Good morning, and welcome to this week's edition of Encompass Live. I am your host, Krista Porter, here at the Nebraska Library Commission. Encompass Live is the commission's weekly webinar series, where we cover a variety of topics that may be of interest to libraries. We broadcast the show live every Wednesday morning at 10 a.m. central time. But if you're unable to join us on Wednesdays, that's fine. We do record the show as we are doing today. And it will be available on our website in our archives for you to watch at your convenience. And I'll show you at the end of today's show. I'll show you where you can access all of our recordings. Both our live show and recordings are free and open to anyone to watch. So please do share, spread the news with your friends, family, neighbors, colleagues, anyone you think might be interested in any of the topics we have on the show. For those of you not from Nebraska, the Nebraska Library Commission is the state agency for libraries. We similar to your state library. So we provide services to all types of libraries in the state. Public, academic, K-12, corrections, museums, archives, historical societies, anything and everything. So we will have shows on Encompass Live, excuse me, that could be for any type of library. We really are only criteria, really, is it something to do with libraries? Something cool libraries are doing. We do interviews, many training sessions, demos of services and products, all sorts of things. We have Nebraska Library Commission staff that come on and do presentations sometimes for programs and services we're offering through the commission. But we also bring on guest speakers, which we have this morning. And so we have today is Erica Rogers. Good morning, Erica. Good morning. And she is from our Hastings, Nebraska Public Library. And she's going to talk to us about some cool things she did with their programming kits and how you can do it too. So I will hand it over to you, Erica, to take it away and tell us all about it. Well, hello. As she said, my name is Erica Rogers, and I'm with the Hastings Public Library. And today I'm going to be just talking about what we did with programming kits, especially when COVID hit and then how we're continuing to use those strategies and things like that even now as we're moving forward. So we're going to start with, of course, let's see, here we go. So we all remember when COVID hit in 2020, it was kind of a scary time. We had to close our doors. We had to kind of figure out what we were going to do to still serve our communities because people still needed programming, possibly even more. Because at that time, people were being isolated and a lot of people were afraid to leave their houses and things like that. And so coming up with programming would be a way to kind of help ease those nerves a little bit and try to reach people and not make them feel quite so alone. So we came up with programming kits. And these were kits that you could take home. Our idea was that these kits would provide all the materials that they would need in order to do the program. And then they would get to keep the leftovers. That way, we didn't have to worry about the germs that were coming back. They didn't have to worry about the germs of the person who used it before them. And it was just a little bit more of a piece of mind. But this is kind of an easy thing to think about. But then the social aspect is where we really struggled. Because, again, people were being isolated at this point and we were really worried about those people that were living alone and not getting out and talking to people. So the solution that we came up with was Zoom. We gave people a couple of different options when we sent out the kit. The picture you see is the sheet that we handed out with all of our kits that were sent out. We gave them the option of a Zoom meeting, which is where we would go live and send them the link and we would do the project together. That way, they could talk to each other. We left the mics open and we treated it just like we would an in-person class. So they could talk to each other. They could ask us questions. And it kind of built as much of that feeling of being together as you could at that point in time. But we also then offered a video tutorial. So if the Zoom meeting didn't work or they were too busy or wanted to just do it at a later time, this video tutorial was the one that we recorded that they could watch at any point in time. It went through the project and... I'll talk about that, I guess, in just a little bit. But... So what I'm going to be talking about next is like how to adapt the program. So you have the program concept and you decided that you want to do it as a take-home kit. How do you do that? The first thing you do is look at the supplies. This is something that I do even with in-person programming. But when you're thinking about sending kids home where you don't want to receive the stuff back, you have to think about the type of things that you want to send out to people. You want to buy in bulk, but you also need to have like a certain amount. So one of the things that I would suggest is to start by looking at what you have. You don't have to reinvent the wheel. So even if it doesn't match the Inspiration Project 100% because you have a lot of yarn on hand and they suggested using strips of paper or something like that, you can definitely adapt and use what you have. Oh, yeah, definitely. I mean, there's so many different kind of crafts and leftover things around. Exactly. So it's kind of fun to be like, oh, okay, well, what can we use instead? And a lot of that comes into play with like this stuff. So again, like at this time, we were talking about sending stuff home that we didn't want back. So the big thing that we had to think about was what kind of containers do you want to send this stuff out in? You know, paint and glue, they're wet, they're sticky. You want to make sure that they have lids that are secure. You got to think about what kind of glue you want. Is it going to be hot glue? Is it going to be crafting glue, Elmer's glue, super glue? And so again, that would be a point where you would look at the project and be like, well, this is calling for a hot glue gun. What can we use instead? And we have this giant tub of glue because we used to do all of these projects. So instead of buying like little glue containers, you could then portion it out into, we use little makeup containers that you can buy. Yeah, as far as paint goes, we found that you could buy the paint strips that for like the little paint by numbers and things like that. And then you could cut those down to fit the number of paint colors that you offered them. So then that would be another thing is, what colors do you want to send out to them? The paint strips held 10 different colors, but did you want to send out 10 different colors of paint or did you just want to shorten it and give them fewer options? Yeah, and then of course, what are you going to be sending the stuff home in? So at that time, we were just using gallon-sized plastic bags. They were easy, they were semi-affordable. You could buy them in bulk and then it also again reduced that germ factor there and everything fit nice and inside. We also used paper lunch sacks or just again, leftover things from other programs that we had had. And so yeah, we got creative definitely a little bit. So depending on what size of a library you are, some suggestions for places that you can buy these materials because you can do as much as you can with the stuff that you have, but then you still have to supplement. So hopefully you are allowed to do some online shopping. That's really what saved us because especially when we were closed, we couldn't go out to the stores, but we don't have in our town, we don't have big stores like Hobby Lobby and craft stores like that. So we buy a lot of stuff off of Amazon and that's kind of a go-to for a lot of people right now. But also the Dollar Tree, they have really upped their craft game over the last year or two and they have a lot of stuff and it's usually pretty cheap. The downside is you do have to buy in bulk quantities. Usually it's a 12, but if you're buying for a program you're probably doing around 10 people anyway. So it's usually it works out just about okay. But they will do both in-person and they will ship to your library as well. Walmart, Hobby Lobby, Michaels, those are all places that have online ordering as well. And again, you can get it set up so that they'll send it directly to your library and then you don't have to go shopping for those specific things that you need. I know at one point in time paint was really scarce because everybody decided they wanted to go paint. So we had to stop and like search for all of these places and we ended up finding it on Michaels was the only place that had paint. So it was just kind of thinking like just because we don't have access to it where we're located, where are some places that do still have this stuff that will then send it to us. Okay, so you kind of got your project figured out, you've gone through the supplies, figured out what it is that you're gonna need. The next step is making clear instructions. The first thing with making clear instructions is starting with the materials list. So I suggest listing off every single thing that you are including inside the kit and then also including items that they might need from around their house. So for instance, if they need to have scissors and you're not sending them because most people have scissors around their house, I would list that as a material that they need. We did start sending home glue guns. We did ask for those back, we checked them out to people just like we did a book item and then they could return them and we would then quarantine and sanitize them. But we have them just for the programming kits. So it was kind of an experiment. And actually what we found is when we started to asking people if they needed a glue gun, a lot of people already had glue guns at home and we really didn't need to send them home. So that was kind of interesting too. If you just ask people what they need, a lot of them already have your basic supplies. I know I have multiple ones because I keep misplacing them. Exactly, I mean, that's the thing. Do you know where it's at? And do you have glue stick? That might be a different story, but yeah, and then as the kits were going on after a few months of us sending them supplies, a lot of times they would keep the supplies. So you could ask, do you need another set of paint brushes? Do you need another set of this material? And they would often just come back and say, no, I've still got plenty left over from last time. So that was kind of a nice thing too. As far as the instruction sheets themselves go, the key is simplify. So you want these instructions to, these are a guide, these are to help people while they're doing their projects, but you don't wanna overwhelm them. So this is kind of the format that I would use. You can see there to the, I would use bullet points. I would use a table format and lots of pictures. Like I said, you wanna pretend like they're in person and you're talking to them, but they don't have the opportunity to ask questions.   But these instructions sheets have really proved to be useful even when we have gone back to in-person programming. So yeah. Is it the thing that also the instructions, I know this, I remember doing something, some sort of an assignment in elementary school, it was teach someone how to do this thing. And it's one of those kind of tricky things like, how to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. And if you don't get all the exact instructions in the right and people follow your instructions, literally you've realized you've missed something. So is it something that you could have like one person writes it up and then gives it to another person and says, okay, see if you can follow these, test it out on another staff member, I suppose. Yes, I definitely did that a lot in the beginning. Towards, the more you do it, the more you kind of get it figured out. But yes, it's always a very helpful. If you have the opportunity to let a staff member go through it and try to do it themselves first, it's really helpful. Yeah. And the pictures for me, so I ended up usually making three products by the end of it because I would go through and I'd make the project first myself so that I could figure out how to do it. Then I would make it a second time while writing the instruction so that I could take pictures and snap each step. And then I would have somebody else go through the instructions and see if they could do it. Or when we were creating our videos, I would then be going through it as well. So we usually ended up with a lot of copies of each of these projects. Yeah, very thorough. And speaking of being thorough, the last thing you wanna include in these instructions is a picture of the final product because a lot of times we just didn't think about it. We were like, all right, congratulations, you're done. But then people will be like, well, did I do it right? What's it supposed to look like? So it's very important that at the end that you just include a snapshot of what the inspiration project looks like. And I encourage that this is a picture of one that you have actually done and not the inspiration picture that you pulled off of Pinterest or the blog or wherever because it's not going to look like that in most cases. And so if they can see the homemade look, that it's not totally perfect, that is helpful as well. So then after you make the instructions, we did these video tutorials. And this is just, we again, this is kind of like the third step. So we would go through, we'd write the instructions and then we would make up these video tutorials. And they are very conversational. We really wanted people to feel like they were in the room with us. So we were lucky and we had two staff members that were in most of the videos. So we could kind of bounce off of each other and catch the things that the other person was missing. I do have the link here to one of our video lists. They're super wonderful, I promise. I'll mention here, while you're talking about the links there, people if you want to, you can write that down if you want to, but the slides will be available afterwards with the archive of today's show. So if you don't want to, you don't have to worry about writing all that down, you'll have a link to these and be able to get to it all later. Yes, that's a good point. So again, we really want these to be conversational, really simple. We didn't use any fancy software, we just recorded it with Zoom. We went through several different trial and error type things as we were doing this. We tried just recording the Zoom meetings. That didn't work very well because people then would turn off their cameras and they didn't want to talk and that kind of defeated the whole purpose of trying to make it feel like you were all in the same room together. So, and then also you can't really control what people say. So we only recorded two Zoom sessions before we thought, we're just gonna not do that. So then we went to pre-recording it with Zoom. So we would pretend that it was the Zoom session and we would just walk through it, pretending like we were talking to the people that were in the Zoom session with us. But also then it didn't really need to be that fancy video quality or anything like that. No sound effects or zooming in or things like that. We kind of got creative. But again, I feel like that homemade feel was kind of comforting because it made people feel a little bit more like they're there and not so much like just watching a professional quality video, you know? But we also had just a ton of fun with it too. And that's the important thing. Whenever you're doing programming, you just gotta have fun with it. If you have fun with it, people will have fun with it too. Okay, so that is all of the things that we were doing while we were shut down. And even as we started to reopen, we continued doing a lot of those things. And but now things have kind of gotten back to a relatively normal place again. And so it's like, how does this still apply? And I think it has really helped out a lot just in terms of preparing and planning and helping to just rethink about how we want to do programming. So it really, I still follow all of these guidelines and steps when I am preparing a program. I still like to stop, make a thorough list inventory of our materials, thinking about what we have and things like that. And we actually will usually still make the kits, but instead of sending them home with people, we will then just set them out in the places. We had people register for the classes. So we know how many that we're going to be making. And then we have everything all in the kit. So when they get there, it's a lot easier and it saves time when they get from going and handing out materials or them going and picking things out. I mean, some things you do want them to have options. So like we don't put the paint in there anymore. We let them pick their colors, but it really helps with that time management as far as making sure that you have everything for everybody before the class starts. And the instruction sheets are also still a really great idea because people sometimes don't always catch everything as you're talking. There may be more of a visual learner. So if they have the instruction sheets with them and they don't catch what you say, they can then follow along with the instruction sheet or they can go back to it and refer, especially if you're having a larger class, if you're having a class with more than like 10 or 15 people, it can be really hard to make sure that everybody's on the same page. So those, yeah. So those instruction sheets guys are just a really great tool to have. Yeah, that's a good tip. That's something, and you're always thinking about doing this programming in person. So well, everybody's here in the room, so they'll just see what I'm telling them to do, easy. But yeah, not everyone has different learning styles and that is something that teachers know about all the time, but sometimes with us in libraries, maybe not aware that, yeah, you might need another way of showing someone how to do this. And it might, yeah. Yeah. And then of course, you can still do kits. So we have a couple of clubs, we've called them clubs, but they're just kit programs that we've started. And they're in a similar format. Our spice club has all of this stuff in it and it's really popular. And so we put all of the stuff inside the bags and the difference is that with the spice club kits, we do want the bags back. So we have reusable burlap bags that they get to take at home, they get to use all of the spices and things and then the next month, they get to bring it back. And then we do try to sanitize them before we send them back out again. But it's the same idea because people really like to have something that they can come pick up and take home and do in their own time. And then for the kids, we have a virtual Lego club. And what that one is, is again, we just have little kits with all of the Legos in it. It's kind of like the Lego kits that you can buy for really expensive amounts of money. They're just a little simple. One month it was like making a turtle. And so it has all of the Legos in there, has the instructions and a picture of what it's supposed to look like when they're done. We limit it to, depending on the kit, 10 to 15 kids, and they can just come pick it up and take it home. And they don't have to bring anything back for that one either. But again, it's the Legos then. They get to keep the Legos. Nice. Yeah. So it's a really fun program that they can do. And then they can do it together as a family too. So it's just the idea of the kits opening up a lot of different possibilities. So even though we don't have to do kits anymore, there's still a lot of options and things you can do. It's just another service to offer, yeah. And I think this has come up a lot now due to the pandemic of people have gotten used to these new services that libraries were offering and really enjoyed them. I mean, like the family aspect of it, I hadn't thought about that. Yeah, that oftentimes parents or caregivers will bring the children to the library and say, okay, go there, do your crafty thing, do your thing. I'm gonna go look at books over here or I'll come back and have an hour and pick you up from whatever I'm doing. And they're not there. It's like here it's the thing for the kids. But if the kid's child shouldn't be at home, yeah, the parents or caregivers may be right there and get to be more involved. That's a cool light effect I hadn't even thought about. We had a lot of people that were doing that with our take and make kits through the Pixel Lab. They would send us pictures of them doing it together as a family and say, oh, that was really great. Nice. So yeah, it was just a nice side effect. Yeah, so we do have a question that I wanna jump into right now since we're on this slide here. Someone wants to know, they're very interested in the Spice Club. What is, what is Al about? That sounds very interesting. Like how, what do you get for that? Right, so this is not a program that I do, but what it is, what I can tell you is every month it comes with a different spice and you get a sample of the spice. You get to take home, we put in two to three recipes involving the spice. You get some history on the spice, like where it came from and what it's well known for, some nutritional facts. It all comes together in a little bag. And then yeah, you just get to take it home and do with you all with it. I know we've done like cardamom and that one was really good. It came with, what was it? Cardamom whip cream recipe that was delicious. Wow, yeah, sounds good. A couple months ago, we did star anise and that was kind of a weird one. And so it came with a savory recipe for like pork chops and it was really good. So yeah, it's just kind of a fun thing that maybe you would never like buying a whole jar of star anise who's gonna use that generally, unless it's a regular thing, that's a lot. But having just one or two that's expensive to try out, that's so cool, I love that idea. It's been really popular. We started that in January, so it's been really popular. So really, that's kind of all that I have. So I've just left lots of time for questions. Yeah, okay, awesome. So yeah, if anybody has any other questions, go ahead and type into the question section. If you wanna know anything about any more about any of the kits that Erica did there, how they handled anything, go ahead and do that. We have plenty of time to ask questions, no problem. I'm gonna pop this opener so I can see everything. We didn't have another question that came in. You were talking about, with the SpiceKits actually, sanitizing, you said it was burlap bags. How do you, I guess, sanitize something like that? I know for some things, like those, even before this, they would get washed. And for some things, it's just that we, you'd mentioned the quarantining things, just letting things sit for a certain amount of time so you know that any germs have died. Is there something in particular for like a fabric type thing like that, burlap bags? Yeah, I think we've just been washing them, but you could also use, like, you could just spray them down, like the stuff that you use to spray on your counters and stuff. If you just spray it down, it'll soak into the fabric and do the same thing, and it'll dry. Okay, do you need anything special? No special equipment or anything for that, yeah. I think that's something we've all adapted to, all the COVID things that we do now, we've learned how to do, are now just a regular daily part of life, yeah. And it works, awesome. We get to keep all the containers and stuff. So we don't ask for whatever the spices come in, or the leftovers, or anything like that. It's just the bags. Right, only certain things that you'd wanna reuse, yeah. Okay, oh, so we do have a question. If you wanted, this question is about the Lego Club. I wanted to know, where did you get the kits for the Lego Club? Did you, are those kits that you bought, or did, how did you come up with those? One was a turtle, or? I'm not for sure. That's another one that I'm not personally doing. I know that the Legos come from the Lego company. So I'm not sure if it's on their website, that anybody can go and see the kits, but we do order like the specific colors and things for the kits. Oh, okay. But I think it's a program that they offer. Oh, nice, okay. So it's not like you had, because I know lots of many libraries have had over the years in the past Lego Clubs, where it's just, here's like buckets and buckets of all the Legos we have, go and make something yourself, you know, make up something. And that's what she asks, is the person asking did you make it, or just break down bigger ones and make up the thing? But no, these are actual like mini smaller kits that you can get from Lego themselves that actually have usually all the pieces you need to make the thing. And I don't know, I didn't know that. I think it kind of started off though, with us using the Legos that we had, because I think our first one was like making snowman or something really simple. So I think that was where the concept started, and then it kind of evolved a little bit, because I don't see, yeah, you could definitely just, if you have Legos laying around. Yeah, you can make up anything you want, yeah. Yeah, yeah. But Lego is very good about coming up with ideas of things you can do. And they have kits now too, even some of them are, you can make multiple different things with the same Legos they include in a box. I've seen some of those recently, it's like 20 bucks for a box or something, and it makes two different animals, depending on how you use them. Not two at the same time, you get a pick one, but these Legos could make this animal, or if you take that apart, then it can make this animal. I've seen that, yeah. That's pretty cool. Yeah. Ah, here's a good question. How are these kits funded? Specifically the Lego kits, this other person wants to know. Is this just into your, because you said some of this was things you were doing, some was new, how did you budget for this, or get grants, or how did that all work? Yes, so the Lego kits are coming out of our programming fund. I'm not exactly sure, it's not, we didn't get a special grant or anything for it. I know that we are just trying to do more things like that instead of the big programs, so we're just allocating the money differently. I don't have a better answer for that. Yeah, yeah, no, that's, yeah, you already, I mean, yeah, you already had a budget line, a line for that, for programming, and so you just use it in this new way, yeah.  So we just thought about that kind of in advance when we were writing up our budget proposals. Yeah. Okay. Did you ever consider charging for any of it, charging the people who are using the kits? I know some libraries I've seen, sometimes there's a small registration fee for attending the probably crafting event or the program to commercial cost of supplies. Is that something you all have ever done in Hastings? We've done it before, not very often. Most of it, we're very fortunate that our foundation is pretty flexible and we don't use it, but we have before with more expensive projects. I think we did like a clock-making class once, and so it was just like a $5 fee to cover the part of the kits or something like that. We've done tumblers before and they could either purchase one of ours for the class or they could bring in their own type of a thing. Sure, sure. Okay. But primarily we don't charge, we try really hard. Yeah. If you have that foundation to support it, that's key, that's very important, yeah. And I know some libraries also do fundraising for these kinds of things. They say we're doing a kid program coming up, I see it posted on social media, Facebook, whatever saying, if anybody has any empty milk bottles, whatever, we could use them. And we've definitely done that before. Reaching at me like, do you got any old socks? Right, the thing's, I did like five years ago, but I put a cute little sock doppy up and I was like, we're looking for mismatched socks. Yeah, everybody's got those, yeah. We're making dog toys, so. Oh, nice. Cool. Yeah, that was, but yeah, water bottles, a toilet paper tubes, staff, a lot of times we don't have to reach out to the public. We'll just send an email out among staff and be like, hey, can you guys save this up for a while? Yeah. We'll get it that way. Absolutely, cool. I see your camera's been going on and off, that's not a problem if you're having issues with that. Oh, now you're back. Oh, yeah, it was frozen up and then it went off and now you're back. Yes, everything's good. Nope. Oh, sorry about that. Maybe just the system, sometimes it knows that too much going on, whatever, yeah. All right, we have a few more questions here for the tutorials. How long were they usually, the video tutorials? I don't know if you mentioned that. I don't remember for sure. I would say that they were about 10 to 15 minutes. Depending on how fast you went through this stuff. And do you post them, are they up on your website or where do you, how did people get access to those? So if they registered, they got an email link that had both the video and the Zoom link and then we posted them on our YouTube page. Oh, okay. So are they still out there? If somebody wanted to go and look at them? Mm-hmm. That's that link that I put in the Prezi there. Oh, awesome. You are. All right, I'll have to do that. I don't think we ended up saving all of them, but most of them. And we're not still doing the video tutorials. Okay. Wow. Does it just remember for a few? Yeah, you could. I mean, they were a lot of fun to do, but. Yeah, absolutely. Now that people have access to coming in, we're like, well, even if we're sending home a kit, they can call and ask us or, like the Spice Club kits that we are sending aren't really project-based, so they don't really need the video. True, yeah. Take this home, make a recipe, hopefully it comes out edible. Exactly, send us your pictures. Yeah. Okay, so someone also wants to know, and do you have a list of the craft kits you have done that you could share? Or is there somewhere to see them or that you would share with like, I don't know if they want the full information or just. I could. I don't have that put together right now, but I have all of the stuff saved in my work stuff, so it'd be pretty easy for me to do. Maybe email me, have them email me. Does that. Yeah, absolutely, yeah. If anybody wants to, yeah, have any of that reach out to Erica and I think your email address is pretty. What is your email, let's see. E. Rogers at cityofhastings.org. Yeah, so pretty easy. Here I'm going to. Yeah, I'll put something together. I just sent that out in response to that question into the question, so everyone should be able to see that. Just Erica's email address if you want to. I'm also, I think your list is like, I've got a link from the session page to the Hastings Public Library website. That's a way to get in touch with her too. If you don't grab the email from here, not a problem. I did think about that. I did this similar presentation in person at NLA and so I had handouts that I do with people, but I didn't think about that for this one. Yeah, oh yeah, I mentioned at the beginning I forgot, yeah, that this was a session that was originally done, this presentation back in, was it October last year when conference was? October, September? Ah, I forget. Our Nebraska Library Association State Conference.  And I'm sure things have changed since then of what you're doing. The pandemic just comes close and there's always, yeah, things. Yeah. Hopefully we don't have to go back to 100% virtual again, but it's always nice to have the ideas if you do. Yeah, it's nice to have this in your back pocket for if something else happens. I mean, and this is any other kind of pandemic issue, natural disaster or something. Now we know there's ways we can still provide services to the people, if there's a flood and the library is inaccessible, here's things that we can do, we can shift gears, we know how to do it, we already figured it out. Exactly. Yeah, do it so much easier now. It is something that I've talked about a lot within the last couple of years with lots of libraries doing these kind of virtual things, just other ways of doing things is that accessibility issue, that these virtual or these take-home are so important, I think, to people who never came into the library before or couldn't, some parents or caretakers cannot, don't have the time to drive their child to the library and have them do the event and then drive them home necessarily, but they do have the time to say, hey, here's a Zoom event going on, let's sit there in front of it together and we'll do that and then we're all still at home and didn't have to do that part of it. It's, I've heard the other story times and things too that so many parents are so, thank you so much that you're doing these things. And I'm glad that libraries are still continuing them in some way because it's not just because we're not in a lockdown, there's still our people that need these kinds of services. It's just a new avenue of service for people, for people like that who just can't get to the library, people with social anxiety who wouldn't get out but can do this kind of thing like we're doing here. People who are still immune compromised or disabled or cannot physically get out are now having so much more offered to them. And I think it's great that we've discovered these things and libraries are still continuing them. You've got a whole new audience that discovered. Exactly. One last question here, is there anything, and I know you talked about how you worked all this out, any major pitfalls or lessons learned as you're going through this process? Like, I always try to say, you can learn from failure and it's okay, so what didn't work? Well, like I said, the big one was the Zoom sessions. We really had to trial and error our way through that because when we first started, we tried recording it and it was just not, we had some inappropriate things that were said and then I was like, okay, because we have like a very small knit group of ladies that do these classes. And so in person, they know each other and it's like, oh, hey, you know, it's funny, but when it's being recorded and sent out, I was like, oh. It's nice, they know each other, it's casual, it's friends, that's a whole different thing than, yeah. Yeah, and so that was a big one. Learning the different types of materials that you could send out was just a really big one. Trying to figure out those containers and things like that, like what are we gonna, is this going to be enough paint if we just send out this little paint pod or do we need to find like a film canister or something that, you know, and actually we got to the point where if it was a big project, it was only 50 cents a bottle for paint at Walmart. So sometimes we would just send out the bottle of paint if it was just one color. But lots of trial and error working with craft materials. You're gonna practice on a lot of things before because it's, you know, I'm sure you've done trial and error practicing just doing craft events in the library before, of course, ahead of time. So you know what you're doing before you teach it. But having to send the things home with someone is a whole another type of experimenting. Yeah. Yes. And, you know, like I said, it really helps now because it's really easy to see a project and go, oh yeah, we can do that. We just need to get, you know, some clothes, pins and some paint and some glue and we'll make a snowflake. But this forces you to go through it. And like I said, I ended up doing it at least three times before it was all said and done. So I could really see the things that are going to go wrong and try to solve them or at least be prepared to like give advice like, okay, so when you go to do this part, you're gonna wanna make sure you do this. And don't do this because I did it and it was wrong. It didn't work.   It's homemade and it's homey, yes. It doesn't need to be perfect. No, no. You want someone to know you made that, but yeah. Okay, well, I have another question here. I was wondering though, did you have a certain day and time for patrons to pick up kits? How did you schedule that? I suppose maybe when you were closed officially, how did you work out that? Yeah, so when we were really, really closed, we had them pick up and we would schedule a date and time, you know, we would call them and ask them, when can you come pick it up? And we would give them two days of options and then they would call us when they were outside and we would go give it to them, which was not ideal. And so then we went to a, well now we're at a locker system, so we were able to then put the kits in the lockers just like we would a whole book and call them and say, well, you've got it in this locker, you have until this date to pick it up. And if, which would usually be, so our programs are on Mondays and so we would put the kits in the lockers on Thursdays to give them Thursday, you know, most of the weekend to be able to pick it up. And then we would leave it there all the way until Tuesday in case they didn't realize that they were missing the class type of a thing. But we also then, we just labeled them and we, when we were open, but still doing the kits, we put them on our whole shelf. And so then they could, yeah, so we would put them up, just hold on a book. That's kind of how we treated the kits was like hold books. However, you would get them out to people, that would be how you would do it with the kits. Yeah, nice. So of course you mentioned the lockers and now people are like, what's that all about? I don't think many libraries have gone to, and it was before pandemic, some of them are doing it, but since during lots of have done it, we did give out grants to some libraries to buy those things and install. So can you quickly explain how that, how your lockers work there at Hastings? Yeah, so we have a set of lockers, they're a little square that stack on top of each other, just kind of like you would see in school and they're outside of our building. And I believe there's 20 to 30 of them, I don't remember. And we have the option when people put a hold on a book that they can pick it up in person or they can pick it up in the locker. And we set the books in the locker, we have padlocks that we change out daily and well, we change out with each reserve. So it's not locker number one doesn't always have this lock. And so then when they have, we call them and tell them that their item is ready to pick up, we give them the locker combination and we give them five days, which is our standard hold pickup time. And they were able to do that without coming into the library. Nice, yeah, it was a very convenient thing that libraries started doing, it's just so creative. It's easier, it's safer for them if they don't wanna come in, but it's also, they don't have to come when the library's open, that's a key too, for people who work the same hours as the library's open so they can't get there when you're open, they can come anytime they want. And that's something, yeah, that was a side effect that we didn't plan on. But yeah, we have a lot of people that you're like, oh, well now I can come when I get off work or the only day I can come is Sunday and that's the day you're closed. So it's been, or families too have really enjoyed it because we don't have time to load up all of the kids and bring them into the library so they can pick it up in the locker and kind of save time, kind of like the grocery store pickup. Exactly, I love that, yeah. Yeah. So this is a question and this is not something I've heard about, but do you don't have any issues with vandalism or break-ins with the lockers that are outside there? Not with the lockers, no. The thing that we tried before that was we had plastic newspaper bins that the schools had used and those didn't have locks on them. And so anybody, we just put like donated books and stuff so people, this is when we were closed, closed. So instead of checking out books, they could just come and grab books, kind of like the free little libraries. And we did have kids that would come and take the stuff and throw it all over the place and vandalize that, but we haven't had any problems now that we've put locks on them. Yeah, these are like secure metal lockers and the padlocks, that's not easy to get into. No, no, yeah. I mean, if they really want to go through all of that effort to steal some library books. Yeah, exactly.  And we don't put, we won't put kindles or anything expensive in the lockers.  That makes sense, absolutely, yeah. Cool. I mean, we probably would if we ever got to a shutdown phase again, but. Nice, okay. That's really nifty. Yeah. Someone did ask earlier about the funding of it and you said you all had the programming budget. But I did just want to mention that, yeah, we had many libraries over the last two years applied to us, the library commission for grants. This may be something your states did or your state library or your whoever you might get grants from, there was funding CARES Act money in the first year of the pandemic and then the ARPA American Rescue Plan Act money this year. And many libraries did apply for these kinds of programs, anything virtual, anything Zoom, lockers. So I would definitely recommend looking at grants, seeing what your state library is offering or anything outside the box, other kinds of grants that you can apply for. There's lots of grants for like public entities or municipalities where you would think of, you wouldn't think of a library necessarily because it's like, oh, that's for the city or something. But then they say any city department can apply for some of these kinds of things. So there are definitely grants that you, if anyone doesn't have the funding to do these that I would highly recommend looking into and seeing if there's a way to fund this kind of thing. The kits and the craft things are less expensive but lockers, those can not cheap.  I know in some places for weather they've built like permanent canopies over them or put them in an area so that there's no, worry about like rain or snow getting into them. They'll definitely look for grants in. Any other, we got a little five minutes left here. Anybody have a last minute desperate questions you want to ask of Erica? Type into the questions section. I did give you her email address as well that erodgers at cityofhastings.org if you do want to reach out to her there. I am going to, well, wait and see if anybody has any other questions. I am going to pull presenter control back to my screen because since I was just talking about it I'm going to show everyone. Okay. This is the session page for today but on our Nebraska Library Commission website I actually have a section here on grants. We have a whole flyout menu here about grants but anyone can go to this. This is not just for Nebraska libraries but I have a grant opportunities for Nebraska libraries link here which is just nlc.nebraska.gov slash grants and I list the kind of grants that we give out but then ideas for other places that libraries can go to for grants and here specifically in Nebraska, Humanities Nebraska, if you have a humanities department here in your state. Nebraska Arts Council Historical Society. We have grants available or we don't offer them. Our state is from our department economic development and the USDA, these are for facilities as you can see but some of them are just anything to charitable organizations. So feel free to look at this page for more ideas for grants then have resources here for other places to find even more grants out there. I just kind of pulled out a few that I know of that I know our libraries in Nebraska have used.  Anything that uses that wording we could potentially get a grant for our library. Oh, we do have another question that just popped in, awesome. About the spice kits. You said you did a history of the spice themselves. Do you do that about the meal of the recipe itself too? Like where does this come from or what is it with the actual recipe is all about? Mostly it's just the spice because the recipes we get are usually like often blogs, you know, we're online resources. So there's not a whole ton of information about them. But we do, we'll cite the original source that we got it from. Oh, nice. We can go back and look. Yeah. And we give the nutritional information and things like that. But typically there is, we don't have a whole lot of information about. Okay, so then they did ask about and the health facts about that spice. So you said nutritional information. So you do include that part of it. Yeah. So it's interesting to see the history of a recipe or a blog post that talks all about it. Depends on what you're in the mood for. If you want to read up on it, or if you just like, I just want the recipe. I just want to make this. Just stick down to the recipe part. Yes. It's a lot of fun. I haven't done all of the spices, but as staff, if there's leftovers then we get to... Oh, when they test them out? Sure. Of course. That's the cool thing you have to do. Of course, you got to test out all the recipes. There's not always leftovers, but sometimes. Nice. Nice. All right. Get back to our, there we go. All right. Almost at 11 o'clock. Perfect. Anybody have any other questions? We do not have to cut off right at 11. This will just go as long as people do have anything they want to ask, so go ahead and type in any questions you have and I'll just do my little wrap up here while I'm waiting to see. As I said, we are recording the show right now and it will be available on our archive page. I'm going to go here to our main Encompass Live page. If you use your search engine of choice and just type in Encompass Live, the name of our show, nothing is called that on internet yet. Nobody's allowed to use that name. So you will come up with our pages in your search results. These are upcoming shows, but the link to our archives is right here. Underneath. And the most recent one is at the top of the page. This is last week's show. And so today's will be there as well. By the end of the day tomorrow at the very latest, everything should be up and ready as long as go to webinar and YouTube cooperate with me. Everyone who attended today's show and registered for today's show, even if you didn't attend, will get an email from me letting you know that it's available. We also push out on our very social media. We do have a Facebook page for Encompass Live if you'd like to use Facebook, give us a like over there. You see here we do a reminder. She's a reminder about logging into today's show, a little introducing our presenters. And then I do post on here when the recordings are available. So if you do like to use Facebook, you can do that. We also go out on Twitter and Instagram. And we have a hashtag for the show Encompass Live. So a little abbreviation for the name if you wanna see when anything is announced when everything is ready. While we're here on the archive page, I'll show you there is a search here. I did mention that we do lots of shows and lots of topics for all types of libraries. And so you can search and see if we've ever had a show on a particular topic you might be interested in. When you can do the show, full show archives are just the most recent 12 months if you just want something current. And that is because this is our full archives. I'm not gonna scroll all the way down cause it's a huge, huge page as you can see. This is our full show archives from when Encompass Live premiered which was in January, 2009. So we're going on 12, 13 years worth of shows here. Weekly shows, almost every week of the year. So just pay attention to the original broadcast date of any show. Everything's got a date, so you know when it actually happened. Many of the shows will stand the test of time. Still be good, useful information, but some things will become old outdated. Resources may have changed drastically or might not even exist anymore. Links might not, might be broken. People who presented on a topic might no longer work at that library. So just pay attention to the date. But as librarians, you know, this is something we do. We keep things for historical and archive purposes sometimes and as long as we have a place to host them all we will always have them available here. All right, so got another question that popped up here. Oh, so you said you do the nutritional information. Is that nutritional information about the recipe as a whole? And like at the end of the recipe? Or what about like health facts? Like supplements, certain spices are good for your heart or in an accident, those kinds of things. So both, kind of when we're talking about the history we also talk about the benefits and the health stuff about the actual spice. But then with each recipe, there's also the nutritional information about the recipe. Sure, sure. So a little bulk, perfect. Yeah, exactly what people need. All right, oh, and a good question here which is actually a question for me. Why not if we get a certificate of attendance for attending today? Yes, approximately an hour after we closed down in the show today, everyone will get an email from the GoToWebinar system saying thank you for attending. This email shows as proof of your attendance for attending the show. And there is also a PDF certificate attached to that email. That is if you do need to use it for applying for CE credits, continuing education units, whatever you do in your state. We have them here in Nebraska to our CE coordinator here. You're in CE hours for keeping up certifications as librarians and library boards do. So yes, you will receive something within the next hour letting proof of your attendance that you can use and submit to whoever you need to submit to. We cannot issue a credit for anything outside of Nebraska. If you are from outside of Nebraska, we don't have the authority to give out credits for other states, but we do that certificate and that email that you can then submit to whoever does give you your credits and use it for that. All right, any other questions you wanna ask? We're a little after 11 o'clock here. We got a perfect, 11-04, we've started a little after 10, so perfect hour. I think else you wanna ask it in. Otherwise, you can email Erica. The recordings, you'll all be notified of that and the link of the slides and the video of today's show will be available. All right, we just got some things coming in, awesome. I think we will wrap it up for today's show then. Thank you so much, Erica, for coming on today and talking about this. This is great, lots of tips and tricks and ideas and obviously people are very interested in trying to replicate some of the things you're doing. Well, thanks for having me. It's always fun to talk about library things. Of course, yes, absolutely. All right, so that wrap up for today. Here's our upcoming shows and you can see we've got August and we're starting to get our September dates on here too, so keep an eye on here. Next week, I will be talking about E-Rate. If you're in a public library or a school and want to know about E-Rate, getting discounts on your internet access and your networking equipment. I'm doing a one-hour quick overview of it. We do do fuller workshops later in the fall, later in the year, three-hour longer workshops on E-Rate and special construction and things. But just since that's gonna be a lot later in the year and the process is opened up for the upcoming year, I'm doing a short one-hour just an overview of the basics of E-Rate. So if you've never done it before and you're interested, good show for you. It'll be a very high level, not all the different exact step-by-step but just a high level overview of it. Or if you just need a refresher, if you're getting back into it, if you're a new library director or a new library staff who have never done this, you keep hearing about it and you know what you're supposed to do is a good intro. Like I said, I will have fuller, longer workshops. I am one of my duties here at the library commission that says on here, I am the state E-Rate coordinator for public libraries. So I handle all the training, education, hand-holding whatever our libraries here in Nebraska need to do E-Rate. Other states, every state has their own public library coordinator and a school library coordinator. So you would have your own people that'll help you with it but anyone who wants to is invited to attend that next week. And any of our other shows we have coming up here as well. So thank you everybody for being here. Thank you, Erica, for being here. Good to see you and hopefully we'll see some of you in a future episode of Encompass Live. Bye-bye. Bye.


Today, I am doing the first ever Zoom interview, fireside chat. This is a big step, and I'm very honored to begin this interview with two wonderful mental men. The primary guest today is Alexei Grachev from St. Petersburg, Russia. The president of St. Petersburg Leatherman. Assisting us today is Mike Est of Estonia, who is the president of Leatherman Club Estonia. Mike is being very gracious to assist us with Russian and English translation, because my Russian is maybe two words or three words only. So Alexei, I must apologize for that. So I will begin right now. Alexei, please tell me about your early life and your family. My childhood was quite ordinary as other young people in Russia. I studied at a special school. I didn't hear much. Then I went to an ordinary school. I was the first one to go to an ordinary school. I was the first one who came to an ordinary school with a problem with hearing. So I was the first. That wasn't such kind of children before. When I finished school, I was the first one to go to an ordinary school. If I graduated from the secondary school, I went to the high school. I have two diplomas. I have a certified pharmacist and also a businessman, a business administration. Please tell me a little bit about your life in the communist system. Can you say a few words about your life in Soviet times? Not much. I don't understand. Soviet times. How was your life? It was my personal life. It was my personal life. I was busy with my studies. I was busy with my personal life. I was busy with my personal life. I was busy with my personal life. Mostly the study was fulfilling my life this time. But of course I was interested about guys. But I didn't recognize my interest in this time so well. It turned out that my 15-year-old sister had contact with my classmates. If I was 15 years old, I chatted with my friends in school and so on, but nothing special. It was clear what I was interested in. But of course no one could know our time. After that I became... Sorry. With time I started to understand about my interest. But of course nobody could know it. It was indeed a secret. Because I had to support the prestige of my family. Because I was an old man. Saint-Petersburg was a city city. So it was necessary to show the success of our family. And I was married in 1981. Who was the second man, Peter Burrett? He was the second man, Peter Burrett. He was a very old man. He needed to keep a polite position because his stepfather was a vice major of Saint-Petersburg. And therefore he needed to keep such a polite and prestige position. And the position of his family too. And he married when he was 21 years old. And now he already has a daughter who is 25. She knows the orientation of him and supports Alexei with any situation. Yes. I wanted to know about that. On Hotel Uznaita Bertam. But did you feel at age 21 that you must marry a woman? When you were 21 years old, did you feel at age 21 that you must marry a woman? Did you feel at age 21 that you must marry a woman? To be honest, I didn't need it. But before there were such, as they say, concepts. If there is something wrong in the family of a large party worker, then we could already have very simple questions and problems in the career. The situation was so that in this time it was common that people must marry. And if they don't, then it looked strange. And if you like to make a career, you need to have family and children and all kinds of stuff. Then you could have a better position in your career. Therefore it was necessary. The society meets that you are a correct and ordinary member of the society. How long were you married? Seven years. So was this when you were still under the communist system? Sorry, I couldn't understand your question. Let me change it. Did you get divorced still before Glasnost, basically? Yes, he asks, when did you get divorced? Was it during Soviet times? Yes, during Soviet times. It was in late Soviet times. It was already Glasnost and Perestroika times.   What did you tell someone? First of all, she said that there was no coming out. She said that there was no coming out. She said that there was no coming out. She said that she could pronounce it loudly. But I didn't do a secret to her. In the end, it happened again. Our child was 35. Two companies worked on it. I started working in a company called Africa, and I was very busy. So it was normal. It was like that. So until... If I got 35 years old, then I started more, I think, and busier with K-topics. Before, I had three companies. I had a lot of works. So I hadn't too much time for my personal life, and also I thought that maybe it's not normal to live a gay life this time. So after when I got 35, then I had more time to think about it, and to act more likely. Lovely. When I got 35 years old, I came to a Russian gay site in Omsk. I thought it would be nice to talk about it. This award, when I was 35, there started the first gay site in the internet in Russia, where you could have relations and to know each other. And therefore it was easier to communicate gay people in Russia this time. Please tell me more about that site. Can you tell us a little bit more about these sites, what they were, or what... What kind of acquaintances were there, and what they had. Yes. What did these sites ask about? They asked about everything. So it started from the site, and it was a huge size, and it wasn't that big of a difference. Because it was a very unpleasant site. The first one was, ''Hello, let's go to the site.'' It was a very common experience, and I wanted to be sure, because it was real. A man is just a person in the street. I got it. Okay. There was different advertising, and a lot of such kind of advertising, where guys like to meet immediately, and to have sex the first time. But I was more interested to know the other person, more detailedly understood which person he is. Is he a serious man, or just some kind of such person, who likes to have one time fuck, and that's all. Was it very popular to use this site? Was it popular at that time? What was popular? This page of acquaintance. Yes, it was probably, if not the only one, but at least the access to acquaintance, connection, and even the Russia. Russia was a very popular website. It really was the first chance to have a contact in Russia for gay people, because before there wasn't such kind of places and it was the first one and all Russia and all gay people in Russia could use it so it was very popular because there wasn't anything before it came with the internet as they don't they didn't have such a magazine or printed places where you could put advertising so internet games a chance to communicate directly to the gay people how did you learn about homosexuality and about kink how did this information come to you, how did you accept it? probably it came intuitively, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know what my inner nature is I looked and made searches on the internet and I found that I was a gay person I looked and made searches on the internet and I found that I was gay I looked and made searches on the internet and because I had interest then I searched about these topics and this way I could collect some knowledge about these topics so the internet was where I could educate myself on this field for many of us in North America and Europe also we are very curious about gay life under communism please tell us a little bit about that in in the communist days of Russia how was their gay life were there bars or saunas or a cruising area this is very curious for us in America and of course in Europe men are interested in gay life in the Soviet times there were some bars, places somewhere in the park where people gathered and talked and how was gay life in the Soviet times organized at all? Well, considering that I am quite late to go to the demo, but I knew that Saint Petersburg had places for such meetings. Saint Petersburg has an old gay club in a bar that already existed in the Soviet times, even in the so-called past, I don't know how you can put it, it's a few meetings in the city of Saint Petersburg, but that's why, of course, you know only your own because I came out so lately I didn't participate too much this time, but I knew that there are some bars and some places where gay people could meet and also in the center of Saint Petersburg on the main street there was a place where gay people could meet of course this information was known only in a gay circle not for everybody, but in Saint Petersburg there was already in Soviet time one club which was well known for gay people and who gay people like to visit and to meet.  Of course, there was a sauna, a so-called freezing sauna, but I don't know, so I can't tell you. Of course, there was such a situation that in public saunas you could in a certain time meet gay guys, but it was such unofficially and Alex didn't visit these saunas and these freezing places this time, but yes, there was such places and people who were interested they could visit them and to meet some other guys in this time. Okay, okay, was it very risky then? It was time to visit these places. It was in Soviet time, right? Yes. If you say that, well, as a class 5, at that time, it wasn't too much, so everything was very clear, everything was clear, but if, of course, there were a lot of attacks, then it was necessary to have some kind of extracurricular appearance, as a rule, as a rule, because a lot of gay men, they look like natural, so well, in general, and those who have a certain kind of extracurricular appearance and social norm, appearance and behavior, there could be problems. In Soviet times, these gay people, they looked like ordinary people and there wasn't any difference, but of course, if some gays were more differently outfitted or something special, so then could be some, how to say, higher interest or the other guys could attack them because they looked like different and act different, but of course, it wasn't so generally, but with some certain persons, so there wasn't a big danger for gay people, if you act like ordinary straight people, so nobody was interested and nobody didn't care. Ah, okay, excuse me, so Russia is depicted as having a negative view about homosexuality. How do you see that in Russia today? In Russia, gay people are treated negatively, how do you see this situation now? Well, that's it for now, but for now, I don't know what's going on in the world, it's just getting harder and harder, so right now, when there's a movement in Russia that's going down the drain, even though the activists are trying to solve this problem, but for now, Okay, thank you very much.  And after collapsing of communist system, the first president of Russia, Yeltsin, he took from penal code homosexuality as a crime, but now the authorities, they are talking again that we need to put it back to the penal code. So, this way, this gay activist who would like to organize and develop a gay movement in Russia, they are going more deeply under the cover because authorities, they try to show that it is not common for Russia and not common for traditional values. Do you think authorities will succeed?  How do you rate it? You need to answer this question, because on the one hand they are on the basis of Russian mentality for which the law is not only about men and women, and on the other hand they are not acceptable. Of course, the church itself does not include it in this question. I think, if the situation, the government needs to do everything it wants to do. I think so that the authorities nowadays like to fix that the only normal and acceptable relation is between the man and the woman, and the other relations are not legal. And if the authorities think that they need to somehow to stop and to liquidate such gay movement, of course they can do it. But it's difficult to say, because Russia is so large and of course public opinion is a little bit different in bigger cities and the small towns and countryside, so we need to accept these differences, too. I said that it depends on which place, that in small places it is more conservative than in big cities. How is the current gay life in St. Petersburg? In St. Petersburg, of course, there are gay people, but in terms of gender, I know that there are three groups that work, one is gay, one is gay, and the other is gay, but it depends on the situation. There are three gay clubs that are working nowadays in St. Petersburg, and there is a cruising club which is working in St. Petersburg, too. But of course life is changing and some clubs have openings and some are closing, so the situation is changing all the time. You mentioned a cruising club, is there a leather bar? Do you mean a cruising club? Do they have leather bars in their clubs, or what? Yes, leather bars, they are very expensive in St. Petersburg, but in St. Petersburg, they don't have any money, they are only for our business. In the cruising club, there are mostly vanilla guys. Leather and fetish guys are very close in St. Petersburg, and they didn't show yourself on these clubs in Leather Gear, only these Leather Club events, there are guys in Leather and they are visiting, not in other places in other clubs. Do you have private leather parties? He is asking if you organize private parties for your family. Yes, they organize private evenings. How does the community feel about this? Is it popular? Is it popular for you to organize private parties? Yes, it is popular, but it is not for our family, but for our family, it is popular. Well, it's a bit boring, it's a bit boring, I don't know what to do, that's the same thing. Therefore, this interest is not so big, it is bigger than it was sometimes ago, but not too much, let's say so. And we are happy to work in the club, cabarets and central station, but because we don't have the opportunity to organize a club, then we are happy to work with all the visitors of the club. Because our lesser club is not very large, there is not too much members, so we couldn't rent a whole room. So we need to accept that if we organize our meeting in some club rooms, then there will be also other persons who are not members of our club and who are not into the festivities. They could be of course interested about this, but they are not members of this club. So therefore, we don't organize events only for fetish people. How about if you do this in a private home? Well, in general, in the club, in a private area, we do not participate in parties. There is no special distribution for us and for the rest of the people. Yes, the question was that you don't meet someone in a private... No, no, no. Then if it's a large place and they have some room or corner where they are collecting for this event, then this way. Wow, how many people are part of the club? How many members of your leather club? How many? How many? How many? Fifteen members. He said it was a little. Well, it's a primary activity, but it's the most active activity in the club. It's a real situation. This is, of course, not too much people, but it's a reality of today. And a lot of guys who are a little bit interested about leather and fetish, they are afraid that if other persons could know about their interest, they could have problems at work, always family and so on. And therefore, they keep a low profile.  It's sad. It's sad? Yes. It's sad, but it's a reality. It's sad, but this is a reality. Yeah. How is it seen elsewhere in Russia? There is a movement in Moscow. There is a movement of the bear. It's clear. Well, because it's old, it's a little bit later. But about the club, it's a very rare place. It's about 34 years old. And it's a big concern. They try to do something. There are no other places, so there is no talk. It's just so... It's so empty. Okay. Of course, in Moscow, the situation is a little bit better because it's a capital and the biggest center. There are more key clubs and also the bear movement organizing regular sauna meetings in Moscow. But there are four free cities where the key activists try to organize something. But in smaller places, there is nothing because the public opinion is so... It is not legal and not supported. So in smaller places, there is no such events and meetings as in bigger places.  And therefore, if there is something about gay life, the authorities also turning it against gay people that it's not prohibited to talk anything about gays' lifestyle and so on. Even if these for adult people, grown-up people, these authorities say this information could get for children somehow and it's forbidden. So that's a question and a problem. There is a fetish club in Moscow who are interested in latex and they are organizing once a year competition Mr. Rubber Russia and Alex cooperating with them and they have connections. But this is only once a year. So there is no more regular events during the year. But once a year they are organizing this competition Mr. Rubber Russia. How many years have they been doing this competition in Moscow? Alex? You are asking me? Yes. How many years have they been doing this? Alex thinks that they have organized this competition Mr. Rubber Russia three times, three years. May I ask you to please introduce me to them for an interview like this? He asks if it's possible to introduce him to these men in Moscow so that they may agree to do an interview with him. What do you think? In general, we have discussed this issue a lot. We are thinking to combine our efforts and conduct all these activities on a higher level. But for now it's just an interview. For now. I don't know what to say. I think that this is still very, how to say, in a low level. And therefore they think that there is not too much to talk about it yet. But I can ask that you could have some contact person to take contact after some time. Let's think about a year or something like that. I ask him. But what do you think? You can just give some contact person with whom he can, for example, contact well, let's say, after a year and find out how things are going to look. Maybe then we can talk about it in more detail. Yes, that's not a very clear question. What do you think about it? The question is that if you have the opportunity with some of these men to organize Mr. Ravir Rasha to give him some contact so that he can directly communicate with them. Maybe in a few months or in a few months to find out how these things are going. Well, in the future, we can, of course. And, of course, we can talk about it. First of all, ask them if they agree and if they agree with them. You can send them an email address. He agrees that he will talk with guys in Moscow and if they agree, then he will give your contact and you can date later contact with them. And if something you can arrange some email connection and maybe interview one day. Okay, thank you. So, what shall I ask Nick? Please tell us about being the president of St. Petersburg Leatherman. Please tell us about your work as president of the leather club Peterburg. How did you become president? What do you do as president? If you have a job, then I will do it myself. Because I never got a job. Because I already had someone who could take care of himself and take care of the person who is not afraid of the fact that he can do it himself. I understand. Actually, there wasn't any election for presidency in this club. They just needed a person who was a leader, who could organise and who other guys trust and go after him. So, he elected himself president. Very good. And the other point was also that the president is somehow a public person. So, he is not afraid to be looked as a leader of his fetish and leather movement. That was the other point where he was agreed to take his role and post. Great. So, what would you do if you could be open about your kink? What kind of events, what sexual activities would you like to organise or try? If I could be free, I would like to organize a meeting for myself. For yourself? That's a good question. Well, yes. But, until then, it didn't work out. But, in the end, a private party is being organized. I won't do that, but private, private, private meetings in the apartment, something like that. Well, I don't know. He tells that he is interested in different kinks, but he hopes that he could practice them in some private meetings in private places. But he didn't specialise very much what kind of kink he would like to practice himself. Which kink do you like? What do you like? With a leader. He likes to be dominant. He likes to be dominant and to be a leader. For example, is there any kind of physical fisting or, I don't know, flogging? Is there something that really makes you excited? For example, fisting or how to speak Russian. Well, if you are drunk, on such behavior, it wakes you up or is it not for you? What kind of behavior? Do you know what? For example, fisting. I would say it is very confident. Very little. Very little. I think what is your favorite kink that you like to do? He asks what is your favorite behavior? I understand. I understand. I like my business with dogs, as they say. When they value I don't know how to say. Well, it's good to dominate. I understand. Of course, they don't fight. I understand. When you are going to fight, you need to master the character. I understand. He likes to dominate and if there are puppies, then he can organize and discipline these puppies. Then he is a puppy owner in his role. You must come to the international puppy contest here in the United States. You must. He said that you should feel international competition for the Chinese in the United States. It's very cool and good to fight. Yes. Well, I really want to. I want to fight for 2-3 years. I'm afraid it's unreal. I'm afraid of the Russia. It's not going to be easy to fight. He is very interested but he thinks that it will take a couple of years and he could arrange it and of course they are organizing competition of Mr. Russia couple of years. But it is also very in a very beginning and if this event will be more developed and so on and then probably they can visit more other such kind of competitions different competitions in other countries also in the United States. They like to do this competition of Mr. Russia Europe more higher level and if they could arrange more more publicly and so on then they can do the next steps and visit and go to other countries and other competitions too. You must let me know about Mr. Leather Russia because if you do it I will try to come and if you need if if you organize the next competition of Mr. Leather Russia he'd like to know it before and he'd like to come and if if you organize the next competition he'd like to know about it and then he'd like to come and watch the competition. If you organize Mr. Leather Russia then then he'd like then he'd like to know the date so that he can come and watch the competition. No problems he will keep you informed it will be next year next year next year. Please let me know as soon as possible. What king do you most want to try? I want to test everything in Poland. I understood. The question is how what Well, what awakens you, awakens the sexiness of pain? It awakens the sexiness. Well, in that sense, we have a lot of classes such as, let's say, Golden Shower, and other events. It's just one thing, but it's interesting to him that in such games it awakens you more. It's complicated. It's complicated. He could meet such real men, real masculine men. Don't tell any specific thing he'd like to practice. My last question is, what is the biggest misconception about you? Is it too difficult? It's difficult. I think I need to look to the translator correctly to translate this question. I'm very sorry, Alexei. Just a moment, yes. What is the biggest misconception about you and your position as a leather man? There is no misconception, right? There would be some misconception.  That is the point. Lovely. But Alexei, I must say thank you very much for such a lovely interview. I want to say thank you for the translation, for such a good friend who helps you. Thank you to our general friend, John O'Brien. Alexei, thank you for translating and for John O'Brien who connected us. And also to you that you are interested about people in Eastern Europe and especially about us. My pleasure. It was very pleasant to him. Right. Pleasure on both sides. But Mike, I must thank you very much as well. You were very kind to assist Alexei and me. This was very kind of you. And I say thank you very much. Yeah, you are welcome. You are welcome. I did my best. You did wonderfully.


Fresh you get that coming we're live. Okay. Looks good. Everything looks good. All right. I'm not gonna worry about it


What is going on guys welcome back to the channel critical overload here So we're gonna talk about the opening of scream 6 and where the movie could potentially take us during this opening I've seen some people start to speculate on it. I've also had some of you DM me asking about Certain theories you've seen online about the opening. I've seen some post about what people think the opening will be over on reddit I've seen people trying to also decipher what viewer or non is putting out there. So my Premise for this opening is gonna be related to the character that is played by Devon Dakota Who I don't think her name has been revealed just yet, but Going off of the fact that we know very little about that character Let's say that there's a strong chance that she is the opening and what could happen is I would say that Devon Potentially is the girlfriend of either Chad or Mindy. I will put that too I will apply that to Chad for the sake of this video and What happens is? She maybe is is walking off somewhere from a party or a gathering that's going on to the opening of the movie Maybe it's even happening at the Blackmore on the Blackmore campus somewhere or somewhere not too far off from the Blackmore campus She's left the party. She starts wandering the streets and she gets a phone call from Ghostface and then she's in a crowded area She's being taunted by the killer Someone who's playing with her that she at first thinks is one of her friends just playing around But then she ultimately finds out that they are very serious because it leads to this very intense chase sequence Between Devon Dakota's character and Ghostface chasing her in what I would say I'll just apply to an alleyway a dark empty alleyway No one can hear her screams No one is if they do hear her screams They're just shrugging it off because it's such a crowded city the sidewalks are filled with people It's Halloween night. Nobody's taking it any nobody's minding it nobody's taking it seriously at all It can be very reminiscent of Helen Shivers death and I know what you did last summer You have Ghostface chasing someone through alleys back alleys all all throughout wherever she is ultimately getting to the point where She ends up dying by the blade gets stabbed has her throat slit However, you want to do it get it done Shatter Mindy has lost their lost their girlfriend as the opening kill sequence and Then we're not done I've seen some of you point out how you have noticed that Tony Revillory's character appears to be Hanging around potentially in the opening sequence. I've also seen Vera non make mention of Some other stuff about this sequence that some people have highlighted. So let's say Tony Revillory is also in the opening sequence From this from this image if this is him walking away with a backpack in the in the teaser What if this is a witness to a to a ghost face killing spree or to a ghost face opening kill Ghostface takes note of this witness and the witness tries to get out of there Now the witness is trying to remain calm by initially walking away very calmly So they don't cause a cause a ruckus with everyone else around them And they also just want to blend in and kind of hope that the person that's following them because they just saw Ghostface kill Devin's character. They're hoping this person leaves them alone But ghost face is just right behind him following him intensely with his backpack on now Also, some people did point out that the backpack that whoever this person is in in the teaser is carrying That people believe is Tony has the Blackmore College logo on it So this is clearly a Blackmore student in that image that I'm starting to see people decipher So if this is Tony and again, I'm applying to the fact that this if tone if this is Tony This is a witness someone who just saw ghost face killed Devin and they try to walk it off But they're not going to be able to just walk this off because the killer saw them Looking and looking in that direction is a very awkward exchange You could have go on where Tony sees Devin gets stabbed to death and then he tries to simply walk away You've never had an opening sequence where you've had a witness to the kill Then end up being someone who becomes another victim as well because of the fact that they are a witness and they can go Blab if they get far enough So ghost fakes it starts to start stalking Tony while he's trying to walk away in the crowd That leads to yet another chase where he's ultimately running away to his apartment or wherever He decides to reside and he gets into the apartment and somebody is already already waiting there to kill him because again He was a witness to the initial opening kill Which was Devin a coldest character who is chatter midi's girlfriend That is what I would say could potentially happen in the opening where they kind of Fake you out a bit make you think that there's only going to be that one traditional kill or a pairing of kills But usually the pair is seen together during the chase sequence, but this time they shake it up a bit They don't just have one They let you think it's gonna be one But then the take the opening take is extended into two people the second person ends up being a witness To what just happened to the initial kill and they get stalked because the fact that they need to be eliminated now because they were Witness and if that's Tony's character, I think that would be a very unique and clever opening Especially getting you factoring all these different things like having ghost face stalk this person in an alleyway Having this person who was the witness to the alleyway kill try to walk it off Is if they didn't see anything because they know that this person is about to start following them the minute They start walking away. They try to keep it calm.  You can you can chalk it all up to that I think that would be a very fun and different Opening sequence they have play out where you have somebody who's initially killed But then they shake it up a bit by letting you think that all we're gonna get the title card Then you don't get the title card and then it shifts over to a witness to that kill And now the witness is in trouble because you can't have any witnesses No witnesses allowed because ghost face doesn't do that That is how I could see the opening potentially playing out. That's one idea. I know there's a plethora of different ways It could play out. Also, I know that some of you have probably some better ideas So if you have a different idea of how the opening could play out Let me know why and how down in the comment section below I'm really just open to hearing what you guys think could happen in the opening I want to know who you think is in the opening Do you think that the opening is going to be something very reminiscent of scream? 1996 screen 5 or screen 2 screen 3 screen 4 What do you think is gonna go down in screen 6 is opening? Do you think it's gonna be one of the most unique ones we've had since screen 2? Do you think it's gonna be just overly reminiscent of stuff you've already seen before? What do you think will go down in that opening and who do you think will be the open? I've also seen some people say that they think tomorrow we even is gonna be the opening There's a chance that she could be the opening well for the sake of this video I'm applying it to another person. We know nothing about really Which is the character that Devon Nicole is gonna be playing which again, I don't even think we have her name yet So you guys can let me know what you think about it down in the comment section Well, if you haven't already of course go ahead and I rarely say this but give the video thumbs up And also if you haven't already of course make sure you subscribe turn on post notification at never miss a video in the description I will have links on social media accounts I'm on Facebook Twitter and Instagram you can message me there of course limiters any movies news or reviews Let me to cover in the future and with all that in mind guys. I will see you in the next video


Is Good Eats over? Good Eats on television. I'm not going to make any more Good Eats for television. Good Eats, the entire library has been taken and put on cooking channel. I am working on a new very Good Eats-like program, but it's going to be for web only. It's going to be digital only. So right now the only thing that I'm really working on for broadcast television is the 10th season of Food Network Star for Food Network, and also Cutthroat Kitchen, which has just been green-lit for a fourth and a fifth season. So we're moving back out to LA pretty soon to shoot another 26 episodes, I think. Rapid Fire Questions with Alton Brown here at the Performing Arts Center. Favorite hot dog? Jack's Cosmic, the blue cheese slaw dog. It's my favorite on earth, and I featured it on a documentary they call Feasting on Asphalt. My family, we very often have vacations on ala palms, and so I've actually flown here from Atlanta just to go have a hot dog. I love it too. You mentioned Feasting on Asphalt. This is going to be Rapid Fire, but I got to ask, is there that of all the shows? I think that's my favorite. It's funny you mentioned that. That show is going to be moving to another Scripps Howard Network, where Scripps Howard owns a bunch of networks, including Food Network, and they own Great American Country, and that series is going to move to Great American Country, and I'm going to make new ones. That's just happened in this past week, so I'm going to be back on the motorcycle, back on the road for that show. Any country music tie-ins? I got to ask a country station. Well, you know what? Yeah, I'm hoping. I'm hoping so, because I mean I'll be really honest. As a musician, you know, we play a lot of songs during the show. I'm actually a pretty big fan of country music, and I'm hoping to be able to kind of lace some of that into the storytelling. I'm looking to get a really pretty decent country star to come on the road with me. I'm not going to say who I'm in talks with, but I am currently in talks with someone of note. That's all I'm going to say. Cannot wait. That wasn't really rapid fire. I know, I couldn't, but you actually had, I had another question over there. All right, well, here, we should knock it out. Now I will get the rapid fire questions. I tried to do this earlier. How do you like your steak? Medium rare. Favorite cheese? Purple haze. It's a California thing. It's a goat cheese. Best barbecue in the world? North Carolina. Eastern Carolina. Interesting. And I guess my last question is, what would be your favorite country song heading to GAC with a new series? All right, it's going to have to be Johnny Cash. Just cause. Because, you know, if I was going to have, if I died today and anybody from history could come back and play at my funeral, it would be Johnny Cash. I'm going ring of fire. Ring of fire. And, you know, that could kind of tie into the food world as well. Absolutely. Because if you eat too much Mexican food, you end up in a burden ring of fire. I think there was an ad campaign around that at some point. Was there? For Preparation H or so, one of those. Oh, dad nab it. I thought it was being original. Chatting with Alton Brown. And okay, so I've heard like a game show host is like the best job in the world. I've waited to be a game show host for a really long time. I helped a food network devise the show Cutthroat Kitchen because I wanted to actually host a game show, not a competition show or a reality show, a game show, meaning that people that are in it must play a game to win. Because I think the game show format is one of the finest formats that there ever was. And I've always wanted to host a game show. So I'm super happy with that show because it's it's clever and it's smart and it's kind of you know, I termed I coined the term evalicious because it allows people to really do horrible things to one another. But above all, Cutthroat Kitchen is about watching people cook their way out of terrible trouble. And it's on. Have you completed the whole season? Well, we've done three seasons actually season two is just now wrapping up. We shot season three in December. That's going to be premiering soon. And then season four and five are coming down the pike. So we're having a lot of fun with it. Is that in New York or LA? We shoot that in LA in Burbank, fabulous Burbank. You know the best thing about Burbank? Free parking. No parking meters in Burbank. You find a spot you park. It's fantastic. So yeah, any thoughts that try and bring some of these shows to the South? Atlanta is your home, right? You know, Good Eats shot for 14 years in Atlanta. And I just moved my studio. We sold our studio in Atlanta and built one up in Marietta, Georgia, where I live, new studio where we're going to be shooting all of our new digital stuff. So still shooting a lot and shooting a lot in the South. And if I do another feasting on asphalt, which I'm probably going to be doing, I'll be doing that in the South too. I'm a Southern boy and the more I can shoot here, the happier I am. All right. And we'll look forward to seeing who this country star is that could be not going to say I'm not not currently going to say, you know, but she's expressed real interest in riding bitch. So what can I say? Okay, so we got at least we know for motorcycle people, you'll know exactly what that means. Sorry. Sorry. It's a technical term.


Welcome to the Knuckleheads of Liberty. The board has cut the EPA's ability to be able to do some of these power plant regulations and such that have to do with greenhouse gases and such. So this is potentially a huge blow to EPA and executive authority to push through some of these green new looking deal type of things. But what do you guys think about this? This potentially has some earth shattering stuff. I actually remember when, gosh, it was 15, 20 years ago when the Supreme Court came down and said that the EPA could regulate CO2. So that was a huge issue. So anyway, what do you guys think about this? This is probably the most monumental thing since that I would think. I'm glad to see these bureaucracies, these three letter bureaucracies being confronted by the harsh reality of the Constitution. Oh my gosh, you've got some limitation on your power after all. Oh, and your butt heard about that and the sky is falling now and we're all going to die because your three letter institution, your bureaucracy cannot do whatever they want without any kind of legislative process whatsoever. Nothing to vote on, you know, where's the people's chance to submit their support or their lack of support on these issues and where is it debated on the floor?  And so I love it when top down central planning gets pushed back from the Supreme Court and is put into their place and, okay, no, you can't do that. You can't do this, you can't do that. And so you guys on the left, if you want to completely kill our standard of living, if you want to go back to the dark ages, you want to ride a horse at a bicycle, first of all, lead from the front and sell your car. Number one, that's the first thing you need to do. The number two is that you need to put these issues up to the table in the legislature and you need to debate it and go from there and see if it'll pass, you know, instead of just relying on these top down central planners that you love, by the way, you love them all. And the fewer the better and the higher up the better for you. I mean, you would love it if the whole country was run.  Willie and Millie. And, of course, you'd love that, you know, so it was going to make you ride a bicycle and turn in your air conditioner. No longer going to have air conditioning in the summer, Sacramento residents, sorry, that's what you want. That's what you need to have your monarch order all of us to do, because that's how you think. You know, you know, as a federal government, well, I mean, this is true at the state government level two, but as a federal government have grown larger. Too often these bureaucrats without clay statutory authorization, they have made rules and regulations that is affecting our lives. This rule and this particular ruling about the CO2 emissions, this particular rule and have far reaching consequences beyond just this particular situation. Because the bureaucracies throughout the United States, whether the state government or the federal government, they have been making rules, they have been using some vague language, you know, well, Congress nowadays, and this is the fault of Congress, they have been using these, these wordings that are vague, and it could be interpreted this way or that way. But the agencies, the bureaucratic agencies have been using this vague language to take authority upon themselves to pass rules and regulations that affect our lives without having clear mandates from Congress. And this is where it should be, this is where the rubber in the road should be, is that they're supposed to have clear authority from Congress before they pass these rules and regulations. And this is what the Supreme Court found faulty in this particular situation. They did not have clear statutory authorization to pass the rules that they are about to issue. So this thing will go beyond this particular case because there are many situations where the bureaucratic agencies are doing exactly what the EPA was trying to do in this particular case, which is to issue rules and regulations without clear mandates from Congress. So I am glad about this ruling, and I hope this is a turning of the tide where we could regain some of our liberties from these people who are not elected by me or anyone of you guys, they are not elected, but they think they could rule our lives. And even if they were elected and elected to be our rulers, that's not how we work. Exactly. We don't, it doesn't make it any better whether they're appointed by some other elected representative or they are elected by the people to rule over us. I mean, either way, in my opinion, it doesn't matter. And I know probably Leon's too, he's just bringing that up. That's also true. But yeah, maybe one of these days we'll get to the Federal Reserve. You know, in all these things, you know, the devil's sort of in the details because when Congress or legislature passes a law, if those words aren't very precise, then, you know, the executive agency may have a lot of leeway or have been given a lot of leeway in the past to do a lot of things. And, you know, it's supposed to be pretty straight and narrow, I guess. So I mean, the question is when they start interpreting too much, I guess, then it's essentially the legislature ceding their power to the executive. Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness always and forever.


Music legend Tina Turner recently passed away in her home near Zürich, Switzerland, where she had lived for almost 30 years, a place that she had made her sanctuary. Her property was more specifically located in the town of Kuschnatt, where Tina was a valued member of the community, and the star revealed in her 2021 documentary Tina that she spent the last phase of her life in private, alongside her husband, Erwin Bach. Tina's stunning mansion was kept pretty private as well, but we do know Chateau Algonquin sat on the lake Zürich with stunning views, and was reportedly decorated like a European palace, no wonder.