 You don't mind what I'll do is I'll turn on one of the bright lights for all of you. Here we go. Sorry, I'm going to zoom in on people over here. So, you know, like why should we go with some other... At least stay with them. We're so glad you could join us tonight. How's that sound? Come on in. We're so glad you could join us. There's a person wandering around with food I feel the desire to tell them where to go. I can't do it all. But we're going to start with a little music with Spencer Lewis. And then we're going to have a program. Well, we are having a program despite the anarchist tendencies of all involved. And as Spencer sings to us, we'll make sure that Linda is here with us. Spencer Lewis, thanks so much. Thank you so much for joining us on behalf of Nat's family and friends. We're so glad that you could be here. I'm Lauren Glendavidian. I had the privilege of working with Nat for many years at CCTV. And I did want to just let you know that we will be having a meal after this. And the restrooms are in the back that way in case you need them. And we're going to start. We have a program that's sort of loose here. But I'd like you to just consider at some point, if you'd like to share some comments, there is an open forum as makes sense in any democratic institution. And we're going to start with Linda Eyre, Nat's beloved wife. Thanks to a good friend who brought me this. I don't know where you are, but thank you for it. Welcome, everybody. Myself, Damon, Toby and Zimmy. Thank you for being here with us. Today, I'm going to have to read this. I didn't practice it, and I just finished writing it. Today is, today this is our community, our caress, our mishbukka. I wish to recognize that as a community, we have lost a lot of people. Husbands, wives, fathers, mothers, sons and daughters, friends and activists. Today we're celebrating Nat, a builder of community. Who was a husband, a father, a brother, a grandfather, friend and a colleague. He was kind, loving, quirky, angry, shy, friendly, honest, hardworking, inclusive, supportive, often very quietly. I used to, you've probably seen me bring a whole bunch of stuff to different places catering. And Nat did the quiet work in the background. He would fill the car, he would empty the car. He'd do all the dishes, and one time he said, does anybody know I do all this? And I don't think I ever told anybody well enough, so I'm telling you now. Okay, I lost my space. There we go. He was a gifted tennis, soccer and hockey player. His final year at Milton Academy, he was picked to be the captain of all three. But the coach decided that two captaincies were enough and he had to spread the wealth. Nat loved sailing and canoeing, anything that put him on the water. He devoured books, primarily mysteries, Dick Francis, Robert Parker, but also Proust and Harry Potter. He had a wondrous sense and love of nature, whether it be trees, plants, fiddler crabs, dogs, squirrels, horses and spiders. He loved babies. We often refer to him as the baby whisperer. Then of course there's Bob Dylan. I think some of you know that. He had an encyclopedic knowledge of Dylan and traded bootlegs around the world. He would hide his tape recorder under his jacket and I hid the camera under my dress. And we were successful sometimes. When pressed for his favorite songs, his list was amazing. He would say, oh yes, oops, I have the right, oh, I maybe don't have it anymore. Anyway, what he would say is, yes, blowing the wind, Paris 1974, I can't think of any, tangled up in blue. Oh yes, that was Poland, 93, and he could identify those songs and where they were from. All of his CDs had little sticky notes. And those who have ever worked with him know about Nat and his sticky notes. He said they were one of the best things ever invented. We do have sticky notes outside that people can write on and we can read them later. We don't have an entry book so you could use that as a way to do that if you'd like. Nat used to make beautiful furniture and there's a piece outside that he did. It's gorgeous, all dovetails, curly maple, bird's eye, just wonderful. He certainly taught me an appreciation of wood. He then helped to start depot woodworking. Does that say, oops, sorry, okay. Depot woodworking, wood's good. To foster camaraderie, he created the depot newsletter, complete with jokes and puzzles. He used to write actually for the Middlebury paper when he was there for a short time. Then came CCTV. A lot of you know him through his work. I wish Bernie was here. He did a lot of work with Bernie and actually one time I called into an AARP call that was statewide and I wanted to say something glowing about Bernie. They put him on and I said, hi, it's Linda Eyre. He goes, oh, Linda and Nat, good friends of mine. Why are those tapes resurfacing now? I don't know if some of you saw them but they were pretty silly, some of them. He shot a lot of video. That's an understatement. He created a channel that was 24-7. I don't know if YouTube existed then but you guys just figured it out on your own. He loved it. He would work up to 16 hours a day and the TV was always on to channel 17. I missed a lot of shows. A couple of short vignettes and then I think I'm done. You're probably all aware of Nat being slow to speak or if you aren't, that's the way he was. He always was thinking, what do they want me to say? What are they saying? What do they need from me? Lisa Kiley is an old friend and she met a friend of hers who told her she just met the most amazing man. He thinks before he talks. Then Lisa said to her, was it Nat Air? Toby, our middle son, traveled to France for three weeks when he was in high school. The deal was long distance calls. They cost a lot of money that he would call Nat and I and we would pass the info on to Kit, Nat's first wife. Well, Toby is another man of few words. He called but he spoke to Nat. I called Kit who started asking the questions that I wanted to know too and it asked Nat. But then I realized and told Kit, Nat and Toby spoke and she said, oh. So I think that's it for me now. I may come back. Oh, actually I'm going to read this because I haven't handed it out to anybody else. From Bruce Cipher, Nat was a dear man who cared so much about our community. Every time I saw him he always had a twinkle in his eye. We always chatted before and after a show when I would go to CCTV to film a show. Nat was solid. Always there making sure everything worked and it always did. What defined Nat to me was his presence of mind. The ability to remain calm and take quick sensible action. He had the presence of mind to record the scene on video. And Bruce said, thank you. Thank you. I may have more stories but I don't know what they are right now. Thank you, Lars. Lars is going to give us a little musical interlude for every young. It's in your program but I wanted you all to know that Lars played this song at the end of Nancy and my wedding. You're stealing my thunder. I'm sorry. Yeah, this was going to be a surprise but the reason why I'm sitting down is twofold. One is that I don't have a strap for this guitar. And number two is that I'm just a few months away from getting a new hip. So I'm in kind of a little bit of a shaky statue right now. Linda is correct. I did perform, well we've known each other since way back. And this song that I'm going to do, I hate to say that I had to relearn it. And seeing this group of people here is probably going to make me wish that I hadn't offered this to come and sing this. But I sang this song for Linda and Nat's wedding. I sang it for Louie and Patty's wedding. I sang it for probably my friend John Bennett and Linda Suttonfield's wedding. I sang it for Phil and Ellie and I sang it for Bill Joplin and Val's wedding. So one would think I would know it by heart. But these lyrics they get away from you over time. And I've never really focused on my guitar playing like I have on my woodworking. So I was a member of the, I was one up in Depot woodworking with Nat. And I will say that I'm as nervous now as I was sitting in Nat's living room when he first was making videos. And I asked him if he would indulge me to shoot some video of me playing some songs. Dylan songs of course. And some years ago Nat had committed a lot of those videos to CD or DVD or whatever. And so I got a bunch of them and I was sort of shocked because Nat really followed this community around with his video camera. And if you've seen some of his earlier video stuff you would think that he's like in Pomplona running away from the bulls. Because they're pretty shaky. It's all over the place but I think he got much better at it. And I remember one that he would go, I see Andrick out here and Andrick's dad and a good friend passed away recently. And Nat would come out to the basketball courts and watch us all parade up and down the court. And so Nat was really a chronicler of the events of Burlington. And I hope that those videos or those whatever the stuff he's captured has found a good home and can, you know, obviously will take a little bit of cleaning up to make good. But anyway, so anyway, this is a song that I was going to do as a surprise. But Linda called me yesterday as I was driving down here and asked if I was coming so I guess the cat was out of the bag. And I'm a little nervous but I think I'll get through it here. I mean, if I boom, are you going to hear me okay? Do I need the mic? Just tilt it toward me. My musical career was always just, you know, one full house shy of the big stage. Foundation wins, wins and changes. And that did make you stay. From folks who have written in that some of our friends are going to read. So if you could come on up and read those, that would be great. I know there's at least to be just keep in mind as you're thinking about some reflections on Nat that you may be making. It will be helpful to come up here and make them so everyone can hear. So why don't you come on up? And Linda called and asked if I would read a poem that my mother Alexandra wrote for Nat. Yeah, I know it's really sweet. Oh, here it is. Be laitidly, here's my birthday poem to Nat, written August 09. He's turning 60, my old friend Nat. He no longer smokes and that is that. He continues to toke. He still thrives on Dylan. I ask God willing for the rest of his life may he live without strife surrounded by food, love and laughter. Hugs Alexandra. That's it. So I'm Suzanne and I've known Linda since God was born and some of you in the room as well. And I didn't have the privilege of knowing Ham Davis, but Amy said would I read this for him? Those of you who know him, Ham Davis played hockey in high school and college, so he knows who a good hockey player is. He and Nat played in a pickup game together and Ham knew Nat was good. The moment he saw him on the rink, Nat didn't have hockey gloves, so Ham gave his to Nat. If they picked teams, he would want Ham and Nat on the same team. Thank you, Linda, for everything. So the floor is now open for those of you who may want to make some reflections around Nat. Brian, would you like to come on up? That's a great public access technique. Ask someone who you haven't spoken to before. So Nat was, as you all know, quite a character. And my memory of Nat that stands out at City Council in the 90s. We had a moment of time where a couple of, I would say, belligerent city councilors were really after CCTV. And they were accusing it of all kinds of things. And Nat would produce these meetings. He would record these meetings and the vitriol and the sort of venom of people on the council was amazing. And I said to him one night, how do you do this? How do you put up with this? Because they're saying stuff about UNLG and I just want to yell at them. And he just said, no, actually, all we're doing is recording it so that everyone knows what they're saying. And that's enough right there. That's all we need to do. He did something that I just want to share, which is so touching that I think I can say it. But our first child was, Liz was pregnant with Austin, our first kid. And Nat was so excited for us. And he said, I've got this cradle. And I made it probably for all the kids, perhaps. Toby was okay. So Toby got to rock in this cradle. And of course, Nat said, but I have to do a little bit of tuning up of it before you can have it because it's not quite ready. And Austin arrived a little early and I called up Nat and said, Nat, I think the cradle is like now. And he said, oh, I'm not quite ready, but I will be ready. And Austin arrived and the cradle wasn't there yet. I realized it doesn't really matter when she have a kid. You learn that it doesn't matter. But Nat showed up with it a few days later and he had like taken it and cleaned it up and polished it and got this beautiful. I think it was cherry or walnut. It was some really gorgeous piece of furniture that he made. And he set it up with me and he brought cloth diapers with him. And I thought, that's an interesting thing to do. What are you doing? He goes, I'm going to turn you on to these cloth diapers. These are the best thing you'll ever have as a woodworker. I still use the cloth diapers for my children. So we used this rocking cradle with Austin for a while and it was okay. But we were that family that chose to keep the baby in the bed. And we told Nat, he's like, that's not such a great idea. They're going to depend on it. We're like, that's okay. We sleep better. So six months later I said, Nat, you know, we're just not using it right now. What do we do? And he said, just find someone else who's going to love it, whose kid is going to love it. And he used to ask, who got the cradle today? I don't remember because that was 27 years ago. But nonetheless, it was so touching that he cared that much to do that. And what an incredible person and gifted human being in so many ways. And we're lucky to have them. Thanks for sharing them with us. Somehow we ended up with that cradle also five years later. So I don't know the path it took, but it was quite extraordinary. It's very big and it rocked. And it's Joe McNeil here. I don't think he is. That's right. Peter, would you mind coming on up? I'm Peter Clavel and I have the distinct honor of having attended approximately 500 city council meetings in my life. And that was at many, many, many of them. And just picture when the city council meeting is about to start. You have a little small talk and that would be there with always this mischievous grin on its face. And a chuckle. And it wasn't until I left office in 2006 that I figured out what the hell that was about. What I thought, what many of us thought, counselors, department heads, that aren't we big shots. Here we are on televisions. You know, there's the TV cameras. There's Nat. And we're going to be on TV tonight. And my mother can watch us and anybody else can watch us. And that, I finally figured out his chuckle was about you damn fool. This is not about you being cool. It's about us, the citizens holding you accountable. So we have a record of what you're saying and we're going to hold you accountable. And I really believe that. And then later in my life when I left the mayor's office, I went on to work in international development. And much of my work was designing and implementing local governments, projects, and developing countries. And always a fundamental principle of the project was to promote local governance that is open, that is transparent, that is accountable. And I wanted so dearly to take the best practices from Burlington and apply those to these projects in developing countries. And oftentimes I would say that we would do, we would record local council meetings and put them on public access TV. We never did it. Why didn't we do it? Because it's so damn difficult to pull together all the pieces. The access piece, the finance piece, the technology to get the engagement of all the stakeholders. It was just incredibly difficult to pull off. And it took me, being away from city government for a while, to figure out that you LG and Nat in CCTV, you figured out a way to do it. This was not done by city government. This was not done by any institution. It was done by you crazies that felt that we should deepen democracy in this community. And that's Nat's legacy is that he worked so hard to do that, to uphold accountable folks like me. And as a result, Burlington in Vermont is one of the most small D Democratic places on the planet Earth. So thank you Nat. I was thinking that you're going to come up and talk. I just want to read a little quote from Nat to this point. Peter's point. Oh, here it is. Very tiny. And it's outside on a memo that I didn't know we actually had, we had, he had written. With its programs, this was a Arts Council grant in 1985. With its programs, CCTV wishes to inform, encourage, compliment, and inspire the community of Burlington to interact and initiate activity amongst themselves even more than they do already. And in a peaceful manner. I hope that my shows help viewers become aware of the incredible world around them. That even with the extensive coverage, there's a whole lot more than even what they see on the TV set. I want kids to ask their parents to take them to a juggler's from Mars practice. And it's great to hear that someone was moved by a story on the Meals a la Carte or Vermont Youth Orchestra performance. Awareness. I want to promote awareness. Let people know. Would you like to share some thoughts? Hey, I'm Rebecca. I was Nat's caregiver the last couple of years. And boy, I didn't get to know that side of Nat that everybody here is talking about. He was already pretty intellectually diminished, I guess, having a hard time. But boy, did I look forward to going to see Nat. He was so much fun. And you know that, Linda, that I had so much fun with him. And in the beginning, when I was at your house taking care of him, and we used to be able to like take him to the petting zoo and for walks by the lake and take him to my house and hang out with my kids. And that was the best when he could come there. And he loved all the hullabaloo and the action going on. And he just kind of wander around from room to room with a big smile on his face and a sparkle in his eye. And he'd just fit in so comfortably. And all the kids loved him. And he, we could tell that he loved being there. And there was an authenticity about Nat. Without, I see that it seems to be a common thread that everybody's talking about here. But it really must have been deep, deep in his soul because it stayed with him forever. Even towards the end there when, you know, if he was mad, you would know it. And if he was glad, you would know it. And we spent many wonderful afternoons just like looking at, there was a picture book of orchids. Do you know that book, Linda? We spent like three hours one day looking at that book. And he would turn the page and just be amazed, truly amazed. And make me aware of the beauty there too that I would have quickly moved past if not for him. So thank you. I've loved getting to know your family and Nat. And I miss them. I'm Dorian Kraft. We got a wonderful evening together, Marvin, Linda and I a few nights ago. And this memory came flooding back, which was another one of those times. And I might have been at a city council meeting, but it was definitely within an event taking place in Burlington. And I was very upset by the way that I was treated by some of the city councillors. And it was a break during the evening. And we were out in the lobby and I was talking to Nat and fuming. And I was kind of apoplectic about just how could anyone be so cruel. And Nat turned around and he said to me, I think maybe you heard them differently than what they meant to say. And he started reinterpreting what was said, trying to make me feel better. And I had never had that kind of a conversation where, you know, it was so personal and so deeply felt and so appropriate for a time that was rough for me. And it was a lovely part of him that I've experienced more often than I can remember and not just towards me but towards perfect strangers. And it was a great part of who he was. One of the great things that Nat did as was mentioned is that he was so curious. Armato at CCTV was for inquiring minds. And he would cover, he would look in the Burlington Free Press every morning and see what was happening. And one of his particular loves was storytelling festivals. And one of his particular, particular loves was Peter Burns. And that was incredibly generous. I did performance artwork which was experimental at that time in the 80s. He took, it must have been hundreds of hours of video of it. And when I stopped doing that, he compiled all of it and he gave it to me. I didn't ask him and it was just characteristic of his generosity. I never knew exactly what he thought about the work I did. He had a kind of a quizzical look when he was, but he never commented on it. He was the camera person and he just recorded it for which I am tremendously grateful. But I always kind of wanted him to say something nice about it. But then Doreen Kraft actually helped me get a grant where I went to various places where city workers do their jobs. I went to the airport and we recorded a little session with the men. They were mostly men at the time who do the maintenance work on the airport. And there was a basketball court or a basketball hoop and these guys didn't always have a lot to do so they would play these complicated games of horse and do trick shots. And so I picked up the basketball and I did a couple of shots. And I said, hey, you got a great jump shot. And I said, yeah, I still treasure that. I had finally done something to impress him after all those years of making art and I still treasure that memory. Thank you. And just a quick reminder, pretty much everything we're talking about is in the CCTV archives because in addition to the little post-it notes, you'll notice there's a sharpie out there. And Nat catalogued every single program that we produced and he would write on the spine of the VHS tapes with a sharpie. He needed a very particular kind. And they were all catalogued in books that he would write by hand and then he would type up, there's an example out there. And now we have an archive of about 41,000 programs of which he probably produced 25,000 of those programs I may be overstating, but you understand just the dimension and scope of this legacy that Nat has left us. Michael Monty. I wasn't going to tell a story about me and Nat, but I was remembering the first time he filled me and we were doing the bike path. And he said, I said, what are we going to do? I was 1986 and I said, we're just going to go out there and you're going to just start talking. So he just turned the camera on and said, go. That was the production value we had at that point. And I would just say, what do you mean? And I would just sort of gesture and start talking about different parts of where we were at in terms of developing it. I wasn't going to tell that story. What I was going to say was that whenever, like all of you, whenever you see Nat, you would get a little twinkle, a little chuckle, a little rep appart, a little back and forth. But then that would start talking and you'd always get a sense that he was seeing the world for the first time. That these are fresh eyes to everything that was going on around him. It was brand new to him. Whatever it was, even if he knew about it, it always seemed like new. And I think he brought that to the camera. And I think that it is his legacy. And I think we get a chance to see that all the time with his fresh eyes. So thank you. You want to say something? Well, it's kind of hard what I'd say. Got it. Okay. There is some questions. No, there's more to say. Yeah, it was just, you know, when I got married in first marriage, we were in this meadow and Job came driving in with a Fiat 122 and said, this is from Nat. So that was kind of cool. Of course, in those days, you know, I was having a kid and didn't own a car. And remember, he loaned me, you know, the first biography of Woody Guthrie back when they were just discovering everything from him. And I don't know if I even knew about it, but he loaned me that copy for a while. I think I finally had to buy another one to give it back to him. But, you know, and then, of course, all the bootlegs we got long before. They're all out now, of course, and pristine quality, but they really helped a lot in those years. So I would just think that I'm not sure if this is a favor to his, but he might have thought about Linda when this song was coming on. We're trying to get music for our channel. There were a lot of licensing fees, and so it was hard to get music. But Spencer Nat wanted local music, and Spencer Lewis was one of the mainstays of our channel music, along with the Vermont Youth Orchestra and other local musicians who graced the channel. Dan Higgins, welcome. I've been sitting here trying to figure what I could say about Nat, because I've known him so long. And there's two, I've finally cut it down to two stories. And one is in the early days when we were doing video, it was before camcorders even, there were cameras and there were decks, and there's something that happened with CCTV, which if you look at the old tapes you'll notice, all of the titles that Nat did were handwritten up to a certain point. And there was a point where suddenly the computer came in and the digital world happened and now the titles were all done with the computer. I was really upset when that happened. You know how he scribbled things. All the titles of the early CCTV shows were handwritten by Nat, and that was a real breakthrough when that stopped. That's one thing I remember. And the other thing is that in the year 2000, Nat and CCTV, the whole, all of us, you know, went down and we introduced the concept of public access television in Nicaragua to Burlington's sister city. They had, the cable had come in and people were, well, they were watching television. They weren't always paying for it, but they were watching television. It was mostly soap operas from Brazil and so forth. And we went down there, CCTV gave us some old VHS heading equipment. We took five cameras and we got the local university to put on the radio that anybody who wanted to learn how to, to video could come. And for three months we were down there teaching people from all different walks of life. And then we got the local cable company to open up one hour a night. And that was the start of people seeing their own lives on television. And it was amazing. It was the same thing that happened here, you know, when public access first started showing people that they knew their neighbors were on, on television. And it was, it was amazing. And Nat was a big part of that. I can tell you more stories about Nicaragua, but those are the two things that I wanted to comment on. Megan, Megan don't work. Like, Dan, I have like five or eight or 20 stories in my mind. And I wouldn't be anywhere else but behind the camera today. Because I went to Nat diversity, like LG and Nat diversity. So I started working for CCTV a long time ago, but even before that, when I was about 16, if you go into the archives, I found footage of myself dancing as part of the mayor's youth office at first night. And it was recorded by Nat, which I was like, I'm like, we probably have lived multiple lives together. And so we worked together since I was probably about 23. And I learned so much from Nat. And like Peter, I would wait for some positive piece of feedback. And when, you know, I recorded the Palmer Lowe Christmas events for a number of years, and those Nat would say to me, good job, good job. And not always easy to work for because you would be waiting for that feedback. But I just, I've learned, you know, so much of my life I have gotten and learned from Nat. And yeah, I left him a great deal. Thanks, thanks. Bob Davis. I think the first time I really met a new Nat, I think was when I was living with Kent Cassell across the street from Atticourt. And I remember we talked about music and Nat was like, come on, I got it. I'm going to show you my Dylan collection. And I know, okay, okay. And then it went down. It was in some of the basement or something. And it was like wall to wall Dylan. Then when he started working at CCTV, I was thinking, man, they're in trouble because they don't know how many taste Nats produce. But where I really got to know Nat was as a news photographer for WCX TV. And we were kind of comrade in arms at city council meetings. And that's really where I got to know Nat a lot. And sorry, Peter, but I think Nat and I probably haven't beat for how many city council meetings we attended. So I started in 1981. When was Bernie elected? 1981? Yeah. So kind of the rest is history, right? So I was young. I felt like I knew what I was doing. I knew very little. And that was just really starting out as well. Of course, we had all this amazing gear. And that was just kind of still plugging things hands together and getting the cables. And I would attend city council meetings. I worked Monday nights because I like skiing on Monday morning. And I would run around with my camera having to get stuff turned around for the 11 o'clock news. And I'd be running here, doing air and capturing stuff. And that would be just stalwart Nat standing in his position and taking it all in. And he would watch me. He'd ask me a bunch of questions. And I'd help him out with a few things. But Nat really helped me because I would run around crazy, pretty schizo, capturing things. And Nat would be sitting there absorbing. And there was a big difference. And, you know, after a while, we learned that. And we learned how to kind of really work on kind of a dynamic team. We wouldn't have to say anything, but we'd look across the city council hall at each other and just go, yep, you know. And it was kind of one of these tortoise and hare things. I would be fast and I'd be jumping on things, but Nat would be just standing there and he would get the things that I would miss, you know. So I'm good at reflecting on Nat's behavior and his style, his demeanor to just sit there and absorb it all in and get smarter and smarter, you know. So he was a great guy. We spent a lot of time together. Thanks. We were in here doing the air and capturing stuff. And Nat, we learned how to really work on kind of a dynamic team. We wouldn't have to say anything, but we would look across the city council hall at each other and just go, yep, you know. And it was kind of one of these tortoise and hare. Okay. Sit there and absorb it all in and get smarter and smarter, you know. So he was a great guy. We spent a lot of time together. Thanks.