 All right, why don't we go ahead and get started. All right, so welcome everyone to and then they were gone teenagers of people's temple from high school to Jonestown, which is a virtual talk with their San Francisco teacher, Judy bebalar. Am I pronouncing your name right Judy. Bebalar but that people are I just realized. The kids called me miss B because nobody pronounces it right. Thank you. My name, my name. So Judy bebalar will be our speaker tonight. She has a lot of great stories to share with you. My name is Taryn Edwards and I am one of the librarians here at the mechanics Institute of San Francisco. For those of you who are unfamiliar with mechanics, we are an independent membership organization that houses a wonderful library, the oldest designed to serve the public in fact, not just mechanics. We're also a cultural event center and we host all kinds of fun activities like this, and we are the oldest chess club in the nation that has been in continuous operation. Right now due to our shelter in place, almost all of our activities are virtual, but I encourage you to consider becoming a member with us. It's only $120 a year. And with that you help support our contribution to the literary and cultural world of the San Francisco Bay Area. So Judy bebalar and her co author, Ron Cabral, were both instructors at Opportunity High School, which was a public alternative school in San Francisco, when in September of 1976, Jim Jones enrolled all the teenagers there. So now Judy is a poet and an author. Her work has appeared in over 50 literary journals, and she's published three anthologies. And currently she co hosts a monthly reading series with the Bay Area Writing Project. So the way it's going to work tonight is I'm going to show a brief film trailer about the book, and then Judy will give us a talk, and then we'll take questions. So please post those in the chat space, and then we'll make every effort to answer them. Judy, do you have anything you want to say before we before I share my screen and show the video. I think I'm ready to start. Okay, let me just do that here. And how is this looking. When we speak of John's town, we speak of full aid of Jim Jones and the babies who are murdered first. We speak of visual hang on one second. There we go. Let's share the right screen. So we want to share this screen. Hang on. It's not letting me share. Let's try this again. All right, does that look good Judy. Yes. Perfect. When we speak of Jones town, we speak of Koolaid of Jim Jones and the babies who are murdered first. We speak of cults with messianic leaders. We rarely speak of the individual victims, and we never speak of the teenagers. High school students with dreams beyond Jones town who died in what some call a massacre in their book, and then they were gone. Judy B. Belar and Ron Cabral tell the stories of these young adults who are students of theirs that opportunity high in San Francisco. They live in poverty, their crushes, and most importantly, their hopes for the future. In the late 70s, Jim Jones created a settlement in the guineas jungle to serve as a model system to live freely without bias. But by 1977, when most of their students arrived, Jones town had become a jungle prison camp with mandatory hard labor and harsh punishments. And then on November 18, 1978, 918 Americans died after ingesting flavor aid laced with cyanide, one third of them under 18. Some called it mass suicide. Others called it murder. Some were zombie followers. Instead, they were terrified and hopeless, trapped by the jungle without their passports and fed fake news by Jones. B. Belar and Cabral's tales of these teens and interviews with the few people's temple survivors show how they lived, loved, and found ways to resist Jones. John gives a new perspective on this tragedy and examines how so often the young pay the price for the errors of the older generation. That was a great trailer. Marianne better. Now I can't hear you. There we are. Now you can. Yes. So are you ready to tell us more about your experiences. I can't hear you again. There's not a line. There we are. Somehow Judy keeps getting somehow you keep getting muted. You okay now. Yeah, I think so. I didn't touch until just now, but we're on now. So tell us more about your experiences. Okay, well, first I want to say thank you to Marianne for that beautiful trailer. And thank you Mechanics Institute Library for hosting this reading and thank you so much, Teran, for being so helpful. I thought I'd just tell you a couple of things about the trailer quickly. But if you remember the face of the man going like this, and he's up in some kind of sport stands, and then there's a younger man behind him. That was Ron Cabral, my co-author, when he was a coach. And after Jonestown, and the Jones brothers showed up for a game for a practice actually, and Tim, who is a really good picture, who would have become a professional if it weren't for Jonestown was pitching balls, and that Steven Jones, Jones only biological son behind him, who's smiling, because he knows that's his brother's great love. Thank you again. Ron and I had no idea that the book that started out as just a very small draft that we thought was a finished book would turn into the larger book that it became and win so many honors and awards it's 110 now. I thought we were writing the book just to honor those kids and so their story wouldn't be untold, but it kept growing and growing and changing as I contacted people for interviews and to read it. And I think I'm glad even that it took those 12 years because it really made it a much richer book from all the help that people gave me all the stories that they told me. And I'm deeply gratified that people are still interested in this story. One half of those who died in Jonestown were in their 20s or younger, and a third were under 18 really just children. It's a sad story, yes, but it's also a story of their resilience and resistance and spirit. Turn should, I'm seeing you instead of the mechanics. Is that how it should be now. Just want to stop and ask. I can put my mechanics logo up. If you don't want to see me. Okay. Just checking in. Sorry, audience. And I wanted to share with you something that buddy guy, the great blues guitarist said. Funny thing about the blues, you sing, you sing them because you got them. But when you sing them, you lose them. And it is really true that in all sad stories, there is a kind of communion because who have not has not experienced sadness in or tragedy in their lives. And now that we can see tragedies all over the world. Every day, we all are a part of tragedies. Telling a story does something for the teller of the story. And that's I think what buddy guy was talking about because you feel like you're taking action. And you, you understand inside I think that you're touching other people with your story or your song or your play. There are tragedies, even in the greatest tragedies, there is some kernel of hope of redemption of love. And there certainly is that in this story makes me think of the Parkland students who took their grief and turned it into action, trying to prevent more deaths by gun violence. And several Jonestown survivors who have told their stories and I guess, in a way, Ron and I are survivors too. Deborah Layton seductive poison is a really good book she tried to stop the tragedy by risking her life escaping. And she helped a lot with the book, and Stephen Jones own wonderful writing is not in any book you can buy but you can find it on the Jonestown to website. And he also was just really, really helpful with me he's Jones only biological son. Other people to are working on their stories, and I think most of them are almost complete I'll mention them as I go through. So, because I want to leave a lot of time for your questions. Now I'm going to get right into the book. But in September 77, almost all of the San Francisco temple kids there was also a Los Angeles temple came to our small 300 student school, 80 or 100 of them came we don't know exactly how many because the school district has not released the records. So we could match that against the who died list in Jonestown, which you can also find on that website. So they, many of them joined my creative writing class and their palms are an important part of the book. It made possible the baseball team, the cobras that Ron had been trying to start for years, but a lot of the temple kids like his son Tim, who was the great picture, and other young people were really good athletes loved baseball every day, which is something that our other students, many of other other students not all of them did not do, because the school had been designed for kids who weren't making it who were true and who had problems at home girls who had had babies and weren't allowed to go to regular high schools. So they really added something to the school and we didn't mind as we did at first that they came in and large bunches almost all together. So instead of being interviewed one by one, as we usually did the other kids, as we always did with the other kids with two teachers and a student or two, interviewing the students to make sure they understood what we would require of them and telling them it was going to be a lot of fun because we're going to go on a lot of field trips and we'd cook a whole meal in my cooking class. So we tried to draw them in but make them know what they had to do what their part was. They also went to Ron's radio production class and were part of that and helped with the newspaper. He had them work on the natural high express. Then we didn't know at the time that there even was this settlement Indiana, but he began to draw people out starting first with his son Stephen, probably, because Jones was afraid that Stephen would become a defector. There had been many defectors and much earlier there had been a group of college age people's temple kids that defected. Then Jimmy was taken out who was on the baseball team. Stephen's love was basketball and many other kids. I'm going to tell you about Tim's leaving now from the book, a visit from the minister's wife. On the morning of March 27, Cabral was called to Golden's office, that's our principal, where he found Tim and the principal sitting with Marceline Jones. He looked uncomfortable as he glanced at Cabral with an attempt at a smile. When Golden asked Cabral to sit down, Tim looked at the floor, which was not like him at all. Mrs. Jones spoke quietly. Mr. Cabral, we have decided to take Tim out of school, as his dad needs him in South America at our agricultural mission there. Cabral thought this must be some kind of error. She just didn't understand. Tim was the team captain, the starting pitcher, and potentially the best hitter. Trying to recover from his surprise, Cabral told her how talented Tim was, a real leader, and that he had even spoken to a coach at UC Berkeley about him. He asked if perhaps they could wait until after the season in May. He applied lightly but firmly. No, I'm sorry, Mr. Cabral, his dad needs him for now, and you must realize that the work of the church is more important than baseball. Although his father and I certainly appreciate what you here at Opportunity have done for our boys. There's no plan here since we've already called Jimmy away, and now we have to take your star picture. Golden said, of course we understand Mrs. Jones. Cabral repeated, of course, though his heart didn't. He turned to Tim. We'll miss you. The two shook hands. I'm going to tell you a little bit about Mark. He's the blonde boy that you saw in the trailer and he's in the third row on a book cover. And he's the first clear picture on that row. All the other pictures of, not all the other pictures, the pictures of all the students are two of the same, one clear and one in shadow to indicate that those kids died in Jonestown. Mark, his mother had defected from the temple and she was in hiding. We didn't know that at the time. His father remained a loyalist and stayed in the church. And Mark was probably sent to Jonestown as a punishment to his mother and to make sure that Mark didn't follow her lead. In mid-May, Mark came into Cabral's room after school, wearing his trademark blue fisherman's cap with a red star. He joined Cabral in the small adjoining balcony overlooking Plum Alley. The final layout for the express, Mark said, handing his teacher a large envelope. Well, almost all of it. I have a couple of questions about two of the stories and where they should go. Great, Mark. Thanks for all your work. And there's something else. Mark's tone changed. You know, my parents have been temple members for a long time. My dad wants me to go to Guiana. He said it would be great experience for me. Toughen me up. Man, I really don't want to go. I want to stay here, play ball, work on the paper, draw. Miss Wong says I have talent. But dad said he wants me to go there this summer for who knows how long. Is there any way you can get out of it, Cabral asked? Anyone you can stay with? No. The only way I could get out of it would be to run away. He took off his cap and turned it around in his hands. I pretty much have to do what my dad says. And Ron tells him to think about what he wants to do when he gets back. Where does he want to go to school to study art? Back to the book. I don't know. I don't know what to write. Mark said, you know, I'll miss this school. I really love some of the classes, especially art. And some of the kids. He looked a little strict. And the staff here, you guys really care about us. You're friendly and easy to talk to different from some teachers I remember at other schools. I enjoyed getting to know you too, Mark. Sorry, you'll be leaving. And then I stepped back into the room and Cabral watched as Mark walked to the door. Stopped and turned back. See you Ron, he said. And the reason that Mark looked a little stricken was that he had a non-temple girlfriend. And he told the kids they weren't even to become very good friends with any of the other students at the school. And certainly never tell anybody anything about the church except the good things because the church did do many good works. And the kids were involved in that a lot. It was in the newspapers. And I thought I'd like to next take you on a little trip as the trailer did to Yana. And what I'll read next are the words of Eugene Smith, who was the husband of one of our students at Opportunity, Ali. Jean lost Ali and their baby in Johnstown. They both died. And he was taken away at the capital, Georgetown, because he was in charge of shipments there. And finally, after all these years, it took Ron and me a long time to figure out what we could do. And you can imagine how hard it must have been for Eugene. But his book, I believe, is almost complete. So look for his name, Eugene Smith. And here's what he said on the website of his first site of his book. And this is Georgetown, the capital, which is far, far away from Johnstown. A third world country, shacks, barren patches of brown grass, people, villagers doing the best they could to survive. I saw the first and last person in my life afflicted with elephantiasis. They were desperate and very tired. From Georgetown, where they traveled by plane, mostly from Florida, after a cross-country bus trip, the temple owned many used greyhound buses that he used to ship them around. And they left mostly for Florida in the middle of the night, because Jones didn't want people to know how many church members were leaving. Most new arrivals made the journey to the jungle interior on the temple boat, a very small one, the Kujo. Smith described the boat trip from Georgetown to Port Kaituma, which is outside of Johnstown, as a wild, scary journey. The deck covered with vomit and Guiana's heat as hammering. The Atlantic is very rough between Georgetown and Johnstown. Between April and September 1977, the Johnstown population grew from 65 to 630. A number, the settlement, was not prepared to handle. Most came in July and August after the New West expose of what defectors revealed was going on behind closed church doors. Most of our students, as well as Eugene and Deborah Layton, both in their 20s when they came to Johnstown, entered during this time when conditions were deteriorating rapidly and horribly. Deborah's description is equally vivid. We sailed out into the Caribbean for about 25, the about 25 hour voyage to the mouth of the Kaituma River. The seas were rough and no one spared the ocean's wrath. We stayed in our places, hanging on tightly, heads bobbing, stomachs croaking. We heaved ceaselessly into the waves, which crashed onto the deck and drenched us. My clothes were soaked with seawater and vomit. Skipping, I had a little, only eight more hours to go yelled a crew member as the Kujo entered the mouth of the Kaituma. My stomach settled as we made our way into the calmer river waters. The jungle river was thick with life, snakes, piranha, and curious debris from the rain's torrential runoff. Its root beer-colored water swooshed past us, carrying felled trees and other plant life uprooted from the banks. And the young people thought they were going to a tropical paradise to create a model society without ages and racism or sexism for the world to emulate. Then this is the story of Stephen. It's coming to Jonestown. Stephen traveled to Port Kaituma from Georgetown by plane when he came in February 1977, although he did end up traveling to and from Georgetown on the Kujo several times later and knew what a long and miserable part of the trip the ocean journey could be. In an article in The New Yorker, Orphans of Jones Town, which you can look up, Lawrence Wright, the author of The Leaning Tower, which won a Pulitzer Prize in many other great books and plays, and he's a musician in Austin, Texas. Wright describes Stephen's arrival in Guiana's capital and his first impressions of Jonestown. After landing in Georgetown, 135 miles from Jonestown, Stephen caught a flight up the coast on an alarmingly rickety plane. Through the window, he could see the jungle stretching endlessly before him. The only breaks in the canopy were vast rivers that cut through the bush. There were no roads, no towns, no human mark visible in the entire expanse. The airport consisted of the strip and a shed with a dirt floor. The sounds of Marvin Gaye's Let's Get It On drifted across the village from a tiny hut that called itself a nightclub. His barefoot Indian children ran up to Stephen and looked at him with fascination. Six foot five with his father's fiery eyes. Stephen Jones at the age of 17 was already an imposing figure. Roughly half of the 50 settlers were inner city kids who had been taken in by the temple, many of them foster kids. And the other half consisted of longtime church members who had the skills Jones needed to build the settlement. The kids were mostly troublemakers in the temple. They had been sent by Jim Jones to Guyana either as punishment or to put them beyond the reach of the law because so many were foster children or like Mark had a mother who didn't want him to go there. They were working from before dawn to nearly midnight every day clearing brush, and it was formidable work, especially cutting the hardwoods, so dense they could deflect an iron axe head. They left the fallen trees to drive for months, then ran through in teams of two, one boy carrying kerosene and the other a torch and set fire to huge swaths of brush. We held at the top of our lungs pouring kerosene and lighting fires, Stephen remembers. It was quite a romp. The head of them would be a rush of wildlife iguanas monkeys lizards, the ruin forest would burn for days. And while it was still smoldering, Stephen, and two other colonists would come in with a bulldozer and push the embers into review. There would be an explosion of sparks. The boys would come back, their faces black with soot, and their hair singed in this fashion, they cleared 300 acres. And then I'm going to skip ahead and the jumps town half of the book to chapter 12, which I consider the heart of the book. This comes from Debbie Layton's book, precious acts of treason, which is how she described the many acts of kindness and love that people did for one another, in spite of risks in Jones town. When she and her mother came and her mother was seriously ill with cancer, and she believed that Jones would cure her. The two who inspected their suitcases as all were, or boxes or whatever they have with them, saw her mother's pain medication, which she badly needed them. She didn't take it out, as she should have. No doubt it would have ended up on Jones' shelf in his personal cabin, not used to ease her own suffering or anyone else's. The woman just tucked it back in under things as she could have been punished for. The police did not follow all the rules. They had relationships when they weren't supposed to. There was a relationship committee that really had Jones behind it who said who could be with whom they snuck out after curfew to be with one another. Also punishable. And the punishments were terrible there. He even tried to escape, which was high treason. There's a wonderful part of the book, taken from another wonderful writer about Jones town. Julia Shears called a thousand lives about a kid, Tom Bo, not our student, although his family was in Jones town. It happened to him afterwards. He was chained to a log and his hair was shaved, the other boy too. And it was terrible until Marceline and Stephen intervened and said that you have to let him go. So Jones did. So I'm going to tell you about music and the kids. Usually the rallies that Jones held at night were punishment sessions. People were called up on the stage and ridiculed or even punished in front of people. And maybe Jones would go on and on about the wonders of socialism for a while too. But if guests came in, then they put on a good show and the good show was mostly put on by the kids. So it was a chance to have fun, to dance and sing. They weren't allowed to dance and not be punished. So, at one such evening, the soul steppers are rhythm marching and dance group that performed regularly were there. And one St. Louis blues was sung by one woman, another woman sang Summertime and isn't she lovely. And a girl did a snake dance with an emerald green boa constrictor, which was probably Stephen's pet snake. And our students, Johnny Cobb, also the author of a book, which is almost done, I believe. Jimmy, his adopted son, and Calvin Douglas, and Bruce Oliver, all of our students form the lineup for a musical group they call Black Velvet. And they had fancy costumes with big lapels because there were good seamstresses in Jonestown. And they sang and danced and sing and snap their fingers to motel music, although Stephen says that despite their having no time to practice, they actually sounded pretty good, though a couple of them were told just to move their lips and things. So I'm going to skip over a little bit of that and get to basketball, another form of escape. That, as I said, was Stephen's great love. When the shipments from San Francisco, a basketball arrived. Stephen, some of the boys from the opportunity baseball team, and several others began to practice drills, seeking up fields in the settlement where they could play. Stephen describes how basketball began in Jonestown in the essay on the Jonestown Institute website called Baby Toes. We threw together a bootleg basketball court in Jonestown because I loved who, because Mike could well, and because we both had just about enough of dad's control and ship. It was a juicy piece of rebellion that ultimately saved many young lives. We managed to get the floor for our storage and tool room up on stilts, as you have to build things in the jungle. Before dad said we had no money for the walls and a roof. Without walls and a roof, the floor took up about the same area as to gray hand buses side by side. Now there was a dimension with people of people's temple would understand. Plus, the precipitous, we made them adventurous edges. It was practically ready made for a basketball court. I can't remember if dad had said outright that we couldn't have a court everyone in town knew that he didn't approve of competitive sport. It seemed like we were always trying to see how far we could get before our drug whacked leader notice. It was harder for him to take something away than for them away than to snuff it. Well, it was just between our ears. And they even managed to have a forbidden dance at night past curfew on the basketball court and Stephen says he doesn't know how Johnny and Tim got that together but they managed to have their dance. And I'm going to skip that part. You can read about that in the book. And last, when Congressman Ryan and his party of journalists and photographers and concerned relatives that was the defectors came to Georgetown to check it out to see if people were being held against their will. One of our students at Monica Bagby and her friend, Verne Gosney were the first people courageous enough to pass a signed note to a journalist, help us get out of Jonestown. And that was a great risk that they took. And once they did that, people who had been afraid to sign up saying they wanted to leave began to sign up with Jackie Spears. Okay, now it's your turn to ask questions. That was wonderful. Thank you. So that I was looking at the chat it's been kind of going wild while you're talking. I have a quick question. I thought you referenced a book by Eugene Smith, but it's not out yet. Right. Well, I did find it, but I noticed that it wouldn't be published. Yes, it is now on Amazon's catalog with a publishing date of April 23. And the title is Back to the World, A Life After Jonestown. So, so good. I'm glad that that. Yeah, thank you for looking that out. So Eliza, I wanted to start with this one question, but Eliza Fox beat me to it. She asks, as a teacher, how did Jonestown transform you? Oh, well, it transformed me into working so hard on this book. At first, all of us were just so shocked as most of San Francisco and the Bay Area was but especially since we knew the kids personally, it was just really hard to take in. And at first, the number reported was 400 dead. It took a long time for enough people to get there to count the bodies. And so it took some days to get to 918. So we thought, oh, maybe that means that some of our kids make it. Of course, they would be the ones to be able to get out somehow through the jungle. But a few people did escape that way. But the numbers were huge. And when you're a teacher, especially in a large school, maybe one kid would die in a car accident or something every year. And that was hard enough to take. But so many of them, in such a horrible way, that it really was hard. I guess it just made me want to reach out more to kids. And I had, I was already that kind of teacher, but that really put a red line under how important that is to talk to kids and mentor kids and try to guide them in good directions and try to find out what's going on in their lives. That's troubling them. Yeah, it's so important to be a mentor to younger people and to anyone who seems like they need it. I saw Manny Blackwell's name on the screen. He's a student of mine. Does he have a question? He has made several comments. He's, he's wondering where, how Ron is doing, where Ron is. Okay, yes, I should have said that. Well, Ron is struggling with dialysis and has been a for a long time. And I told him about the meeting and I told his daughter and I was, because I thought he might need some help for her, but I guess they didn't show up. I'll have to check later. And then her name is Beth Pate Cabral. But he's soldiering on Manny. He's, he's doing the best he can. And I know the book you need to watch it. Yeah, he responds. Thoughts and prayers go out to Ron and his family. Yes, I'll tell him that if he's not here. Let's see, Maria or Mary Julia has a question. She wonders, did, did everyone believe Jonestown was a good place? And that did, did anyone suspect that Jones was out of control? Well, the first hints we got about, I got personally about Jonestown was in some of the kids poems because all of a sudden this beautiful tropical paradise and little creatures hiding from the storm is one of the lines from one of my students in her phone. So, and she talks about dressing African style in her hair and croat cornrows and, you know, her head up and proud. And so I didn't know it then but I think that was about Jonestown because that was the story Jones told his congregation about Jonestown. And one of the slides that he showed them, he was holding up a big bunch of bananas, but he forgot to remove the grocery store bag from by his feet, because he'd bought the bananas in Georgetown. They hadn't been wild just for the picking from the trees. And people in San Francisco up until that New West article that appeared in the summer of 1977, people thought that the church was this great church with this charismatic leader, and there'd been a big dinner to honor Jones and there were articles about him in the paper and he took his people and protest marches for good causes and he took care of animals and old people and got people off drugs so people thought it was good until that article came out. And of course, the kids didn't know till they got there so what it what the truth was about it. Hi, Julia. Judy I thought after we go through these questions that it looks like there's quite a few students of yours that are in the audience and so maybe after we asked answer a few more questions will ask the students to, to raise their hand and then I can turn their mics on individually one at a time just so they can say hello to you. Hi. Let's. Let's cover a few more questions. Adrian asks, it seems that you knew defectors as well as victims. Can you offer any generalizations for the two different groups. I didn't know the defectors, some of them until after the book was written and I got to know more of the survivors and the defectors. So I didn't meet those people until after I didn't find out about Mark's mother until after. I didn't even know that there had been this group of young people who had defected. It was, I think in 74 until I started doing research on the book. So I just knew, Ron and I just knew these great kids that spoke up in class and wanted to write for the paper and write poetry and we didn't know that mostly they had to go home and then do work for the church like go out and raise a certain amount of money or be punished. So, there's a lot that we didn't know while they were with us. And I think it was partly because they really enjoyed being at the school. It was a place of freedom, you know, where they could do ordinary things that ordinary kids did and. So I think that and that they were forbidden to tell us anything bad was why we didn't know the bad side of the temple. As a question I think on your process she asks, asks, what kind of permissions did you need to to get to in order to write about the students from opportunity. Well, I did a lot of interviews with Steven, I emailed back and forth and I asked people for those permissions. And then, sadly, with the kids poetry. If someone is dead, you can publish their work. So, that's how that happened. And I had to get there's a great photograph from in the orphans of Jamestown article with Steven and his brothers, and I had to pay for that. And I had to pay just a little to the California Historical Society for permission to use those the California Historical Society is in San Francisco it's a very interesting place, and they hold all the papers and movies and tapes and everything that related to Jamestown and People's Temple, if you want to do some research there, but the Jamestown Institute website is the best place to go. It's called alternative considerations of Jamestown and People's Temple. It's based at San Diego State University, and headed by the sister of one person who died in Jamestown and her husband. I'll try to look that up and put that in the chat if I can get to it. There's a couple more questions. George asks, Judy, were you and Ron at Jamestown. No, and no, okay, and then he has a follow up question. How did the, how did the people get the money to fly everyone to Jamestown. No, they didn't fly everyone they flew special people like Steven. But most people had to take the temple buses all the way across country in the middle of the night, and then Jones had a lot of money because people that joined the, the temple were trying to be what Jones told them, you know, the old Christians did you share everything. So they signed over their houses before they left the older people signed over their social security checks. And then the kids as I said were out, sent out to collect money from San Francisco and so he had money that's why it's kind of terribly said they didn't have money to build the rest of the house and people were jammed into those little cabins. So maybe you touched on this earlier, but Jolene had a question about how the kids came to come to Jones town but you kind of touched on how, you know, many of them were marginalized, had rough child rough rough home lives, and we're the other kids in our school the temple kids. They were as Carl one of our students, who is not in the temple, who said that September that the worst thing that ever happened until September 11 that day at Jones town. For him, it was just the most awful day and he figured that God spared him and his family, because they were already, he and his brother were living in hell at their home, but that most of the Jones town kids came from really good families. They kind of sold at the earth, middle class people working hard smart, the ones that came all the way from Indiana were very much that kind of person knew how to drive bulldozers and build things and farm and clear land and they were they were smart people and it was they weren't the adults were not zombies and the kids were not troubled kids except probably the foster children. I just wanted to point out to everybody that in the chat space Lottie has put down the has found the Jones town reference was at San Diego State University's reference collection of Jones town materials. Jones town dot sdsu.edu and the link is directly in the chat space. I want to go to alternative considerations of Jones town. Yes, yes. I'm going to take just two more questions and then we'll go ahead and have everyone who's a student of Judy's raise their hand so that way I can turn your mics on and you can say an individual message to her. But Catherine has a question if you could read. Can you please read a student poem please and how did you get these poems. Did you, did you read this poem in your reading, just a few minutes ago. I know I just quoted a line from one, and you know what I forgot to bring here it's just out there I'll go get it as a copy of the book. Okay. Meanwhile, while she's gone. Those of you who are a student of Judy's if you could raise your hand. I'll turn your mic on briefly once she, once she comes back, and you can say hi to her. This is a group poem written by some kids from the temple and some other kids and it almost seems as if they were somehow for telling the true future because they didn't know anything about jumps town at the time and of course the babies who are killed first had not died here. I'll turn my glasses on for this. If there were a window in the sky. I would see spirits of dead in dreams, gossiping gods, spirits of dead deeds, spirits of war gods, thunder gods, spirits of mothers who have lost their babies, weeping like spirits of seeds and planted spirits of weeping willow trees, spirits of giant redwoods, sacrifice to man's greed, spirits of all the helpless things, spirits of brown grizzly bears, spirits of infants taken before their time. Now look for another one here too. This is by Rory Bargeman who's also on the cover. The twin of an eagle flying over the jewel blue seas. Here is some of the fruit. I smell the flowery aroma of oranges and lemons. A black panther in his brown trees, an olive green jungle, a king pacing slowly in his land, watching the stone flowers growing. And then this is one by Tim Jones, it's just the end of the poem, because he is alive and they had to get his permission but I never did but a fragment is apparently okay I hope so. Actually Tim died recently very sadly before his time of a heart attack, and I think it was because John's town was so hard on him, you may have seen pictures of him holding his hat to his face and identifying the bodies of people that he loved and grew up with. But this is about the girl he loved. This is like night that comes and settles down over the world. And one more. Let's see. How do you get from the ghetto to the sparrow. How in a corner of the ghetto, a sparrow grows lips and remembers how to sing. And that was by Joyce, who is also on the cover. She's in the very bottom row and she her face was in the trailer. Lovely person. Lovely poet. Well, that is a wonderful way to wrap this up but I have one question for you. Before we. You have a couple people who want to say hi to you but what positive messages can people learn from the book, especially younger people who are who are reading it. I'll give you Steven's idea about what young people most need to be aware of, which is peer pressure, because he describes sitting in the church, and Jones saying or doing something that didn't seem right. But he looked around and here were all these people that he loved and cared about and had grown up with. And they didn't seem to see anything was wrong. Maybe he was the one who was wrong. So, you know, to be careful to look into things and trust your own feelings. And of course just don't believe them right off but think about them do what research you can talk to a person you trust about it. And I think for adults, I kind of said it before, but if you can help mentor a young person, just be their friend just be a person to talk to if not help them with their homework. You know, that's a really great thing to do and there's a lot of opportunity for mentoring. Now, the kids can't go to school and get the extra help there that they might get. They're just rid of the kids, you know, they just would not not be themselves and they fought back even though it was hard and if the basketball team, which was already sort of aligning against John. And then when they were way at the tournament, they had a chance to be out of the madness and they could say whatever they want whenever they felt like it. And they were determined that when they got back Stephen said, things will be different and they were finally going to take on Jones, because partly they just thought well, obviously look at the man all the drugs and alcohol he's ingesting he's going to die soon and he was sort of shrunken and sick, but he would manage to get himself together with drugs for the visitors who came. And so they decide, okay, no more waiting when we get back. But of course, they didn't get back in time. They had been ordered to come back that night, the basketball team. But they said, he's just doing that crazy thing where he scares people called a white knight you can read about it in the book. And we're not going to go watch people suffer we're going to win the next game, but Well, thank you. Okay, so those we do have some students of Judy's in the, in the attendees and I was just wondering if you wanted to say hello. Go ahead and use the raise hand feature and I will call on you to turn your mic on and say hi to Judy. I'm going to start with Dean, Dino, he is here. Hi, Dino. He was at opportunity but not in the temple. Let's see let me just. There we go. Yes. Judy, are you there. I'm here. How are you. I'm good. How about you. I'm doing great. Thank you very much. I appreciate everything you've done for me and others not a whole lot of time to talk about but Judy was my, she was my counselor she got me into a creative community. And I had a wonderful career 30 years as a police officer in San Francisco and it could not have happened without Judy's direction and Ron's and Ken Coleman and everybody else's direction I really appreciate it. Thank you very much. I just retired last year, April 2019. No, you're too young to retire, aren't you 30 years. I'm okay. Thank you all is 17 right team. So it was a lot. It was a lot of fun, Judy. Thank you very much. And I've been to like five or six schools prior to opportunity and I didn't really get along in them. But when I went to opportunity I was I was welcomed, no matter who I was and I was welcome and open arms and I really appreciate that they made it different for me. Thank you very much. You're welcome, welcome, welcome. Thank you very much, Judy. Thank you. I guess maybe that's the only one. Unless Manuel, Manuel wants to say hello, Emmanuel, many manual many, maybe not. He's got to go. I always forget to say that the book is on Amazon, you can get it through Kindle and any bookstore can order it, but first go to the mechanics library and join. Let's see maybe Dean has one more thing he wants to say. Looks like you raised his hand again. I did. I think I, well, I think I might have messed up, but Emmanuel, what's up, man? I see your name over there. I try to say hi to you. But Judy, you've, congratulations on the book, Judy. You've done a great job and in a great interview tonight. Thank you for interviewing, interviewing Judy and I hope Ron gets better. I've been trying to get lunch with him and he says he's has some issues. To contact you, but it doesn't always work. I know. Okay. Hi, honey. Manuel, you there. And manual. Maybe not. He's probably. He said he was at his son's house and he had to go. Oh yeah. All right. Well, it was nice. Nice hearing you, your voice anyway. Thank you very much. Judy, you're the best. Okay. Bye bye. Bye bye. All right. Well, I guess Emmanuel cannot talk, but. All right, well, thank you very much, Judy. We I learned a lot and I need to read your book. But it looks like. I'm going to save the chat for you because there's so many private messages or personal messages for you. But yeah, I mean, I'll send it to you. I'll send it to you. I'll send it to you. I'll send it to you. I'll send it to you as we probably should sign off. Because I see there's only a few people left in our attendance. And we probably want to cut some of this stuff from the video. Private stuff. But I just wanted to thank you for. Coming tonight and sharing your story. And I look forward to reading the book. And. It looks like every, all of our attendees had a great time too. Good. Thank you so much for doing this. You're very welcome. I did the easy part. You just wrote a book. That's all. All right. Well, thank you everyone. Stay safe and well and dry tonight. It's raining here in the Bay Area. And we'll catch you at the next virtual event at the mechanics Institute. We'll see you soon. Bye. Bye-bye.