 Welcome to another show of Celebrate Life. My name is Gary DeCarlas and I'll be your host today. Over the years, I've read too many obituaries that left me pondering, why did I not have a chance to meet this person? The goal of this program is to celebrate the life of everyday Vermonters. Many of them you'll know and some of them you probably won't. But I can tell you this, that everyone has a story to tell and everyone's life is fascinating. Before we start the show, if any of you would like to be a guest in the future, please write to me at celebratelife0747 at gmail.com, and I will gladly entertain putting you on the schedule. If you have a question for our guests, also write to me at celebratelife0747, and I'll make sure that our guest gets that question and answers it and gets it back to you. I'm honored today to have and I'll be very transparent to have our close friend of mine, Mark Finari, who I've known for over 40 years now, on our show as our guest. Welcome, Mark. Thank you, Gary. Thank you. So we're going to celebrate your life today. And let's go back and tell us where it all started and what life was like back then. Well, first, it's an honor to be on the show. I've gotten a lot of pleasure out of watching your interviews with other folks. And I've thought a little bit about this, you know, you gave me some great questions and to think about. And I was born in the Bronx, the son of a Italian American family. And my folks were very working class. My father worked for the New York City subway system. My mom was a housewife. She did some small other small stuff to make some some money and stuff. But she was mostly domestically focused. Love the phrase domestic engineer because she was certainly certainly one. Very loving. I was born into an incredibly loving family and my parents had an exceptional relationship. They were deeply in love the total time they were together. So that's that's where I was born in what's called Little Italy in the Bronx, Little South of Fordham University. So when you when it's nice to hear that your parents were so loving and both to themselves and to their children, what did that afford you, Mark, in your life? Oh, my goodness. It was safety, love and safety in my nuclear family. I when I heard about other people being abused or not being well taken care of or people witnessing their parents acting out or having addictions, I had the most difficult time processing it, you know. And so I just felt fortunate. And I thought everyone that might make you laugh. I thought everyone had parents like this, right? Of course, you know, what did I know? So yeah, family becomes our universe in the beginning. Exactly, exactly. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So yeah. What was life like as a little child there in the Bronx? Very urban oriented. I lived at the juncture of I lived at the juncture of the Botanical Gardens, the Bronx Zoo and Fordham University right outside of Little Italy. I could literally walk into any of those environments in less than three minutes. So it was really, but it was urban. And I played a lot of, you know, it was very, I'm just saying, I'm full of, you know, young adults, adults with children. I played a lot of ball, I read a lot, played softball, slap ball, which is a very urban game and stickball. Yeah, I played in the streets until I moved to the East Bronx when I was a little older, about 10, which felt like the country. I actually defined it sort of as like the country. It was a joke to anybody who lived in a rural area. So, yeah. So when, go on. Now, you know, my family was very family oriented, you know, you know, we had Sunday dinners with the extended family, motorboat trips, fishing and touring on the sound, swimming trips to Jones Beach, Coney Island and going to the library. My mom was a library, you know, fish and auto. And she brought me to the library at five years old. And libraries have always been a huge part of my life. Tell us a little bit about that Italian culture that you had. You know, like that Sunday dinner. What was that like? It was priceless. It started at my grandmother's, my father's family. His father came, was born in Sicily. And he, he came to the United States and he opened up a barbershop in the Bronx. And he married a woman who ultimately came from Abruzzi, which is up in the mountains, east of Rome. And that was large family gatherings. My father was one of six, my mother was one of four. And literally, you know, the tables were put together in the biggest space we would have in his house. Or sometimes the tables would take a turn into another room. And the food, food was over the top. Yeah. And it was very much a potluck form. I didn't know that word until I came to Vermont. In the early 1970s. But it was very much a potluck, you know, the host house. Yeah, people brought stuff, you know, the stuff they had made. The food was excellent. I had cousins, lots of cousins. And, you know, it was, it was pretty sweet. I have to tell you, that's wonderful. That's wonderful. Yeah. So, so that little boy growing up in the Bronx, what did he, when you thought about what you wanted to do when you grew up with some of your early career fantasies? Oh, my goodness. My goodness. I, my father worked for the subway system. So initially I wanted to be a railroad engineer, a driver railroad train. I thought about becoming a physician, you know, and I actually was a pre-med student when I first went to college. And walking across the US was always an ambition. And I thought about becoming a librarian. Those were early things that I wanted to do. I also told my father when I was 12 that I wanted to be a priest, which fits into a whole. He wisely told me to think about it for a few years and he would help me if that's something that I still wanted to do. But it is connected to some of my life later on that urge to what was embedded in there, you know, it's connected. Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. I loved it. You know, I love to be just dreaming about what I could do. I still think about walking across the US. The other day I was I was thinking about it and I said, OK, how fast could I do this? How many miles a day? You know, hmm, I want company. Still on the bucket list. Still on the bucket list. I do about 30 or 40 miles a day now. Wow. So, you know, I'm no kidding. Oh, yeah, I've been doing I've been, you know, intensely involved in walking as an activity for years. Well, that's amazing. Yeah, yeah, I love it. And so. Grammar school, high school, what were those years like? I went to a parochial, a Catholic parochial school, 12 years for both elementary school and high school. It's a parochial education, you know, parochial is defined by narrow, narrow interests. And I, you know, I I did the best I could. I was a pretty high academic learner and in high in elementary school. And I won an award, you know, and we graduated from elementary school, but I chose the wrong high school and a parochial school, Catholic high school. And I didn't realize that I knew something was wrong. I, you know, but I didn't know how to separate myself from that experience. I could have my my parents would have intervened, but I was too conscious that the admission of that might be seen as a failure. So I just went slowly downhill. What was what was wrong about it? What what didn't fit? Well, I didn't really buy the whole religious education piece. I it didn't pass. I was a science mate. I love science and it didn't pass what I, you know, what I respectfully call the straight face test. It didn't make any sense at all. And I didn't know what to do with it because on one hand earlier, I wanted to become a priest. And then all of a sudden three or three, four years later, I was looking around saying, what am I going to do now? You know, I'm not going to. I made up my mind not to go to a Catholic university. I would experience, you know, one great decision. So you grew past that I want to be a priest. Let's go to Catholic school. Of course, that would support that. And then that mind started working. And the science mind started working, saying something's wrong here, something this doesn't connect. It doesn't connect. And there were there was a it was a teacher, a sister. Her name was Kathleen Donnelly. She was my eighth grade teacher. She became president of a high principal of a high school nearby, all girls. She was a person I really started to turn toward history with her. She turned she turned the class's attention towards physics and history in the modern world. And, you know, JFK. And, you know, she was she was quite a force. And I I held on to that. Yeah, when high school was I wasn't really inspired at all in high school. So which is unfortunate. I could have gone a couple of other places. Right, right. Now, you said you won an award in grammar school. What was that? It was, you know, achievement for excellence, you know, studies. Yeah, you were smart. Yeah, when we graduated, a number of people received awards. And I was. Yeah, I'm great. And that was fun. In high school, I was, you know, not, not, you know, not an chiever, although I was on the chess club and I enjoyed that. And stuff. But I was going to ask you, were there any clubs or areas that you really sports or things that you got into during those years that. Yeah, that's a good question. I didn't even think about that. I ran track 440 relay and later cross country for a while. And that was really good. It really brought me away from sort of hanging out with the wrong people in high school, taking on some poor habits. Like I became a smoker in high school and I started to drink when I was 16 or 17 years old, you know, like many of my friends and those became abusive situations later on. And I had to really consciously change those. But I didn't, you know, I was really interested in chess, pocket billiards, hiking, the natural world. I was always looking, you know, I was out at all the parks in New York doing doing different things with my friends. And I loved it. You know, I loved it. And when you got your driver's license, did that give you a freedom that you could get out of the city? Oh, yeah, my driver's license. I wasn't in a hurry right away. I wasn't in a hurry. I got my license when I was 17 because I was still discovering New York City using the mass transit system and going place town to Greenwich Village, looking at art art stuff, looking at the City University of New York, which I ultimately went to, just discovering the city and saying, whoa, this is amazing, you know, and so I wasn't I went and when I've got a license, I started to go with my friends go to natural areas, you know, large parks out in Jersey, upstate New York, up in Connecticut, up in the northwest corner of Connecticut, where it meets Massachusetts. I started just traveling around. Yeah, yeah, that's great. So you went to City College in New York. Yeah, I went to City College. And you were a pre-med major. Yeah, I started as a science major pre-med concentration. Yeah, and I had I had an evolution, a revolution there, you know, but it was definitely the right place for me. And I discovered that the anti-war movement was more important to me than the study of medicine at that time. And I moved over to being a history major. A little bit of just the Kathleen's push. I became a history major thinking I would ultimately do maybe teach or what have you. And I love the City University because of the diversity. You know, people from different ethnic groups, you know, Asian, Asian, Hispanic, African American, just, you know, I was, yeah, I mean, out of the school I graduated from, there were probably three people of color in the school out of 250 high school students. And I was on the track team with two of them. But they weren't close friends of mine. When I got to college, though, I had lots of friends and different people that I could hang out with who had really different upbringings than I did. Yes, yes. Changed my life, you know. Yes. Who was he? I was a revolution, you know. Yes. And those were the days of the Vietnam War was raging. Yeah, the days of the Vietnam War, I was profoundly influenced by that war in so many ways. I thought about that a little bit. Oh, my goodness. Oh, my goodness, you know, well, you know, you're you're close to my age. You know, I watched, you know, the war was on television. The death and destruction that we reigned on innocent people was on television. And my father was a decorated World War Two hero, a member of Israeli. He wasn't Jewish, but he was in for for for the saving Jewish concentration camp victims as a medic. He was awarded a Righteous Among Nations. He was a proud World War Two veteran. And the war of the war, the Vietnam War, was a travesty. And it impacted me, you know. Matter of fact, can I tell you a short story? Sure, absolutely. One day shortly after I started to go into college, there was a protest movement right in front of the school and with somebody singing with a guitar and singing any war songs. And I was with some friends from high school who came to visit me, you know, we went outside and they started making fun of this person and jeering them. And he had two guitars with him, one he was playing and another one leaning against a fire hydrant. I picked up the one against the fire hydrant and broke it over the fire hydrant. Whoa. And walked away. Wow. Wow. But the story doesn't end there. Next, the next semester, I'm in an organic chemistry class in the first couple of days and this fellow sits next to me in the room. You know, he sits right next to me and starts talking to me and we're back and forth and stuff and it's right before lunch. And he says, what are you doing right now? I said, I don't know. I said, I'm not doing anything. He goes, you want to get a sandwich together? I said, I love that, you know. So we went off campus a little bit, a couple of blocks away. We're sitting down and was talking. We're starting to know each other. And he said to me, he said, do you remember me? And I said, no, have we met before? And he said, yes. He said, we met out in the street in the spring. He said, you broke my guitar over a fire hydrant. Oh, my goodness. And I looked at him and I was, I was like, you know, a number of months passed by and we said, oh, my goodness. I said, I'm sorry. I'm like, oh, my word. I said, let me buy you lunch and I'll replace your guitar. And he said, he's nodding his head and he says, I'll tell you what. He said, buy me lunch. I don't want my guitar replaced. He said, it wasn't that good of a guitar anyway. And I said, I started laughing. I said, I don't even know what to say to you. And he said to me, I'll tell you what, all is forgiven if you can come with me to a meeting. Because do you know anything about the Vietnam War? And I said, no, I don't. And he said to me, if you come to a meeting with me, one meeting, he goes, we're square. I said, OK, where am I going? He said, the organization is called Students for a Democratic Society. OK. And he says, I'd like you to come with me. I said, OK, yeah, I went and it changed my life. Wow. The people who were there, what they were doing, how they were talking about the world, the women were like, whoa, you know, I'd never seen women like this before. Right. And it was just incredible. That's wow. Did you, has this person stayed in your life at all, Mark? No, no, no, no. Stephen Moritz, I think his last thing was Moritz. Stephen was his first name. We didn't say friends because, you know, we just didn't. But he he was so, you know, he had an agenda and that's OK, because but he gave me a way to make amends. Yeah, he sure did. And that that emotional maturity to be able to say, let's go out and have lunch, you know, spotting you and going out to have lunch. No, I don't sense any anger or, you know, animosity whatsoever. Just an open door and open invitation and wow. Yeah, yeah. And it changed my life and change your life. Absolutely. That was one of the, you know, situations that have been many that have changed my life and it helped shape what became sort of my operational. Well, how would you say? I don't know, mission in the world. Yeah. Have you paid that forward in life and yourself? By. Yes, many times, I love pay. I love, you know, I love I've done many, many different things. And my operative word is discovery. You know, I'm curious almost to a fault sometimes and discovery. And also I'm addicted to transformation, both my own and helping other people. For me, it's a passion. If I can facilitate someone else's transformation in a respectful way. And that became my work later on, you know, that became. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, what an amazing story. Thank you for sharing that. Well, you're welcome. I haven't it brings up tear to my eye a little choke in the chest. Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. I think about the splinter walking away, breaking someone. A piece next guitar over a fire hydrant and then walking away. Right. You know, what do you do with that? So. Wow. And yeah, I mean, that can that's just an amazing story. Thank you. You're welcome. So. So you graduated and then what? Oh, I was it was, you know, the anti-war movement was in full bloom. The year was 1970. I filled out a conscientious objection form and applied to apply to Canada for Canadian Immigrancy. And I was in going along in those processes. And those are long stories. But I the lottery came about and I drew a high number. And I drew I drew a buy. I threw a number three twenty six. And if you were in the top, the high third, you weren't going to get drafted. Right. I had a girlfriend who later became my wife. And we were reading the back to the land movement. And we had traveled across country on two large camping trips in one summer, and I loved national parks. You know, I just love being out of New York and being in the rest of the world. Yeah. So we decided to buy a farm in upstate New York with a with a dozen with not a dozen with four other people. We bought a 70 acre, 10 room house, 70 acre farm with a 10 room house on it in upstate New York and moved there completely after I had been working in New York City. I came back and I worked a year and a half, put some money together in the New York City Health and Hospital Corporation. And that was was a good thing because the year was I worked there when abortion became legal in 1970. And so I that started me on my path outside of New York and away and away from living in New York City. Grilled I was radical to radical upstate New York 70 acre farm. Yes. Yeah. An old dairy farm had a small, a small barn. I think a small, a small barn was still on it or might have just been a large shed and the barn had burned down. Yeah. And much did you pay for that? I paid. You're going to cry. Nineteen thousand dollars. Great. Unbelievable. Yeah. Stayed there for a year and a half or two years. And then we found out how much we didn't know, you know, I went to graduate school up in Buffalo then is to get my teaching certificate certificate and taught in a local school. You know, but what we didn't know, we didn't understand what we were really doing and the kind of emotional, communicative skill you need to live with a group of strangers in close proximity, you know, in a big house on an isolated piece of land, trying to go back to the land, whatever that means. Right. Right. From the kid from Bronx, kid from the Bronx. Wow. You never know how much you don't know until you step into a foreign world. You go. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. And that. So how did you get to Vermont? We made a decision to end the end the relationship around the group, the group ownership of the farm. We sold it and I had we were I was interested in going up to the northern Adirondacks and Mary, my first wife. And I said, yeah, let's do that. So we went up to Potsdam, Canton and Potsdam. We knew they were university towns and we were drawn to university towns because we wanted the diversity of people. We wanted young people around. We wanted the ability to take courses and discourse. And so I went to Potsdam and I got offered an adjunct faculty position teaching history, starting out, you know, at practically no money at all. We were renting a small place, sort of. I'm going to be complimentary and call it a reconverted chicken coop. And and we were renting a place and we had a friend here who I knew from New York City in Burlington a number of years ago, who went out with a friend of Mary's. Yeah. And he and she invited us to come over here. It was the September of 1973. It was over Labor Day weekend and we came over here and wonderful woman and she put us up for a weekend. I I looked around in Burlington and thought about where I was and looked at Mary and said, this is no. There's no comparison here. Yeah, let's move now. And so that's what we did, you know? Yeah. When we went back, we packed up our stuff and within five days we moved back to Burlington and Deborah put us up for a while until we found another space and then Mary went to work for the Free Press and I went to I went to work all to all at the same time for the the People's Free Clinic, which was the precursor to the Community Health Center and the Union River, Union River Food Cooperative. I was one of the managers there and helped build it and and also worked on a little newspaper, a little local newspaper that was an absolute rag. So you I think you're being a little modest on the Union River co-op there. You were right in the beginning of that, weren't you, Mark? Yeah, pretty close to the beginning. Certainly, my friend John and I started the produce co-op. We did. We started a lot of the initiatives. It was really a grain grain bulk order cooperative. Right. When I first discovered it, my friend of mine, Larry Kufferman was the one of the original members with the woman I'm forgetting her name right now. We were in the early we were in the early formative stages. Is it the Archibald Street property that that you have the big bags in there and all that stuff? Well, you've got a great memory. You're right. I lived upstairs there with Larry and we were renting the space and the building came up for sale and I put up the money to buy the building. I had cash left over from the farm in Western New York State. And I said, Larry, I'll lend the co-ops some money. I know the co-op can pay me back. And that's what happened. We bought that building, Archibald Street. Oh, wow. Amazing. God, you're bringing back some of the best memories, Gary. That's the point of the show. Oh, this is great. These are great memories. Thank you. Yeah. So you settled in the Burlington. I did. Yeah, I settled in Burlington. And I started to get involved in local local stuff going on, you know, and my nature, I started to get involved in political stuff, too, which was really good, you know, Liberty Union Party. I remember when friends, later friends began to run for office, Bernie Sanders. I got to I met Bernie there set up doing some work with him and working on his campaigns later. Good man. Tremendous integrity. Yeah, so I started to, you know, do stuff in town and. And. Yeah, and then I got involved in a political movement that was based on a. Socialism, actually, it was a it was a an American, a new American Communist Party. It wasn't the Communist Party USA. It was the Communist Party, Marxist Leninist, and it believed it leaned more toward what was going on in China as a model than what was going on in the Soviet Union. And I didn't really know much about this, but I figured I would learn. I would learn. So I was a bit impulsive and I got involved in this. And I learned a lot. I learned that, you know, I learned to avoid political cults, cults that respect autocrats. And, you know, I stayed with them and did some. I did some union organizing, went to work at the hospital for a while. So I went back into hospital work, which was really fun. I met some good people. I started doing that work. The union organizing work was really good. This is when the service employees international union, this is before the hospital staff, a lot of the staff, particularly nursing staff, was. Union represented by union, right? Yeah. Yes, I got involved in that and stuff. And that led me to the political stuff led me to work in with the city council, which is how I, you know, I met you. I knew where I was on the city council and I became a staff person for the city council for a number of years. Did some good work. I did. I enjoyed that work. I enjoyed all the different people. It did a lot of constituent work, if I'm not mistaken. You did. Yeah, it did. You were very influential and pointed me in a couple of different directions. One was encouraging me to take some mediation classes, which changed my life. Mm hmm. So, Mark, if we just pause for a second, I mean, you know, if you believe in that notion that we all are a combination of all kinds of people in our life that we build upon, who were some of your mentors, some of the people that you you worked with, looked up to, learn from, grew from that really helped make you who you are today. There are there are so many. There are so many. I'm still trying to do that, you know, and I find someone who knows more than I know about something. I just that curiosity comes right out, you know, and I want to know how they structure themselves and their priorities. But, you know, later, I think that when I was younger, you know, it was, you know, I said, suspect that sister was I Eisenhower. I remember liking him. Martin Luther King, I remember a lot who he influenced me, the Kennedy brothers. But, you know, in terms of vocational stuff, you know, Susan Terry, who headed the Woodbury program as a mediator, made a huge difference in my life because she watched me work for a while and she really questioned whether I really wanted to be a mediator. Could I stop? Could I learn how to be and stop being an advocate at time and learn how to learn neutrality enough to convince someone who I disagreed with that I understood them perfectly and that they should hire me to be their lawyer? You know, she actually used those words. And I said, wow, I said, that's what I need to do. She said, if you want to be a mediator, if you wanted to be effective, that's what you need to be able to do. So she was one of, she was a beacon for me, you know. She was a beacon in terms of how to take the neutral ground and stuff. And the city councilors, whether it was you or, oh, my God, I'm remembering some of the folks I used to work with, you know, Earhart Manka and who I really loved Earhart and working with him. And it was a woman, Zoe Briner. Zoe Briner, right. Zoe, a Rick musty, loved Rick. Yeah, yeah. And the people that got, they came in later on, you know, I worked with great people at City Hall, who were staff. Mike Monty learned a lot from Michael Monty. Yeah, yeah, it was good. Yeah. And then I turned towards psychology later. I started to move away from that experience, the political experience. And tell us about that a little bit. Well, what happened was, I found political analysis wanting for me. It didn't give me an understanding of people and why they did things. Like, I, you know, I saw people in political parties, you know, and while I was staff person of the city council, I did some work for Democrats and Republicans, not just progressives at that time, or independence. And I, I really wanted the human piece because I would, people could do work, but I didn't see that people became easily transformed by political identification. But there was something deeper going on. And I've got to find out what this is about. And it was through mediating and doing, starting to do the worst work in community-based mediation. For the Burlinton Mediation Project, which is, I said that was one of the things I started with a friend of mine, Ellen Bernstein. And I realized that I needed to, I was, I was co-mediating what I'm doing, a mediation dispute. And my co-mediator, very bright woman, said to me, Teamon Mark, you are driven to psychological analysis. Do you know that about yourself? And I said, no, I don't. I only took a, you know, a broad introductory course in psychology when I was in college. But I really, the professor wasn't that good, and I wasn't that interested in it. She said, I recommend that you take some courses, take a couple of courses. I said, well, wait, she goes, yeah, you would, you're going to like it a lot because the questions you ask, and that's what happened. I turned away from politics because I'm going to say something. I don't mean it in a way that's anything, but I appreciate it for the people who do the work. I founded superficial political work, and I wanted something that went deeper. And, you know, and then I also had my own process, my own, you know, moving away from something that I didn't know was going to happen. I'm moving away from substance use and understanding that in a deeper way. So the politics stuff is an external thing. It's out there. It doesn't, and you're, it sounds like you turned in, who am I? What am I all about? And what are you all, what are you all about underneath the label? Yes, yes, absolutely. Yeah, it was, it was hard for me to turn in and leave the other behind because I had spent years developing myself as an agent for external change and had made fabulous, wonderful, become friends with fabulous people. Highly motivated, skilled human beings. And I found myself moving away from that. And there was a loss there. Yeah, yeah, I understand that. Yeah, there's a loss there. And interesting. So, yeah, and then you have, you did quite a bit of work in mediation. You know, way beyond the, that, that certificate or degree that you got. Even till recently, how you've done a lot of that kind of work, Mark. Well, yeah, it was really interesting because the mediation took me into conflict resolution in the workplace. And because I was a mediator, people would hire me and I had, I was hired by some amazing people. That's Axon Blair Hamilton, the founders of Vermont Energy Investment Corporation. I worked with that company for nine or 10 years with their senior staff. And what happened was I was, I changed and I became a, I went from becoming a workplace consultant looking at conflict resolution to really assisting people in leading in a more appropriate way. So it became leadership development, coaching people who were executives, managers, team leaders. And then I became, I hit, I hit heaven when I, because I became friends with people who were doing that work prior, longer than I have. And just wonderful human beings, both Peter Cole, certainly a mentor and another, another person I'm forgetting right now, Marilyn. I'm forgetting your name, it's aging, you know, what can I tell you? And I learned from those people what tools to use and really how to do the work. And I've been doing that work actually since, you know, really engaged in leadership development work, still do some mediation and conflict resolution in the workplace. I moved away from doing counseling. I only did counseling work, like traditional therapy work for about a year. And I found that I didn't like the 50 minute hour, I wasn't interested in doing, seeing people that way and working with people that way all the time. And so I moved toward workplace stuff, which is what I've been. Yeah. I'm still doing it. Yeah. I love doing it. That's great. Now you've got three daughters, if I'm not mistaken. Three daughters. Yeah. And they're close by. Yeah, they were all over the country. They were all over the country. And California, you know, New York, Boston, Chicago, you know, way at college. And then four years ago, yeah, about four years ago, they started to move back. They said they're coming, they're moving to Burlington. I gotta tell you, I was a little surprised because I thought they were, you know, they had made lives in these other locations and had friends. They had some great friends. And they started to move back. My oldest daughter moved back, stayed for a summer and her and her future husband loved it here. They're here now. They just had their first child here. Now they just had their second child two months ago. All boys. And then my middle daughter moved here with her son and just had another child, two boys. And my third daughter moved here after college and she's still here. Although, are they all going to stay here for their lives? Well, who knows? Who knows, right? Yeah, that's nice. It's wonderful having them around, I have to tell you. Oh, yeah, it's, you know, it's a real treat. And as a grandfather with all those little boys running around. Oh my God. I, you know, I see, I do a lot of grandparent duty. It's a joy. Yeah, I can imagine. This afternoon, I'll be with my grandson, Luca, who's named after my father, who lived to be just a little short of a hundred. And I'll spend a few hours with him this afternoon. Well, you know, he'll tear me up. He's like 18, he'll tear me up. He's 15 months old. I can barely keep up with him. He's, he's on the, he's walking now. Oh, yeah, yeah, he's all over the place. Yeah, he doesn't stop. He's has a great spirit. You'd love it, Gary. It's, it's just a beautiful spirit. He doesn't stop and he's, he's glee. You know, that's great. Oh, yeah, yeah. That's wonderful, Mark. It's wonderful. Thanks for asking about them. Oh, absolutely. So if you, what, what kind, a couple of things here. One, when you think about your life, is there a quote or a piece of wisdom that you would share with other people that kind of capture what your life's been about and what others could benefit from? Yeah, you know, there are a few things. The first thing is I have a quote that's on the bottom of my email and many people talk to me about it. They say they like it. It says, it's in those individuals whose thoughts or behaviors challenge us have the potential to be our greatest teachers. And I really believe that, you know, when I don't understand someone, I, you know, I might get irritated initially. I might start to lose patience a little bit. There's an internal part of me that says, wait a minute, Mark, what are you gonna learn? I'm addicted to learning. That's, I mean, I love it. And so what are you gonna learn? What's this person going to teach you? And as opposed to saying, you know, this person is a, well, you fill in the spot, you fill in the line. I'm like, okay, I've got something to learn here. What's it gonna be? And I go, and that's a great feed for my curiosity. And I am patient. Sometimes I'm impulsive, but I'm basically a patient person. And I like to be, to think things through and be insightful, be less impulsive. And the other thing is, you asked me what would be my words to people out there, you know, my, you know, is to integrate the pursuit of joy and purpose into your life. That I think in this culture, you know, particularly if you're a man growing up when we grew up, you know, you were the, your males around you, mentored and modeled being the breadwinner. You're right. A lot, you know, and, you know, at the sacrifice of pursuing joy in your life and what brings you happiness and developing emotional capacity, emotional intelligence. A lot of men are age, you know this, their emotional intelligence is compromised, you know. And I don't mean they're bad people. That's not at all. No, I understand. Yes, they're good people. But it's trying to do their best. But, you know, emotional intelligence is a whole skill set. And, you know, in the workplace, I think it's valued being valued more and more. You have emotional intelligence, you know, you're a valuable part of a team. You can lead, you can lead a team of people. If you don't have emotional intelligence and you're focused on data or just content or you're driving for results all the time, you know, you're gonna miss something. I don't know yet what you were looking for. Oh, no, it's really, it's you. And I appreciate that. Yeah. Thank you. You know, when I'm listening to you, it made me go back to that Qatar incident and wondering if you challenged that guy who was playing music on campus, if he was curious to learn something from what you did. Yes. You might have taught him something during that whole thing too. Yeah. He, I mean, he was very, he, I just said it before, he was very present. I mean, in a way that was unusual then. Like I never knew about his family, you know? Interesting is like, where did he develop that kind of presence from, you know? But he asked questions, he was patient, he listened, you know? He was curious about my life. And he said to me, I mean, you don't really know much about the Vietnam War, do you? He forced me to be self-reflective. Yeah, right. And I said, no, I have to be honest. I don't know much about it. That's why I destroyed your guitar. Exactly. So what an embarrassment, you know? Well, so we're getting towards the end of the interview. Is there anything we've missed that you would like to talk about, about your life? Well, you know, I would go back to my family a little bit because this is where it all began for me, but my mom particularly and my father, they really practiced integrity, being generous and compassion. You know, when I read about those later on, recently I just finished a book by the Dalai Lama, talk about somebody who can influence your life. It was, you'd love it. It's an exchange, I recommend it for anyone. It's called The Book of Joy. It's a dialogue between the Dalai Lama and Archbishop Tutu, a facilitated dialogue. And out of it came the book. Wow, it's a wow. You listen to them talking. I mean, I did it as an audio book because you can hear Tutu in his voice and there's an Asian man translating the Dalai Lama. And you can read it to him, that's fine too, but you can put that, you know, the voices in there, but you get the emotion by listening to it and the deepest respect that these people have. And it reminded me of my parents. I said, you know, my father, here's a beauty. My father, they were religious people. My mom was a Eucharistic minister for the Catholic Church. My dad, later in life, my dad and her went to a tour of Israel and Egypt when he was on tour and they were going through the working class and poor areas in Egypt, all he was doing was giving away money. He wasn't satisfied unless his wallet was empty but he got back to the hotel. Yeah. No. What can you say, you know, than that? So I think that's what I would say there and try things, challenge you, you know, be curious. You know, gotta find that the, yeah, you gotta find the Japanese called Ikigai, and it's about the essence of achieving the external expression about the internal integrity and values you have. Not that you're not gonna make a mistake. We are, like I'm gonna make a mistake today. I don't know what it is. Exactly, yep, yep. But I think if you're pursuing that and you're looking for it, you know, you'll find it. Yep, so at this point in your life, all right, do you feel like you've queued up all that internal stuff with what you do in the external world? I'm still working. I'm still working on it. I have a new, very sweet new relationship in my life, very, very, very nice woman and her interests are different than mine and overlap and she's taking me in a different direction, you know, through my friendship with her and I'm queuing up something else, you know? I think I'm gonna do more of the saying of what I've been doing the last few years, working with people and transforming themselves and transforming myself in the process and spending more time in nature, even more, you know? I was a beekeeper at one time for a number of years and I'm just looking into getting a hive, my eldest grandson said, bees? He calls me Uppie, it's a long story. And he says, Uppie, you're gonna have bees? And I said, yeah, I'm gonna have bees in the backyard. I'm gonna show you how to open a hive. He's like, are we gonna get stung? I said, maybe, but probably not. Do bees hurt? I said, it can hurt. I said, you gotta get the stinger out right away. I said, it'll hurt a little bit, but don't worry about it, I'll show you what I do. Hives are like this. Wow. It was really fun, you know? So maybe these grandchildren might be your way of paying it forward, Mark. Yes, you know, someone just asked me, he said, Mark, you have four sons, you have three daughters. What do you think of that? And I said, I said this to my daughters and their families too, I said, look, our job, I said, when you were young, the daughters, our job was to raise strong, resilient, smart young women who would not back down easily. They could push back. And with men, it's develop strong, competent, emotionally savvy men who are also sensitive. And treat women, listen to women, treat them with respect. That's the only way I can pay it forward to my dad. There you go. That's my dad. Yep, yep. That's nice. Love that. That's a great, that's a good one. I like that. Yeah. Any last words you wanna, Mark? Any last words? I don't think so, let me think. I've said so much. I was wondering when I started this interview, Gary, Mark, what are you gonna say? You have hardly anything to say. Yeah, great life story, Mark. Oh, thanks, thanks. Last words are don't be afraid to start something new even when you're older. Like I got into real estate stuff and development and stuff when I was 50, 50 years old. Yeah. And I'm 76 now and I'm really happy I did it for a number of reasons. Yeah. I was flying to Mexico, man sitting next to me is active in real estate in Dallas and Mexico near San Miguel Allende. He started asking me what I do. I started asking him what he does. At the end of the conversation, we exchanged emails. He gave me a tour in Mexico of real estate stuff that he was up to with a partner. And I said, Stephen, why did you wanna do this? And he said to me, I can't believe it. You got involved in this stuff when you were 50 years old. Most people are hanging. They're not interested in that at all. I said, got it. So that's my parting words. Don't be afraid. There you go. That's great parting words. Thank you, Mark. It was great having you on the show. Yeah, thank you, Gary. This was a pleasure. Thank you. Thank you for bringing back all these memories. Appreciate it. You're more than welcome.