because of your political people you gorgeous people that the spark started started flying and just to move along you met you married in World War Two came you went back as a seaman and served in both the Pacific and the Mediterranean during World War 2 in the North Atlantic and the North Atlantic.

You were all over the place except. Though if there was except the note says I know it's there. Oh you mean the moment moments from now I was not on the Mormon scrub there were he would leave you I wouldn't be here otherwise. Move. So Sonia had had one child before the war you came back you had a second child and you started taking some courses at NYU. George you got a degree in education it wasn't quite that way but Joyce Why go to school I didn't come home when I wanted them how my that was always our our chase to find a place from home when he did many things and selling vacuum cleaners fans at work. And I had been working at a private school in my back background besides teaching dance he was teaching Jensen and I had been teaching dancing many many is. And my aunt ran a school for young children and I said and I was working there while George was at sea. I'd take the kids and work there and I said to him and he was very fond of me. Why can I have a school just a simple as that. And

she said why not just as simple as that and so I looked for a building and I found this old white elephant building it was one of the famous theater peoples. John go and John go in his house. A sale and I got I think for twenty thousand dollars. Something like that 12 or 13 a room house on the bay. And ICE Border in October and moved in November November Tober and I opened the school in the early part of May. Now this is really a war nursery school for us or history. That's with school and our partners over the top of the building. And this got George off the see well I said it might be a good thing for you to do. So he went to NYU and took the test and it came right they should do teaching and directing us. So he went back to NY I went to and now you do have a degree in a high school degree at that time. And I did take an equivalency test a high school

degree or graduation. You know he was the only man in this to be eligible to go to college right. But he was the only man in the group of teachers just because of no man a below their grades at that time in the in the teaching of the schools. So I majored in early childhood education is an anthropology cultural anthropology. And he went to school and came back by June he was able to I was able to support him while he went to school. I took my student Griese in there was APHC drop out you know and you ran a very progressive very thing right. George Street Samia educational insurrection. I was administrator right. Well I'd like to move on to the film festival because you know you can only got about another four minutes so well let's go. I know let's go so how did you became a star to be doing film. You know you had the school and

and when you moved here you made Washington to Moscow Washington What inspired you to make that film. Well the nuclear freeze campaign. Oh we went to a meeting and Brattleboro and one of the speakers was David Macaulay of the American Friends Service Committee and he told us about the peace walk that was being organized from Washington Vermont to Moscow Vermont. So I said wow that's a wonderful thing. That's something someone should do a film. And so he said do it. So David said OK George you're doing it you do it do it. Now this film won the you know ASCO prize and you know went warded and here at Hiroshima Hiroshima International Film Festival What was your experience in her ocean of it in your time. Just read a book you know incredible. Yeah it was so moving. And we went to the museum is that we were just signed by the Japanese and it was just the whole

feeling about being against warning against Boeing is just so powerful you know the theme of their festival is peace and reverence for life. Yeah. And is that not the seed for the Vermont Internet yeah exactly to exactly. We came back home. I love the few friends and I have a living room and said we want to start a festival you know like I started school I didn't know anything about it when I started it. We saw the festival is a real operation in our back room justice. Now this was 16 years ago you starting a festival 1985 and I was the first one. And how has it how has it changed is it is it still after the same thing how do you how do you say it's different now. It's grown like topsy. You know really and we owe a debt of gratitude to all the wonderful young people up here in Burlington who keep it going. I'm just a figurehead now.

Where were the board. We're on the board. OK but what I said was in my mouth. OK anyway so it's wonderful the way it's kept going and very inspiring last night we went to Lee when the meetings the young filmmakers and there we heard about their problems and I start to laugh because it's the same you no matter where you are. You don't have the money seem not of money but they need money and they need you know and distribution just over 11 distribution. And that's what they're struggling for. Much more elaborate with lots of cards and papers and the tremendous Quitman. But the the heart of it is still the same they have to give their life to what they have to give their interest to stop doing anything else. So lawful is the way they talked about how involved they were. That's on the wall was thing to do you the work you have to do and to be involved with it as as you are we haven't even talked about your art but we just have a minute left. Some words about your a long devotee. I know you'll swim

and and the longevity of your marriage. Any He thinks he is so young and I don't think is I still think you are still struggling to look like that. You know it's it's never the shortage. What do you think. No comment. Maybe it is this the swelling of my own I was always an artist. Yeah if I wasn't dancing I was painting or I was doing something and I have I was still working. And I went from 12 phase shifts in a steel pieces which is too heavy for me now to working in tissue paper. And they're all interesting in their frame by about eight of them in the young and Constantine gallery in Wilmington which is lovely I check out the gallery. Keep your eye on these two. They're fabulous thank you so much for coming George and Sonia come on the way it's always wonderful to talk to you so badly don't you. But thank you for being here today.