 Welcome, everyone. My name is Robin Lloyd, and this is a session of the Burlington, Vermont Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, our monthly meeting. And we are very honored today to have two women who have recently returned from Nicaragua, who will speak to us. And, but before that, I want to let them know and bring them up to date a little bit on our Burlington connection with Nicaragua. You can see the poster behind me. Well, our Senator, who his name is Bernie Sandarista, went to Nicaragua. And the Sandanistas then said, yes, you must have a sister city. And he assigned us to Portugal basis and we've been going back and forth there ever since and Dan Higgins, who thank goodness is called, has been the person who's really held that together for many years and has gone back and forth. And so, wait a minute, isn't it called bill we now. And also, do you want me to try and take minute and take minutes, or, or anyways. Yeah, if you could. This is Jane Henry, who is a wealth member that would be wonderful if you take minutes. And, but when this banner was made, it was still a particular basis. So what can we do. All right. And in addition, I want to boldly recommend this wonderful tape about the dawn of the people Nicaragua's literacy, literacy crusade. That was the first time I was in Nicaragua in 1980. And, and with during craft and J Craven and it's a remarkable document and it's on our website. Green. Green Valley. And you can go there and play it. And here's another one. Oops, called. We have other plans, which I made later on, which is not at the Pacific coast, but on the Atlantic coast in a journey I did with Alliance for the same group that you traveled with Alliance for global justice for global justice so this was this is a document of going to Nicaragua way back in. Wow, I forget when the early 20s I think. So, let's, let's jump in here. And let me introduce Jill Clark Gala. She is a translator and an activist in back and forth to Nicaragua and recently took a delegation there and Diane was on the delegation. And as I understand from the two of them Diane is going to speak a bit first and then. And then, and then Jill will. So you want to start off. Diane. Okay, so I am. I know very little compared to Jill who I greatly admire. She, she filled us all in and other and several other people in the brigade. We've discussed at length the history of Nicaragua and the United States and the relationship that we've had to it. So, the whole, the 10 days was was very informative about so much. And she's been involved with Nicaragua so much unlike me I only had one other trip to Nicaragua was in 2019. And that was right after the 2018 coup attempt. And I didn't even know it hardly I knew something had happened but we were, I was with a medical mission, and they never talked about it at all. And so, you know, I guess we talked about lots of other things but not that. Anyway, so I just was really loved the trip and I got as soon as I got there. I met a woman who has lived in Nicaragua for, I don't know, 15 years, I think, and she had talked about all the great changes that have happened since when she first started. And so, I, you know, the whole, the whole time was just very informative and, and it was really heartening to see the people trying so hard to have the, the health care, and the, and just bring up the standards of living and and support women, because it was really kind of a women's delegation and that was really our emphasis. And then we saw women's co-ops and we went to them and we went to Parliament. So the whole time was just meeting with different people we went with trade trade union representatives. And, like I said, six women from Parliament. It was very informative and I, well, first of all, I didn't get sick, which was wonderful because typically on my trips to Central America, I have big problems at first usually. And, and everything was just really nice that was organized so well. And Jill, I just want to say a little bit about her because she was our, she was the translator. She had a machine so she could translate in at the same time as someone was speaking so we didn't have to go back and forth and, and the room that the place we stayed in was called Casa Ben Linder Benjamin Linder, and he was killed by the contrast in 1987, I think. Well, after the 80s. Well, the 80s were, you know, there was all the contrasts going on and the big put down of the revolution attempts. And so anyway, that's it was named the place we stayed at was named for him and their murals all over and artwork. It's a great place to stay. And her uncle was very instrumental in so many things. And then the room that we were staying in his name for her mother who has done so much dealing with Nicaragua. And so I just felt I feel honored to have Jill speak because she just has so much of the history and her sister we was one of the guest speakers. And she's lived in Nicaragua I think for like almost long time 20 years, I think. Anyway, Jill will tell us but I just wanted to say I I just real quick the trip was very, you know, lots of meetings and and but at the last day we managed to go to a crater lake and go swimming, and it was really deep down on the sand to get into the lake. And then we actually saw a volcano in the evening. And there was, it was, you could look down and see the lava bubbling, and there was this red glow all over. And then afterwards we went to a dinner. And we got a gift and I have it over there but it's just had different things and many at various places we got little things that people gave us and I almost felt like we were treated like royalty. The way that we were received. So I just, but basically it's very impressive the changes that are happening there with the health care and the education and trying to bring up the standard of living. And I just can't say enough about the good things about it. So, if you have any questions I can ask later but I think that's good enough now. Okay, well, thank you, Diane. And, yeah, so Jill should tell us more and there will be time at the end for questions and I know a lot of us do have questions who have followed some of the changes that have happened in the last five years so please, please, please start Jill. Thank you. And thanks Diane. It's great to hear your impressions. And I want to share everybody that everyone in Nicaragua is not related to me. It's a little embarrassing to hear Diane talk about it, but my mother was at the Nicaragua Embassy in Washington in 1985 to 1990 and she did deal with a lot of sister cities so I don't know if anybody working on the list of cases Burlington sister city had dealings with her, but her name, could you say that Rita Clark and your uncle's name, Father Miguel de Scott. He was the foreign minister and the 1980s and then the, the president of the UN General Assembly in 2008 2009 and involved in a lot of things. In some ways. So, just to tell you the purpose of this delegation it was to look at women's rights in Nicaragua and how Nicaragua came to be rated so highly by the UN and the World Economic Forum in terms of gender parity. So, we wanted to look at at how this came about and we've been doing so. We visited clinics and a hospital maternity wake home and women's police station and government offices including the Ministry of Women and we met women parliamentarians. And then we spent time in three communities of women, women's farming cooperative as Diane mentioned, an organization in MacDougalpa that's working on violence against women, and the feminist elite that I'll tell you more about in a minute. So I thought now I could show you some pictures and talk a little more about what we did. And then we could. I just shared the screen gave me the ability to share a screen. Okay, let's do that. And, okay, so I'm screen sharing. And now I need to put it in slideshow. Okay, so you can see there were about at this point there were 27 of us. There were two Canadians who got COVID on their second day on the visit and, as one of them said they got voted off the islands they had to isolate so they weren't with us for the rest of the trip, but you can see different people there from the delegation. So he was in Managua at an overlook of the city. And this is the Casa van Cumming Linder named for Ben Linder, who as Diane said was, he was a 27 year old American, who was a mechanical engineer doing little hydroelectric energy projects in the countryside and he was targeted and killed by the people in 1987 along with two Nicaraguans. This was one we were at the Ministry of Women just some pictures they have there this is a kind of historic photo of a woman gorilla right around the time of the Triumph of the Revolution maybe 1979 1980. This is a statue that I don't remember but these are other scenes in Managua I didn't take the pictures I was always interpreting so other people took the pictures. And this day here was really cool. I thought we went to visit Christian based community, and people aren't familiar with Nicaragua, Nicaragua's Revolution coincided with the liberation theology movement in Latin America, and there were Christian based communities in Nicaragua Salvador Brazil and other countries, and these were Catholics who believed very much in taking care of the poor here on earth, and liberating them here on earth and they have this saying between Christianity and Revolution and that's why people like my uncle, and a few others were priests that were in the government and there were many lay people who considered themselves Christians who fought for Revolution. And so this Christian based community still exists and it was really interesting to talk to them. They run their own service they don't have a priest. And it was three women up at the head table running the service people who are not even religious we're very moved by it because it's a very vertical structure. And in discussing with them we got into talking about some of these conflicts with the Catholic Church that you hear a bit distorted in the US media but there are conflicts with the Catholic Church hierarchy in Nicaragua. There's a huge change on the side of the old order. And as, as we talked later with some of the peasant feminists in Nicaragua who talk about fighting against with capitalism colonialism and patriarchy, the Catholic hierarchy very much represents all of those things. And so there's, this is Mucasa, who was one of our delegates led us in tears often at the end of our meetings. And this is the, the next day and see that Sunday, you know, a large municipality on the outskirts of Managua, that has come to be the largest municipality in Nicaragua was always where people surviving different disasters would go to live and at some of the poorest of the poor people in Nicaragua still. But we saw this very interesting clinic, which is actually privately run by the organization that runs the Casa Ben Linder community, the house community. And we learned about projects, things how the government runs health care and how this little organization that that started in 1995 has gradually been doing less and less in health care as the government takes over the needs but we still saw very interesting things going on there. There you can see us now here we're at a Casa Materna, and that's a maternity weight home. I think they're about 182 of them now throughout Nicaragua. This is something that you might have heard of in the 1980s and 1990s. They started with little NGOs and now the government has taken them over and made them available throughout the country. And this is where women who are either experiencing a high risk pregnancy, or who live in remote areas can come for the last two or three weeks of pregnancy to be safe and to be close to a hospital for an institutional birth. They have their own midwives if they'd like to, and on the Caribbean coast I understand that they bring, you know, traditional medicine midwives. And so everything that the women are comfortable they have good nutrition they have good medical care and they have, you know, child rearing advice and breastfeeding advice. And so that that one of the statistics that's that's highlighted by the World Economic Forum is women's health and survival, and through vastly increased and free health care. That's why maternal mortality has gone down by two thirds under the current government. And this maternity weight homes are also a big part of that is child infant mortality is also gone down. Is abortion is abortion legal and no that's a very interesting topic. And I have heard that some people I mean I haven't heard this I've seen myself that some people say that Nicaragua doesn't have rights for women because of abortion is not legal. And we, I have found out on a previous visit and and confirmed in this visit as well that abortions are available for women to save the life of the mother. And especially when I was there in November of 2021 we had a very interesting discussion with the doctor at this little clinic who also works for the Ministry of Health and he said, Well, you know, we as doctors have signed a note to save lives. And, but sometimes because of their religious beliefs now less than half of Catholics, less than half of McGrawens are now Catholics, and many are Protestants now are evangelicals, but they also seem to have conservative beliefs on this. The current abortion law was passed in 2006 before the FSLN came back into the presidency and when the FSLN still had a minority in the legislature. And it, I know several people who believe that it was a deliberate tactic to put that up for a vote and it's interesting. A similar legislation passed in El Salvador about the same time. And it's, it seems that the thinking was that this would keep the FSLN from winning the presidency because they would vote against this ban on abortion. And in fact, the FSLN told people that they were free from party, you know, from upholding a party line they could vote their conscience on this vote. Some people voted for it, and some people abstained the MRS party who has promoted themselves since then as the party of women's rights because they support abortion, they didn't vote for it either. Nobody in the whole legislature voted for that, for that, against that law, because it was polling with over 80% support in the population. And they knew that it would have been political suicide to vote against that law. However, we see, we talked with women who are very much in favor of the right to choose. And we see that they get free, free contraception through government clinics and readily available this, this little clinic that we visited they have a program for implants for young women, and also free sterilization operations after a woman has had the children that she would like to have. So I've heard in peasant communities that I'd stayed in that most women after they've had two or three babies get, get their tubes tied before they leave the hospital. And, and the other thing is that the, the morning after pill is also readily available in Nicaragua. And correct me if I'm wrong but I think that that is the most widely used form of so called medical abortion in the United States, but you don't have that controversy in Nicaragua that we have here in the United States. And I'm hesitant to say that in a big public forum because I feel like that's just going to give the national endowment for democracy, an idea to go in and stir trouble in Nicaragua about the morning after pill. And now it's, it's readily available. So this is here is seeing a Nicaragua Christian socialist and solidarity. This is at the Dallas pies hospital I don't know if there's a picture of the hospital. This is a new hospital. It's a beautiful big state of the art hospital. This woman is the Minister of Health. This woman right here is one of our delegates and she's a pediatric surgeon from from Maryland. And then I think we have so you can see other pictures here. This woman here which I think we can see her better. This woman is the director of the hospital. And she told us that people kind of look at her and say you're the director of the hospital you look so young but she's she's 39 years old. And this is what we found so many places that there are women running things. So this is the next day. We, this was an impromptu meeting, we had met this woman here her name is floor of a young, and she is one of the leaders of the self employed workers union, which is kind of sounds kind of odd to us that you that self employed workers have a union, but they formed in the early 2000s to protect these were primarily street vendors wanting to protect their ability to sell on street corners or and from the buildings or in parks or whatever. So they actually formed a union, and in recognition of her leadership in that union this floor of a young actually has a seat she's, you know, voted in as part of the FSL and but she has a seat in the national legislature. And at this, we unexpectedly had free time on that day. And she, she found out about that and she set up a meeting with the National Federation of workers. And so we had this very enthusiastic and interesting meeting with them, and some of the self employed worker women came there were very enthusiastic to come and talk to us about about how they get their interest loans and their different programs to help them and their children are getting so much better education and health services. This is our group meeting at the Ministry of Women, right there, can you all see my little cursor when I move it around. That's that's the Minister of Women of women, and we talked very briefly with her I remember one of the questions, Diane you might remember was is same sex marriage recognized in Nicaragua, and her answer reminded me of this debate about around the code in Cuba. And she said, she said as as the FSL and we have no problem with that we're in favor of same sex marriage, but you can't just pass along, your society has to be ready for it. And that reminded me of the Cubans talking about these kinds of issues and just the process of society getting ready for it. So, this is at the, the Parliament, the, the National Assembly, and this lady is from, I think she's from Billy, right, Diane. This lady. Oh, shoot. Which one. This lady, the one. Yeah, Nixon she. I don't know do do the, the Burlington bill we people recognize her know that name. No, I think. Yeah, I think she's from the Caribbean coast, but I think she's from the North Caribbean, not the south. Right. I think so too. Oh, yes, right, because she talked about the new bridge. Yes, she was very moved when she was telling us about what an impact that had made on people's lives so there's a new bridge. There's a bridge that connects the highway, all the way into communities on the coast that people used to take a ferry to get across this river, and it's a huge celebration I think it might be the longest bridge now in Central America. And these bridges and the roads that connect the Caribbean coast with the Pacific side, both the North Caribbean and the South Caribbean have a huge impact. In addition to the local universities that have been set up a new hospitals there's a new hospital being built in bill we and I think it's supposed to open up sometime in 2024, maybe towards the end of 2024. And so then we went to visit with these women in farming cooperative they primarily produce coffee for export and you actually can buy it here in the United States through friends of the ATC if anyone's interested. I can tell you how to get it. And these ladies I visited them before and they do a group. I don't want to leave them yet they do a great job of telling you how life has changed for new generations. I think it's going to get better. This is when we were in matagalpa with an organization. Oh, I guess you can't see. Can you see here, you can see Dorothy Granados. Oh shoot, I can't I can't show these smaller photos, any bigger, but Dorothy Granados is a Chicana woman from the US who went to Nicaragua in the mid 1980s and stayed and she's been doing this one for I think at least 20 years and it's called the skills to save lives foundation, and they work with women and girls who are victims of violence or sexual abuse and for example they were talking to us about this beautiful program to with these young girls you can see over here who have been victims of sexual abuse they set up like support group for them and different after school activities and they teach them how to do jewelry making and other kinds of hobbies and they even sell them to make a little thing and they were talking a lot about wrap around services and this is actually we were hearing at the Ministry of Women as well how women's ecology. Gender equality is part of the school curriculum starting in the early grades and how in their program they enter, they have interface with with the schools and with something interesting called the women's police stations, and we visited one of these and we hear about how this is a place where victims of women and children who are victims of violence and abuse can go and meet with people without men being there and people who are trained to not re victimize the victims. So we had this meeting here and the women's police station with these police officers and as there they gave us they gave us bags of coffee right Diane everywhere it seemed like people were so happy that we came to talk to them. Right. You know not that many people are going to Nicaragua. So, and one thing interesting thing that came up in this discussion is somebody said, I don't see police officers with guns where your guns. And they said, no, we don't carry guns unless we're guarding a building, or we're on a, you know, a drug staying operation or something like that. And this lady, I think she's in charge of PR for the police and she said that they don't even have one gun for every police officer. And I said, so, you know, how's your budget compared to other people they said we have, we have the lowest police, actually the lowest police and national defense budget in Central America, but they also have an inside crime just put out their verdicts they rate Nicaragua's second lowest in homicide rate in in Latin America only second to Chile. So we know that that Nicaragua's had less violence than its Central American neighbors but even less than most of the whole region. And you're up for a second because I know Dan has to leave early for an appointment and so how about three more minutes and then we can have some questions. Sure. Okay, so this is a silly. This is the group with the FEM and I can talk about that afterwards so that Dan has a chance to ask questions but this is another women's group that was founded in 1995 while there was a woman's president but it was a very difficult time for women in Nicaragua. They didn't have, especially peasant women couldn't feed their children and didn't have access to education, neither did their children, and they were experiencing violence in their homes and so they organized around all of those things and and so sexual and reproductive rights. And this is a talk at the end and there's my sister and Camilo Mejia whom some of you may have heard of he's an activist against the Iraq war, but a Nicaraguan. This is our group at a party there towards the end of our stay. This is the old cathedral and downtown Managua. And that's it. Stop share and let you ask questions. Beautiful. Fascinating. Thank you. Thank you so much. So. And I see Pamela Williams has joined us and Anita Rapone. Welcome. So are there questions now about this report. And please demute yourself if you do have a question. I've enjoyed the pictures of Nicaragua. Thank you very much. Unfortunately, I have to leave in a few minutes also but I want to learn more. Dan you're still muted. Technologies. Am I am I now. Yeah, we can hear you. Okay. As Robin knows, I mean Robin and I in 1984 in opposition to the Reagan administration trying to destroy the Sandinista Revolution, Burlington became a sister city through who knows what mechanism, and it's been that way for over 35 years. And what was an interesting learning curve for all those of us in Vermont, who knew maybe a little bit about Nicaragua but not a lot was that the Caribbean side. The sister city in the region that we became sister cities with was not pro Sandinista and was was in fact very was a contra area. And so we've we've slowly we've watched things evolve and it's been a very interesting process. Looking, you know seeing how things have gone. And I don't. I don't want to, you know, I don't want a bad mouth, Nicaragua but the but the Sandinistas have not been particularly great in dealing with the indigenous population there which is mostly mosquito. And a lot of the efforts that go into making life materially better for people have ignored some of the spiritual or some of the aspects of what what people feel in that in that part of Nicaragua, and certainly the most important concept in the on the east coast in in the Caribbean side in Puerto Cabasas, which are billy is the concept of autonomy. And slowly and slowly, and sometimes not so slowly that's been eroded by the central government out of out of Managua for whatever reason. They have a they have their narrative that they're worried about the United States and so forth well the mosquito people have a similar narrative except that they're under assault from the, from the federal government so it's it's been an interesting. It's been an interesting history and I don't think there's time to talk about that right now but things aren't doing from from our report of people that we know when and billy. Things are not very good right now, and both economically and, and, you know, like my margarita which you know, Robin was in tears on a zoom call with me because she said our culture is just being decimated. And, and a lot of a lot of, you know, it's a little bit like what the United States did with its indigenous population, I think, you know, 150 200 years ago, and it's. So I don't want to just give a glowing report about the Sandinistas there's there's a lot of problems, and they are an authoritarian regime, and they don't allow much that doesn't fit their narrative is my sense of it. So that's I'll stop with that and see what Jill you can respond to that. Oh, sure. Yeah, I think that we should look into this more Dan because what I hear from the I think I think you are right that the the Sandinistas made mistakes with the mosquito population in the 1980s. There has been a lot of work to repair that relationship, and I think that the, the, but I've heard from mosquito people who have a favorable opinions of what's happening, and the autonomy is further consolidated. So I think I, I think we should look at this more. And actually, I helped organize a course about women in Nicaragua, an online course, and the people who did that with me are interested in supporting us to do a course about the, the autonomy, the various regions of Nicaragua. And, you know, they have the cool thing is they, they don't have to rely on professionals from the Pacific side anymore, and you're, you're very right that it has a different development. And there were many mistakes made in the 1980s but now the people the Caribbean coast people have their own universities their own hospitals their own health care that combines traditional medicine with Western medicine. And I think we should hear from them, what they have to say, and I have to say that I had friends who came to accompany the national elections in Nicaragua in November of 2021, who went to the Caribbean coast and who just talked to people who just came up to vote not not a certain kind of people are not anybody selected by the government, and they found overwhelming support for the government. And in fact, the North Caribbean coast gave the government some of this highest votes in the whole country. And people talk to the people I know who went there about all the roads that were built, and about having health care and the fact that they'd had two category for hurricanes that hit right them, you know, and it caused devastation all the way up to Guatemala but it hit first in Nicaragua on the Caribbean coast and nobody died, a few people died in the second one who refused to evacuate, but the government mobilized people to get evacuated, and they responded very well to the hurricane. Yeah, they did. And, and, and I guess one of the things that I mean I understand it's a different narrative but the but one of the things that's had a big impact is that the government has outlawed NGOs from the And NGOs were a major part of what people's the life in that town. We ran into some problem even you know getting money to people. And, you know, so that's that's an example of, of suddenly the NGOs were playing a really big role, and I don't think they were doing that much to upset the, the Fed, you know, against the government which is sort of what they said was happening maybe some of them were but you know they were like the Danish were running health care they were a lot of. There was a lot going on that suddenly was made illegal, which is which has had a big impact from what people tell me, and I was hoping as Robin said to have. I was hoping that one of the people we've worked with was going to be in Burlington this month, and we've lost track of him, you know he started he started. He said a lot of people are starting to leave that area to go into the United States and I don't know what's become of him. So I'm just, I don't know a lot of what's happening at this point, but but it sounds like things aren't as rosy as, as it seems. Jill, could you tell us about the, the people who are released from prison who have been left Nicaragua. Yes, this happened on Thursday. There. So, in the, the coup attempt of 2018. There were people who were arrested who were engaged in very horrible acts of violence. And there were other people being investigated but after a lot of pressure from the OAS and United States in 2019 a year later, Nicaragua issued an amnesty for any crimes committed in 2018, as long as people did not commit new crimes. And in 2021 in the lead up to the, the presidential elections and national elections. This actually was discovered in 2020, a plot by the at the NED USA ID to have a coup in Nicaragua, basically around the election results. And in 2021, people began to be arrested who were found to be complicit in that in that and that included a lot of people tied to NGOs and the, the NGO funding is, is a real issue, like Dan is talking about, but it's a very it's a complex issue and I'd love to have a longer conversation with you about that Dan sometime when you have time because it is very complex. And I know good organizations who have had a really hard time dealing with this, but it's it's not something that the government was cracking down on just because NGOs have been used as a channel to fund illicit activities. It's also because the financial action task force required this of Nicaragua, and of other countries and Nicaragua got taken off the grey list because there was no accounting for what people were were doing with money and Cristiana Chamorro, who is one who, you know, she was being asked, she, she has an organization she's from one of the, the most famous oligarch families in Nicaragua had many presidents over Nicaragua's history, and had this this paper called La Prensa, and she was using it to funnel in money to other press outfits that funnel in money from the NED. And she had been asked to, you know, there was the legislature passed a new law for accounting funds of very much like the foreign agents law in the United States from back from like the 1930s. And she kept saying, well, I'm not going to comply with that law. I'm just going to shut down my organization. But in fact, she just put $7 million into her own bank account that she was getting in that she had been funneling through her organization. And as it came closer to the fact that she was really being investigated for sure she was saying things like the State Department says my accounts are all in order, you're like she doesn't know that she doesn't live in the United States and that she's subject to the laws where she lives. And then she went and declared herself a pre she invented this thing a pre candidate for the presidency. And so when she got arrested that was the news and the corporate media in the US that a pre candidate for the presidency was arrested because such thing as pre candidate doesn't exist in there. There were others who also suddenly called themselves pre candidates, but you know, I know, I know other sister cities that had trouble with this I know that the, the financial reporting requirements are a big burden, but I also know that there was a lot of NGOs that came up in the 1990s and the early 2000s to do things that government is supposed to do. It's very delicate for some to understand when they need to step back and let it be sustainable and let the government do what it's supposed to do, but sister cities have a special role. And I'm sure that your sister city, you know, it has has all of the best intentions but I know that it's still onerous requirements and yeah, that's, that's a good thing. I have a six o'clock dental appointment that I got to go to. I would love to talk with you more Jill if you're. No, I'd love to. Yeah. Yeah, just keep in touch with email. Yes, that'd be great. Thanks for inviting me to this. Thanks for having your poster on the wall behind you. So are there any other questions for Jill or for Diane. We're still being recorded and this will be going to CCTV so ask your questions now. Yeah, I want to ask what cities, what regions you visited? I thought I heard the word, I thought I heard the name Madagal, but at one point. Yes. We went to, we were in Ciudad Sandino and Managua, and then we, we went to a small community of Santa Julia near El Crucero, which is not that far from Managua. And then we spent a day in Mataralpa and we spent a day in Esteli. And then we were back in Managua and Messiah. So we did not have time to, we had a very packed agenda and did not have time to go to the Caribbean coast, but I would love to go with Dan and the, the Puerto Cabezas Burlington people to, to build we some time. Yeah, and it's easier to get there now. There's a highway, right. Yes. Yes. Any other questions for Jill or Diane. Yes. Well, if not, I'm going to call this meeting to an end and thank you so much Jill and, and Diane, and I hope we'll hear more from you because as I understand it you're going to be living in Burlington part time in the future so thank you so much for coming.