"Send Me"

Redwood Fellows Anthony Afriyie and Kevin Brown in conversation.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:16

Hey everybody, I'm Andrew Ferguson of Redwood Fellows. Welcome to Stories from the Grove, a podcast production of Redwood Fellows made possible thanks to the generous support of CCM. You know, our media is filled with examples of people exploiting their differences to pull us apart. This is different. Stories from the Grove is about leaders who seek to lean into their differences so they can understand each other, find common ground to strengthen Connecticut. I hope you enjoy Stories from the Grove.

SPEAKER_02 0:51

Here we are. Yeah, right. So we're reporting to you live. My name is Kevin Brown. I live in Guilford. My family is from the eastern side of the state, uh, the Mohegan tribe, growing out of Uncasville, Connecticut. And currently I'm working to revitalize the town of Norwich. That's the short version.

SPEAKER_01 1:11

How about yours? Yeah, so Anthony Offrier lives in Stratford, Connecticut, originally from the Bronx, New York, have Proud Roots from Ghana, West Africa, and currently serve as uh the council chairman in my town and serving the state of Connecticut for quasi-public.

SPEAKER_02 1:24

Yep. We're both doing it. We're both doing the public service thing. And I think what you and I discovered about each other is that we we have an interesting transition from a deep culture into the service that we're providing to our communities now here in uh here in Connecticut. Um and we had some cool commonalities, ones that I wouldn't have expected in our in our first conversation together, which is which is really cool. Um, but you know, how about for everybody who's watching the podcast? Like, tell us about that transition for your family and for you from Ghana.

SPEAKER_01 2:00

So when my mom and dad came to the United States uh late or mid-1990s, I was born shortly after in the Bronx, and I'm the first person on both sides of my family to be born in the United States. So it comes with like a lot of expectation and like a lot of demand of you need to set the table, you need to set the standard because your cousins, your nephews, your nieces, they're gonna look at you and be like, that's how I gotta do it. That's the one that did it first. So it's been a really interesting, worthwhile life adventure so far, and the journey has been beautiful. But the biggest thing for me has been giving it back forward. And that's something that when we first met, I heard about your acts of service and like when you went to be deployed and that whole journey. That was something I had such an affinity for. And you talked about it. You did actual service, yeah, serving our military. I did national service during the pandemic, but that same cord of service was something that I was like, me and you speak the same thing. Yeah, that's for sure. That's for sure.

SPEAKER_02 2:53

Um, so let me ask you this before you get to ask me where I'm from. That when you mentioned that, you know, as the firstborn of your family in the United States, you've got to get it right, or you're gonna be the example. Is that you putting it on yourself or is that them putting it on you, or is it both?

SPEAKER_01 3:10

I think it's a combination of both. Yeah, I have a high standard for myself because I want to ex like I want to strive for excellence, yeah, and I want to be able to look back at my life when everything is said and done and be like it was a life well lived. For me, like I'm a really big like philosopher. I read a lot of books. Yeah, eudaimonia is something that I try to live by daily, so that's something that I put on myself. But the family expectations of you really do got to set the standard, it's always been on the well, you're doing it, man.

SPEAKER_02 3:35

I I I I am glad that Andrew put us together because we did have that immediate affinity and you struck me right away as somebody in pursuit of excellence and doing things the right way. So so far, so good on what you're trying to do for your whole family.

SPEAKER_01 3:50

It's good stuff. Wait, Kev, I want to talk to you about you ran the Boston Marathon how many weeks ago?

SPEAKER_02 3:55

Oh, well, was it Patriots Day, whatever that was, April 19th or 20th. Um and I I have to make the disclaimer every time I talk about this. I I didn't necessarily run it. Uh I sort of struggled through it because they, the Boston Marathon team, in partnership with a military nonprofit, they run an event called Tough Ruck. And it is on the day prior to the actual running marathon. And we load up a 35-pound pack and we do the Boston Marathon and we raise money for families of the fallen. So I've been doing that now for going on eight years. Uh and even though we're a little slower, I always say that the skinny, the skinny kids run the next day. The old heavy military service guys that we ruck the day before. Uh it still turned out pretty good. Like for age adjusted, you know, these days in the in the world of road races, they do age adjusted, right? Thank God. Um I came in 45th out of a thousand. That's solid. Because I'm an old man. You're not coming down. Yeah, so that's that's been a great adventure, but it's, you know, you know, it's tied to my military service because it's it's uh Military Uh Friends Foundation is the nonprofit, and the idea is that they are raising money for families of fallen service members, firefighters, police, uh, and EMS. And so when we're out there on the on the course for 26.2 miles, we're carrying individual ribbons, yellow for service members, blue for police, uh, and red for fire and EMS of those who've died in the line of duty. And you know, I've got personal connections to to that. So it means it means a lot. It's fun to do it, it's fun to perform well and all that kind of stuff. It just means a lot to be out there. And then when you finish, it is it is a gold star family, someone who's lost their son, daughter, brother, sister, uncle, mother, aunt that hangs your Boston Marathon finisher medal around your neck. I mean, there's just nothing like it. I can't allow it. Uh and and in and in my particular case, it was the son of one of my fallen soldiers. So it's good stuff.

SPEAKER_01 6:04

Kevin, even going back to that now. So when you go through that and you do it year over year, how do you reflect back on your years of service and like go back to like how did you start, how did you find yourself in this space?

SPEAKER_02 6:15

Yeah. So, you know, your story is that your family came here from Ghana and you've got this new start, right? Like you're gonna do it a new and different way for your family.

SPEAKER_03 6:25

Right.

SPEAKER_02 6:26

I gotta say that I'm doing what my family's been doing for a long time, right? Um on the Mohegan side of my family, our tribe has actually served in every conflict uh since the Revolutionary War to present with tribal members. And then there's this fun side story. If we have an hour and 15 minutes, I can go back to. But so when the time came for me, uh, you know, I had that history on my Mohegan native side of my family, and I had the I had the example of my father who served in World War II, Korea, and Vietnam.

SPEAKER_03 6:58

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 6:58

So it was sort of a foregone conclusion that I was going. And uh, you know, I told you the story at the uh first uh retreat that we had, that when I was 10 years old, I would stand on the front lawn with my mom and I would watch my dad, I would have the C-130, one of those big, you know, Hulkin airplanes that fly over everybody's house and I see it here.

SPEAKER_03 7:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 7:18

Um, it would fly out in the distance over the drop zone. And, you know, when dad left for work that day, he'd tell my mom, I'm jumper number seven, right door. And so she we'd stand on the front lawn, she'd tap me and say, That's your dad right there. You know, when you're 10 and that gets imprinted on your on your brain, uh, and then you live it. Uh, you can't help but want to wanna serve and do it too. And that's that's kind of how I got there. That's so so let's go back to you. So so you are the firstborn, you are on this path, but what what is it that took you to public service as the way and the place that you wanted to manifest this new example for your family?

SPEAKER_01 7:56

Yeah, that's a great question. Um, I graduated college during the pandemic. So it was a really challenging time of like self-worth, self-identity, trying to figure out how can I be young in a society that we're having a want-in-a-generational moment. And at that time, we decided to shudder everything. So people were just home-based. And I thought about JFK's words like ax not what you can like your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country. But that just resonated with me so loud throughout the early months of the pandemic. So I did the national service for about a year. And when I came back, I realized I can't just be a passive citizen. I need to really be active, I need to create the world that I want to see. And I really want my community to do better off because I existed. Yeah. So that's something that I've really put my foot forward and I've been just at the pedal pushing all gas, no brakes. Right, right. And uh it's push it put me in a really great situation. But I think we're me and you have an affinity for. I think in our society today, yeah, a lot of people look at uh people as consumers. And once upon a time during like the 1950s, 1960s, it was the worker mentality, and we're trying to exactly uplift people. I think we're coming to an inflection point where we need to transition from the consumer to the citizen. And that starts with service. And I feel like our lived experience are those examples of how you can feel self-worth, yeah, how you can feel dignity, how you can get that purpose.

SPEAKER_02 9:20

Yeah, yeah. Purpose. So now you got me thinking my military life, right? Purpose, direction, and motivation. PDM acronym stuck in my brain for the rest of my life. Purpose, direction, and motivation. And and you know, and the reason that that's a that resonates or that it's stuck in my brain is because that was a way that you could assess a young leader. Are they providing purpose, direction, and motivation to those that they're serving? Whether it was a team leader who had three dudes or a battalion commander that hit a thousand dudes, uh, and and you're clearly identifying that, right? You you want to have purpose, direction, motivation in your life, but a lot of it's coming from your soul. But I got to believe that you've got a powerful mom or dad or both that's involved in all of that.

SPEAKER_01 10:04

Is that yeah, that they're really faith-based. I really put everything to God, so I put it to him as well.

SPEAKER_02 10:10

Yeah, yeah. It's good stuff. It's good stuff.

SPEAKER_01 10:13

All right, where do we go from here? That's uh is that an hour? No, not yet. No, for me, it's uh today is May 8th, 2026, and I think about where the state of Connecticut is and and your role right now. Like, how are you trying to help out people? Yeah, try to really abut the cost of living adjustments. Oh man. Because it's hard, you know, like it's a multifaceted puzzle. It is, but you're playing an integral part in that.

SPEAKER_02 10:36

Yeah, so you know, serving as the as the lead for economic development in the city of Norwich is a very difficult thing because if you rack and stack the 169 towns and municipalities in the state, uh, we are probably fifth or sixth from the bottom in terms of the annualized equal net grand list, the the wealth, the wealth of the city. And and you know, when you try to over when you try to simplify that, what do we have to do? We have to grow the grand list. Groton has Pfizer, you know, uh, and electric boat general dynamics, Stratford has Sikorsky, Hartford has the insurance industry. Different communities in the state have a heavy, heavy anchor. Right. We don't have that. We have a lot of mom and pop businesses and a lot of folks just trying to get by. So it, you know, job number one in Norwich is is it's interesting because it's indirect. It's not about touching those souls and helping them, it's about setting the conditions where they can thrive, where where the where their individual tax burden is lower, which you know it matters, right? It does matter. So we're working hard on that. But meanwhile, you know, you have to military flashback, you have to fight on the strategic, operational, and tactical levels at all times. If anyone ever says to you, ah, you're being very tactical about how you're approaching this, or hey, you're being very strategic, but what about you have to do it all. And and I've got a story if we have an hour and 15 minutes, I would tell you about that. But but you got to be able to operate on all three of those levels. And so while we're out there hunting for the the big whale, right? Some might call me Ahab in Norwich, I think they are. Um, you got to be able to help folks where they are right now. And and I saw a statistic the other day. I just had this conversation this morning with my wife. I every day I think about this statistic because I wonder to answer your question like, how am I gonna fix that?

SPEAKER_03 12:30

Right.

SPEAKER_02 12:31

Of the children in the public school system in Norwich, 60% come from single parent homes. That's a big number. 60%. I'm still floored. That's a big number. Nationwide, if I if I read the data correctly, nationwide it's 33, Connecticut-wide, it's 38. And then there's Norwich, and it's 60%. That's an outlier, yeah. I mean, I'm not gonna give up, but I got like, what do you do with that? That's that's you know, whether it's child care, the cost of the housing, the cost of the transportation to get the kid to the child care, so you can go to your job, which isn't maybe pay enough to get, you know, so multifaceted, so much going on there. And so, you know, back to one of our core talking points, that's why you and I are engaged in the fight. Like we want to help fix that. Uh, but that's a really tough one that's that's in front of us in Norwich. How about your town? What's happening?

SPEAKER_01 13:21

So uh reevaluation happened in my town. We're trying to abut that shock that came from uh the reassessments, and a lot of people have really sounded the alarm of I can't make up this delta. Right. And I lived on a fixed income, I've lived here for 30 years, my house has not seen an improvement, but yet there's this extraneous new cost that I have to encumber. And being able to speak with people and understand there's long suffering and working with the tools that we have at our disposal here in the state of Connecticut to really try to address that has been a challenge. And every single day people call me and they're like, I would not want to be in your position. And I sit there and I I smile and I say, Um, I'm 28 years old and I find myself at this really critical moment in my town's like financial trajectory. Yeah, and it's creating an environment for me to really understand the groundings of how do you build a sustainable public administration model that doesn't just work now in the short term, but is financially solvent for generation. Yeah, and that's uh that's something that I see exciting in the opportunity. So I don't see it as a challenge, but it is really hard.

SPEAKER_02 14:25

You know, I you know, I'm sure, I'm sure you could probably point me at a biblical passage that says this. I know it's out there, but you know, like send me, right? Like you've got to have that in your spirit that that you know, I'll do it, I'll do it. And and that's you know, whether it was my military service, your current service, that's that's where we share, I think, a common bond uh in what we do. I'm trying not to tell the the side story. No, I need to hear the side story, yeah. No, it might work too for you in your role, you know. Uh not that you could tell it again because it wouldn't resonate right, but I'll never forget um during my second tour in Iraq, I was in northern Iraq in Kirkuk, and it's about, I don't remember exactly anymore, let's say 60 miles from the Tigris River. The downtown of Kirkuk was about 60 miles, and there's a lot of farmland in between. And in that farmland, a lot of outlier small hamlet towns, right? You know, Kirkuk, I don't know, maybe it had, I don't know, 300,000 people, let's say, in the city. And these little hamlets have anywhere from 10 people to 150 people, all spread along this one road that goes down to the Titus River. And so I've got troops serving all through this whole area. Some are in downtown Kirkkuk, some are out in these hamlets. And the United States Agency for International Development, USAID, holds this conference, right? You know, and I'm wearing a dirty uniform with a dusty rifle. Um, wasn't dusty, it was clean. And uh, and you know, I wander into this thing, and there's a bunch of guys who've flown in and they're all in this nice air-conditioned room. Um, I think we're actually we were in uh to crit for this conference. And they're talking about the fact that they're gonna build this $20 million water distribution pipeline that's gonna pump water from the Tigus River to Kerkuk and pass through all of these farmlands to help the farmers have better irrigation for their farms. And they're really proud, and they should be, because they're operating up here, it's a strategic level with tons of money. And I stand up, you know, skipping in the back, and I say, hey, look, you know, this is all great. But today, young Captain Lee, a 24-year-old company commander, got shot at in Saba 7, a number seven village because he's been promising them a 10 gallon per minute pump to get water out of the ground for the last six months, and he hasn't been able to produce, and they've had enough of the Americans and they want us out. So I don't have the time for your strategic plan that's gonna take 10 or 12 years to be produced. It's gonna be phenomenal.

SPEAKER_03 17:05

Right.

SPEAKER_02 17:05

And it's it's amazing that we're making this investment in the infrastructure to bring this war-torn nation up to a good, but right meanwhile, you got to fight at the tactical level too. And what are you doing for that farmer who just needs a $500, 10-gallon per minute pump today so that he can subsist? And that's the fight that you and I are in. Right. Like we we need to and must look at the long-term generational change that we can create. Meanwhile, we've got to fight the daily fight too, and and fix those families that today can't afford their food. And and I'll just say, I mean, we've been very fortunate this past year uh to establish a program in Norwich called the Anchor Program, where we're doing that.

SPEAKER_03 17:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 17:46

At the same time that we're, you know, tearing down old buildings and building new ones with better jobs in them, we're taking care of people one at a time.

SPEAKER_01 17:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 17:55

So you got to do it all. You got to do it all. So, how do you keep yourself grounded on all of this like perfect transition? Because I was gonna say to you uh in that first pause that we had, uh, thank God for the redwood retreats.

SPEAKER_01 18:08

Don't talk about it. It's very therapeutic.

SPEAKER_02 18:11

Yeah, it is. It's uh it's a minute for us to step out of this, right? Uh, because you know, the how do the how do you do it part is we just keep doing it. Like we do it. We do it. Like you said, it's uh you're in it to win it and you're you're gonna keep doing it. And people say, How do you do it? You say, I don't know, but I'm gonna keep doing it, right? But these uh this uh uh Redwood Fellows program and these retreats that we go on, they're a blessing. I I mean just just to be able to step out of the noise for a minute and you know, share time with folks like us. And and I think one of the themes is folks not like us, right? Like we just it's an amazing group of people uh where we can really, as as Andrew encourages, Andrew and Rebecca both encourage, drop our guard and kind of talk. It's it's it's great. It's great. In one word, is what isn't this, isn't this what they do to us at the end of every sentence? One word uh to date for the two retreats we've had, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 19:08

What would be your one word? It's empowering.

SPEAKER_03 19:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 19:11

Because um, oftentimes when we find ourselves in these spaces, yeah, we feel alone and isolated. Yeah, it's a fact. And it's like, do are there other people in these spaces that are trying to accomplish the same outcomes that I want to do? And when we get into these Redwood retreats and you sit and look across the people in the room and you understand what they're dealing with on the personal and professional side, you feel really feel like I have a network, I have a community, and I'm not going at this alone. And that's what I've felt so empowered that as a young person, I often find myself to be the youngest person in the room.

SPEAKER_03 19:42

Even at the retreats, I'm the youngest person in the room.

SPEAKER_01 19:46

But it's often like, okay, but like there's 30 other people holding the rope.

SPEAKER_03 19:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 19:52

And I'm just another person holding the rope. And if we pull in the same direction, we can get so much done.

SPEAKER_02 19:58

Yeah. And that, and that, that, that power, that empowerment, that power that comes out of these sessions is is exactly that. It's amazing. But that was more than one word. I said one word. Empowerment. Okay, okay. Uh okay. Uh mine has been and will be here, uh, cathartic. Cathartic. Okay. Break that down. You know, we we uh I think we all come in there thinking as you described, like I'm I'm just out here against the world doing this thing. And when you can actually hear others say, me too, right? I'm also one against the world. And you get to share those moments. It's just it's a release. Like you just you feel, you feel better, even if it doesn't change anything, even if it doesn't improve your lot, it just makes you feel better because you are in that spirit of all those people that are in the room with you. Uh so I'm I'm I'm glad for one that uh I'm glad for one that I was able to represent Eastern Connecticut. I'm I'm one of the first ones to come in from uh from eastern Connecticut. And I think there's a dynamic there too. Yeah, you know, I mean it was purposeful, I think, on Andrew and Rebecca's part, but for all the right reasons. And uh, you know, we're we're we're connecting with each other uh across this whole state, which is the big idea. You know, there's silos.

SPEAKER_01 21:12

That's uh yeah, what I think in one of our first retreats we talked about Connecticut, and I'll use the congressional map for an example. Yeah, there's five districts. Like you have the coastline there in Long Island Sound, where we have a really dense population and Fairfield County, for example, very affluent. But then you go to the northwest corner or you go to the northeast corner, and it's a different state, yeah, completely different world. And these people's day-to-day operations, yeah, they've been there for generations. They look at their shared environment, they look at their communities as part of their identity. But then you go to like our more urban areas where people are just trying to make ends meet. Right. They might not be from Connecticut, they came here to get equal opportunity and they get jobs and then they start families. But what they really care about is the day to day. How am I putting food on the table? How do I provide shelter? How am I getting from pointing? To point B. Right. And all of those interests, all of those demands, and you talk about the people in the Redwood fellows or that are helping to create that platform of in all those places. All those different places. It's like that's such a beautiful place where we can all have that shared vision of we want to see a better tomorrow.

SPEAKER_02 22:16

Yep. Because some of us are doing it in the statewide approach. Some of us are doing it in the individual parts of that state that you described, and we're all in the same room uh thinking and talking about it. Yeah, no doubt about it. I still haven't heard though, I thought for sure we'd hear the you know the playlist we had to make. I've listened to it. Yeah, I've I've listened to it, but I haven't heard us take a moment to say, all right, who put that one on? So me and you are gonna have that moment right now.

SPEAKER_01 22:41

My my first song is the very first song on the playlist. It's called Organize. Help me out. I listened to it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The very first song. That's very cool.

SPEAKER_02 22:51

Which one was yours? Uh Moon Sun by Trevor Hall. I have no idea. Yeah, you'll go you'll catch it now. You'll pick it out. I was I was thinking it'd be fun if if we had like in one of the intermission break periods, right? Like pick one song and point at the person you think put it on the side. Yeah, that would be great.

SPEAKER_01 23:08

I think that would be so funny.

SPEAKER_02 23:09

And then you'd be like, no. Why'd you why'd you call that out on me?

SPEAKER_01 23:15

Um you know what's so like I really appreciate about the retreats too. Every single time you go into like other rooms, you have to be the executive director. Right. You have to be the former like combat veteran.

SPEAKER_02 23:29

Yeah. But in that room, we could really just be yourself. Yourself. Yeah, it's that that's that's part of that cathartic thing too for me, is that I don't have to be anybody. I can just be just be myself. No doubt about it. No doubt about it. Tell me about Asaki. Like what I because I don't know like what type of artist or what's the I love that you asked this question. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 23:49

So Afrobeats is a new genre of music. It's probably starting like the mid 2000s and tens. Yeah, yeah. And it's basically taking like traditional Afro af like African culture and like rhythm. And then combining it into yeah, combining like techno and like RB and like uh reggae music. I remember it now, I remember it now. I 100% remember it. And it brings in this rhythm, but you still have the constant beat drums of traditional music, but now you're incorporating more modern pop, and it's a really beautiful genre that's really exploring like sense itself, sense of identity by bringing it to contemporary view. And Asaki is just one of the biggest stars that we have right now. So uh native or US-based artists? He lives out of Nigeria, but he's worldwide now.

SPEAKER_03 24:35

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 24:35

These guys have turned into like Mick modern day McJaggers, selling out like the biggest stadiums in Europe. So it's African K-pop, right? You know, yes, I would say yes, I'd say it's African K-pop. That's a good analogy.

SPEAKER_02 24:48

Cool, cool. Um, I don't know why. Maybe because we have 30 minutes or so to burn, but but on the on the realm of you know uh audio and all that, I spend 45 minutes on the road to and from work, right? So I typically I'm I'm a big music guy. I'll listen to everything. I do not know why, except that I think it popped in randomly. So Trevor Hall is kind of a kind of a little bit of reggae, but more like a uh crunchy reggae kind of artist. Trevor Hall bring it brings around some Amos Lee, it brings around some Ben Harper when you when you're on like Spotify or something. That's that's what it brings. And then this one uh song/slash spoken word popped in because there's a lot of meditation, he does a lot of meditation and incantation stuff, Trevor Hall does. So this artist I'd never heard of, Adi Goldstein, I think is it. He plays just some kind of easy backdrop music, and then he has this overlay of Alan Watts doing spoken word. Oh, that's interesting. Are you with me, man? Yeah. Yeah. So I'm I've found myself now not just listening to it and it randomly comes up, but I've been out seeking to listen to these Alan Watts spoken word things. Helps. Oh man. I tell you what. And and the one the one line that stuck in my head from one of them. Matter of fact, the name of it is The Unspeakable World. The unspeakable world is he talks about the fact that we we have this tendency to define our world as the five colors and the five notes instead of seeing the spectrum of colors and the melody of the music that the notes make. Wow. And I just I just driving along like every day. That's a variance like that opens up the spectrum so much larger. Every day we're guilty of that. You know, that's red, that's black, right? You know, the binary look at things. And and the reason that I'm tying this in is, you know, they had us do the soundtrack, it made me open up my own music a little bit. I was investigating and listening, and I find myself falling onto this thing. Yeah, and there's something, you know where I'm going with this because you're a spiritual being. There's something spiritual about when we come together at that Redwoods retreat, like just the release, right? That the chance to not just look at the five colors, right? But just kind of get the whole synthesis of of what we could or should be thinking about on a on a daily basis. It's it's valuable. I think we've earned our pay for Redwoods. Let's talk about other things. What what else? What else could we talk about?

SPEAKER_01 27:23

I'll tell you, I recently watched the Michael Jackson movie that just came out at theaters. Yeah, and I was so uneducated, I did not know his lifestyle. Yeah, and I was sitting there thinking about the expectation of being a childhood star at the age of eight years old and then being in the spotlight all the way until like God calls you home. And I'm like, that's kind of pressure. It's not natural. No, it's not. No, no, but then it goes back to like our society of like people want to achieve great things and they want it fame. Fame is something that a lot of people strive for. I have a lot of friends that they see they want to be like influencers or they want to be streamers. And I sit there and I'm like, what pushes somebody to want to always get this recognition? And that's something I've been trying to figure out.

SPEAKER_02 28:04

Well, because you're the youngest one in the group. So you know, no, but I I mean I know you're at, and and I was talking to Chelsea from our group, yeah, yeah, yeah. Kind of about this same thing. And she said, you know, I can look across our group and I can see three kind of bands of people. And she didn't call you out specifically, but there's a younger group that is like wondering how hard am I striving? What am I striving for? Where am I going? There's the mid-group who's sort of in chaos because they thought they were striving to be here and now they're not really sure. And then there's she didn't call me out. And then there's other guys that are like, you know what, I've done this whole thing. I'll take what comes my way. I just want to surf, right? And and you know, you call out that Michael Jackson sort of shaped in the spotlight growth pattern, how it can cause difficulty. I think, I think that there's a there's a lesson there for you as the youngest guy in the group, like be careful of the spotlight. Yeah. You know, because it can it can point you in the wrong direction when you saw it in the movie that you watched. You know, and and I just it's we always have to cycle back to that values exercise that we just did in the last session, right? Yeah. Like just always re-reminding ourselves what are the things that point the way for me. Uh and and now you now I'm in a music's headspace, right? Like, you know, there's there's plenty of songs out there that talk about what happens when you let the industry take over and take you in the direction that isn't where you started, right? And I'm sure that's what you saw with him. And then just bad things happened.

SPEAKER_01 29:37

Yeah, life just happens. Yeah. I do want to pivot though. Yeah. And this goes back to service. And this is something I've been reading a lot of books about more recently. I finished a revolutionary book, I finished a book on the war of 1812. I recently finished a Civil War book. What does America 250 mean to you? Oh, what a great, what a great question.

SPEAKER_02 29:53

I mean, look where we are, right? Here we are. Uh so yesterday was a national day of prayer. And my church in Guildford asked me to pray on our military because of my experience. And but it was, but because it was National Day of Prayer, that was just one component of the six or seven different things family, businesses, arts and media, military, a couple others that I forgot. And so a number of us cycled up and you know, spent a moment in prayer and prayer for, prayed for uh those different things. The cool thing about it for me that just brought it right into perspective is uh on the cover of the trifold for the service was a very well-known uh image of George Washington kneeling in prayer at Valley Forge. And uh, you know, it just like all I was supposed to do was go up and read Psalm 8411. And I sat I sat there staring at that. I was like, oh my gosh. Um because you know, most folks in America would look at that picture and think, well, you know, he's praying for this nation that we're about to to to birth. Yeah, right. This whole nation. And and and for him as General George Washington, this whole army that he's in charge of, he is praying for strength for that army and and this nation uh that's about to be born. But what struck me about it is, you know, generations removed, I know, having led men and women in combat, that it was even more personal than that. Uh and I'm not gonna get choked up on this podcast, although we can edit it. So that's I know he was praying for his own safety. And uh and I know that while he was praying for an entire army, he was praying, he he he was seeing faces of friends and men that he was leading in his head and saying, Please God, protect him, this guy, that guy. Right? All this is going through my head last night before I just have to go up and read Psalm 8411, two lines. Okay. So I I so I rolled a little bit of that out for everybody and then read the psalm and sat down. But it it uh it to your question about the 250th, like our nation should really take stock in just how much sacrifice it's taken for us to get to this point that we're at right now. Like this is not just a you know typical veteran thing. This is not just a mattress sale on Memorial Day weekend or July 4th weekend. This is this is about 250 years of sacrifice and growth and change and commitment to our declaration of independence and constitution, where we said, you know, we're we're not gonna be flawless, but we're gonna keep evolving and we're gonna keep this thing together. Like if everybody could just take a minute, you know, and and and if and if it's if it's your way, prey on that. And if it's your not not your way, be proud of that, you know. Uh it's a big deal. It's a big deal. What what do you feel in this moment? The late as a as a as an immigrant family and first generation American.

SPEAKER_01 33:17

So I'm a student of history, so I've I've really tried to dissect like how we got here. And um, I think to quote the late great Reverend Jesse Jackson, America is a quilt with different patches, different different like threads. And from the start, it's been a beautiful manifesto of cultures. And I feel like right where we find ourselves now in 2026, it's so beautiful to see where we've come and how it's grown. And I tell my friends all the time like, I understand the very present picture is very blurry. Yeah, and a lot of people are losing confidence, but 250 years is not something to joke about. Yeah, that's a long time.

SPEAKER_02 33:56

It's not gonna disappear overnight. We we gotta hang on, we gotta keep it together, all that kind of thing.

SPEAKER_01 34:01

And I think the big bigger is better. I think the more perfect union is forming. And that goes back to like this whole like I mentioned the Michael Jackson and I mentioned social media, but I look at our society as we're at such an inflection point when it comes to technology, when it comes to healthcare. And when we talk about like our institutions, that we have everything to make a better future at our fingertips. It really just goes to the direction of how are we all collectively going to steer the ship in the right direction. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 34:28

Cause it because and and I don't want to be the downer and all that because it could go in the wrong direction if if it's handled and managed and not used in the right and most powerful ways that that help us all. Yeah. It's a tough time. It's a tough time, but we should not, as you said, get caught in the fog of the right now, right? And and and reflect on and be thankful for for where we are. Um I got a fun, I got a fun um lineage story to tell you about this whole 250 thing. And and I even I even tie all this together uh here in a moment, but you know, you asked me about the ruck, right? So the place that the the downside of the story is it the first year it was conducted, it was done on the course at the same time as the actual Boston Marathon run was done. And unfortunately, that was the year of the bombing. Right. And they said, hey, we can't have guys running around with backpacks on the course anymore. So from that day forward, they moved us off site and a day prior. So now it's conducted along the battle trail between Lexington and Concord, right? So when we when we step off, when we start, uh we go right across the North Bridge where the first where the shot heard around the world happened. And as we as we cross the bridge, they've got the muskets out there with legs and they fire. It's all it's all very cool, right? It brings it around for you. Um here's the crazy thing. Um, in 1775, before this was called the United States of America, uh, gentlemen by the name of uh General Putnam mustered a bunch of soldiers from eastern Connecticut together and said, We're gonna march up to Massachusetts and we're gonna be involved in this colonial militia and we're gonna help fight for this nation. Well, guess who got scooped up in that? Some Mohegan tribal members who at the time, now you can appreciate this, right? Yeah, were considered less than.

SPEAKER_03 36:28

Right.

SPEAKER_02 36:28

But you can come fight for us, right? So about 20 Mohegans fought uh from the very beginning. And one of those Mohegans was a gentleman by the name of Samuel Ashbow. If you go to Bunker Hill, you will see or hear one of the guides tell you, if he's on his game, that the first Native American to die in the defense of what would become the United States of America was a Mohegan tribal member named Samuel Ashbow. Wow. So you ask me about the 250th. Yeah. I mean, can I bring it any closer? You know, that's a that's a family member of my Native American side of my family that died at Bunker Hill and he wasn't even respected. And think about the decades and centuries. You know, you talk about the quilt, yeah, and and I talk about the not, you know, maybe less than perfect path. It's taken a long time to to mend a lot of fences and and reach reconciliation, but you know, I I've got that trace all the way back to that man saying, you know, back to our public service inspiration, I'll do it, I'll serve. And not knowing what's going to come of it, right? But uh that's one story. There are millions of those stories and all of our conflicts and all of our elections and all of our growth as a nation. And uh, I think we have something to be proud of. We do.

SPEAKER_01 37:50

Yeah, talk to me about the duality of like your identity, like with that Native American like prescription and yourself. Yeah, I want to hear a lot more about that because I have such an affinity for Native American culture. I've read Vine Deloria Jr.'s like God is red. Like I understand what they were going through, especially during the 1960s and 1970s, but not many people understand it.

SPEAKER_02 38:12

There's a lot there to unpack. And and let's just be completely transparent and frank about it. Look at me. I look like my Irish daddy, right? So when I sit with someone and and try to tell the stories of my Mohegan ancestry, immediately they think that I'm faking it, you know, and there's enough of that going on in the world. So, you know. Um, but I grew up, so you know, I've got an Irish father. You've heard this whole story when we told our journey tales. I've got uh uh an Irish American father, that side of my family emigrated from Ireland in the 1860s. Um, I have too many stories. One of the mills that I'm knocking down in my current job in Norwich, Connecticut, is where my first generation immigrant Irish immigrant family worked when they landed in America. And now I'm knocking it down. Imagine they saw that. Probably be happy, but that's a whole nother thing. Um, you know, and then on my on my Native American side, uh Uncasville, Connecticut is named for Uncus. I am Uncas's 13th great-grandson.

SPEAKER_03 39:17

Wow.

SPEAKER_02 39:17

Me and a bunch of others, but I am one of them. Um and growing up as a kid, we, you know, in our home, I always saw pictures of Uncas, painted portraits of Uncas, and pictures and painted portraits of my great-grandfather, Chief Mataga. He was the chief of the tribe in the 50s and 60s, right here in Connecticut. You look at those pictures, Anthony, that the they look Native American. They are my ancestors, direct descendant. Yeah. Um so just from a superficial standpoint in our America, it's tough for me to, you know, talk about it. But from my heart, it's not tough for me to talk about it. Um and and it's a difficult, it's a difficult path that uh that we've led and you know, where we were Christianized, right? We were heathens and we were Christianized. And and while that might sound like a really complex duality, like how does that happen? Do you believe in the Creator or do you believe in Jesus Christ and our our Lord and Savior? How do you put that all together? In this hour, I can't unpack all that. Yeah, that'd be a long conversation. But the but the easy and interesting thing to point out is this in the 1800s, on our current Federal Reservation tribal land in eastern Connecticut, uh, a church was built to Christianize our tribe. Were it not for that church existing, we may not be federally recognized today. Because we we went from there are maps, you know, those old cartographer maps that are Connecticut's kind of wonky looking. It doesn't really look like it's shaped, right? That show Mohegan territory going all the way to the Hudson. And then there's 100 years later, 2,000 acres in eastern Connecticut, and then a 50 or 100 years later, 400 acres, right? So this continued, and then in the 1860s, and the name of the the uh legislated process is escaping me, but our land got parceled up and sold off, and we only had about 13 acres left at that time, and then we were down literally to the quarter acre that that church sat on. That was the only possessed true possession that we still had as a tribe, and that was in the 70s, and from 1970 to 1994, our tribe fought for federal recognition, and you had to show cultural, historical uh governance and and societal connections between your tribal members. Well, that quarter acre of land and that church was the place where we would gather and have our powwow on that quarter acre of land for those 20 or 30 years. And if were it not for that, we may not have been able to prove our existence as a tribe. That's crazy, right? So you know, are you Christian or do you believe in the I don't know, but one of them gave us the opportunity to work at the same way we have now? Yeah, yeah. Crazy story. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 42:22

I grew into that. Um as a young African-American person, I've had to battle this duality of am I American or am I African?

SPEAKER_03 42:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 42:32

And that duality has been a real conflict. And it did, it was exasperated during COVID when I had this loss of sense of self. But it was really that service year that really brought it home for me. That when I got to travel to Missouri doing like disaster relief, when I got to go to Louisiana and go build homes, when I got to New Mexico to help out the impoverished, I became American.

SPEAKER_03 42:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 42:53

Because I saw communities that had the same characteristics, the same values that I had. And this notion of the Midwest or the South was completely stricken out of my head. And I saw myself in them. And then I thought about okay, well, I grew up in an African household where tree, our native language, was the first spoken. That's what I understand even till this day. But when I stepped out and I got to go find out who I was, the affinity of no, this this is who I want to be. Yeah, yeah. It was such a beautiful blend, and like I'm so fortunate and so like glad that like those formative months and years really shaped how I see myself in this world.

SPEAKER_02 43:27

Yeah. I mean, you you still have that duality in a very 21st century way in that you're a dual citizen, right? Right. Which is super interesting for those of us that can't claim. I mean, I do too.

SPEAKER_03 43:38

Yeah. No, you really do, um, but you're right.

SPEAKER_02 43:43

I mean, it when it comes down to it, uh, this is gonna sound like you know, we're all God's people, but we're all the same. And I I had those experiences. I've told this story, we still got an hour, right? Uh a number of times, but um, you know. For whatever reasons, whatever battlefield conditions or missions we were on, I found myself sitting in a in a in a sheep pen in the backyard of a mud hut home in eastern Iraq.

SPEAKER_01 44:15

Oh my gosh.

SPEAKER_02 44:16

Just out in the middle of nowhere with this tribal, you know, sheep herder. And through my translator, just sitting, literally sitting in the sheep pen drinking tea and just talking to him. And I'm I'm really appealing to your story about getting around the country and realizing we're all the same.

SPEAKER_03 44:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 44:32

You know, and I had to, I had to teach my young soldiers when we deployed, like, look, we're going to a bad place where there's inherent danger, but everybody there is not trying to kill you. That's the hard part of today's conflicts where there's not, you know, tank on tanks, here's the line of departure. And it's not like that, right? And uh, and making them understand that most of these people we're going to encounter in Iraq are just trying to get by, just like you when you're back home in America. And in that sheep pen over tea with this 90-something year old man, and I just realized I can't tell the whole story here on air. Um, it became very clear to me that, you know, he was happy, right? You might think, well, look at the standard of living that you have here. He was good. He had what he needed. Yeah. And I think that, you know, back to maybe the 250th point you made, or just in general, like we should all recognize how very blessed we are to live in this country and have the kind of problems that we have. Uh people say first world problems. Yeah, 100%. 100%. And and by the same token, you know, think about those folks you met in the Midwest or or when you went down to was it Louisiana or Mississippi. Um sometimes they're not even looking for what we think we're supposed to have or need or want. And and and a simpler approach to life sometimes is is better. Um, but you don't learn that if you don't get out of your own comfort zone. You gotta pop the bubble. And there, you know, and here you are doing it. So good on you for that. That was a you call it your service year. Yes, service yeah. What was the actual agency? AmeriCorps agency. Yeah. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 46:19

How many different missions were oh so I was building houses, I was um COVID investigating for the state of Canada State of Colorado. I was um doing disaster relief for FEMA in Louisiana, and then when Missouri in Missouri, I was doing almost everything under the sun. But then that's when the first COVID vaccine came out. So I worked with the National Guard in Missouri, traveled the whole state, and just with the distribution. And it was pretty crazy to see like firsthand, like, oh, like we are the first responders right now, and the world is moving in the right direction. But like, am I equipped to like help this out this out? You learned it.

SPEAKER_02 46:56

The answer was yes. Yeah, yeah. You know, uh yeah, stress, pressure, and emission will produce amazing things. Yeah, I agree with that.

SPEAKER_01 47:04

But to go back to your point when you're talking about your soldiers and like how you had a prep them on, like the people that you interact with, their intentions are not all malicious. That's right. It goes back to like how we find ourselves and the spaces that we find ourselves right now. Oftentimes I feel like when people are like, Anthony, oh, you're in government, government's bad. Government doesn't really do anything, it just takes our money. I really try to be that beacon of hope, like no, we really do have intentions of we're trying to build it better tomorrow, right by clear by where and that's that persona and that it's that mind thought, mindset that I think we need to fundamentally shift.

SPEAKER_03 47:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 47:42

And I think with the Redwood Fellows with this cohort of us extending our network, us reaching out to different places and people, maybe we can start to change it, to stir the ship into a different route. Because I think that's where it starts.

SPEAKER_02 47:54

Yeah, well, because there's there's trust. I mean, this is a trust thing, right? And and you know, I just think about the social media that I read, uh whether it's at the national level or the local municipal level, where people clearly are coming from a place of distrust. And how do you how do you fix that? How do how do you, me, we, how do we fix that so that people don't have that immediate visceral response that, oh, you're in government. Uh, that's you're a line in your pocket. Exactly. Every time I read that one, I'm like, nah. It does not work that way. In fact, I've said it if I had a dollar for every time someone says line in your pockets, I might be lying in my pocket. Um it's just crazy. I mean, it's public service. And I and I hate it for our municipally elected leaders, you know, like on a city council or a town or a town board of selectmen. I mean, there's no there's no money there.

SPEAKER_01 48:51

I volunteer.

SPEAKER_02 48:51

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 48:52

96 hours every day.

SPEAKER_02 48:53

Yeah. That's that's that's public service. And uh so you're right. We what whatever we can do, however we can do it to turn the tide on that lack of trust of government is is really important right now. Like right now. Um and you know, wandering out amongst the people and you know, letting them realize that, hey, here I'm not a bad guy after all. Like I'll I'll sit in your backyard and drink tea. Yeah, that's I'll and I'm sitting in your droppings here, you know, and it's all good, you know. Uh yeah, being accessible, being accessible and and you know, what's what's the thing that all of our grandmothers told us she got two of these and one of those? It's funny. We're on a podcast and I'm talking a lot. No, and I'm and doing this. I don't know if you remember, but when they asked us to highlight our one weakness, I was like, I talked too much. But, you know, just just you know, having conversations with people is is one simple way to to bring about trust. Um culturally, my uh well not my, but our our tribal medicine woman, Gladys Tanakh, she passed away at 104 years old. Wow. She was actually uh uh assigned by the Bureau of Indian Affairs in 1934 to go and live with the Lakota-Sou, one of the most destitute tribes, even still today in our nation. And uh uh to this day, because of her presence with that tribe almost 100 years ago now, uh, those folks look at the Mohegan tribe as royalty because she gave of herself and she helped preserve their culture and all those kinds of things. One of the things she famously used to say was, it's hard to hate somebody you know a lot about.

SPEAKER_03 50:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 50:43

And it's been said by other people in different ways, but I mean, that's the thing, right? Break down those barriers. Uh, we as public servants, we got to make sure that we're cognizant of that in everything that we do. And to your point, I mean, Redwood Fellows is creating that sort of glue and and connecting us across the state. So I don't know what Andrew wants us to do with all that. I think that's our last assignment.

SPEAKER_01 51:08

I think that's the organic nature of we're gonna have to go figure it out.

SPEAKER_02 51:11

Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's what they say. That's what they've been telling us. Cool. Uh, let's see, where are we at?

SPEAKER_01 51:17

Um I want to learn a lot more about your family, though.

SPEAKER_02 51:20

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 51:20

So, like right now, you're in this really interesting situation where you're trying to really help any municipality build up its foundation so it doesn't become over-reliant on property owners. Right. But like, how does your family interact with my dad's a war veteran? Like now he's running economic development. Do you have time for them? Like, I'm trying to figure this out.

SPEAKER_02 51:38

Yeah, that's a that's a fun, that's a fun question. Um, it's been a tough, look, it's been a tough life journey for me. Uh, you know, I'm on my second family, frankly, right now. And uh my first family, my kids were teenagers and in high school, and I was probably deployed to Iraq for more than half of the time that they were in high school. And that was really tough. Now, there's some fun things about it, right? Like my son would score a touchdown, and I'd get, you know, nose to that, and I'd make everybody in the operations team watch, you know. My daughter hit a line drive softball to third base, it bounced off the third baseman's head. It's kind of funny. She cried, she didn't make it to first base in time. I showed that, you know. I got to share in some of those things, but I was absent for a lot of it. And uh, and so, you know, I mean, that's just uh I not to over uh describe this, but when you hear about the difficulty of service on the military family, I mean, I've lived it, you know, and and uh and it's tough. And and I mean, no exaggeration, probably one out of every two military families experienced divorce or separation because of all these stresses and pressures and all those kinds of things. So, you know, now with my second family, um, I'm having a second shot at that, right? And and boy, timing is everything on this question. This week, I think I missed my I think I missed the first lacrosse game I've missed in two years, right? Because I'm there, I'm there, I'm driving him, I'm I'm there all the time. So it's a tough balance, but I'm doing the best I it's a second shot for me. Like I'm gonna get it right. Yeah, and uh and it's good. Um yeah, yeah, yeah. It's tough, it's a tough go. I I'll you know, look, we got an hour. Um we do. I I try to describe people what this transition for veterans is like uh using Maslow's hierarchy. So foundationally on that triangle, you've got food, water, safety, shelter, shelter. Then you come up a layer, a little bit smaller, relationships, family, friends, significant other. Then you go up to the final top and it's self-actualization, something larger than myself. And the way I try to give people my cereal box rendition of Maslow's hierarchy of needs for a veteran is whether they were in for three years and did two deployments or 25 years and did a whole bunch and over a long period of time, that thing gets inverted because think about it. What's supposed to be food, water, safety, health, and shelter, you are forsaking all of that when you go into harm's way in a Hum V with a five-gallon can of water, a whole bunch of ammunition, and a hope and a prayer that you don't get hurt, right? Instead of being this, it's a tiny triangle. You go up a level. Well, that's supposed to be relationship, meaningful relationships, uh, friends, family, significant others. Well, you leave all them behind when you deploy, right? But it's not completely minimized because now you got this whole new group, this whole new group of significant others that you bond with, right, in a very significant way. So it's an interesting next layer. And at the top, you're self-actualizing every day when you roll out of the wire and you're trying to protect the good people and hunt the bad guys down. And and in and in that entire experience, it's not about you, it's about your country or this other country or the people to your left and right that you're fighting for. So your Maslow's hierarchy, you live in this inverted space, right? Luckily, you're living in a structured environment, so that thing doesn't topple over. It's held that way. Right now you come home, now you get out of the service. Now that structure that kept your inverted triangle balanced is gone.

SPEAKER_01 55:36

Right.

SPEAKER_02 55:38

Right? It's inverted situation. So that's I use that analogy for folks, they can realize that what you can do is you can help prop that veteran up and keep it and help them and really help them reshape their triangle. And that's lucky for me, I got a second shot at life.

SPEAKER_01 55:54

That's beautiful.

SPEAKER_02 55:55

Yeah, I love that. That's working out. It's cool. It's cool. How about you? What's your you're the youngest guy in the group? Uh I've used that four times now. You're the youngest guy in the group. You've got your future ahead of you. What is what does family mean to you in this busy life that both you and I are leading? What is it now, or what do you see it looking like for you?

SPEAKER_01 56:12

You know, I find this is a question people always ask me, Anthony, what's next? Right. And I feel like I've been able to check off key milestones for myself at a very young age. And it's like, okay, well, family is probably the most important thing that I need to focus on right now. So, Kevin, the thing I've been debating about internally, and I think at Redwoods has helped me like understand professionals that have already stripped, like strived, yeah, got into it, and now was it really what I wanted? And I'm like, wow, like I'm not there yet, but I'm getting there. And I really want family. But I see my career aspirations and my ambitions, and I'm like, am I willing to sacrifice that to build this model of the family that I want? Because you want it to be right. And I want it to be right. Yeah, but I also want to accomplish so much in this life. And for me, the balance is like right now I work really like long hours, then I finish up, go do town council stuff, which is more long hours, right? And then I uh referee soccer games on the weekend. Yeah, so I barely have time for myself. Yeah, and now I'm trying to figure out how do I incorporate how do I incorporate a partner that's gonna help me build a house, a home, a family. And then how do I sustain that so that I can step back maybe one day and step back into this arena?

SPEAKER_02 57:23

Yeah, we we talked about this uh quite a bit actually, I think in our last retreat, uh, when we were talking about being a father, that that conversation really got a lot going on. And and it made me think about the values exercise that we did. Five, what you know, what were your five dominant values that came out of that? And and I don't even remember what they were. I could, if I thought about it, I mean I could tell you what that but the but the thing that hit me more than what they were was the fact that when I looked at them, I thought, okay, here's a hard, hard reality. Yes, those are my five values, but the real trick in life is being willing to look at them and realize one has to give way to another sometimes. Like they can't all exist, they can't all coexist at their ultimate all the time. And I think it's the same thing with what you're talking about and thinking forward in time about like sac this is sacrifice. When I looked at the five, I was like, sacrifice is touching all of those because I'm gonna have to sacrifice something somewhere. Um, and and that is the hard reality for all those professionals that you're looking at that have made it, you know, they had they had some sacrifice that that that they had to that they had to make uh to to get there.

SPEAKER_01 58:40

So uh kept tell me about this moving forward the rest of the year. What's something that like you're really focused on when it comes to these five values that are you're gonna try to hone in on or try to sharpen? Yeah, or are you like, you know what, I'm gonna let one sacrifice. Yeah, I'm gonna sacrifice one of them.

SPEAKER_02 58:55

Yeah, yeah. Uh I'm gonna be super selfish and and grab the individualism one that popped out.

SPEAKER_03 59:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 59:03

Because I think the reason in my values exercise it popped up was because I value it a lot because I'm not experiencing it. I'm giving of myself to so many things that I'm not really learning to play the guitar. Yeah. Like I really, really, really want to. And time is ticking. You got time, Kevin.

SPEAKER_01 59:23

You got time.

SPEAKER_02 59:24

So I it sounds selfish, but you know that you know that how they talk how folks, human resource management folks and self-help folks talk about this. If if you can't pour from an empty cup. And uh, and I and I think I think because of the battles of my life, literal and and figurative, I've learned how to do it. That doesn't make it right.

SPEAKER_01 59:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 59:43

So I think I want to, I think I want to focus on myself a little bit just to make sure that I that I am my best version of myself when I'm pursuing all those other values that uh that I'm not gonna let go of. Like, let's just go back to where we started. Like you and I believe in public service and serving others, and I am not ever gonna stop doing that. So to be able to do it better or at least in a more sustained way, I'm gonna take care of myself this year. How about you?

SPEAKER_01 1:00:09

Uh, one that I'm gonna focus on for the rest of the year is uh faith. I've always put it upon myself that I think I can control all the variables in any situation, and that if I just put enough effort, if I give it enough attention, I can force the outcome that I want. But but life has a funny way of like dealing you a hand and you are you have to just suck it up. And that's why I really come to like just give it up. Yeah, and giving it up. Uh I've had a situation the last two months that's really fundamentally shook me to my core. But like keep up the persona, keep up the facade. But internally it's like you're struggling, you're fighting through it, fighting through it. And I realized the easiest thing for me to do is just pray on it, let it go, yeah, and just every day wake up and look look forward right on. And you just leave it to there, and I feel like I've turned the corner where I feel a little bit more comfortable, yeah. But I still hope that those situations like the universe, the karma, or for me, God is moving in the direction that I hope.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:08

Right. Well, look, uh you are clearly the pastor in this duo, but but you know, the Holy Spirit is a is a real thing, is my belief. And and and we and that's it's the inner connectivity of all of us. And you know, Redwoods is a portion of that. Yeah, but I think it's a good place for us to leverage relationships, and I'm glad to be in it, and I'm glad to be in it with you, my friend. This is great. Yeah, it's great. Thanks for taking the time today. Right on.