 Oh, yeah. Oh, I have so many of them. It's crazy. Alright, so what brings you out here today? What brings us here, Simon? Mama and Dadda. Yes, but why did we come here? For the solar eclipse. For the solar eclipse? Yeah. Are y'all from Burlington? No, where are we from, Simon? Boston. Boston. Boston. And is this your first eclipse that you're seeing? Yeah. It's first eclipse. My second eclipse. Your second eclipse. And where was the first time you saw an eclipse? We were out in Oregon in 2017. It was an awesome experience. Like nothing I've ever seen before. Totally something I wanted to share with him. Now we have the chance. It is beautiful. And then, so the next eclipse that's going to be here in New England is not until 2044, I think. And so, what do you think the world will be like then? Well, hopefully we're still here. That would be nice. If the world is still here in 2046, then, well, I honestly don't know. I try not to think that far ahead. Hopefully we'll all be happy, healthy, and we'll be here. Awesome, y'all. Well, I hope you enjoyed the eclipse. Thank you so much. Hey, why are you here today? Well, I'm here as the new mayor's communications director. And, you know, we're six days in the office. And this is an exciting event to have so many people coming into Burlington. And so much planning and preparation went into it. So it's just really exciting to see all of these efforts come together in support of everyone having a great experience. Is this your first solar eclipse? It is, yep. Yeah. Is there anything that you are expecting to see? I'm not really sure what to expect. I've heard from various folks who have experienced the total solar eclipse, and it sounds like a pretty transformative experience. So I won't say my hopes are too high, but I'm definitely excited to see what it's like. And, okay, well, this is kind of... Do you believe the earth is flat? No. Okay, I was going to see because I was like, well, I was going to ask you if this experience might change those opinions. What? This might turn into a more... So the next solar eclipse that's going to be in Burlington for 20 years, what do you think Burlington will be like? That's a great question, you know. I think we'll have a pretty good playbook for how to plan for extra visitors. And that's a major credit to the city team. You know, I think we'll certainly be a bigger city in 20 years, so it'll be interesting to see just sort of how the city changes in that time. Awesome. Thank you. Yeah. For midday briefing on what's been going, but I have to say, again, Mayor Emma Mulvaney-Stanik, it's been going really smoothly, and I've been out touring the Waterfront Park, we were over at Roosevelt Park, down to Ekka and whatnot, and people are just so upbeat. Visitors from all over the place. I heard someone was from England here visiting, and there's just such a, again, as I said this morning, vibrancy and optimism about this day, this event, and over at Roosevelt, where I think all the local, some of the places that the locals are really convening, they're about to pump up the bouncy house, which will be the call to all the children who are not in school today to come into Roosevelt Park and partake in all the really great, vibrant things that the Parks Department has set up there. But with Parks staff we're over there right now. Again, just optimism and excitement about what a full day this is, an opportunity. And Parks was also saying Roosevelt Park's a great place for folks who might be overstimulated with large crowds because it really has a much chiller vibe over that way. So I encourage folks who might want to have that experience to check out Roosevelt Park. And it is really filling up here at Waterfront Park, which is exciting. I think we're seeing a lot of the tourists down in this part of the city, which is a whole wonderful thing to experience as well, just how excited people are. And people are just really excited about people from Boston and England and other places. So happy to answer any questions. I'll also let my colleagues here talk a little bit about from BCA and our business and workforce development. Departments talk a little bit about what they've been seeing and hearing from folks in the community. How long have you been planning this? And it has been over a year. And something that brought all of us together who work as department heads and fellow colleagues within the city trying to imagine everything we are going to need to know for this day and to be able first and foremost to provide for the safety and security of everyone in our community and everyone that we are welcoming and we have the largest welcome map thrown out for people all over the world who are visiting here. And it's thrilling, but it also shows the importance of planning because if you take the time, bring everybody together, build on your strengths as a community, then a day like this just kind of does go as smooth as it is going. So it's lovely to be out there. There's optimism as our mayor referred to. There's really a gentleness in people and kindness and like however I can help you and people are really stretching. I feel that. I was parking cars earlier this morning when we needed a few extra people to help out in the early hours and people were just waiting at their turn and nobody pushing ahead and no anxiety and just very much picking up the Burlington vibe of take care of your neighbor, take care of your friends. Feel the joy of this event and feel the happiness of this community and the welcoming that's here. It's both working as a team, but also uplifting all of our community members and organizations and retail businesses and everyone who has gone the extra mile to make this day work. So pretty lovely out there. I know you've been out there having the same experience I have. I'm Cara El-Masrawi, director of business and workforce development for the city. As you probably all know, this will be an important day or weekend for our economy. We have more guests in town than we normally do. We are, as you know, most of the area hotels had a two night minimum so as opposed to some of our other large events like the 3rd of July fireworks, we are anticipating guests will be here for a few days. We already see them in our stores and our restaurants, so we're really excited about that just a reminder, over 90% of the businesses in Burlington are locally owned so these are our friends and neighbors who are hopefully having a prosperous weekend for themselves and their families. So we're really excited about that. We're not going to know any true numbers about this until we get some of our local option tax and gross receipts tax numbers back so it might be a little bit a few weeks before we really see that impact but I think anecdotally and visually we can see it already happening. Thank you. Any questions? Any pinch points, issues? Anything like that probably right now? No, everything is running smoothly. We still have parking on 127 still available at this point. As we reported this morning, we have the parking garages of what not are already cold but that was as of a couple hours ago. Everything is still running smoothly and we still have space for folks to come down and park on 127 and enjoy Burlington. I'm Koshina but I work for Japan News Barrier. Thanks for being here. Thank you for having me. Your dimension is a little bit but how is it to have USMID 50,000 subscribers and how is it to have as many as the city population and for you as a mayor personally? Well this is my sixth day on the job. It's been one week so it's pretty wild to host the health host I should say. Such a big celebration and I'm really grateful we have such beautiful weather which has helped really I think boost our numbers up to 50,000 who knows it might be even more than that at some point. It is a doubling of the size of Burlington but as we heard earlier I'm so proud of the city and all the departments, the staff and the department heads doing so much really important planning ahead. That meant for us to have a really smooth day today so that we are ready to welcome 50,000 people as well as to really support our local residents also engaging and enjoying this day. I was at a park earlier where I think more locals will celebrate and we are making sure everyone has the glasses they need, they can have the fun they need. There's no school today and no child care today in the city of Burlington so I've seen a lot of folks who are in my kids' classes and whatnot just out in the neighborhood enjoying the vibrancy. Even when I live in the Old North then and went by T-Rugs which is a local bar for the locals if you know T-Rugs and they're out grilling and having a great time so people are really making this the joyous event that we're hoping it to be both locals and our visitors. Yeah. Anything else? This moment? Yeah. These are laying from the earth. You don't see it because the moon is kindly locked with the earth but there is no single dark side to the moon. There is light side and dark side and those switch around as the moon spins. It spins once every 27 days or so as it will receive it. Got it. Oh yeah. Yeah. Myth busted. Alright so what else are we looking for today Doc? Also we're going to look for as those Bailey leaves start to disappear. The last one is going to form what we call a diamond ring. So we'll see just a band of light going around the edge of the sun and maybe a sparkling diamond on one side. Now then we'll see a double diamond ring so keep your eyes out we might get lucky and see a double diamond ring and when that double diamond ring or single diamond ring disappears that's when we enter totality also called second contact and after that disappears we will let you know that you have 3 minutes and 14 seconds to enjoy that totality and it will be safe during that time and only during that time to look at the sun without your eclipse glasses on. I've got to say I've never seen thousands of people come together to share a moment in which we can't look at what we came to see. Well if you came to see the moon today it made me a weird day for you. If you came to see the Sunday today well you're going to see your star in a new special way. Was any luck that he's I don't know what's happening out there with the haze but still visible still kind of hazy well there's a chance we might get to see the solar corona alright it is 3 24 3 24 3 24 2 minutes left I've got my time around I've got my time for 3 minutes and 14 seconds also keep an eye out once totality starts the sun is having a special time right now it is very close to solar maxima so the sun goes through these cycles every 11 years the north side of the sun flips to the south side of the sun at least magnetically so the north magnetic pole becomes the south magnetic pole and vice versa and during that time there's much increased sunspot activity and that's what's going on right now in fact I saw through someone's telescope not long ago a big fat sunspot right in the middle of the sun right today yeah the telescope right behind us it's a I don't know why I try to put these glasses on and look out in front of me the sun's over there there's a little black spot on the sun today Dr. Kushner we are just a minute out what are some final things what are some final things B-25 we're going to look for that red crumbosphere peeking around we might even see a solar flare we're lucky I think I see the corona despite those glasses oh my god it's so amazing this is breathtaking isn't it oh my god it's so beautiful so tell us what's happening now doc so we're looking at the K corona and the F corona so that's scattered by electrons in a giant field of plasma that's coming off the sun making the enormous nuclear power plant out there in these three minutes in 14 seconds the sun will be burning through 750 million tons converting that all into energy for us that's the energy that keeps us alive that makes our world and makes life I used to watch like TV back when they would always have shows about eclipses and they would get this dark I never believed this would really happen but wow this is amazing if you are celebrating a birthday today happy birthday either my son Miles is turning 11 oh what I'm pretty sure I see a prominence down at the bottom of the sun there on the south side I have 43 seconds left does anybody see Jupiter yeah up there in the sky near the near the zenith I see Jupiter next to Jupiter is a comet called Ponds Brooks I do not see Ponds Brooks that's okay yes hopefully it stays far far away it's so breathtaking over the people even Vermont it gets dark this time of the day up until daylight seems oh time has stopped I see Venus time to put those glasses back on that is so amazing little tiny bit of the sun I'm so glad you came out for this if you are getting married today if you are getting engaged today we wish you a lifetime happiness and cosmic significance right now down let me see probably about 6 or 7000 people down here in the park plus an additional 500 battery park battery park people make some noise and this is just launched second sounding rocket off to study the ionosphere oh and the center is heading over to just reaching Maine what were you all here to do today we were here to watch the eclipse yeah and so how was the eclipse it was really cool it got really cold and it was still it was like darker and I was like what the heck it was really cool and totality was really cool fun when they were narrating it yeah and is this your first eclipse yeah well yeah first total yeah first total eclipse I saw the 2015 one from my driveway I didn't I was working how did it differ being a total eclipse from partial eclipse it was crazy like the ring around it and we got to see the whole thing and it was built up and you could take your glasses off and it was just like after watching the eclipse do you have any beliefs that the earth is flat not going to admit that publicly so the next eclipse will be in 20 years where do you think you'll be in 20 years maybe I'll visit I'll go some here would you still be looking to watch it I would watch it too if it was close by I wouldn't go to extreme heights I would fly but I would drive yeah if I could well thank you y'all I came to enjoy the experience with my friends was this your first eclipse was there anything that surprised you when you saw it I thought that people weren't supposed to have their phones out and recording it but that was pretty surprising because I saw people doing it all the time and I don't know was there anything that really really surprised you from when you heard about it and then when you saw it you were like oh this either makes sense or this is not what you were expecting I didn't expect to get so cold so quick yeah it was very surprising for me yeah and it got dark and it looked yeah and then it got really quick again so that was pretty confusing yeah so the next eclipse is in about 20 years are you interested in seeing another eclipse definitely awesome experience awesome thank you so much and I hope you have a good day