When I was 15, I lived in Paris for six months as an exchange student.

It was the first, but not the last time I would do a geographical.

A geographical is a term that we use in 12-step.

It's the impulsive move to a new city, a new country, in the hope that your problems won't follow you.

What kind of problems could I have at 15 when a semester in France was an actual life option? Well, the problem was that I was me.

I was an awkward, angry, restless, opinionated, irritating 15-year-old who felt like her life was small, who felt like she didn't fit in, and who wanted to be confident and cool and living a big, adventurous life.

alive

Strap yourself in, folks, because this is a very Corbyn sermon.

But I feel very privileged that I get to deliver it today.

If you are anything like me, when you got this rock, your eyes rolled so far back in your head that right now you're staring at your own brain.

I'm looking at you, Catherine.

Which would be weirdly perfect for where this sermon is actually going.

And be grateful because my original intention was to insist we all get to get up and dance at some point in this sermon so you all got off lightly.

you.

So, uh, not that there's anything wrong with putting flavors and spices and, and adjuncts and things like that in meads, but you're depending on the character of the honey itself for the different, uh, flavors that you get out of your meads.

Uh, that is correct.

When I started making mead, uh, I've always loved honey, and, uh, uh, I didn't think much about the flavor nuances of the honey, I just knew I liked it.

Then when I started making mead, and when you start, uh, reducing the sugars, turning them to alcohol, and those other flavor compounds become much more prominent, and then I started discovering just how many different kinds of honey there were.

Just in this country alone, there's over 300 different honey varietals.

I just started v- v- not only l- liking the taste of honey, falling in love with it as just a, a natural creation.

And, uh, I just, I do it just to, to showcase something that is right in front of everybody that v- few people even notice.

[laughs]

Mm-hmm.

I was very guarded, right? And I still can be, right? Because now that I am comfortable and confident in myself, and now that I'm embodying my own core values every day, right, and I've worked on myself, and I'm...

It's a practice, right? It's not something that we ever stop.

It's like, you know, I have to wake up every single day and ask myself, you know, "Hey, does this align with me? Does this not?" You know? But I know now that not everybody deserves to have access to me, you know? That's me standing my ground and having my own boundaries, right? Like, she's snapping.

I'm like, "I am a queen, and I deserve to be treated as such, okay? And so do you, girl." You know? So I guess, you know, my rebuttal, I mean, I think that, uh, when you're in the moment and you're feeling that way and you're like, you know, eh, like you're just telling yourself that it doesn't really matter, you're just telling yourself it doesn't, you know, it doesn't bother you.

You're just telling yourself like, you know, "I'll just get over it.

This person doesn't like me," or, you know, "I, I'll be forever alone." Like, blah, blah, whatever limiting belief is like, you know, going on in your head.

[chuckles]

like,

what the hell is going on? Like, it feels weird because there's other people, now I have dust.

What the hell is this? And, like, you said for the first section, by the time it comes race day, like, I won't really touch it.

I'll touch it the week before and then that's it.

So by the time I come race day, I'm just like, what the hell is going on here? But we're lucky because the cars go through.

You guys just clip those beautiful, nice edges.

And, like, my plan of attack is just, like, ride the windrow.

And that's helped develop what you are now.

Mm-hmm.

Like that first year that we had the ladies class, I was not prepared mentally for how, like, easy the track would be.

I thought it was just gonna be chaos, like when I prologued in class four.

And then I found that year that I didn't actually pass that many people.

So normally, like you said, when it was class four and prologue and I'd be like leaving town, some stupid number, passing over 200 people on the way down and then...

Yeah, and then you're like seeded well for day two, but day one is hard work.

But yeah, when we did the women's class, I found I only passed like five or six people.

So there must be a few people that you wanna thank, uh, for helping you along the way.

In its growth or its maturity, how would you say it has changed for the better and then maybe not changed where it should?

It's a great question.

So, I mean, in 2006 when it was first passed, uh, I think the two backbones, let's say, of the legislation were the creation of the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response and the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, which is ASPR and BARDA.

Now, ASPR was tasked with handling public health emergencies and coordinating them, or emergencies that dealt with CBRN threats, which is chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear.

And then BARDA was tasked with distributing and developing countermeasures very quickly to address the threat.

So if that's where we started in 2006, I think it's really important for people to understand why that was created, and it was in response to 9/11 and the anthrax attacks of 2001.

Which I know 2006 feels like a long [chuckles] uh, way away from 2001, but there was a lot going on, and that was the impetus.

In the different, uh, competing versions of reauthorization proposals that have been, have been offered but not passed yet, what would you say are some of the critical modernization efforts that they've included?

In its growth or its maturity, how would you say it has changed for the better and then maybe not changed where it should?

It's a great question.

So, I mean, in 2006 when it was first passed, uh, I think the two backbones, let's say, of the legislation were the creation of the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response and the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, which is ASPR and BARDA.

Now, ASPR was tasked with handling public health emergencies and coordinating them or emergencies that dealt with CBRN threats, which is chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear.

And then BARDA was tasked with distributing and developing countermeasures very quickly to address the threat.

So if that's where we started in 2006, I think it's really important for people to understand why that was created, and it was in response to 9/11 and the anthrax attacks of 2001, which I know 2006 feels like a long [chuckles] uh, way away from 2001, but there was a lot going on, and that was the impetus.

So through its other reauthorizations in 2013 and 2019, different events preceded those reauthorizations of the original 2006 bill, which gets to your question, where it has evolved, because it's had to.

In the different, uh, competing versions of reauthorization proposals that have been, have been offered but not passed yet, what would you say are some of the critical modernization efforts that they've included?